7WK

LADIES

THE REFORMATION

,MEMOIRS OF
DISTINGUISHED FEMALE CHARACTERS,

BELONGING TO THE PERIOD OF

THE REFORMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

REV. JAMES ANDERSON,

AUTHOR OF "THE LADIES OK THE COVENANT," KTC.
ILLUSTRATED BY J. GODWIN, J. W. ARCHER, &c.

ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE NETHERLANDS.

BLACKIE AND SON:
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, AND NEW YORK.

1IDCCCLVIII.

GLASGOW:

W. O. BlAtKIK AND CO.,
VIIXAF1ELIX

PBEFACE.

No revolution, since the age of Christ and his apostles, can be com-
pared in magnitude and beneficial results with that of the Reforma-
tion in Europe in the 16th century. By elevating the authority of
the Sacred Scriptures above human authority, and asserting the
right of every man to judge of their contents for himself, it released
the human mind from the fetters of Popish implicit faith, and
restored it to the free exercise of its powers. It was thus to the
mind of man like a resurrection from the dead; and from the terrible
shock it gave to the Papacy, wherever established, entirely overthrow-
ing that system in some countries, together with its powerful influence
in advancing civil liberty, commerce, science, and literature, it forms
the commencement of a new era in the history of Europe. From
recent events in England, particularly from the progress of ^xford
Tractarianism, and the Papal aggressions, the study of this great
revolution has become anew important, that, under a deeper impres-
sion of the blessings we have derived from it, our gratitude may be
quickened, first to the Great Ruler of the church and the world, to

vi Preface.

whom, as the efficient cause, it is to be attributed, and next to those
distinguished individuals who, under Him, were the instruments in
achieving it.

The new claims which, from these circumstances, the history of
the Reformation has upon our attention, suggested to the author the
composition of the present work. A series of biographical memoirs
of distinguished females in the principal countries of Europe, who
supported or contributed to this great revolution by sympathy,
action, or heroic suffering, when adherence to the principles of the
Reformation exposed them to peril, and even to death, had nob
hitherto been written, though the lives of particular individuals had
engaged the pen of the biographer, and such a work seemed to offer
an opportunity of presenting various of the leading facts in the
history of the Reformation in a somewhat new connection, as well as
of introducing notices of the characteristics of the period, and
episodes in real life, altogether omitted, or only slightly touched
upon, in general history, though partaking sometimes even of a
romantic interest.

The amount of materials for such an undertaking varies as to the
different lives. In some it is scanty and fragmentary ; in others it
is so voluminous that a single life might easily have been extended
to a volume. In the composition of the lives the materials for
which are most abundant, the author has endeavoure'd to select the
most interesting portions ; and, while compressing his matter within
as narrow limits as possible, to give, at the same tune, a degree of
fulness to the narrative. The authorities from which he has derived
his facts will be seen in the course of the biographies. Whenever

Preface. vii

practicable he has consulted the original sources of information, the
great importance of which must be obvious to all conversant with
historical inquiry.

These memoirs being in a great measure historical, it seemed
necessary to their 'being the more clearly understood, that the
reader should have placed before him the contemporaneous events
and characters with which the subjects of the memoirs were con-
nected. This information the author has endeavoured to supply,
sometimes in the course of the lives themselves, and, as this was
not always practicable without too great a digression from the
point in hand, at other times in the general introductions prefixed
to the biographies under each country, which embrace, for the most
part, a general view of the history of the Reformation in the respec-
tive countries to which they relate. This, it is hoped, will leave the
reader at no loss as to the general course of the events of the period,
in so far as connected with the ladies brought under review.

Had the author's limits permitted, he would have included under
the English portion notices of some of the female martyrs who
suffered during the reign of Queen Mary, and under the Netherlands
portion notices of several other females who underwent martyrdom
in that country. Multitudes of the tender sex in these, as well
as in other parts of Europe, thus signalized themselves for God ;
and church martyrology has preserved the memorials of the mar-
tyrdom of various of them, though even the names of by far the
greater number have not been transmitted to posterity, and are to
be found recorded only in the registers of the Lamb under the
altar. The author's object has not been to write a martyrology ;

viii Preface.

but many illustrations of the intolerant spirit of Popery are adduced
in this work. In answer to these, Eomanists and a certain class of
professed liberal writers will quote the instances of Protestant into-
lerance of the same period, in proof that Protestants were then no
better in this respect than Romanists intolerance, as they allege,
being a characteristic of the age, not peculiar to one ecclesiastical
party or religious system. But this is to draw a conclusion for
which the facts of the case, when fully and impartially stated, afford
no warrant. For, first, all the instances of Protestant intolerance,
when put together, dwindle into insignificance when compared with
the dreadful details of the cruelties of the Papacy, and the vast
multitudes whose lives it has sacrificed, amounting, as has been
estimated, since its first rise, to upwards of 50,000,000 of persons. 1
Secondly, while persecution in no party is to be screened from
merited censure and opprobrium, it is to be remembered that Pro-
testants had come out of a persecuting church, and that the intole-
rance of which they were in some instances guilty, being traceable
to the lessons they had received from Eome, she is fairly respon-
sible for it. And, thirdly, what the reader should specially notice,
intolerance is at variance with one of the fundamental principles of
Protestantism the principle that every man has a right to judge
for himself in matters of religion ; whereas intolerance is in entire
harmony with Romanism, which, in its standard books the decrees
of its councils, and the bulls of its popes denies the right of private
judgment, and unequivocally sanctions the principles of persecution ;
so that the persecutions which it has carried on have not arisen
1 Brace's Free Thoughts on the Toleration of Popery, p. 127.

Preface. ix

simply from the depraved impulses of man's nature, from tempo-
rary fitful outbursts of popular fury, or from the violence of certain
atrocious individuals, but from the teachings of the Popish religious
system. The principles of Protestantism, when acted upon, inevitably
lead to toleration; those of Popery, when acted upon, as inevitably
lead to persecution.

The characters whose lives are here narrated, the author presents
to the public rather as the representatives of the great leading
principles of the Eeformation against Popery, than as the sup-
porters of any particular denomination of Protestantism, for they
belonged lo Protestants of different shades of opinions. In the
programme of the ecclesiastical condition of Christendom during
the reign of Antichrist, given in the Apocalypse, the Spirit of God
takes no note of the differences and divisions among the Eeformers, de-
scribing only two parties Antichrist, and those ranked on the Lamb's
side in opposition to Antichrist by which he seems to teach us that
earnest, intelligent, and faithful witnesses against this the great enemy
of Christ, would be found among the various parties of the Reformed
Church, though these parties should not all be reformed to the same
extent. By this principle the author has been guided in selecting
and narrating the lives of these ladies. Differing as they necessarily
did in intellectual powers, in opportunities of religious improvement,
in diligent inquiry, and in the circumstances in which they were
placed, they were not equally enlightened in their views of divine
truth, and they held different sentiments on some religious points.
But they were united on many great important truths revealed in
God's Word, which are denied or corrupted by Popery ; and they

x Preface.

all sympathized with, or promoted, by suffering or action, the great
religious movement of the 16th century. In these respects they
occupy the same position, and are entitled to the grateful remem-
brance of Protestants of every name.

The author has only to add, that he intends to continue these
biographical sketches in another volume, embracing Lives of Ladies
of the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and
Spain.

EDIUBUBGH, November 14, 1854.

CONTENTS,

Page

PREFACE, ........... y

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, ........ xiii

LADIES OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, ........ 1

ANNE OF BOHEMIA, queen of Richard II., 33

ANNE BOLEYN, second queen of Henry VIII., 57

ANNE ASKEW, daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Kelsey, . 136

KATHARINE PARR, sixth queen of Henry VIII., .... 180

LADY JANE GREY, . , . . 244

KATHARINE WILLOUQHBY, Duchess of Suffolk, . . . . . 315

ANNE DE TSERCL AS, wife of Bishop Hooper, 365

KATHARINE VERSIILIA, wife of Peter Martyr, 400

QUEEN ELIZABETH, . . . 418

MILDRED COOKE, Lady Burghley, ....... 461

ANNE COOKE, Lady Bacon, 484

LADIES OF THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, . . . . . . . .513

KATHARINE HAMILTON, sister of Patrick Hamilton, the martyr, . . 523

HELEN STARK, wife of James Ranoldson, 528

ISABEL SCRIMQER, wife of Richard Melville, 535

ELIZABETH ASKE, wife of Richard Bowes, and MARJORY BOWES, wife of

John Knox, .... 540

ELIZABETH CAMPBELL, wife of Robert Campbell, of Kinyeancleugh, . 551

ELIZABETH KNOX, wife of John Welsh, 563

xii Contents.

- * ___

LADIES OP THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.

Pagt
HISTORICAL, INTRODUCTION, ........ 577

WENDELMUTA KLAAS, a widow of Monickendam, .... 595

LYSKEN DIRKS, wife of Jeronimus Segerson, . . . . 601

MRS. EGBERT OGUIER, of the town of Lisle, 619

BETKEN, maid-servant to Peter van Knlen, goldsmith in Breda, . . 627
ELIZABETH VANDER KEKK, widow of Adam van Diemen, . . 631

CHARLOTTE DE BOURBON, Princess of Orange, .... 634

LOUISE DE COLLIGXT, Lady Teligny, afterwards Princess of Orange, . 666
APPENDIX, . . . . . . .... . 703

Anne Boleyn's Letter to Henry VIII., from the Tower, . . 703

Popish Plots against Anne Boleyn, . . . . . . 704

Lady Jane Grey's Letter to her father, written three days before her
execution, ......... 708

Lady Jane Grey's Letter to her sister, Lady Katharine, written on the
evening before her execution, in the end of the Greek New Testa-
ment which she sent to Lady Katharine, . . . . 709
Notice of Lady Katharine Grey, sister of Lady Jane Grey, . .710
Notice of Ladies Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, daughters of Ed-
ward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, . . . . .713

Maria van Reigersherg, wife of Hugo Grotius. Manner in which she
liberated Grotius from prison, ...... 714

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

LADIES OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

Engraver. I

'oh.e

THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION, . . Frontispiece.

Godwin.

Linton.

AN ALLEGORY,* Engraved Title.

Godwin.

Vizetelly.

Ornamental heading to Preface,

Humphreys.

Bolton.

Ornamental heading to Introduction,

Humphreys.

Bolton.

Tail-piece Preaching Cross, Hereford,

Jewitt.

Tomb of Richard IL and Anne of Bohemia, in Westminster

Abbey, as now existing,

Archer.

Williams.

Border and Ornamental Initial-letter,

Humphreys.

Bolton.

Court Costume, time of Richard IL,

Archer.

Bolton.

Lutterworth Church, Leicestershire, as now existing, . .

Archer.

Williams.

Hever Castle, Kent, as now existing,

Archer.

Bolton.

Part of the Gallery in Hever Castle,

Archer.

Bolton.

Horologe presented by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn,

Folkard.

Miss Gainsford and Zouch, her lover,

Godwin.

Linton.

The Papal Tiara,

Folkard.

The English House, Antwerp,

Archer.

Bo'.ton.

St. Mary's Abbey, York, as now existing,

Archer.

Bolton.

Anne Boleyn and Matthew Parker,

Godwin.

Linton.

103

ARREST OF ANNE BOLEYN,

Godwin.

Linton.

104

Anne Boleyn a prisoner at the Gate of the Tower, . .

Godwin.

Linton.

105

Archer.

Bolton.

107

TRIAL OF ANNE BOLEYN,

Godwin.

Linton.

117

* The spirit of religion encouraging and consoling adherents to the reformed faith, under
Romish persecution. The stake, accessories, and the monk officiating in the douhle capacity
of jailer and executioner, typify the means resorted to for the subjugation of heretics. The
upper portion of the design depicts the apotheosis of a martyr.

XIV

List of Illustrations.

Draufoumcm. Engraver. PjQ

Facsimile of the name of Aune Boleyu on the wall of the

Marten Tower, . . . . , Archer. Bolton, 135

Ornamental heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 136

Anne Askew at her Midnight Devotions, Godwin. Lintou. 144

Pix of the Fourteenth Century, Jewitt. Jevritt. 152

Anne Askew examined before Bonner, Uodwin. Linton. 153

Anne Askew's Maid and the Apprentices, Godwin, Liuton. 16G

Applying the tortnre of the Rack, ; . . . v '. .' . Watt. Folkard. 167

BURNING OF ANNE ASKEW AND OTHERS, .... Godwin PaUiel. 175

Ruins of Keudal Castle, Westmoreland, .'.... . Archer. Bolton. ISO

Snape Hall, Yorkshire, as now existing, . . . . , . Archer. Bolton. 183

Hampton Court, time of George II., ....... Archer. Bolton. 189

London and Simons paraded in disgrace through Windsor, Godwin. Linton. 193

SERMON BEFORE QUEEN KATHARINE PARR, . . . Godwin. Thomas. 213

Gardiner inciting Henry against Katharine Parr, . . Godwin. Jackson. 216

Reconciliation of Henry and Katharine Parr, .... Godwin. Jackson. 223

THREATENED ARREST OF KATHARINE PARR, . . . Godwin. Thomas. 225

Sudley Castle, Gloucestershire, as now existing, . . . Archer. Bolton. 234

Chapel of Sudley Castle, . Archer. Bolton 233

Fail-piece Ancient Faldstool, . . Jewitt. Jen-itt. 243

Remains of Bradgate House, Leicestershire, .... Archer. Bolton. 244

LADY JANE GREY AND ROGER ASCHAM, Godwin. Thomas. 253

Rich Female Costume, time of Edward VI., .... Archer. Bolton. 261

Durham House, London, time of Charles I., .... Archer. Williams 267

Sion House, Middlesex, as now existing Archer. Bolton. 273

Ridley Preaching at St. Paul's Cross, Godwin. Jackson. 283

Baynard's Castle, London, time of Charles I., .... Archer. Bolton. 286

Lady Jane Grey at Dinner in Partridge's House, . . . Godwin. Linton. 292

Pompous Parade of Popish Priests, Godwin. Linton- 298

LABY JANE GREY AT THE PLACE OF EXECUTION, . , Godwin. Thomas. 311

Tail-piece Ancient Sconce, Jewitt. Cewitt. 314

Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, as now existing, . . Archer. Bolton. 315

Part of Weston Stow Hall, Suffolk, time of Henry VIII., Archer. Eolton. 818

Bishop Gardiner in Confinement, Godwin. Vizeteliy. 826

List of Illustrations. xv

Drati^lttmtan. Engraver . Page

Remains of Winchester House, time of George IV., . . Archer. Bolton. 340

The Flight from Santon to Wesel, Godwin. Vizetelly. 350

Tail-piece Stone Pulpit, Buckenham, Norfolk, . . . Jewitt. Je\vitt. 364

Ornamental Heading Humphreys. Bolton. 365

Old St. Paul's, London, time of Elizabeth Archer. Williams. 369

The Romerberg, Frankfort, as now existing, nine. Jackson. 379

Old House in Gloucester where Hooper lodged, . . . Johnson. Bolton. 392

Place of Hooper's Martyrdom, Gloucester, Johnson. Bolton. 393

The High Street, Oxford, modern view Mackenzie. Williams. 400

The Shrine of St. Frideswide, Oxford, Jewitt. Jewitt. 412

Tail-piece Portable Shrine, Malmesbury Abbey, . . . Jewitt. Jewitt. 417

Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Archer. Bolton. 418

Woodstock, Oxfordshire, as existing iu 1714, .... Archer. Bolton. 427

Shene Palace, Surrey, as now existing, Archer. Solton. 456

The Holbein Gate, Old Whitehall, time of Charles I , . Archer. Bolton. 459

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 461

SIR ANTHONY COOKE INSTRUCTING ins DAUGHTERS, Godwin. Thomas. 461

Burghley House, Northamptonshire, as now existing, . Archer. Bolton. 470

Lady Burghley's Monument, Westminster Abbey, . . Archer. Bolton. 480

Tail-piece Bracket, Lincoln Cathedral, Jewitt. Jewitt. 483

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 484

York House, London, time of Charles I Archer. Bolton. 493

Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth, time of George II., . . Archer. Bolton. 499

Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, time of George III., . . Archer. Bolton. 503

LADIES OF THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.

Ornamental Heading to Introduction, Humphreys. Bolton. 513

Ornamental Tail-piece to Introduction, Humphreys. Bolton. 522

Ornamental Heading and Initial-letter, Humphreys. Bolton. 523

Helen Stark parting with her Child, Godwin. Jackson. 533

Tail-piece Lich-gate, Jewitt. Jewitt. 53!)

John Knox's House, Edinburgh, as in 1846 Drummond. Williams. 540

Castle of Kinyeancleuch, Ayrshire, as existing, .... Johnson. Williams. 551

Tail-piece Ancient Chalice, Jewitt. Jewitt. 562

xvi List of Illustration*.

Draughtsman, Engraver. Paye

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 563

Linlithgow Palace, as now existing Collie. Williams. 567

MBS. WELSII'S INTERVIEW WITU KING JAMES, . . Godwin. Vizetelly. 572

LADIES OF THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.

Ornamental Heading to Introduction, Humphreys. Bolton. 577

Tail-piece Halberts of the period, Watt. Keck. 591

Ornamental Heading and Initial-letter, Humphreys. Bolton. 595

Wendelmuta Klaas aud the Dominican Friars, .... Godwin. Jackson. 597

Antwerp Cathedral, from the Egg Market, ..... Vizetelly. Vizetelly. 601

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 619

Mrs. Oguier and her Son, ............ Godwin. Jackson. 624

Tail-piece Ancient Staircase, Jewitt. Jewitt. 626

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 627

The Townhall, Utrecht, as now existing, Johnson. Williams. 631

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 634

Charlotte de Bourbon instructing the Nuns of Jouarre, . Godwin. Jackson. 638

The Town and Castle of Heidelberg, as now existing, . Hine. Heaviside.641

Charlotte tending the wounded Prince of Orange, . . . Godwin. Vizetelly. 660

Tail-piece Ancient Lettern, Jewitt. Jewitt. 665

Ornamental Heading, Humphreys. Bolton. 666

The Elector and the Portrait of Colligny, Godwin. Vizetelly. 676

The Townhall, Delft, as now existing, Hine. Jackson. 679

ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE OP ORANGE, . . . Godwin. Jackson. 681

The Townhall, Middleburg, as now existing, Read. Heath. 685

The Hague, distant view, Archer. Bolton. 687

Louise de Colligny on her Death-bed, Godwin. Jackson 700

Ornamental Tail-piece Humphreys. Bolton. 716

Dairies of fl)t &*&rmation

IN ENGLAND.

" We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, aud the Lord brought ue out of Egypt with a
mighty hand " (Deuteronomy vi. 21).

" What we have heard and known, aud our lathers have told us, we will not hide from their
children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and
his wonderful works that he bath done " (Psalm LXXVIII. 3, 4).

INTRODUCTION.

HE first of the subjects of the biographical sketches
included in this division of our work carries us back
to the times of John Wickliffe. The others lived in
the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary,
and Queen Elizabeth. We shall therefore, in intro-
ducing them to the reader, touch upon the instrumentality of
Wickliffe in the advancement of Divine truth, and then advert to
some of the prominent features of the reigns of these sovereigns,
considered particularly in their relation to the struggles of the
Eeformation in England, with the history of which the lives of these
ladies are more or less connected, and a cause which all of them had
embraced or supported from conviction, though not with equal zeal
and intelligence, nor with the same spirit of self-sacrifice.

The Reformation in England in the sixteenth century was not an
outburst for which there had been no previous preparation. Revolu-
tions generally seem to the superficial observer to happen abruptly,
but they are always the effect of causes which, though hidden and
unnoticed, have been previously in operation, preparing the way for
the great catastrophe. These causes, like those in operation in the
physical world, may work slowly and by insensible degrees, and there

2 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

may, from our ignorance of the counteracting influences -which may
spring up in the course of events, be much uncertainty, even to the
mind which sees their operation, whether they will issue in the catas-
trophe to which they naturally tend. But when the catastrophe does
take place, and when we philosophically trace back and investigate
the causes, it will be found that the remote and general causes have
had such influence, that without them the direct and immediate
causes could not have produced the result. In looking at the imme-
diate causes, there will often appear such a disproportion between
them and the effects produced, as to excite our surprise that so great
events should be brought to pass by so small causes, but when we
examine the subject more minutely, we will discover that the imme-
diate causes have been indebted for their efficacy to a long chain of
preceding causes. It was so in regard to the Reformation in England
as well as in Germany.

To go no farther back than the fourteenth century in tracing the
influences set at work by Providence in preparing the way for the
Reformation which signalized the reign of Henry VIII., a brief
glance at the labours of John Wickliffe, will show that they were
intended by Providence to have something like the same relation to
the Reformation as the seed-time to the harvest. Before he came
into public view, his predecessors in the same cause, Fitzralph,
Bradwardine, and others, had gone to their rest. Into their labours
he entered. The work they had left he took up with increased
energy and success. From the theological chair, when professor of
divinity at Oxford, and from the pulpit, on his becoming rector of
Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, he boldly denounced the arrogant
pretensions of the Pope and the Papal priesthood, attacked the
doctrines of Popery, and proclaimed the pure doctrines of the gos-
pel. He did the same thing by his numerous writings, of which
the most important was his translation of the entire Scriptures,
which he executed from the Vulgate, being ignorant of Hebrew and
Greek. To disseminate the sacred volume in English among the
people, his object in. this undertaking, was quite a novel idea, and

ENGLAND.] Introduction.

was in itself an important step in the cause of the Reformation.
Many portions of the Bible had been translated into English before
his time, but to translate them for general circulation appears never to
have been contemplated by the translators, and the translations were
generally buried in the library of some man of wealth, or in some
monastery. It was Wickliffe who first took down the Bible from the
shelf, and shook off the dust with which it had been covered for ages,
that it might become common property. Was it not Heaven's great
gift to the whole human family 1 Why then should it be sealed tip
in an unknown tongue 1 Why should it not be translated into
English, that his countrymen might be able to read in their own
language the wonderful works of God 1 To do this would be doing
something worth living for, something for his generation, and some-
thing for posterity. Such were the thoughts which filled his mind,
and he diligently set himself to the task, which, after the labour
of many years, he completed about 1380. These combined labours
produced great effects. His opinions infected not a few of the paro-
chial clergy, the University of Oxford, many of the aristocracy, and
multitudes of the common people. So numerous were his converts,
even in his own day, that, according to the testimony of a popish
contemporary, " starting like saplings from the root of a tree, they
were multiplied, and filled every place within the compass of the
land." After his death his doctrines continued to spread throughout
England, notwithstanding the efforts of the adversaries to suppress
them. His various writings, and especially his translation of the
Scriptures, both the whole of it and copies of particular parts, were
multiplied by transcription, as they had been during his lifetime, the
expenses being defrayed by persons of rank and wealth, and they were
the means of making many converts. A single copy of the Scriptures,
or detached portions, would serve the inquirers of a whole district,
who in times of persecution would assemble in some friendly house
where the manuscript was secreted, and where, drawn from its place
of concealment, it was read by one of their number to the company,
who listened with eager and devout attention. This continued even

4 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

down to the reign of Henry VIII., when the disciples of WicklifFe
were so widely diffused throughout the country, that Sir Thomas
More, mainly, it would appear, upon this ground, predicted the speedy
ascendency of heresy in England. 1 Thus did the humble rector of
Lutter worth mightily contribute more perhaps than any other
individual to prepare the way for the great revolution which shook
and overthrew the Papal system in England in the sixteenth century.
He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, " Prepare ye the
way of the Lord." He was " the morning star of the Beformation."
Had circumstances been as favourable in England in the fourteenth
century as they were in Germany in the beginning of the sixteenth,
this great man would have achieved for the former country what
Luther did for the latter.

That step by which Henry VIII. separated England from the Papal
jurisdiction, is, from its important influence on the Reformation in
England, deserving of special attention, though we can only glance
at some of the leading facts connected with it.

In the beginning of the year 1527, if not at an earlier period, Henry
began seriously to contemplate a divorce from his queen, Katharine
of Aragon, the widow of his brother Arthur, on the alleged ground
of scruples of conscience as to the lawfulness of a marriage contracted
with a sister-in-law ; but his real motives, it was generally believed,
were his decayed affection for Katharine, in consequence of her faded
beauty and declining health, and his passionate desire to have a son
to succeed him, a felicity he could not expect without a new marriage,
as he was hopeless of more issue by his present queen. The idea of
the divorce originated with Cardinal Wolsey. This is agreed upon
by all contemporary writers. Katharine uniformly ascribed it to him,
never to her husband, and affirmed, probably with truth, that his
motives were to be revenged on her because she had censured his
profligate life, and on her nephew Charles V., because he had not
raised him to the Pontifical chair. Wolsey himself confessed that

1 See Vaughan's Life of Wickliffe, passim.

ENGLAND.]

Introduction.

he was the author of the project to the French ambassador, Bellay,
at a time (October, 1528) when he was not likely to have made the
declaration, had it not been true, for then the subject had become so
embarrassing as to occasion serious regret to all concerned that it had
ever been stirred. The suggestion was made to Henry in the year
1526 ; and to strengthen him against Charles V., by allying him to
Francis I. of France, Wolsey's plan was that his master should marry
Margaret of Valois, sister of Francis, and at that time widow of the
Duke of Alengon. In March, that year, we find him directing the
attention of Henry to this princess, and he also procured her portrait
for the inspection of the amorous monarch. 1

When the question was fii-st presented to the attention of Pope
Clement VII., in 1527, during his imprisonment in the Castle of St.
Angelo by the imperial army, which had taken Rome by storm, rest-
ing his hopes of being restored to freedom upon the sovereigns of
England and France, he professed the most cordial desire to gratify
Henry's inclinations. 2 But after Charles, with the view of engaging
him to thwart Heniy in his wished-for divorce, had determined to
restore him to liberty, circumstances being changed, new motives
operated on his mind, and entirely revolutionized his sentiments in
regard to the divorce. Perceiving that the emperor was full of
resentment at Henry's proposal of degrading Katharine of Aragon,
his aunt, and would on no account consent to the divorce, he dreaded
having any hand in a transaction which might bring upon him anew
the wrath of the emperor, whose unscrupulous power he had so recently
experienced. 3 He besides became afterwards bound to Charles by
the very advantageous treaty into which he entered at Barcelona,

1 Turner's History of the Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 139-149.

2 Robertson's History of Charles V., book v.

3 That such were the feelings of the Pope, appears from the following passage of a
letter from his secretary, Sanga, to Campeggio, dated Viterbo, 2d September, 1528,
when Campeggio was preparing to go to England as the Pope's legate about the affair
of the divorce, and the triumph just gained by the arms of Charles V., in Italy, over
Francis I. of France, would give additional intensity to these feelings : " Our lord the
Pope, esteeming himself, as your most reverend lordship knows, most deeply obliged

6 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

in June, 1529, with that sovereign, who, as some atonement for his
ignominious treatment of the Pontiff, granted him highly favourable
terms. Had it not been for the terror of Charles, and for the advan-
tages to be derived by preserving his friendship, the Pope would
certainly have yielded at once all that Henry prayed for ; but thrown
into the perplexing dilemma of breaking either with Charles or Henry,
neither of whose favour he was willing to sacrifice, he hesitated, would
come to no decision on the question of the divorce, and having recourse
to a procrastinating and duping policy, alternately encouraged Henry
by promises, and discouraged him by retracting them, seemed at
times to grant him all when he intended to do nothing, being resolved
to hold the divorce in suspense, convinced that the moment he issued a
sentence agreeable to the one sovereign, the other would become his
irreconcilable enemy.

Irritated at the tergiversation and delays of the Pope, Henry, set-
ting the papal authority at defiance, settled for himself the long agi-
tated question, by marrying Anne Boleyn in the beginning of the year
1533. On the 23d of May, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in
a court held at Dunstable, pronounced not a divorce, but a sentence
on the former marriage, to the effect, that having been contracted
contrary to the law of God, which forbids marriage with a deceased
brother's widow, it was null, and had been so from the beginning, and
on the 28th of the same month he judicially confirmed at Lambeth
Henry's union with Anne Boleyn.

Indignant at Cranmer for presumptuously encroaching on his pre-
rogative, by pronouncing Katharine's marriage with Henry to be, and
to have ever been void, his holiness issued a bull annulling Cranmer's
judgment ; and on the llth of July, braving the displeasure of the

to that most serene king, there is nothing of such magnitude that he would not wil-
lingly do to gratify him ; but still there is need that his holiness, seeing that the Em-
peror is victorious, and having reason, therefore, to expect to find him not averse to
peace, should not rashly give the Emperor cause for a new rupture, which would for
ever obliterate all hope of peace ; besides, that his holiness would undoubtedly bring
down ruin and destruction upon his whole estate." Ranke's History of the Popes,
book i., chap. iii.

ENGLAND.] Introduction.

monarch, he published a decree, which was affixed on the public places
at Dunkirk, threatening to excommunicate him unless he separated
from Anne Boleyn, and restored all things to their former state before
September following. Henry instantly appealed from the Pope to a
general council lawfully called ; l and Cranmer, foreseeing the storm
which was gathering around his own head, made a similar appeal, by
the king's advice. Both appeals were transmitted to Edmund Bon-
ner, afterwards Bishop of London, who had been sent as his majesty's
envoy to the Pope, to co-operate with Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of
Winchester, who had previously been despatched to protect his
majesty's interests. In November Boniier obtained an audience of
the Pope, and on reading Henry's appeal, his holiness, to use the
words of Bonner, " fell in a marvellous great choler and rage, not only
declaring the same by his gesture and manner, but also by words.
He was continually folding up and unwinding his handkerchief,
which he never doth but when he is tickled to the very heart with
great choler." He requested that the words might again be read to
him, upon which, " not a little chafing with himself, he asked what I
had more." Two days after, Bonner returned to the Pontiff, to receive
an answer as to his majesty's appeal. He had to wait two hours,
during which his holiness was engaged in the very laudable and edify-
ing occupation of " blessing beads, and suffering ladies and nobles to
kiss his foot," and then he received an answer expressed in a tone of
civility, but yet in a manner indicating suppressed resentment. "My
mind towards his highness," said he, " always hath been to minister
justice, and do pleasure unto him, although it hath not been so taken.
I never unjustly grieved his grace that I know, nor intend hereafter
to do ; but as there is a constitution of Pope Pius, my predecessor,
that doth condemn all such appeals, I therefore do reject his grace's
appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and unlawful." 2 Bonner had an addi-

1 His appeal is dated 30th July, 1533. It is printed in Rymer's Fcsdera, vol.
xiv., p. 476.

2 Burnet's History of the Reformation in England, Oxford, 1816, vol. vi., pp. 54, 58.

8 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tional ungracious task to perform, that of submitting Cranmer's ap-
peal ] to his holiness. By this appeal, combined perhaps with the
peremptory and arrogant manner which formed a part of Bonner's
character, his holiness was so exasperated, as to threaten to throw
him into a caldron of melted lead, or to burn him alive. " Bonner,"
says Turner, " having himself no taste for the agonies of fire, to which
he afterwards doomed so many without pity, was glad to make a
precipitate escape." 2

In his irritation at the Pope, Henry, even while negotiations for
effecting a reconciliation between them were going on, assembled his
Parliament in January, 1534, and got it to pass various bills destruc-
tive of the papal authority in England. It was, for example, enacted,
that hereafter no appeals should be made to the court of Borne, but
that all causes ecclesiastical should be judged by the prelates within
the realm ; that first-fruits, annates or St. Peter's pence, should be no
longer paid to the See of Eome ; nor palls, bulls, nor dispensations of
any kind procured from thence ; that monasteries should be subjected
to the visitation and government of the king alone ; that it was no
heresy to call in question the Pope's authority; that Campeggio.
Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci, Bishop of Worcester, two Italians,
should be deprived of their bishoprics, as being foreigners and non-
resident. In the same Parliament the marriage of the king with
Katharine of Aragon was declared to be void, Cranmer's sentence
annulling it ratified, the marriage of the king with Anne Boleyn con-
firmed, the succession to the crown settled on the issue of this marriage,
and an oath in favour of this succession was to be enforced under the
penalty of imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and the forfeiture
of goods. On the 30th of March the Parliament adjourned to the 3d

1 It is dated 22d November, and is printed in Burnet's Reform, vol. vi., p. 61.

2 Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 340-345. At this time, however, as
Fuller quaintly observes, " Bonner was not Bonuer, being as yet meek and merciful. .

.... Bonner began to Bonner it to display the colours of his cruelty in 1540,
after being made Bishop of London." Worthies of England, vol. ii., p. 468; and his
History, vol. ii., p. 99.

ENGLAND.] Introduction.

of November, and, what was ominous of the times, during the whole
session a bishop had preached at St. Paul's cross in condemnation
of the Pope's authority in England. 1

The variance between Henry and the Pope was, however, not yet
desperate. Some prospect of a speedy amicable adjustment still pre-
sented itself. By the interposition of Francis I., in an interview with
the Pope at Marseilles, in October 1533, his holiness promised to
pronounce the desired sentence of divorce, if Henry sent a proxy to
Eome, and submitted his cause to the Eoman See. Cardinal John
de Bellay, Bishop of Paris, being immediately despatched by Francis
to London with the communication, succeeded in obtaining from
Henry a promise of submission, provided the cardinals of the em-
peror's faction were excluded from the Eoman consistory. Bellay
hurried to Eome to lay Henry's terms before the Pope, who expressed
his readiness to accept them, but required that they should be drawn
out in writing and subscribed by Henry, and fixed a certain day for
the return of the messenger with the signed agreement. Thus a
peaceful conclusion to this long and serious difference seemed to be
at hand. But mark how great revolutions often turn on some slender
circumstance ! The messenger having been detained, did not arrive
with the document at the appointed day ; and certain reports had in
the meantime reached the Vatican, "that a libel had been published in
England against the court of Eome, and a farce acted before the king
in derision of the Pope and cardinals." This roused the fury of these
ecclesiastical dignitaries, and yet the Pope from timidity was reluctant
to proceed to extremity, but yielding to his cardinals, he pronounced
in conclave, March 23, 1534, twenty-two cardinals being present, a
final sentence, that Henry's marriage with Katharine of Aragon
was valid and canonical ; that he was bound to cohabit with her as
his wife ; that he should be compelled to do so ; that all molestations
against this marriage were unlawful ; and that he should be for ever

Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., London, 1649, fol., pp. 371, 372.

10 Ladies of t/te Reformation. [ENGLAND.

silent on the subject. 1 This sentence, in the circumstances so rashly
pronounced, irrevocably sealed the doom of the papacy in England.
Two days after, the messenger arrived with Henry's promise of sub-
mission, and the Pope now bitterly repented the precipitate step
into which he had been hurried, and sat up all night perplexing his
brains in the attempt to devise a remedy. Common sense might
have suggested the recalling of the sentence ; but he could not do
this without in the very act knocking his arrogated infallibility on
the head. He survived his fatuous decision only about six months,
having died on the 25th September, 1534 ; but before his death he
had the mortification to see his ecclesiastical domination at an end
in England. 2 The effect of his sentence, on the tidings reaching Lon-
don, was most exasperating. Books immediately issued from the
press, to prove that the ecclesiastical supremacy claimed by the
Pope is a usurpation. Even the monarch himself girded on the har-
ness, and entered the field as a polemic. 3 And when Parliament
met in November, the decisive blow was struck, by abolishing the
papal supremacy in England, and enacting that the king "shall be
taken, accepted, and reputed the only and supreme head 011 earth of
the church" within his own dominions. 4 Thus was the chain broken
which bound England to the foot of the papal throne. 5 In the same
Parliament it was enacted, that after the 1st of February, 1535, it
would be treason for any person to call the king an heretic, schis-
matic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper.

It is interesting and instructive to mark the agency of a gracious

1 On the 8th of January the Pope had been vehemently urged by Charles to pro-
nounce this sentence, but hesitated, and delayed till this meeting.

2 Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 347, 348.

3 Strype's Memorials Ecclesiastical, Oxford, 1822, vol. i., part i., p. 230.

4 Hall's Chronicle, p. 816. Lord Herbert's Henry VIII., p. 380.

5 Yet about the same time, at the instigation of the clergy, Henry issued a procla-
mation against the importation and reading of the New Testament and other books in
English. These books had been for the most part printed abroad, and being imported
by stealth into England, had been dispersed by the secret promoters of the Reforma-
tion. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part i., p. 247.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 1 1

Providence in overruling the wayward passions and actings of men
for striking off from England the fetters of papal despotism, and for
bringing about a revolution so beneficial to her, whether religiously,
politically, or socially considered. With this great revolution,
reason, conscience, religion, wise and liberal views, had nothing to
do. It was not the effect of the teaching and labours of ecclesiastical
reformers, or of the power of truth and patriotism on the mind of the
English monarch, though he has been eulogized as a "godly and
learned king," as "a Moses who delivered his people from the bond-
age of Pharaoh." It proceeded solely from the violence of his proud,
ungovernable temper, which would brook no restraint, driving him to
this course, because obstructed in the gratification of his amatory
passions by the Pope. It was what none of the actors on the stage
at first contemplated or desired. "Assuredly," as has been well ob-
served, "had the tiara deigned to nod to the regal solicitor, then had
the 'Defender of the Faith' only given to the world another edition
of his book against Luther." 1 Even for several years after the Pope
refused to grant him a divorce, Henry never seriously thought of
shaking England loose from the papal jurisdiction ; for he had no
desire of effecting a reformation, and no desire to encourage a spirit
of religious innovation. It was not till the Pope refused or shifted
his demands for a divorce, denounced his marriage with Anne Boleyn
as null, and threatened to excommunicate him unless he separated
from her, that Henry was driven, after a marvellous exercise of
patience, considering the impetuosity of his disposition, into the bold
measure of abolishing the papal supremacy in England. Wolsey,
who injected into Henry's mind doubts as to the lawfulness of his
marriage with Katharine, and first suggested the idea of the divorce
from hatred to her, and to her nephew Charles V., dreamed of no
such catastrophe, else doubtless so zealous a supporter of the Eoman
See, to which he was not yet without hopes of being elevated, would
never have made the suggestion. Gardiner and Bonner, who were

1 D'Israeli's Amenities of Literature, vol. ii., p. 138.

12 Ladies of ilw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

employed as Henry's ambassadors in negotiating with the Pope,
desired nothing less than the deposition of his holiness from his
supremacy over England. Yet, contrary to the intentions and wishes
of all the actors, such was the issue under the overruling providence
of Him who maketh the wrath of man to praise him.

The reasons of the Pope's refusal to accede to Henry's wishes are
also deserving of notice, as other links in the chain of causes which
Providence mercifully made use of in accomplishing this revolution in
England. Divorces had frequently been granted by papal authority
upon grounds less specious than those produced by Henry ; and had
the holy father granted the divorce sued for, he would have pre-
served his power and jurisdiction over England unimpaired, and Eng-
land at this day would in all probability'have still been in connection
witli the Boman See. But the dread of incurring the resentment of
Charles V. prevented him, and led him to adopt a policy of consum-
mate duplicity towards Henry, whom he cheated at every step, the
result of which was, that the Pope was found to be the only loser in
the game he had been playing. He was minus England, and bitterly
did he lament, as his successors have ever since done, the loss of this
rich jewel in the papal tiara.

Thus Wolsey, Henry VIII., Clement VH., and Charles V., each
governed by different motives, but none of these motives higher than
human passions and worldly interests, were all instruments, unwil-
ling instruments, in the hand of Providence, in emancipating England
from papal despotism.

Having thrown off the papal authority, and assumed to himself the
supreme jurisdiction over the English church, Henry ruthlessly per-
secuted such, both ecclesiastics and laymen, as refused to acknowledge
his new title as head of the church. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,
and Sir Thomas More, both strenuous maintainers of the papal
supremacy, perished on the block for refusing to acknowledge the
ecclesiastical supremacy of Henry. When the oath of succession was
tendered to them, they expressed their willingness to swear to the
act itself, but not to the preamble, which asserts Henry's new claim.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 13

The news of the execution of Fisher and More caused indescribable
horror and indignation at the Vatican : and on the 30th of August,
1535, Paul III., who had succeeded Clement VII., issued a furious
hull of excommunication against the English monarch. The bull
decreed that Henry should be deprived of all his dominions, and that
he and his abettors had incurred the highest penalties, and should
be deprived of Christian burial. It laid all places where he or his
partizans should come under an interdict, and prohibited the perfor-
mance of any divine service or ceremonies in any church, monastery,
or place under his subjection. It pronounced his offspring by Anne
Boleyn, and the children of all his supporters, born, or to be born, in-
famous, and deprived them of all possessions, liberties, and privileges,
honours, offices, or property. It absolved his subjects from their
allegiance. It forbade all trading and intercourse with him, or with
the cities and districts that acknowledged his authority, and dis-
solved all contracts with them. It enjoined all ecclesiastics to leave
his kingdom, and commanded the nobility of England to rise up in
arms against him. It disannulled all treaties with him, and called
upon the sovereigns and princes of Europe to make war against him
and his supporters. And it ordered the prelates to excommunicate him
in their churches. The bull was posted up in Flanders, France, and
Scotland. 1 Though suspended in its operation for the present, it ren-
dered if possible a reconciliation between Henry and the Vatican still
more hopeless. Papal bulls were not now the same terrible things they
had been a century or half-a-century before ; and the attempt of his
holiness, three years after, to give effect to this bull, by sending Cardi-
nal Pole from Rome to foment commotions in England, entirely failed.
Henry's abolition of the papal supremacy within his dominions
was the first great act in his reign, by which he rendered most im-
portant service to the cause of the Eeformation in England. A second
was by his suppressing the monasteries, and seizing upon their pro-

i Strype's Mem Eccl., vol. i , part i., pp. 511, 512. Turner's Reign of Henry VI1L,
vol. ii., p. 464.

14 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

perty their movables and territorial possessions which he partly
appropriated to himself, and partly distributed among his courtiers.
This gave a terrible blow to the ancient superstition, on the one
hand by the overthrow of institutions which contributed so much to
uphold it, and on the other by binding a very powerful class to the
new order of things by the ties of self-interest. The third was by his
sanctioning the printing and circulation of the Scriptures in the
vulgar tongue, which prepared the middle classes, who alone at that
time could generally read, for the reception of the reformed doctrines,
by enabling them to see that these doctrines were agreeable to the
Scriptures, while the errors of Popery were contrary to them.

A contemporary, writing in the year 1542, gives a very gratifying
account of the great change to the better which had taken place in
England within the course of a few years, and though it would
be incorrect to say that this change was entirely owing to these
acts of Henry, yet each of them, and particularly the last, had an
important agency in producing it. "I think," says Thomas Becoiv
"there is no realm throughout Christendom that hath so many
urgent and necessary causes to give thanks to God as we Eng-
lishmen have at this present. What ignorance and blindness was
in this realm concerning the true and Christian knowledge ! How
many [meaning how few] savoured Christ aright 1 . . . . How many
believed Christ to be the alone Saviour ? . . . . How many felt the
efficacy and power of the true and Christian faith 1 But now Christ's
death is believed to be a sufficient sacrifice for them that are sanctified.
The most sacred Bible is freely permitted to be read of every man in
the English tongue. Many savour Christ aright, and daily the
number increaseth ; thanks be to God ! Christ is believed to be the
alone Saviour. Christ is believed to be our sufficient Mediator and
Advocate. The true and Christian faith, which worketh by charity,
and is plenteous in good works, is now received to justify." 1

i Right Pathway unto Prayer, published by Becon under tbe fictitious name of Theo-
dore Basilic, and reprinted by the Parker Society in his works.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. ] 5

But nothing was farther from Henry's intention than to promote
ecclesiastical reformation. As his first great step proceeded from the
ungovernableness of his temper, the other two were taken from prin-
ciples not more reputable to gratify an all-grasping rapacity, to
strengthen his authority for maintaining the position he had taken
up, or from mere wayward impulse. By the plunder of the monas-
teries he supplied himself with money ; and by dividing a large pro-
portion of it among the nobility and gentry, he secured, by the bonds
of gratitude and self-interest, th,eir loyalty, thus fortifying himself
against the popish continental states which might be disposed to make
war against him for throwing off his allegiance to the Pope. And his
having sanctioned the dissemination of the Scriptures in the mother
tongue, was very much owing to caprice, or to the influence acquired
over his mind by Cranmer, who had greatly assisted him in obtain-
ing his divorce from Katharine of Aragon. He besides granted this
as a boon, which, as flowing from his royal prerogative, he might
'revoke whenever he pleased. He afterwards restricted the reading
of the Scriptures in English to a few persons, and to particular occa-
sions, enjoining that "no women, except noblewomen and gentle-
women, no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, serving-men, husband-
men, or labourers, were to read them to themselves or to any other,
privately or openly, on pain of one month's imprisonment." l And
shortly before his death, he absolutely prohibited the possession of
Tyndale's or Coverdale's version of the New Testament to all classes
of persons. 2 Having, in consequence of his breach with the Pope, be-
come the head of a party opposed to the papal jurisdiction, he was led
by the influence of some of that party who were in his confidence, and
who contemplated a much farther departure from Eome than he ever
did, to contribute in various ways to the advancement of the Pieforma-
tion. But he was no Reformer, in the proper sense of the term. To speak
of him as such, is altogether to mistake his real character. He was
simply a schismatic, a separatist. While he denounced the papal

' Act of Parl. in 1S43. 2 See Life of DucJiess of Suffolk.

16 Ladies of tlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

supremacy, and transferred it to himself, he still continued a Eomanist
in heart, 1 and maintained the popish articles of faith as ferociously
as he had assailed the supremacy of the Pope. He was not less in-
tolerant towards Protestants for denying the popish doctrines,
especially the doctrine of transubstantiation, than towards Roman
Catholics for maintaining, in opposition to his new claims, that the
Pope was head of the universal church. Both were equally perse-
cuted ; they were confined in the same cells, and drawn upon the
same hurdle to Smithfield. The former were burned as heretics, and
the latter hanged as traitors. Pointing to Bilney, Bayfield, and
others, whom Henry cast into prison, and committed to the flames,
D'Aubigne justly exclaims, " He was not ' the father of the Reforma-
tion in England,' as some have so falsely asserted ; he was its execu-
tioner." Yet it is never to be forgotten that various of this monarch's
political measures had a powerful influence in promoting the Reforma-
tion. This is to be remembered, not as putting any honour upon him,
but to the praise of the Governor among the nations, who, in his infinite
wisdom and mercy, renders, by his controlling agency, the passions
of men subservient to the accomplishment of his own great purposes.
During the reign of Edward VI., "the English Josiah," as the
Reformers both in this country and on the continent delighted to
call him, the Reformation was vigorously prosecuted under the
direction of Archbishop Cranmer, aided with the advice of distin-

1 Luther correctly formed this estimate of the ecclesiastical character of Henry, of
whose opposition to the Pope he speaks with the utmost contempt, though Henry gave
a deadlier blow to the papacy than the great German reformer is willing to allow.
" Henry VIII., king of England," says he, "is now also an enemy to the Pope's person,
but not to his essence and substance ; he would only kill the body of the Pope, but
suffer his soul, that is, his false doctrine, to live. The Pope can well endure such an
enemy ; he hopes, within the space of twenty years, to recover his rule and government
again. But I fall upon the Pope's soul, his doctrine, with God's word, not regarding
his body, that is, his wicked person and life. I not only pluck out his feathers, as the
King of England and Prince George of Saxony do, but I set the knife to his throat,
and cut his windpipe asunder. We put the goose on the spit ; did we but pluck her,
the feathers would soon grow again. Therefore is Satan so bitter an enemy unto us,
because we cut the Pope's throat, as does also the King of Denmark, who aims at the
essence of Popery." Luther's Table Talk, p. 205.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 17

guished foreign Protestants; and had the life of this youthful sovereign,
who was only in the tenth year of his age at his accession, been spared,
and the same ecclesiastical policy been persevered in, the reformed
church, as established in England, would have approximated nearer
than it now does to the reformed Church of Scotland, in its worship,
discipline, and government, even as ita articles of faith harmonize
with the confession of that church: But his death, which took place
on the 6th of July, 1553, when he was aged only fifteen years, eight
months, and twenty days, after he had reigned not quite six years
and a half, arrested the work of reformation, and was followed by
the overthrow of that work, accompanied by a sanguinary persecution.

After a brief struggle, caused by the usurpation of Lady Jane Grey,
his sister Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII. by Katharine of
Aragon, ascended the throne.

Mary was undoubtedly a sincere believer in the Eoman Catholic
religion, in which she had been strictly educated by her mother ; and
the validity of her mother's marriage, and consequently her own
legitimacy and right of succession to the English throne, being bound
up with the Church of Borne, personal interests as well as filial piety,
combined with inward conviction to attach her strongly to that
church. That revolution in England which threw off the papal yoke,
having also, by pronouncing and dissolving as illegal the marriage
between her father and mother, labelled and pilloried her mother as
her father's mistress, and herself as a bastard in the eyes of all Europe,
the Eeformation was contemplated by her as responsible for this
affront this stigma, this outrageous wrong, as she believed it to be
though the great body of the Eeformers had nothing to do in the
matter. The Pope, on the other hand, having stood forth as the de-
fender of the lawfulness of her mother's marriage and of her own
legitimacy, the papacy became endeared to her by the ties of grati-
tude, as it was venerated by her from blinded superstition. Thus
her eager zeal as a Eomanist, uniting with the rancorous hatred pro-
duced in a mind naturally sullen by a sense of wrong, made her the
stern implacable enemy of the Eeformatiou.

18 Ladies oftlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Upon the death of her brother, she was enthusiastically supported
by the great body of the people, as being the rightful heir to the
crown, in opposition to a noble lady of high character and accomplish-
ments, and none were more zealous in her cause than the Protestants,
who expected, as she promised them, to enjoy toleration in the pro-
fession of their faith ; a promise which, in the true spirit of Popery,
she perfidiously belied. No sooner was she securely seated on the
throne, than she gave distinct indications of the persecuting policy she
had purposed to adopt. Her appointment of Stephen Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, to be chancellor and her chief adviser, and
her restoration of Edmund Bonner to the bishopric of London, two
of the most virulent persecutors of the reformers during the reign
of her father, were signs of ominous import, and awakened painful
apprehensions in the minds of many of the reformers. Their worst
forebodings were too truly realized. She proceeded to repeal all
the acts of her brother's reign in favour of the reformed religion, to
re-establish Popery, to enact persecuting laws against heresy, to
restore the Pope to that supremacy of which her father had deprived
him ; and during the last years of her reign a horrible scene, which
must render her memory inglorious and hateful to all coming ages,
opened, delighting the Roman Catholic priesthood, but inspiring
the great mass of the people with terror a scene of barbarous per-
secution against the Protestants, which, though shorter than many
pesecutions which have raged, has hardly been surpassed in ferocity
since the bloody reign of Dioclesian. Burning was the common
mode of putting heretics to death; and, according to one account, there
were consumed in the flames five bishops, twenty-one divines, eight
gentlemen, eighty-four artificers, one hundred husbandmen, servants,
and labourers, twenty-six wives, twenty widows, nine virgins, two
boys, and two infants, one of which springing from its mother's womb
as she was burning at the stake, was immediately snatched up, and
inhumanly flung into the fire. 1 Besides these many perished in

1 Speed's History, p. 852. This account makes the number committed to the flames

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 19

prisons, by starvation, impurity of the atmosphere, and barbarous,
treatment, while hundreds fled the kingdom, to seek safety on foreign
shores. The sanguinary character of this terrible reign is fully
detailed in the pages of Foxe, whom, like many others, Mary forced
into exile, and thus gave him leisure for writing his Martyrology
for telling posterity the tale of her cruelties ; and harrowing as is
the record, it is well that it is preserved to keep fresh in the memory
of England the deeds of atrocity which give an infernal character to
this reign, and exhibit a type of the true spirit of Eomanism in all
ages, whenever it has had the power. Little to be envied is the man
who can read the history of the cold-blooded murders then perpe-
trated in England, without feeling his soul swell with indignation,
and the thought simultaneously rising up in his mind, Woe to
Britain when popish bigotry shall wield its destinies !

During somewhat more than a year and a half after Mary's acces-
sion to the throne, no Protestant blood was shed, though many Pro-
testants were imprisoned. This comparative lenity was not, however,
owing to her. Had her fervent wishes, which were the extermination
of heretics, been gratified, she would, immediately on her accession,
have enacted the terrible scenes of persecution which darkened the
close of her reign. What prevented her from doing so was not her
humanity, nor even present expediency, but the restraints imposed

under this persecution 277. Different writers vary slightly as to the number, some
raising it to 300. These various relations, " sufficiently different to assure us that the
relators were independent witnesses, who did not borrow from each other, are yet
sufficiently near to attest the general accuracy of their statements." Sir James Mackin-
tosh. According to Lord Burleigh, an authority of great weight on this point, who
gives the number in each county and under each year, with the places of execution,
the number burnt in 1555, beginning in February, was seventy-one, in 1556 eighty-nine,
in 1557 eighty-eight, and from February, 1558 to September, forty ; amounting in all
to 288, and giving an average of seventy-two for each year. Strype's Mem. Ecel., vol.
iii., part ii., pp. 554-556. From this table it appears that the persecution proceeded
at about an equal pace during the whole of that period. Towards the close, when it
was conducted under Cardinal Pole, who has so often been commended, but unde-
servedly, for his moderation, there was no relaxation, and no symptoms of relaxation.
Had Mary's life been prolonged, the persecution, there is every reason to believe, would
have been carried on with the same unmitigated rigour.

20 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

upon her by her privy council, a strong party of which, on various
grounds, particularly from hostility to Gardiner, the chancellor,
opposed themselves to blood-thirsty measures. This is evident
from the letters of Simon Renard, Charles the Fifth's ambassador
at the English court, to his master ; and it is to be observed, as giv-
ing the stronger weight to his testimony, that all his leanings were
in favour of the Queen. From one of these letters, dated 28th April,
1554, we learn that Mary's cruelty required to be held in check, even
by this callous Spaniard, who, in recommending moderation, acted
from no higher motive than state policy. " Sire, The Queen has
more maturely weighed what I represented to her within these few
days, (as contained in my last letters to your majesty), the troubles,
namely, which might arise from the divisions in the council, of what
great consequence it was to bring the Parliament to a close, and to
proceed gently in the reformation of religion, to avoid giving the people
any ground for a new rebellion, and to provide a strong force for the
safe passage and entry of his highness into the kingdom." 1 In another
letter, dated 1st May, 1554, he writes: "The Queen holds Paget in
great suspicion for two reasons, which she gave me. The first, that
when it was proposed in the Parliament to make it high treason for
any one to take arms against his highness, Paget spoke more violently
against it than any one ; although, before this, to the Queen herself
he had declared it quite right : the other, that when a bill was brought
in for the punishment of heretics, he used all his influence with the
lords to oppose it, and to give no room for punishment of death."' 2 In
a subsequent letter he says : "This morning the Queen sent me word by
Basset, that the Parliament finished yesterday, much to the content-
ment of the estates, the reputation of her majesty, and the satisfaction
of all, that the ancient penalties against heretics were assented to by all the
peers." 3 Again, in a letter dated 13th May, 1554, he writes: " Sire,-
Paget, stung with remorse, has lately presented himself to the Queen

1 Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 378.

2 Ibid, vol. ii., p 335. 3 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 388.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 21

after her mass, and asked her mercy for his intrigues in the late Parlia-
ment against the act for the punishment of heretics, and the statute
which made it capital to take arms against his highness ; . . . . pro-
testing that for the future he would serve her majesty with faith and
loyalty. After some remonstrances, the Queen pardoned him, re-
commending him to behave better in time to come" l

Some Protestant writers have affirmed that, abstracted from her
erroneous notions as to the power of sovereigns and of laws over

1 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 392. Miss Strickland, the accomplished biographer of the Queens
of England, attempts to whitewash Mary of the guilt of the Protestant blood shed
during her reign, by throwing the blame upon her ministers. Speaking of her during
her severe illness at the close of her life, she says : " So much ridicule has been cast on
the mistake made in the Queen's situation [the mistake of her disease for pregnancy]
that no person has asked the obvious question, Who governed England during the
time which embraced the commencement of the Protestant persecution and her violent
illness?" She again asks, "Who can believe that a woman in this state of mortal
suffering was capable of governing a kingdom, or that she was accountable for anything
done in it?" Vol. v., p. 405. In answer to this it is to be observed, 1st, that Mary
distinctly knew of these barbarities. " That they were transacted by her bishops with-
out her knowledge," says Ballard, " will seem very strange to any one who duly con-
siders the vicinity of St. James's to the place where very many of them were put in
execution. It seems impossible that Smithfield should be kept in flames for so long a
period, and Queen Mary know little or nothing of it." Learned Ladies, p. 134. That
she knew all about it appears from many passages in the despatches of Noailles, the
French ambassador at the English court. 2dly, These barbarities were committed by
her orders, or with her approbation. This also is manifest from the despatches of the
same ambassador. Gardiner was her prime minister during the first stages of the
persecution, and Cardinal Pole during the last three years of it. With these ministers
she was in constant communication during their respective periods of power, and they
enjoyed her entire confidence, because they fulfilled her wishes more perfectly than she
believed any others would have done. Had she been averse to the shedding of blood,
Pole, who aimed chiefly at pleasing her, would perhaps have acted with less severity.
3dly, The enacting of these cruelties was just the carrying out of the policy which, as
the above extracts from Renard's correspondence abundantly show, she contemplated
at the commencement of her reign. Let it further be observed, that in the directions
which she gave in writing to her council, with respect to the reformation of the church,
just before the persecution commenced, she expressly says : " Touching the punishment
of heretics, we thinketh it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving in the mean-
while to do justice to such as by learning would seem to deceive the simple. Espe-
cially in London, I would wish none to be burnt without some of the council's presence,
and both there and everywhere good sermons at the same time." Collier's Eccl. Hist.,
vol. ii., p. 372. Burnet, vol. iv., p. 402.

22 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

religious opinions, which made her a persecutor from principle, she
was of a compassionate and humane disposition. 1 This estimate of
her character is unhappily not borne out by facts, which prove her to
have been morose, gloomy, vindictive, unrelenting. It may suffice
to advert only to her cruel punishment of such as had been concerned
in Wyatt's rebellion, caused by the unpopularity of her projected
marriage with Philip of Spain. This rebellion not being Protestant,
it could not be a misguided conscience, but the ruthlessness of her
temper which impelled her to severity. So inexorable was she, that
her councillors, as we learn from Renard's correspondence with
Charles V., had some difficulty in prevailing with her to put a stop to
these cruelties. Writing to Charles, 22d March, 1553-4, on this subject,
Renard says : " On Sunday last the councillors (moved by the pre-
meditated intrigues of the heretics) came to a resolution that, as it
was a day of devotion, the Queen should be entreated to exercise
clemency, and not to shed the noble blood of England ; that already
the justice inflicted on the rebels amounted to cruelty; that the
people ought to be forgiven ; and that she ought not to follow the
opinion of bloody men, meaning the chancellor [Gardiner]. On the
instant they determined to set off to find her majesty, and remonstrate
on this subject ; and they employed Paget, who is banded with them
(as much I believe from hatred to the chancellor as for his religious
opinions, which are suspected to be heretical), to carry the request to
the Queen. From this neither Petre nor the comptroller [Sir Piobert
Rochester] dared to dissent. They found the Queen in her oratory
after vespers ; and not only took her by surprise, having given her
no warning, but talked in such a way that, against her wishes and
goodwill, she pardoned six gentlemen, who had been sent to Kent
for execution, and who had sided with Wyatt in his rebellion. The
worst is that Paget told the Queen that they had already squandered

1 " Princeps apud omiies ob mores sanctissimos, pietatem in pauperes, liberalitatem
innobiles, atque ecclesiasticos nunquam satis laudata." Camden in Apparat., p. 23.
" Mulier sane pia, clemens, moribusque catissimis, et utquequaque laudanda, si religionis
errorem lion spectes." Godwin, p. 123.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 23

the blood of the house of Suffolk, that he might work on her fears,
and induce her to be merciful to the brothers of the duke, who had
been condemned." l In another letter to the Emperor, written 22d
April, 1554, speaking of the trial of the celebrated Sir Nicholas Throck-
morton, he says: "It is six days since the trial of a rebel named
Throckmorton. He was acquitted by twelve jurymen, who had been
chosen and empannelled, and who were all heretics ; there being no
doubt that in spite of the verdict he deserved to be condemned. And
when they carried him back to the Tower, after his acquittal, the
people with great joy raised shouts, and threw their caps in the
air ; which has so displeased the Queen, that she has been ill for three
days, and has not yet got quite the better of it." 2

The measures had recoxirse to by Mary in order to exterminate the
reformers produced the very contrary result. The blameless and holy
lives of the Protestant martyrs, their pious fortitude and forgiving
spirit displayed in death, awakened public sympathy, excited to in-
quiry, and made new converts to the cause which it was intended to
crush. Even had her life been prolonged, it may be doubted whether
she would have succeeded in effecting the consummation she so devoutly
wished. It was only after a persecution persevered in with unmiti-
gated violence for several generations, that the government of the
neighbouring kingdom of France succeeded in well nigh extinguish-
ing the Eeformation in that interesting country, and it would probably
have been as difficult to extinguish the Eeformation in England, in
which its principles had been not less widely disseminated, and had
fixed their roots not less deeply. But from her obstinacy, bigotry,
and fanaticism, had her life been prolonged, additional years of misery
must have rolled over England, to which a termination could only be
hoped for at her death, unless perchance the natural indignation
against her tyranny had become so general and overwhelming as to
create a revolution.

1 Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 3-33.
- Ibid, vol. ii., p. 373.

24 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Mary's closing days, as the native fruit of her severe temper and
misgovernment, were very unhappy. The neglect of her husband,
whom she adored; the knowledge that by her cruelties she had become
odious to her subjects, and that the Princess Elizabeth, the heir ap-
parent to the throne, who was looked to as the destined restorer of the
Protestant religion, was the favourite of the nation; her distrust of all
her privy councillors, with the exception of Cardinal Pole, suspecting
many of them of courting the friendship of Elizabeth; the dissatisfac-
tion caused by her having forced the nation into a fruitless and expen-
sive war with France in support of Spain ; the capture of Calais by
the French, a fortress of great importance, from the easy access it
afforded into the kingdom of France ; an exhausted and burdened
treasury; these were fruitful sources of painful reflections, which
preyed upon her mind and soured her temper, adding mental agony
to bodily sufferings. 1 She died of a violent fever, at St. James's
Palace, on the 17th of November, 1558, in the forty-third year of her
age, having reigned only five years, four months, and eleven days,
reckoning her accession to the throne from the death of Edward VI^
6th July, 1553. Of the reigns of all the sovereigns who have swayed
the English sceptre, hers was the bloodiest ; and of all of them since
the Conquest, hers was the shortest, with the exception of that of
the tyrant Richard III. She was buried on the north side of King
Henry the Seventh's chapel, in St. Peter's church at Westminister.
No monument was erected to her memory. 2

1 Noailles, in a despatch dated 22d May, 1556, says : " She knows herself to be
neglected, and she finds little certainty in the promises of her husband." In another,
dated 31st October, 1556, he says, "Most of her council are suspected. A large part
is thought to be inclined to have some secret intelligence with Elizabeth. She has
told Pole that there is now no one in her council in whom she has perfect confidence
but himself." Quoted in Turner's Modern History of England, vol. iii., pp. 490, 491-
Caricature prints were circulated, representing a withered, wrinkled queen, with
Spaniards at her breasts, to intimate that they had reduced her to skin and bone, with
legends noting the rings, jewels, and money she had privately given to Philip. At
this she was greatly incensed, and ascribed it to some of her own council, who only
could have known of these secret presents. Carte's History of England, vol. iii., p. 331.

2 Memoirs of Queen Mary's Days, printed in 1681, and reprinted in the Harleian
Miscellany, vol. i., pp. 209, 210.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 25

Whatever opinion may be formed of the religious and ecclesiastical
character of Elizabeth, who succeeded to the English throne upon
the death of her sister Mary, and however blameable she was in her
.treatment of the Puritans, her accession was a merciful providence to
the Eeformation in England and throughout Europe. In England,
it put an end to a sanguinary persecution, and rescued the kingdom
once more from the papal jurisdiction, under which, notwithstanding
the most strenuous efforts of the papacy, it has never since been
brought. Had the abominable policy of Mary and her rulers securely
established itself, pure Christianity and liberty of thought would have
been strangled in our country ; and, bound hand and foot, it would
have been hopelessly surrendered to a two-fold tyranny, that of the
priest and that of the civil ruler, which would have sunk it to the
same despicable condition to which Spain and Portugal have sunk
among the nations of the world. But that policy was defeated when
Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, and established Protestantism as
the religion of the nation. Then England recommenced that career
of improvement which had been arrested by Mary, and which has
rendered her the freest, the most Christian, the most enlightened,
the wealthiest, and the most powerful kingdom on the face of the
earth the stronghold of liberty and of Christianity the patron of
science, art, and literature ixnequalled for industry and commercial
enterprise ; and, by the rapid multiplication of her race, planting in
the most distant regions of the globe her colonies, which, carrying
with them her faith, her liberty, and her literature, lay the founda-
tions of mighty empires. The United States of America, in their
pure Christianity, their freedom, their intelligence, their prosperity,
their greatness, are the fruit of the Reformation on th,e soil of Britain,
and exhibit to the world the power of its principles, in other words,
the power of the religion of Jesus Christ, as unfolded in the New
Testament, to make a nation great and its people happy.

Elizabeth's accession to the throne was also a merciful providence
to the Reformation throughout Europe. She was regarded by the
Reformers of other countries as their protectress, and in the critical

26 Ladies qft/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

circumstances in which they were then placed, she seemed as if speci-
ally raised up by Providence for their support. She did not indeed
afford them in their emergencies all the aid which she might and
ought to have yielded ; but what she did yield was yet of essential
service. The Reformers in Scotland, in their struggles with the
Queen Eegent, Mary of Guise, backed by the power of France the
Reformers in the Netherlands, in their struggles against Philip II. of
Spain, who was so formidable from his vast resources and inveterate
bigotry the Reformers of France, in their struggles against a succes-
sion of their sovereigns and ot their nobility, who to fiend-like cruelty
added fiend-like perfidy were all deeply indebted to her both for
actual assistance and for the check which her well-known sympathy
for them imposed upon their adversaries. During her reign, too, as
during that of her brother Edward, England became an asylum to the
persecuted Protestants of every country, and there were in it German,
French, Italian, and Spanish Protestant congregations. Had she
united with the courts of Spain and France in a league to exterminate
everywhere the Reformers, then the three greatest powers at that
time in Europe would have been embarked in this infernal enter-
prise, and what the disastrous results might have been it is difficult to
say. Elizabeth's legitimacy, and consequently her right of succession
to the throne, depended upon her supporting the Reformation, as we
shall see in her Life ; and here again it becomes us gratefully to ac-
knowledge the goodness of Providence in making it the interest of
this queen, who became so powerful, to support the Reformation at
a period when two of the mightiest nations of the world had con-
pired to crush it.

One fact which particularly strikes the student of the history of
the English Reformation, is the paramount agency of the Bible trans-
lated into the vernacular tongue in originating and promoting that
great revolution. In other countries of Europe this agency was most
important, but less, pre-eminently so, than in England. 1 At an early

i See this fully brought out in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, passim.

ENGLAND.] Introduction. 27

period of the struggle, Tyndale's English version of the Scriptures,
which had been printed on the Continent, and secretly imported, was
extensively circulated and read by his countrymen, notwithstanding
the forcible measures adopted to suppress it, and it had been silently
and unremittingly working for good even at times when the living
voice of no preacher was lifted up against error and ignorance ; so
that at the period when Henry VIII. threw off the papal authority,
though much darkness still prevailed, yet so many had abandoned
the popish creed for the pure doctrines of the gospel, or had lost
their veneration for the old religion, that the steps he took against
the papacy met with no considerable opposition. During the reign
of Edward, the printing presses teemed with numerous editions of
various translations of the Scriptures, which were eagerly purchased
and read by the people. This contributed immensely, above all other
means, to the triumph and establishment of the Reformed principles
in England, and it accounts for Queen Mary's inability to eradicate
them even by a relentless persecution. The interested supporters of
the papacy in England foresaw from the first that the Scriptures in
the vernacular tongue would be the most formidable antagonist of
the established faith. They therefore opposed to the utmost their
importation and circulation. They got royal proclamations issued
for their suppression, and they bought up or called in whole editions
of them, which they committed to the flames an old persecuting
fashion, as old at least as the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, who
commanded the books of the Jewish law to be torn in pieces and
burnt (1 Mac. i). But no efforts were effectual in putting a stop to
the circulation of the Scriptures in the mother tongue, even when
the sovereign assumed an hostile attitude ; and when he favoured this
great cause, the number of copies printed and purchased excites our
astonishment.

It is farther observable, that the state exercised a more immediate
and effectual control over the movements of the Reformation in Eng-
land, and left its impress more visibly on the ecclesiastical framework
set up, than did any other government of Europe over the move-

28 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

merits of the Reformation within its dominions. This in part arose
from no great and powerful character having appeared among
the Reformers in England at that period, to awaken among the
people, by stirring appeals from the pulpit and the press, such
a wide-spread and burning zeal for the truth as would communi-
cate its impulse even to the government. It was different in other
countries. Zwingle in Switzerland, Luther in Germany, Calvin in
Geneva, and Knox in Scotland, were all master-spirits, who by power
of intellect, fervour of eloquence, and force of character, moulded
their age, and left the impress of their minds on the religious institu-
tions of their country. Each of these Reformers had more influence
in settling the religious creed and ecclesiastical polity of their respec-
tive countries than had their civil rulers, none of whom arrogated
the position of lawgiver in matters of faith, and who, if favourable to
the Reformation, proceeded in a great measure upon the principle of
sanctioning and ratifying, as the religion of the state, the system of
doctrine and the form of polity drawn up from the Word of God by
their respective Reformers. In England matters were conducted in
a less accommodating spirit. Though some of the leading Reformers
were consulted as to the faith to be established, and had influence
upon the sovereign, especially in the reign of Edward VI., yet, in
consequence of the assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy by Henry
VIII. and his successors, which implied their right to choose a
religion for their subjects, the sovereign, or the state, to the injury
both of religion and of liberty, acted as ecclesiastical dictator, pre-
scribed to ministers and people the doctrines to be believed, the rites
and ceremonies to be observed, and the form of discipline by which
the church was to be governed. In Scotland the Reformers would
concede no such power to their sovereigns, maintaining, and rightly,
as we believe, that Christ is the alone head of his church, and that
no earthly sovereign can warrantably claim that title, or the power
which it involves. J As to the English Parliament of that age, such

i The opposition made by the Scottish Presbyterians to James VI. and Charles I.
arose from the assumption of supremacy over the church by these kings, and the true

ENGLAND.] Introduction, 29

was their subserviency to the crown, that they unscrupulously approved
and sanctioned whatever ecclesiastical system pleased the reigning
sovereign. This their unprincipled subserviency, is graphically de-
scribed by Schiller, who, in his tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots.
introduces that queen as making the following sarcastic reply to the
argument of Lord Buiieigh, that as her judges were the chief nobility
of England, no tribunal could be more impartial :

"Yes, truly ; were these Lords as you describe them,
I must be mute ; my cause beyond all hope
Were lost, if such a Court pronounce me guilty.
But, Sir, these names, which you are pleased to praise,
These very men, whose weight you think will crush me,
I see performing in the history
Of these dominions very different parts :
I see this high nobility of England,
This grave majestic Senate of the realm,
Like to an eastern monarch's vilest slaves,
Flatter my uncle Henry's sultan fancies :
I see this noble rev'rend House of Lords,
Venal alike with the corrupted Commons,
Make statutes and annul them, ratify
A marriagp, and dissolve it, as the voice
Of power commands : to-day it disinherits,
And brands the royal daughters of the realm
With the vile name of bastards, and to-morrow
Crowns them as queens, and leads them to the throne.
I see them in four reigns, with pliant conscience,
Four times abjure their faith ; renounce the Pope
With Henry, yet retain the old belief ;
Fiefonn themselves with Edward ; hear the mass
Again with Mary; with Elizabeth,
Who governs now, reform themselves again."

But whatever may have been the disadvantages caused to the
English Reformation by the undue interference and control of the

cause of the sufferings of the martyrs under the reigns of Charles II. and James VII.,
was their refusing to submit to the ecclesiastical supremacy claimed by the crown. The
supremacy of Christ over his own church, to the exclusion of civil rulers, and all
creatures, is a doctrine which has taken such hold upon the Scottish mind, that no
sovereign, we are convinced, could, even at the present day, enforce a claim to ecclesi-
astical supremacy in Scotland, save at the expense of reviving the persecuting scenes
of the seventeenth century.

30 Ladies of tfte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

sovereign, whose nod the Parliament of course obeyed, England has
much reason to remember with the deepest gratitude the history of
her Reformation. It is the most memorable portion of her annals.
It abounds in varied and stirring scenes, and is replete with lessons
of profound instruction. It discovers much of human wickedness,
but at every step it also discloses the singular interposition of a
beneficent Providence, and nowhere do we meet with brighter
examples of Christian heroism than in the English martyrs. For
no kingdom has the Eeformation done more than for England ; and
after having reaped its blessings for three centuries, is she now, for-
getting all the lessons of the past, to fall back into popish superstition
and idolatry, from which, by a train of such marvellous events, she
was emancipated is she again to exhibit herself, as before the
Eeformation, squatting blindfolded, ragged, and squalid, amidst the
accumulated offal of the middle ages ? A party within the pale of
her Established Church would gladly see this consummation ; and the
Vatican, which, since the time it lost England, has never ceased to
look upon her with a covetous eye, has of late been strongly cherish-
ing the hope of seeing her, within the course of a few years, abandon
the Eeformation, and return to the bosom of the infallible church.
Into this belief the papal court has been led by the progress of Ox-
ford Tractarianism in England, and by the representations of the
Oxford converts to Popery. But we will not believe that a nation
which has so long shone transcendent above all the nations of the
earth for its love of liberty, civil and religious, will submit to be again
enthralled by the papal supremacy, the most terrible despotism not
to speak of the character of the papacy as a system of religion which
the world ever saw. Notwithstanding the treachery of some in the
Protestant Established Church of England, and notwithstanding the
aggressive efforts hitherto made and still making by the papacy, we
will not despair of the cause of Protestantism in this enlightened and
free country. We will cherish the hope expressed by one of the
noblest of its martyrs, even when the night of darkness and desolation
was at its blackest : (< Be of good courage, Mr. Eidley, and play the

ENGLAND.]

Introduction.

man," said the venerable and intrepid Latimer, when both were
bound to the stake, and about to be consumed to ashes, in the reign
of the bloody Mary, " we shall this day, by God's grace, light such a
candle in England as, I trust, shall never be put out."

ANNE OF BOHEMIA,

NNE OF BOHEMIA, queen of Eichard II,,
flourished in the age of Wickliffe. Her life,
therefore, does not belong to the history of the
Eeformation proper, which only began early in
the sixteenth century; but though the field
embraced in these biographies is mainly con-
fined to the period of the Eeformation, yet, as
this excellent queen lived at an era when great
preparations were making for that memorable
revolution, and as she was known to have been
!the friend and protector of Wickliffe and his followers, who were
its harbingers in England, as well as in other countries, it may not

34 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

be out of place to collect together the brief notices of her religious
and ecclesiastical history. " To Anne of Bohemia," says an elegant
biographer, " is attributed the honour of being the first of that
illustrious band of princesses who were the nursing-mothers of the
Reformation. The Protestant Church inscribes her name at the
commencement of the illustrious list, in which are seen those of Anne
Boleyn, Katharine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, and Queen Elizabeth." '

ANNE ov BOHEMIA was the eldest daughter of the Emperor
Charles IV., of the house of Luxembourg, by his fourth wife Eliza-
beth, daughter of Boleslaus, Duke of Pomerania, and grand-daughter
to Cassimir the Great, King of Poland. She was sister to Wen-
ceslaus, King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany. She was born
at Prague, in Bohemia, about the year 1367.

Anne is believed to have been imbued with piety, and to have had
more enlightened views of Christian truth than was common in that
age, before her coming to England. This may be accounted for from the
state of religion in Bohemia at that period. There were especially three
Keformers who flourished in Bohemia during the childhood and youth
of this princess ; and from their celebrity, as well as from the close
connection of one of them with her own family, she must have been
familiar with their names and their opinions. These Reformers were
John Melice, Conrad Strickna, and Matthias Janovius. Melice was
a native of Prague, and of noble descent. He was a popular preacher,
and by his addresses made a powerful impression on the multitudes
who flocketl to hear him. He vindicated the communion in both
kinds, and loudly complained of the spiritual death and desolation,
the glaring abuses and corruptions, which everywhere prevailed.
He died in 1374. Strickna, a man of acknowledged erudition and
eloquence, had been his coadjutor, but died five years before him.
Janovius, also a native of Prague, maintained the cause of Divine
truth with still greater effect. He was confessor to Charles IV.,
Anne's father. In the ardour of their zeal, he and some other learned

1 Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. ii., p. 371.

ENGLAND.] Anne of Bohemia. 35

men, entreated Charles to call a general council for the reformation
of the church ; and, though the king pleaded that it belonged to the
Pope and not to him to call a general council, he laid the proposition
before his holiness, and recommended it as a step much to be desired.
But his holiness, who thought differently, alarmed and exasperated,
demanded the punishment of these daring heretics. In superstitious
veneration for the Papal authority, Charles banished Janovius from
the kingdom. Communion in both kinds was then abolished. Re-
cusants could celebrate the sacrament of the supper after their ac-
customed manner only in private houses, in woods and caves, at the
hazard of their lives. They were plundered, beaten, drowned in
rivers, and according to a proclamation issued 18th September, 1376,
were committed to the flames. Janovius subsequently returned to
Bohemia, where, however, he now lived in privacy. He died 30th
November, 1394, predicting, with his dying breath, the coming re-
demption of the church. " The rage of the enemies of truth," said
he, " has now prevailed against us, but this shall not always last ;
for an obscure people shall arise, without sword or power, over whom
they shall not be able to prevail." J

Thus, before Anne came to this country, the Popish doctrines had
been contested in Bohemia, and successful efforts made to enlighten
the piety of her countrymen. This state of matters had a very fa-
vourable influence upon her mind. She became a thoughtful in-
quirer ; and though, from living in an age when only some rays of
light had dawned upon the human mind, her views of Divine truth
were in many respects obscure and imperfect, they were yet more
enlightened than was common among persons of her rank, or indeed,
among persons of any condition of life in that age of darkness. As
in primitive times there were saints in Caesar's household, so in her
father's palace there were individuals friendly to the truth, from
whom she derived important advantages.

Richard II., to whom Anne was afterwards united in marriage,

1 Vaughan's Life of Wlckliffe, vol. ii., pp. 158-163.

36 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

was the son of Edward, Prince of Wales, who was usually styled the
Black Prince, from the colour of his armour, by his wife Joan, '
daughter and heir of his uncle Edmund, Earl of Kent. He was born
at Bourdeaux in 1367. He lost his father 8th June, 1376 ; and on the
death of his grandfather Edward III., in June the following year,
he succeeded to the throne, being then a boy of ten years of age.

The fame of Anne having reached England, Richard, when only
about thirteen years of age, began to think of her as his future part-
ner on the throne, and, in the year 1380, she was sought for him by
the council of regency which conducted the government during his
minority. But it was not till some time after, when, having reached
her fifteenth year, she was judged capable of choosing for herself,
that the marriage was determined upon. She is said to have been
induced to become the consort of Richard, not only from the pro-
spect of being elevated to the English throne, but from the reports
which had reached Bohemia of a revival of religion in England under
John Wickliffe, whose name and some of whose writings were known
in that country. All arrangements for her marriage with Richard
having been made, she was nobly escorted from Prague on her
way to England. On her arrival at Calais, the news having reached
the Parliament, which was then sitting, it was prorogued till after
Christmas, and divers of the nobility were sent to meet her and attend
her in crossing over to Dover. Having safely landed at Dover, she
rested there for two days, and then made a grand entry into Lon-
don, to the great delight of the people, who were proud that their
sovereign was to obtain for his wife " Caesar's sister." 2

It is worthy of notice, that the natives of her own country chosen
to accompany her to England on the occasion of her marriage, and to
occupy situations in her household establishment, had adopted the
Reformed opinions. If her own wishes were consulted in this choice
this would argue that she was of corresponding sentiments.

1 She had been previously married to Sir Thomas Holland, by whom she had
several children.

2 Stowe's Annals, or General Chronicle of England, edit. London, 1615, p. 294.

ENGLAND.] Avwie of Bohemia. 37

Immediately upon her ai'rival, arid before the marriage had taken
place, she gave an interesting proof of her considerate, humane, and
amiable disposition. In that year an insurrection had broken out
in England. The tyranny and oppression of the haughty nobility
and gentry had excited a spirit of strong dissatisfaction among the
people, and this spirit was inflamed by a mob orator, John Ball, a
priest, who perambulated the country promulgating the equality of
mankind, as being sprung from the same original stock, proclaiming
that there were no gentry jure divino, and denouncing all the distinc-
tions of rank in a strain very like that of the levellers in modern
times. In an address to many thousands of the people assembled at
Blackheath, he began with these lines

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"

making them the text for an insurrectionary declamation, which
roused the people to a high pitch of resentment against the govern-
ment. 1 It was then that this couplet became as a household word
among the masses of the people. The train being thus laid for an
outbreak, the rigour with which the unpopular tax of three groats
per head was levied by the tax-gatherers, to whom it had been
farmed out, caused the explosion. The people took up arms, and in
June they mustered 100,000 men. But by the prudent and prompt
management of Eichard, who displayed on this occasion, an address
and presence of mind which raised expectation as to his capacity,
not afterwards realized, the insurrection was quelled. Tranquillity
therefore prevailed when the queen landed in England ; yet many
were trembling for their lives. The penalties of rebellion and trea-
son hung over the heads of thousands. This was a painful thought
to the young princess. The condition of the people excited her com-
miseration ; she felt that they had well-founded causes of complaint,
and that their sufferings had driven them to insurrection. She
pleaded with Eichard and his counsellors that a general pardon

1 Stowe's Annals, or General Chronicle of England, edit. London, 16)5, p. 294.

38 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

should be extended to the insurgents and other culprits throughout
the kingdom. Her entreaties, as might be expected from the cir-
cumstances, were not made in vain. A proclamation was issued,
granting a general pardon to culprits of all sorts with, however, a
considerable number of exceptions at first upon their making
application either personally or by writing, and paying the fee of
the great seal. The king's letters to the sheriffs throughout Eng-
land, dated 13th December, 1381, commanding them to cause the
pardon to be proclaimed in the towns and places under their juris-
diction, begin with stating that his majesty had been moved to
this exercise of royal clemency, "from the fear of God, and at the
special request of the most serene lady, the Lady Anne, about to
become, by the will of God, our consort." l

Anne was married to Richard with much pomp and ceremony on
the 14th of January, 1382, in the Chapel-Royal of Westminster
Palace. Among other demonstrations of joy on the occasion were
the representation of plays, and the exhibition of magnificent page-
ants, with which it was customary at that time to give eclat to the
marriage of princes. From the favourable reports Richard had heard
of the accomplishments and good qualities of this princess, he thought
himself so fortunate in gaining her for his bride, that instead of re-
ceiving a dowry with her, he gladly gave her brother the Emperor
Wenceslaus ten thousand merks for the alliance, besides defraying
all the expenses connected with her journey to England. The
daughter of Barnabe, Duke of Milan, had been offered to him with a
large sum of gold. But he had fixed his heart upon Anne of Bohemia,
and was bent upon having her at any price. 2

The happy pair were greatly charmed with each other. Richard,
though his character, when afterwards more fully developed, betrayed
serious defects, was the goodliest personage of all the kings who had
been since the Conquest, tall of stature, of a handsome person, of a

Rymer's Fcedera, torn, iii., pars iii. et iv., p. 131.
2 Stowe's Annals of England, p. 294.

ENGLAND.]

Anne of Bohemia.

fair and amiable countenance ; and being of warm affections, lie was
fitted in many respects for domestic happiness. Anne's " beauty,"
says Miss Strickland, " must have been limited to stature and com-
plexion, for the features of her statue are homely and undignified.
A narrow high-pointed forehead, a long upper lip, cheeks whose
fulness increased towards the lower part of the face, can scarcely
entitle her to claim a reputation for beauty." But in the eyes of
Richard, no woman was so lovely as his own blooming Bohemian
bride. " The head-dress she wore must have neutralized the defects
of her face in some degree, by giving an appearance of bread tli to her
narrow forehead." 1

Court Costumes, time of Richard II.

At this period there were two rival popes. Gregory XI. having
died in 1378, the cardinals assembled at Eome to elect a successor,

1 " In this queen's days noble women used high attire on their heads, piked horns
[t. e. homed caps], with long trained gowns, and rode on side-saddles, after the example
of the queen, who first brought that fashion into this land, for before women were used
to ride astride, like men." Stowe's Annals, p. 295. But "the side-saddle of Anne of

Ladies oftiie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

and three-fourths of them being Frenchmen, they intended to fill up
the vacancy by one of their own countrymen. The Eoman populace
suspecting their intention, and fearing that if a foreigner were chosen.
he would, like Gregory, reside at Avignon instead of Rome, which
they were determined should be the seat of the Roman Pontiff,
assembled tumultuously around the place of meeting, and pouring
forth terrible menaces if an Italian was not chosen, compelled the
cardinals, who were in terror for their lives, to give their suffrages for
a Neapolitan, who on his election assumed the name of Urban VI.
A number of the leading cardinals, however, dissatisfied with what
had been done, fled from Rome to Fondi, a city of Naples, and main-
taining, that as the election of Urban was the result of intimidation,
it was invalid, chose a French prelate, Robert, son of the Count of
Geneva, who took the name of Clement VII. France and her allies,
including Scotland, Spain, Sicily, and Cyprus, declared for Clement ;
England and the rest of Europe for Urban. The former fixed his
residence at Avignon, the latter at Rome. The distractions caused
by these conflicting competitors for the Papal tiara, diverted the
attention of the clergy to a great extent from Wickliffe, and con-
tributed to preserve him from their vengeance. From the violence
of the contending popes, who launched out dire anathemas, "the one
against the other, he- exultingly anticipated much advantage to his
efforts as a reformer. " Christ," said he, " has begun already to help
us graciously, in that he hath clove the head of Antichrist, and made
the two parts fight against each other." *

After Anne's, marriage with Richard and her coronation, letters
were sent by his majesty to Urban, with intelligence of these auspici-

Boheraia was different from those used at present, which were invented, or first adopted,
by Catharine de Medicis, Queen of France. It was like a bench with a hanging step,
where both feet were placed. This mode of riding required a footman or squire at the
bridle-rein of a lady's palfrey, and was chiefly used in processions." Miss Strickland's
Queens of England, vol. ii., p. 369. In this queen's days was also introduced the use
of piked shoes, that is, shoes turning up several inches at the toes, and fastened to the
knees with chains of silver and gold. Stowe, ut supra.
1 Vaughan's Life of IVickliffe, vol. ii., pp. 1-5.

ENGLAND.] Anne of Bohemia. 41

ous events. His holiness sent the following congratulatory letter to
Bichard in reply : " Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God,
to our dearest, &c., Health and apostolical benediction. The letters
of your serene highness, conveying the tidings of the coronation, and
of the solemnization of the marriage contracted between you and our
dearest daughter in Christ, the illustrious Anne, Queen of England,
we have favourably and very gladly received, and are filled with
great joy at the news, confidently hoping that He who confers favours
and bestows rewards, and by whose will you and the same queen, in
the flower of most grateful youth, have been united in the marriage
covenant, will from the same marriage grant you a noble progeny,
and after a long life, accompanied with the enjoyment of peace,
and passing smoothly down into a good old age, will bestow upon
both of you the kingdom of everlasting blessedness. Of our good
intention towards you and the queen, dearly beloved son, we have
fully instructed Walter Skirlawe, deacon of St. Martin's church, Lon-
don, and the nobleman, Nicholas Dagworth, your ambassadors, the
bearers of the present letters, in whom, as to what communications
we have to make to your highness, we wish you to place full confi-
dence. Given at Eome, at St. Peter's, the llth of the kalends of May,
in the fifth year of our pontificate." Addressed "To our Dearest
Son in Christ, the Illustrious Eichard, King of England." '

Queen Anne is styled by the Pope "our dearest daughter in
Christ," and she never formally separated from the Eomish Church.
There was indeed, in her days, no formal separation in England from
Antichrist. Matters were not yet ripe for such a step. But there
was a distinct renunciation of a great part of what was erroneous,
superstitious, and idolatrous in the Popish creed, and a reverting to
the doctrines and precepts of Christianity as primitively taught by
Christ and his apostles. And Anne, whatever may have been the
imperfection of her acquaintance with Divine truth, exemplified, in
her veneration for the Sacred "Writings, that spirit in which the

1 Rymer's Fcedera, torn, iii., pars iii., p. 153.

42 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Eeformation originated. That book, which Rome hated with a deadly
hatred, and from which the characters and sentiments of the confes-
sors and martyrs were formed, was the subject of her diligent study.
This is saying much for her at a period when the great fountain of
Divine truth was sealed up from mankind, and salvation was sought
in forms and ceremonies, in superstitious observances and mortifica-
tions, instead of through faith in the perfect righteousness of the only
and all-sufficient Saviour as revealed in the Word. Religious advan-
tages at that time were scanty compared with what we now enjoy.
Few were in possession of the entire Scriptures. A copy of one or
more of the gospels, or of one or more of the epistles, was accounted
an invaluable treasure. This queen had in her possession the gos-
pels in three languages, Bohemian, English, and Latin. This English
version, however, seems not to have been the English spoken after
the conquest of William of Normandy, but the Anglo-Saxonic ; for
John Huss thus quotes the words of Wickliffe, " The noble Queen of
England has the gospels written in three languages, the Bohemian,
Teutonic, and Latin." 1 To the reading of the gospels and commen-
taries written upon them by learned men, she devoted a portion of
every day, exploring them like one who had discovered a mine of
gold, yea, accounting them infinitely more precious than all the mines
of gold within the bowels of the earth, and deriving from them that
wisdom whose price is above rubies.

That Anne was devoted to the study of the Divine Word was well
known to Romanists in high places in church and state. In her con-
versation with Arundel, then Archbishop of York, and afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, she spoke freely and in high terms of this
heavenly treasure, and told him of the delight she took in reading its
sacred pages. She also showed him her translations of the gospels,
and her commentaries upon them. 2 Arundel, like all thorough
Romanists, hated the Bible as the most formidable enemy of the
Romish Church, and dreaded its dissemination among the people in

1 Lewis's English Biblical Translations, p. 6.
2 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Townsend's edition, vol. iii., p. 202.

ENGLAND.] . Anne of Bohemia. 43

the vernacular tongue. He was alarmed even at the circulation of
English copies of a single gospel, or of a single epistle ; for he well
knew that these, if circulated, would be like inserting the thin end
of a wedge, which, driven home, would cleave the church in pieces.
But the wily prelate, so far from objecting to her sentiments and
practice, eulogized her piety and diligence. A humbler individual, if
known to be guilty of reading the Scriptures, would have been at
once suspected of Lollardism, and pounced upon as an enemy of the
church. But her exalted station protected her. To attack or disturb
her for her pious readings would have been dangerous ; and the sin-
gular gentleness and benevolence of her nature, which gained upon
all hearts, had their own influence in extorting reluctant praise from
the prelate.

Wickliffe, who lived only about three years after her arrival in this
country, was not ignorant of her course of Scripture reading. To him
she seemed like Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who " sat at Jesus' feet,
and heard his word," captivated by its attractions, and subdued by
its power. He pleaded her example in reading an English version
of the gospels in defence of his English translation of the Sacred
Volume, and inquired ''whether to hereticate her on account of this
practice would not be Luciferian folly?" 1

The diligence of this queen in reading the gospels was not without
its fruits. She imbibed the spirit of Jesus, whose life and character
she studied a spirit of benevolence and charity. Misery and distress,
wherever she found them, excited her commiseration. And, though
it cannot be said that to comfort and relieve the poor and the afflicted,
the widow and the orphan, she sacrificed the embellishments of her
palace, the luxury of her table, the splendour of her equipage, or the
decorations of her person, yet, like an almoner of Divine Providence,
she scattered around her princely benefactions for the relief of the
suifering and the sorrowful. Six thousand persons were daily enter-
tained at the royal table, the most of whom were "the indigent poor."

1 Vatiglian's Life of Wickliffe, vol. ii., p. 158.

44 Ladies oft/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

This statement is made by "Walsingham as part of a severe censure
which he pronounces on the prodigality of Eichard in the expenditure
of his household establishment, at a time when famine and its atten-
dant pestilence were raging in England. But such uncommon gene-
rosity towards the poor, which was mainly owing to the beneficence
of the queen, takes off the edge from this writer's censure, and excites
our admiration, not our blame, of the generous heart of her who de-
vised such liberal things. She would remember how Jesus, whose
inspired life she took so much pleasure in reading, had compassion
on the multitude, numbering four thousand persons, because they had
nothing to eat, and wrought a miracle that they might eat and be
filled. By this charity and kindness she won the affections of the
people, by whom, during life as well as after her death, she was
familiarly known as " the good Queen Anne."

Anne, having imbibed the opinions of Wickliffe, extended her
protection to the Reformer to the close of his life. She was a
main instrument in saving him from the vengeance levelled against
him by his incensed enemy, Courtney, Archbishop of Canterbury,
who was thirsting for his blood. The law was indeed not yet in
existence by which he could have been condemned to perish at the
stake ; but still ways and means might have been found for com-
passing his destruction. In interposing in his behalf, Anne, who
was distinguished for the mildness of her disposition, pleaded with
Eichard in her own delicate, quiet, and gentle way. Hers was the
still small voice. She would select some striking passages from the
gospels, which recommended kindness to the ministers and people of
Christ, and condemned the persecution of them, as one of the works
of darkness, as an effect of the malice of the wicked world against
Christ himself; and she would read them to Eichard in her own
touching and delightful manner. They would be such as these :
" He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall re-
ceive a prophet's reward ; and he that receiveth a righteous man in
the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's re-
ward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little

ENGLAND.] Anne of Bohemia. 45

ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily, I say
unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." " Wherefore, behold,
I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes : and some of
them ye shall kill and crucify ; and some of them ye shall scourge
in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city : That
upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from
the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias. son of
Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." " "Who-
soever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he were cast into the sea." 1 In the whole bearing and deport-
ment of Anne there was an unaffected yet dignified benignity, a
winning grace and suavity, the power of which none could resist ;
and on the mind of Richard, who adored her, and to whom every-
thing she said or did had an indescribable charm, her persuasions,
backed by an appeal to her favourite gospels, though, intrinsically
considered, they might make little impression on his mind, yet, as
coming from her, had a fascinating power, and they swayed him to
the side of moderation.

Anne found her hands strengthened in this good work by Joan,
her mother-in-law, who was a great admirer of Wickliffe, and a
convert to his doctrines. Joan, who was more impassioned- and
resolute than her daughter-in-law, interfered in his behalf with all
the ardour of a sincere and generous admiration, and with a courage
not easily to be overawed and defeated. When he appeared before
the ecclesiastical Synod at Lambeth, early in the year 1378, 2 four
years before Anne came to England, Joan's zeal combined with
that of the people in thwarting the plans of the ecclesiastics to
punish him, and to suppress the tenets he had been teaching. His
doctrines had by this time gained upon the convictions and hearts

1 Matt. x. 41, 42, and xxiii. 34, 35. Mark ix. 42.

2 Miss Strickland, in her Queens of England, vol. ii., p. 372, incorrectly says 1382,
a mistake which affects the accuracy of some of her statements respecting Anne.

46 Ladies of tJte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

of the people, and, to protect him from danger, many of them sur-
rounded the church of St. Paul's, the place of meeting, forced their
way into the midst of the assembled conclave, and proclaimed their
determination to stand between him and harm. Whilst this uproar
filled the judges with alarm for their personal safety, Sir Lewis
Clifford to their increased dismay, entered the court, and in the name
of the queen-mother, boldly forbade their proceeding to pronounce a
condemnatory sentence upon the doctrines and conduct of the great
Reformer. Thus was the courage of the judges " shaken as a reed
with the wind," as Walsingham observes, and they were afraid to
proceed. l The mandate of Joan, at the time when it was given,
was a proof of no ordinary fortitude and energy. It was setting
herself in opposition to the Pope, who had just sent letters to the
King of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of
London, and the University of Oxford, requiring the immediate
suppression of Wickliffe's opinions, and the arrest of his person, and
of all who were tainted with his heresies. The Pope said, " This
arch heretic has gone to such a pitch of detestable folly, that he
fears not to teach and publicly preach, or rather to vomit out of the
filthy dungeon of his breast, erroneous and false propositions and
conclusions, savouring of heretical pravity. We therefore strictly
charge and command you, the King of England, and you the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and you the Bishop of London, and you the
University of Oxford, to cause the said John Wickliffe, and all who
may be infected with these errors, if they obstinately persist in them,
to be apprehended and cast into prison." In the face of this high
authority, thus repeatedly and emphatically expressed, the queen-
mother said, " No, John Wickliffe is not the detestable heretic which
the Pope represents him to be, and if I can prevent it, he shall not
be arrested and imprisoned." And what were the doctrines with
which the man over whom she thus threw the shield of her pro-
tection stood charged? Some of them were these that the holy

1 Vaughan's Life of Wickliffe, voL i., p. 360.

ENGLAND.] Anne of Bohemia. 47

eucharist, after consecration, is not the very body of Christ, but is so
only figuratively ; that the Church of Eome is no more the head of
all other churches, than any other church is, and that Peter had no
more power given him by Christ, than any other apostle had ; that
the Pope of Eome has no more the keys of the church, than any
other individual within the order of the priesthood has ; that lords
temporal may lawfully and meritoriously deprive churchmen
offending habitually of their temporalities ; that the gospel is of it-
self a rule sufficient to govern the life of every Christian, without
any other rule ; and that neither the Pope, nor any other prelate of
the church, ought to have prisons wherein to punish transgressors. 1
Such were some of Wickliffe's doctrines, which the Pope in his con-
sistory, assisted by the advice of twenty-three cardinals, condemned
as heretical, and for which he commanded that Wickliffe should be
arrested and consigned to a dungeon, but in maintaining and propa-
gating which the Eeformer was defended and encouraged by the
queen-mother.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, one of Eichard's uncles, " the
political father of the Lollards," as he has been styled, and other
persons of rank, co-operated with Anne and Joan in protecting
Wickliffe. The circumstances of the times rendered their protection
the more effectual. The antagonistic popes, from their mutual con-
tests, had no time to look after heretics; and the factions by which
England was distracted, so engrossed the attention of the parties,
that the clergy could not obtain the support they desired in proceed-
ing against the rector of Lutterworth. Whether these protectors
would or would not have been able, had Providence spared him for
a longer period, to have preserved his liberty and life, it is impos-
sible to determine. We know that in his closing years he was
living in the anticipation of martyrdom. " To live," says he, " and
to be silent is, with me, impossible ; the guilt of such treason against
the Lord of heaven is more to be dreaded than many deaths. Let

' Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. iii., pp. 3-8.

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

the blow therefore fall. Enough I know of the men whom I oppose,
of the times on which I am thrown, and of the mysterious provi-
dence which relates to our sinful race, to expect that the stroke will
ere long descend. But my purpose is unalterable. I wait its
coming ! " l The malice of his enemies was implacable, and he
might fear that Eichard, as he needed the support of the clergy,
might by their influence be swayed, notwithstanding the interces-
sions of his mother and his queen, to kindle against him the fire of
persecution. He was not, however, called upon to undergo the fiery
trial. "While administering the bread of the eucharist in the chan-
cel of his church of Lutterworth, on the 29th of December, 1384, he
was suddenly seized with paralysis, which threw him on the pave-

J,utt< rnorth Church, Leicestershire.

ment, and on the 31st he peacefully resigned his pious spirit to God.
He was interred in the chancel. His church is still standing.

Had Anne lived some years longer, there is reason to believe
i Vaughan's Life of Wickliffe, vol. ii., p. 257.

ENGLAND.]

Anne of Bolwmia.

that by her influence much of the severe persecution which befell
the Lollards would have been prevented. Eichard was stayed from
actual violence so long as she lived; and, even after her death, though
he lent himself by the solicitations of the clergy to persecute in
various forms, none of the Lollards were put to death during his reign.
Anne continued to retain the affections of Eichard undiminished
to the last, and he never dishonoured her by giving his heart to a
rival. Yet from the time of her coming to England to her death,
she had, from the confusion of the times, her own distresses, caused
partly by the folly of Eichard in the government of the kingdom,
and partly by the cabals formed by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester
against him. That nobleman, who was ambitious of engrossing the
whole authority of the state, finding that the sovereign, as he grew
older, was not to be retained in that subjection in which he had been
hitherto held by his uncles, and that he yielded himself to the
ascendency of strangers, rather than to his advice, formed a strong
party against him, and having both the House of Commons and the
House of Peers at his devotion, wrested the government from his
hands, and transferred it to a commission composed entirely of his own
faction. Eichard's great weaknesses lay in mistaking flatterers
for friends ; in associating with unworthy favourites, by whom he
suffered himself to be almost wholly governed; in an extreme irrita-
bility of temper over which he had no control; and in an unbounded
passion for show and extravagance, which injured his popularity by
increasing the public burdens. These defects gave great advantage
to Gloucester, and, during the time of his triumph, several of
Eichard's counsellors and favourites were put to death, among whom
was Sir Simon Burley, a gentleman who, for his personal merits,
had been appointed governor to Eichard by Eichard's father and
grandfather, and by whom the prince, from his tender infancy, had
up to the present time been attended and served with devoted at-
tachment.' These executions took place in the year 1388.

1 Rymer's Fcedera, torn, iii., pars iii., pp. 135-144.

50 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

During these turbulent and bloody scenes, when justice and
humanity were alike disregarded, Anne displayed her usual tender-
ness of heart. Sir Simon Burley had been sent by Richard to
Germany and Bohemia, to bring her over to England at the time of
her marriage. From the date of her first acquaintance with this
accomplished man, she had formed a very high opinion of his talents
and engaging manners, and he ever afterwards retained her good
graces. He equally retained the esteem and friendship of the king,
who felt something like filial respect towards the guide of his youth,
and conferred upon him various marks of royal favour. 1 Both she
and Richard were much interested in his safety, and interposed, but
in vain, to save his life. " The queen," says Hume, " remained three
hours on her knees before the Duke of Gloucester, pleading for that
gentleman's life ; but though she was become extremely popular by
her amiable qualities, which had acquired her the appellation of
'the good Queen Anne,' her petition was sternly rejected by the
inexorable tyrant." 2

Queen Anne died, June 7, 1394, at Shene in Surrey, at the eai-ly
age of twenty-seven, to the inexpressible grief of her husband, who
in her lost a wise counsellor, and his best friend. She had lived
with him upwards of twelve years. Froissart thus notices her
death: "At this period the Lady Anne, Queen of England, fell sick,

1 Walsingham, who is followed by Stowe, stigmatizes Burley as intolerably proud,
an oppressor of the poor, a hater of the church, and profligate (Hlstoria, p. 366); but
this Popish writer is too partial and malicious to be implicitly followed in his estimate
of the characters he describes. Froissart, who personally knew Burley, says, " In my
youth I had found him a gentle knight, and, according to my understanding, of great
good sense." (See his Chronicle of England, &c., translated by Thomas Johnes, vol.
iii., p. 475). " And the choice made of this gentleman," says Hume, " by Edward III.
and the Black Prince, for the education of Richard, makes the character given him by
Froissart much more probable." The grounds of his condemnation have been pre-
served, but the evidence adduced in support of the charges and his own vindication
are lost. We are therefore without the means of being able to pronounce a correct
judgment in the case. The accusations of his enemies, who were bent on his destruc-
tion, are, it is obvious, not to be implicitly trusted.

2 History of England, chap. xvii.

ENGLAND.]

Anne of Bohemia.

to the great distress of the king and her household. Her disorder
increased so rapidly that she departed this life on the feast of
Whitsuntide, in the year of grace 1394. The king and all who
loved her were greatly afflicted at her death. He was incon-
solable for her loss, as they mutually loved each other, having
been married young. This queen left no issue, for she had never
born children." 1

She was interred with great state in St. Edward's chapel, "West-
minster Abbey, on the 3d of August following, all the nobility of
England, male and female, joining in the funeral procession, as we
learn from the letters of invitation to her funeral in name of the
king. 2 " Her obsequies," says Froissart, " were performed at leisure,
for the king would have them magnificently done. Abundance of
wax was sent for from Flanders to make flambeaux and torches, and
the illumination was so great on the day of ceremony, that nothing
was ever seen like it before ; not at the burial of the good Queen
Philippa, nor of any other. The king would have it so, because she
was daughter to the King of Bohemia, Emperor of Rome and
Germany." 3

Her funeral oration was delivered by Arundel, Archbishop of
York. In this oration, the prelate pronounced a high encomium
upon her many virtues, and especially upon her piety, as shown
in constantly studying the Word of God. "Her four English
translations of the gospels," said he, " she sent to me for my inspec-
tion, and I found them to be true and faithful. I was much sur-
prised on finding that, though a foreigner, she daily studied these
English versions. It appears to me a marvellous instance of godli-
ness, that so illustrious a princess condescended devoutly to study
these excellent works, and several commentators written upon them.

1 Frolssart's Chronicle of England, &c., vol. iv., p. 405.

2 Two of these letters, written in French, are preserved in Rymer's Fcedera (torn,
iii., pars iv., p. 98), the one dated 10th June, 1394, and the other, the 14th of the same
month.

3 Froissart's Chronicle, &c., vol. iv., p. 405.

52 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

A lady of such extraordinary piety it was never my happiness to
know." And as a rebuke to the clergy for their negligence and
ignorance, he added, "In the study of the Scriptures, and in the
reading of godly books, she was more diligent than even the prelates
themselves, whose office and duty it is to make themselves ac-
quainted with these heavenly treasures." '

From the sentiments thus expressed, it might be concluded, did
we not know more of the man, that Arundel was favourable to the
Lollards, and that he would stand up and fight nobly for the dis-
semination of the Bible in the vulgar tongue. But he was acting a
part. In eulogizing Anne for reading the Scriptures and lamenting
her loss, he was speaking "with feigned words," his object being
simply to please Eichard, who was so devotedly attached to the
deceased queen ; and in twitting the prelates with their ignorance
of the Scriptures compared with the queen, he would gratify his own
personal feeling against some of his clerical brethren. So far from
being favourable to the Wickliffites, and to the circulation of the
Scriptures among the people, he bent all his endeavours, after the
death of Anne, to the extirpation of the one and the suppression of
the other. He branded the Lollards as the tail of the black horse
described in the Apocalypse (chap. vi. 5), and stigmatized heresy as
more enormous than treason, since it was a revolt from the King of
kings. He interdicted the translation of the Scriptures into the
vernacular tongue, and stirred up the king to harass, throughout the
whole kingdom, whoever should dare to read and study in their
native language the revelation of God's will, which was intended
for all. Two years after the death of the queen he was made Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and this promotion increased both his ecclesi-
astical and political power. He subsequently became a traitor to
Eichard, and took an active part in the deposition of that monarch
in 1399, as well as supported the usurpation of Henry IV., son of
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, WicklifFe's patron. To gratify

1 Fo*e's 4cts and Monuments, vol. iii , p. 202.

ENGLAND.] Anne of Bohemia. 53

Arundel, who had placed the crown upon his brow, and the rest of
the clergy, who had aided him in acquiring his usurped authority,
and who might still powerfully aid him in supporting it, Henry
passed a statute authorizing the burning of heretics, the first penal
enactment in England against heresy an enactment under which
many were subsequently consigned to the flames, particularly in the
reigns of Henry VIII. and his daughter, the bloody Mary. By this
statute it was ordained that none should preach, or teach in schools,
or write in opposition to the Catholic faith ; that none should favour
such as were guilty of doing so ; that within forty days all heretical
books should be delivered up ; and that if any person, who was con-
victed of offending in these particulars, should refuse to abjure, or
who, after having once abjured, should be found to have relapsed,
should "be burned in an eminent place before the people, to the
intent that this kind of punishment may strike a terror on the
minds of others." 1

After the death of Anne, many members of her household having
returned to Bohemia, carried with them the opinions and the writ-
ings of the English Reformer, and were the means of scattering the
seeds of the Reformed faith among their countrymen. By the writ-
ings of Wickliffe, conveyed into Bohemia by her servants or train,
and by some Bohemian students attending the university of Oxford,
an impulse was there given to the movement for the reformation of
the doctrine and discipline of the church. It was from this source
that John Huss and Jerome of Prague, the honoured successors of
Melice, Strickna, and Janovius, imbibed the opinions which they dis-
seminated, and for which they suffered. 2 Thus the coming of Anne
to England seems to have been an important link in the chain by
which Divine Providence connected England and Bohemia at that
period in the struggle for church reform by which it paved the way
for rendering the labours of Wickliffe instrumental in propagating
Divine truth in the latter country.

1 See this statute in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. iii., p. 239.
2 Krasinski's Reformation in Poland, vol. i., p. 58.

Ladies oftJie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

In the agony of his grief for Anne, Richard caused the buildings
of the palace where she died to be thrown down. 1 Some, from a
melancholy pleasure in nursing their sorrow, love to dwell in the
abode where death has smitten down the dear objects of their affec-
tion ; but to Richard it seemed that to do this would awaken in his
mind associations and remembrances too painful and keen to be en-
dured. In Rymer's Fcedera there is a contract betwixt Richard and
two architects, citizens of London, for the erection of a tomb of fine
marble in "Westminster for himself and Anne, dated 1st April, 1395.
In the same work there is another contract betwixt him and two
copper-smiths, citizens of London, for statues and other furniture for
the tomb, dated 24th April, same year. Both these contracts are
written in French. 2 The tomb was to be ornamented with numerous
effigies, among which were to be two of gilded bronze, the one
representing Richard himself, and the other Queen Anne, both
reposing and crowned, having their right hands clasped in each
other, while they held sceptres in their left hands. The idea of
giving the two effigies this peculiar position, strongly expressed
the tenderness of Richard's affection for Anne. A ball with a
cross was to be placed between the effigies. The feet of the king
were to rest on two lions, those of the queen on an eagle and
leopard; all of which animals are now lost. A table of the like
metal gilded, on which the images should be laid, was also to be
made, and it was to be ornamented with fretwork of fleurs-de-lis,
lions, eagles, and leopards, emblematical of the ancestral honours
of both the king and the queen; the fleurs-de-lis representing
France, the lions Bohemia, the eagles the empire, and the leopards
England. What is almost peculiar to this sepulchral monument,
the devices impressed both upon the effigies and the table are made
entirely by fine punctures, without any engraved lines. 3 Among
their other engagements, the contractors were to engrave on the

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 303. Baker's Chronicle, p. 154.

2 Rymer's Fcedera, torn, iii., pars iv., pp. 105, 106.

3 Archceologia, voL MIX., pp. 32-59.

ENGLAND.]

Anne of Bohemia.

monument suitable inscriptions, to be supplied them. The in-
scriptions were in Latin. The first part, in particular, is remark-
able for the touching tenderness and sympathy with which it
describes Anne's personal attractions, mental virtues, and beneficent
life. Hence it may perhaps be concluded that it was written either
by Eichard himself, or by one who knew her well, and appreciated
her worth. Of the first part we hazard the following translation :

EPITAPH ON ANNE, WIPE OF RICHARD II., KING OF ENGLAND.

" The dust of Anne, the second Richard's queen,

Lies now entombed beneath this spacious stone ;
Her lovely form enchained wherever seen,

Her face with meek arid radiant beauty shone.
Dear was her Saviour to her loving heart ;

Her love and gentleness to all she showed ;
In healing strifes she ever did her part ;

With peaceful thoughts her heavenly bosom glowed.
To her the poor, with want and care oppressed,

Could look with hope for pity and relief;
With heart and hand she succoured the distressed,

Nor grudged the cost of want and pain and grief.
The lonely widow's tears she wiped away,

And to the sick the healing draught she brought:
Whoever suffered found in her a stay ;

To live for others this she daily sought." '

Eichard was subsequently married to Isabella, daughter of Charles
VI. of France, a princess only seven or eight years of age. He was
indifferent about a second marriage, and formed this alliance to con-
solidate a peace with France. After his death she was sent home, 2
and became the wife of Charles, son and heir of the Duke of Orleans.
He survived Anne only five years, having shortly after his deposition
been starved to death by the usurper, Henry of Lancaster. He was

1 The next two lines, which we omit, simply state that she died on the 7th of July,
1 394 ; but there is here a mistake as to the month, for, from some of her funeral letters,
still preserved, we learn that she died on the 7th of June. Crull's Antiquities of St.
Peter's, or the Abbey Church of Westminster, pp. 175-177.

2 Baker's Chronicle, p. 154.

Ladies of t/te Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

privately buried at Langley, 1 in the chapel of the Dominican friars,
none of the nobility nor of the gentlemen commoners being present.
He lay there till the year 1414, when his remains were removed
thence by King Henry V., and honourably entombed in St. Edward's
chapel, Westminster Abbey, in the same spot where Anne was
buried. A Latin epitaph to his memory, expressing partly the
graces of his person, and partly the qualities of his mind, was in-
scribed on the tomb. 2

1 King's Langley, in Hertfordshire, was formerly a royal mansion. Here was horn,
and from the place was named, Edmund de Langley, one of the sons of Edward III., and
Duke of York, and here was a little house of friar preachers. Camden's Britannia,
edit. London, 1789, vol. i., p. 339.

2 Holmshed's Chronicles, edit. London, 1808, vol. iii, pp. 14, 15. Cnill incorrectly
represents the tomb of Anne and Richard as erected by Henry V. It was erected, as
we have seen, by Richard himself.

Hevcr Castle, Kent.

ANNE BOLEYN,

SECOND QUEEN OF HENKY VIET.

CHAPTEE L

FROM HER BIRTH TO HER MARRIAGE WITH HENRY VIII.

HE life of Anne Boleyn forms an interesting episode
in the history of the English Keformation. Without
f/o intending it, she became the occasion of the ecclesias-
tical separation of England from the Papal supremacy.
Conquered by her engaging qualities, Henry VIII.,
in order to gain her for his wife, persisted in demanding from the
Pope a divorce from his former queen, Katharine of Aragon, until
his patience being exhausted by the refusal of his holiness, who,
by this demand, was thrown into the dilemma of displeasing either
Henry or Charles V., or placed "between the hammer and the

58 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

forge," as his holiness expressed it he indignantly threw off the
Papal yoke, claiming to himself ecclesiastical supremacy within
his own dominions. Anne having been thus the occasion of the
loss of so rich a prize as England to the Papal see, her memory has
been assailed with the most indecent and virulent abuse by Popish
writers. They cannot mention her name without losing all temper,
and pouring forth a torrent of foaming, defamatory invective. This,
though natural, is unreasonable enough. It is to make it a crime for
a lady to be loved because she is lovely. It amounts to saying that
Anne, "like the forgotten abbess of Coldingham, when Danish pirates
were prowling around, should have mutilated her countenance in
order to make it ugly." Like every other personage in the field of
history, her character and conduct are to be examined impartially
and without prejudice. If historical justice requires that her imper-
fections and faults should not be concealed, it also requires that she
should receive credit for whatever good qualities she possessed, and
whatever good actions she performed. In the sketch of her life now
proposed, it is not our wish to exalt her above her merits. In respect
of deep ardent piety, high Christian character, accurate and enlarged
acquaintance with evangelical truth, and moral intrepidity in main-
taining it, we do not place her on a level with Queen Katharine Parr-
Bene"e, Duchess of Ferrara, or Jane, Queen of Navarre. But neither
do we admit her to have been the Jezebel, the Messalina, the depraved
monster which foul-mouthed Popish slanderers pitilessly delight to
describe her. It is, happily, not necessary for the defence of the
English Eeformation that we should lavish upon her unmerited en-
comiums. That great revolution did not originate with her. It had
been commenced by other instruments, for a variety of instrumen-
tality was employed by Providence in producing it. It was steadily
advancing previous to her elevation to royal honour and power, and
by her downfall, though thereby it suffered the loss of a protectress,
its progress was not to be arrested. New influences and new agents
were brought into operation for leavening England with the doctrines
of the Eeformation, and for its more complete emancipation from the

ENGLAND.] Anne Roleyn. 59

thraldom of the Papacy. But during the short period of her elevation
Anne had not surrendered herself to neutrality or indifference to the
new ecclesiastical movement. She had shown a zeal in encouraging
it, shown by none in high places before her time. She was the
patroness of Cranmer, Latimer, Tyndale, and others ; and had her life
been prolonged, there was the prospect of her rendering still more
important services to the infant cause. This affords an additional
explanation of the inveterate hatred cherished against her by the
partizans of Popery. Perhaps no other personage in England was
regarded with more rancorous feelings at the Vatican ; and Borne in
due time got a terrible revenge. Its emissaries were unceasingly
spreading snares for her, and her destruction at last, there is reason
to believe, was the result of a Popish conspiracy, combined with the
alienated affections and jealousy of Henry. On these grounds we
have given her a place in our sketches.

ANNE BOLEYN was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn. by
his wife, Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of
Surrey, and afterwards Duke of Norfolk. The usual residence of
her parents was at Rochford Hall, in Essex, but they also sometimes
resided at Blickling, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, and at this latter
place she was born. 1 The exact date of her birth is uncertain.
Camden, an accurate antiquary, whose authority is of great weight,
and who lived not very remote from her own times, places it in the
year 1507 ; 2 and he is followed by Bayle and Burnet. But if the
statement made by Lord Herbert, that she was twenty years of age
at her return from France in 1521, be correct, and various circum-
stances tend to confirm it, she must have been born about the year
1501. The family of the Boleyns is supposed to be of French origin ;
and Anne's father, though only a knight, was nobly descended. His

1 The erection of the present mansion of Blickling Hall was commenced by Sir
Henry Hobart, Bart., during the reign of James I., but not finished until the year
1628. It is one of the most perfect examples of architecture of that monarch's time
remaining. Baronial Halls of England, London, Chapman, 1848, vul. ii.

2 Apparatus to his Annals, Rerun Anglicarum, &c , p. 2.

60 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, who had been Lord Mayor of
London, was married to one of the daughters and heirs of Lord Hast-
ings ; and his mother was one of the daughters and heirs of the Earl
of Wiltshire and Ormond. 1 Sir Thomas was a man of learning and
ability, as well as a generous patron of learned men. Erasmus, whom
he admired and patronized, thus writes from personal knowledge
concerning him, in a letter to Damianus a Goes : " He is a man whom
all unite in praising, almost the only learned man among the nobility,
and manifestly of a philosophic mind." The same great scholar
applauds him for having the greatness of mind not to pride himself
upon a noble ancestry and honourable rank, but to seek the distinc-
tion arising from the honoured studies of philosophy. Sir Thomas,
being a man of letters and of refined manners, had acquired a high
place in the esteem of Henry VIII., all whose favourites, it must be
allowed, were men of superior capacity and attainments, whatever
they might be in other respects ; and such was his reputation for
talents and discretion, that he was early and frequently sent on
important embassies to foreign courts. He appears to have been
habituated to serious thought ; and coming in contact, in the dis-
charge of his diplomatic duties, with men of liberal views in Germany
and other countries on the Continent, he embraced the new opinions.
Erasmus applauds him as more illustrious for the cultivation of piety,
than for the ornament of fortune. And in a letter to him he com-
mends his diligence in the study of the sacred volume : " I do the
more congratulate you, when I observe that the sacred Scriptures are
so precious to a man such as you, so powerful, a layman and a cour-
tier, and that you are actuated by a desire to possess that pearl of
price." To Sir Thomas the world was indebted for some of the
labours which proceeded from the prolific pen of Erasmus. At his
request, that distinguished scholar wrote three treatises, one an Ex-
position of the Twenty-third Psalm, another an Exposition of the
Apostles' Creed, and the third, Directions how to Prepare for Death. a

1 Burnet's Reformation, edit. Oxford, 1816, vol. i., p. 79.
* Strype's Cranmer, pp. 4, 5. Jortiri's Life of Erasmus, vol. ii., pp. 42-49.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 61

His desiring Erasmus to favour him and the world with his thoughts
on these important subjects, bears testimony to the pious temper of
his mind.

Few memorials respecting Anne's early education have been pre-
served. In the early period of her life, the education of English
ladies was less complete than some years later, when Sir Thomas
More, by his enthusiastic diligence in instructing his daughters in
solid learning, set an example which was zealously followed by
Henry VIII. and by the English nobility, in the tuition of their
daughters. Greater attention, however, appears to have been be-
stowed upon the education of Anne than was common at that time,
even in regard to ladies of her own rank ; a circumstance probably
owing to her father's taste for letters. She studied with assiduity and
success the French language under a French governess, called Simo-
nette, and in that language, as well as in her own, she frequently corre-
sponded with her father during his absence at court. She also received
lessons in Latin, though it may be doubted whether the same pains
had been taken to make her a proficient in that tongue as in the
French. She was carefully instructed m music, singing, and dancing,
as also in the use of the needle, then reckoned an essential accom-
plishment of ladies of the first rank, since much of their leisure time
in mature years was employed in tapestry work, an occupation which,
by ladies in our day, would perhaps be considered somewhat mono-
tonous and irksome. Her father, it would appear, proud of the pro-
mising mental capacity, beauty, and loveliness of his daughter, while
desirous that she should be good, was ambitious to give her every
elegant accomplishment fitted to make her shine in courts. Hence
his avidity in embracing an early opportunity of sending her to
France, where, it was then thought, the most polished manners were
to be acquired.

In the autumn of the year 1514, when in the fourteenth year of her
age, she was honoured by being appointed one of the attendants of
Henry the Eighth's sister, the Princess Mary, who, having been affi-
anced to Louis XII., went to France with a considerable retinue to

G2 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

have the marriage consummated. 1 On receiving from her father a
letter informing her of his hope of obtaining for her this honourable
appointment, intimating his desire that she should appear at court
in a manner creditable to herself and him, and pressing upon her the
importance of a pious and exemplary deportment, she, in her reply,
written in French, expresses her delight at the prospect of being in-
troduced into the society of the princess, as what would contribute
greatly to improve her both in speaking and writing good French ;
tells him that her governess, Simonette, had left the composition of
this letter entirely to herself, that nobody might know what she was
writing to him ; and assures him of her resolution to lead as holy a
life as he could desire. 2 From the knowledge this letter displays,
and from the excellence of its composition, it is evident that she
must have been older than Camden's date of her birth would make
her. A child of seven years of age could not have written such a
letter. Besides, her father, it is probable, would not have sought for
her, nor would he have obtained for her at so early an age, an
appointment as attendant on the Princess Mary.

Mary and her suite having proceeded to France, she was married
to Louis on the 9th of October, 1514, in the church of St. Denis, with
becoming splendour and ceremony. Louis having died on the 1st of
January, 1515, his widow soon after married Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, and returned to England. But Anne, instead of return-
ing with her, remained in France at the desire of her father, or of
some others of her friends, and was preferred, probably upon the
recommendation of Mary the Queen -Dowager, her former mistress,
to an honourable situation in the court of Claude, daughter of
Louis XII., and, queen-consort of Francis I., a young princess of
retired habits, of uncorrupted virtue, sincerely pious, though her
piety was tinged with superstition, and who, in order to preserve the
moral purity of her court, maintained in it those salutary restraints

1 Her name appears in the list of the Princess Mary's retinue, signed by Louis XII.
Ellis'g Original Letters, first series, vol. i., p. 116.

2 Ellis's Original Letters, second series, vol. ii., p. 10.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 63

which had been introduced by her mother, Anne of Bretagne. To
the young ladies of the nobility who were her attendants, her palace
was a school of virtue and instruction. Their hours of leisure were
employed in embroidery or in similar useful occupations, and their
intercourse with the other sex was only permitted under such re-
strictions as might tend to preserve decorum and purity of manners.

During her residence in the French court, Anne enjoyed the benefit
of the society of the beloved sister of Francis I., Margaret of Valois,
then Duchess of Alengon, and afterwards Queen of Navarre, a lady
not less distinguished for her virtues than for her talents, the
patroness of letters, scholars, poets, and philosophers, and a nursing
mother to the. Reformed Church in France in its infancy. She had
also the advantage of the society of those learned and liberal-minded
men whom this enlightened and accomplished princess brought to
the palace for the intellectual improvement of herself and of others
in the court. Anne being of a lively and gay humour, the society of
Margaret of Valois, in whom the lively and the grave were happily
blended, would relieve the sombre monotony felt by a young person
of vivacity in the society of Claude, whose sedate retiring manners
were partly owing to ill-health, and partly to natural disposition.
She had the pleasure, too, of often seeing her father, whom official
duties frequently brought to Paris.

Henry VIII. having proclaimed war against France in 1522, Anne
returned to England, to the deep regret of the French monarch, and
especially of Queen Claude, who, with much reluctance, allowed her
to depart. Her father, who was then ambassador at the French
court, being recalled, is said by some historians ' to have brought her

1 As Lord Herbert, who is followed by Burnet and Rapin. Miss Berger says, that
" a formal requisition was made to Francis for her restoration, and that Anne in con-
sequence returned to England, under whose protection is not specified by any his-
torian." Life of Anne Boleyn, vol. i., p. 197. Camden, Sir Roger Twysden, and several
other writers, seem to have been ignorant of the fact, which is LOW fully established,
that she returned to England in 1522, for they make no mention of it, saying that
she continued in the French court till the death of Claude, which took place in July,
1524, after which, not being yet wearied of France, she was received into an honour-

64: Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

over with him to England. On his return, from his favour with
Henry, he had little difficulty in obtaining for her an appointment as
one of Queen Katharine's maids of honour. She is said to have been
the most admired star in the French court, and she returned with all
the advantages which French politesse could add to an English beauty.
Gay, sprightly, witty, graceful in her carriage, affable in her be-
haviour, tasteful in her dress, singing with a voice melodious, sweet,
touching, like that of the nightingale ; mingling in the dance with
the ease and skill of a perfect mistress in the art possessing such a
choice assemblage of charms, she was an object likely to be admired
and caressed in the English court. Nor was she without a share of
coquetry; and with her fine bright eyes she knew how to conquer ;
for,

" Much as her form seduc'd the sight,

Her eyes could even more surely woo ;
And when, and how to shoot their light
Into men's hearts, full well she knew.
For, sometimes, in repose, she hid
Their rays beneath a downcast lid ;
And then, again, with wakening air,

"Would send their sunny glances out,
Like heralds of delight, to bear
Her heart's sweet messages about." '

It is, however, only justice to add, that at this period her manners,
even according to the testimony of her greatest enemies, were marked
by exemplary modesty.

After her introduction to the court, a romantic attachment sprung
up between Anne and Lord Percy, the son and heir of the Earl of
Northumberland. But their affectionate intimacy was broken up by
the king, who, smitten by her engaging qualities, was uneasy at the
thought that another should possess her heart ; and disclosing his
feelings to Cardinal Wolsey, employed the prelate to put an end to

able situation in the household of Margaret of Valois, Duchess of Alenqon. Caven-
dish's Life of Wolsey, edited by Singer, vol. i., pp. 55-58.

1 Metrical Histoire d'Anne Boleyn, quoted and translated in Edinburgh Review
for March, 1827, p. 323.

' ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 65

the correspondence between her and that young nobleman. The
Cardinal, ready to gratify Henry's wishes, never dreaming that she
would rise higher than a royal mistress, severely reprimanded Percy
for making love to " a foolish girl," beneath him in rank, without ask-
ing his father's and the king's consent ; and with the aid of the father,
the Earl of Northumberland, he succeeded in terminating the court-
ship, for which he was afterwards regarded with no friendly feelings
by either of the lovers. It may indeed be doubted whether Anne,
though she suppressed her resentment, and even afterwards professed
the warmest friendship towards him when she thought him willing
and able to advance her schemes of ambition, ever fully forgave him
for the part he acted on this occasion. She was sent away from the
court to her father's house of Hever Castle, in Kent, 1 while Lord
Percy, though permitted to remain at court, was forced to marry
Lady Mary Talbot, daughter to George, Earl of Shrewsbury, which
turned out a most unhappy union. 2 His marriage with that lady
was solemnized in the autumn of the year 1523, as appears from a
letter written by Anne's cousin, the Earl of Surrey, dated September
12, that year, in which he says, "The marriage of my Lord Percy
shall be with my lord steward's (Shrewsbury's) daughter, whereof I
am glad. The chief baron is with my Lord of Northumberland to
conclude the marriage." 3 This letter fixes 1523 as the year in which
Anne was thus crossed, in what appears to have been her first love.
Some time after Henry unexpectedly paid her a visit at Hever Castle,
but knowing or suspecting his errand, she determined not to encou-
rage his love advances, and, under pretence of indisposition, took to
her chamber, which she did not again quit till after his departure. 4
To ingratiate himself in her favour, he created her father Viscount
Rochford, on June 18, 1525 ; and, to bring the whole family to the
court, he appointed him treasurer of the royal household, and William

' This castle is still in good repair. It is at present in possession of the Medleys.

2 Cavendish's Life of Wohey, vol. i., pp. 57-69.

3 Ijngard's History of England, vol. vi., p. 112.
* Lingard.

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

Carey, her sister Mary's husband, a gentleman of the privy chamber.
But her high spirit did not easily forget the affront put upon her by
her dismissal from court, and the loss of her beloved Percy, whose
countess, as Lord Herbert perhaps rightly observes, she would
rather have been, than Henry's queen. Such was her continued
chagrin, that she would not appear at court. Henry thus saw that
her heart was not to be moulded to his wishes like wax ; and when
he first avowed his passion for her, she gave him distinctly to under-
stand that she was not to stoop to dishonour. " Most noble king !"
she replied, falling on her knees, " I will rather lose my life than my
virtue, which shall be the greatest and the best part of the dowry
that I shall bring my husband." By this honourable repulse Henry

Part of the Gallery in Hever Cutle.

was not to be discouraged, and conscious of the splendid advantages
he possessed, he declared that he would not abandon hope. Her
answer was becoming a woman of virtue and self-respect : " I under-
stand not, most mighty king ! how you should retain any such hope.
Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of my own unworthiness, and

ENGLAND.] Antie Boleyn. 67

also because you have a queen already, and your mistress I will not
be." ' Even Sanders and Cardinal Pole, who have so fiercely defamed
her, admit that she had declared it to the monarch to be her resolu-
tion to devote her virtue to her husband, and to no one else. But
not allowing her to have possessed a single good quality, the inter-
pretation they put upon this is, that she was ambitious of becoming
queen-consort ; a dignity to which she would have had little chance
of being raised had she been willing to be Henry's mistress. 2 But
so improbable at that time was the prospect of her attaining such an
elevation, that nothing, save the most inveterate prejudice, would
ascribe the expression of her virtuous determination to a speculation
of the contingency of her becoming queen. How does the case stand ?
The question of Henry's divorce from Katharine of Aragon had not
then been moved. Were we, however, to grant that there had been
some secret motions respecting it, its ever taking place was far from
certain. It would be unpopular in England. It would meet with
the most strenuous opposition from Charles V. That the Pope would
grant it was extremely doubtful. And even should it be obtained,
that a high-minded monarch should set aside the considerations of
state policy, which were repugnant to his marrying a subject, and
condescend to wed one of Anne's comparatively humble rank, who
was the servant of his own queen, was what she could hardly have

1 These particulars are taken from the Sloane MS., Life of Henry VIII., from his
falling in love with Anne Boleyn to the death of Queen Katharine, in the British
Museum, No. 249. This MS. was written in the 16th century, and as it takes the
Papal side, its testimony in her favour is the more valuable.

2 Sanders, De Schism. Angl., p. 26. Pol. ad Reg. Scotl., p. 176. Turner, in his
History of the Reign of Henry VIII. (vol. ii., p. 191), speaking of Sanders's libels
against Anne and her family, says, "More wilful calumnies, I believe, never issued
either from the pen or the press. He has a command of Latin style, but a most bitter
mind against the English Reformation. The very next sentence after his defamation
of Anne, shows us why he inserted it: 'She was addicted to the Lutheran heresy.'"
'De Schism., p. 25. Pole, in his work Pro Ecclesiastics Unitatis Defensione, a work
submitted to the revisal of the Roman pontiff, and the first edition of which was
printed at Rome, heaps upon her the vilest slanders, and never mentions her name
without applying to her some deeply defamatory sobriquet, as " ineretricula," p. 390 ;
" adultednam," p. 266 ; " meretricio amore," p. 336 ; " scortum," p. 280 ; " nova Jeze-
bel," p. 399, &c.

68 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

dreamed of, even in the enchanting moments when fancy most gor-
geously painted the future. Can her becoming answers to the king
be then justly represented as intended to cloak over ambitious
designs with the semblance of virtue, as the cool and crafty calcula-
tion of the chances of dispossessing Katharine of Aragon, and suc-
ceeding her as Henry's wife and queen ? It is more natural, as well
as more just, to regard them as the unsophisticated utterances of a
heart which trembled at the thought of sullied virtue and a dis-
honoured name.

In his endeavours to induce her to return to the court, Henry con-
tinued unremitting, and wrote her several entreating letters, breath-
ing professions of the most ardent affection. But still she could not
be prevailed upon to revisit the spot where her dearest and earliest
hopes lay buried. After remaining for some time in her father's
house, sorrowfully ruminating on her blighted prospects, she is sup-
posed by Bishop Burnet to have gone again to France, and entered
the service of her old friend and patroness, Margaret of Valois,
Duchess of Alengon. This journey, if it took place, would be about
the beginning of the year 1526, when Francis I. had been released
from his captivity in Spain, to the great joy of France, and especially
of his sister, the Duchess of Alenc.on. Anne is supposed by the same
historian to have returned to England with her father in 1527, when
he was recalled from France, whither he had been sent that year,
along with Sir Anthony Brown, to take the oath of the French king
to a solemn league not long before concluded betwixt the crowns of
England and France. 1

The cause of Anne's final return from France to England may have
been the marriage of her mistress, Margaret, with Henry d'Albret,
King of Navarre, in the beginning of the year 1527. That event
having rendered it necessary for Margaret to leave France for the
family residence of the kings of Navarre, in Gascogne or Beam, Sir
Thomas Boleyn, naturally preferring that his daughter should return

1 Htylin's History of the Reformation, edit. London, 15G1, p. 86.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 69

to England and to the English court, rather than retire to that
secluded residence among the Pyrenees, brought her home to England.
By some Roman Catholic writers, as Sanders and Cardinal Pole,
Anne is represented as having sunk, when in France, to the lowest
depth of hackneyed and shameless profligacy. So extravagantly
gross are their scandalous accusations, that to extract them would be
to pollute our pages ; but this extravagant grossness is in itself a
sufficient proof that they are malignant slanders. 1 The court of
France during the period of Anne's residence in it was a school of
virtue, and not that hotbed of licentiousness which it became during
the later years of the reign of Francis I. ; and this her father knew,
for his diplomatic engagements had given him an opportunity of
becoming acquainted with its manners and habits. Had she been
so notoriously abandoned as to become a bye-word and a proverb
among all classes of Paris, as these Popish writers would have us to
believe, a queen of the strict virtue of Claude would not have con-
tinued to retain her around her person. Besides, it is incredible,
upon such a supposition, that her father, who must have known what
every body in Paris knew, would have permitted her to remain in a
situation where her virtue had been lost and her character ruined.
Nor, in the case supposed, would Katharine, queen of Henry VIII.,
a woman of unimpeachable moral purity, though superstitious, have
consented to receive her as one of her maids of honour. Henry,
who through Wolsey and his ambassadors was minutely acquainted
with every court of Europe, must have known it well, had she been
the infamous character described by these scandalmongers. And
yet Henry, after his marriage, speaks to the Pope of " her approved
and excellent virtues ; that is to say, the purity of her life, her con- .
stant virginity, her maidenly and womanly pudicity, her soberness

1 Not content with defaming Anne, they are equally zealous in assailing the repu-
tation of her mother and sister. See these slanders combated in Burnet's Reformation,
vol. i., pp. 74-78; and in Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 191, 430. Miss Wood,
on the strength of an old MS., vindicates the mother, but surrenders the defence of
the daughter Mary. Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol ii., p, 193.

70 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

her chasteness, her meekness, her wisdom." 1 " This," says Turner,
" is the king's own portrait of her, after six years acquaintance, and
amid all the enmity that attacked her." 2 Even Cavendish, the
gentleman-usher of Cardinal "Wolsey, who knew her well, and who
was the reverse of prepossessed in her favour, speaks of her at the
time of her return to England, and when she first became the object
of Henry's affections, as a lady of unblemished reputation. In his
Metrical Versions he introduces her as saying to Henry,

"At home with my father a maiden he found me." 3

The residence of Anne in the royal family of France was well
calculated to enlarge and liberalize her mind in matters of religion.
The social circle in which she there moved, if it did not go the
length of throwing off the Papal yoke, and branding his holiness as
the Antichrist and the Man of Sin foretold in Scripture, was yet fully
alive to the corruptions of the Popish Church, in so far as related
to the lives of the clergy. It freely canvassed and sharply censured
the character of the Papal hierarchy, from the Pope downwards,
their ambition, avarice, idleness, libertinism. Louis XII. had been
engaged in war with that restless and domineering pontiff Julius II.,
and setting at defiance the anathemas of the Vatican, had contem-
plated the deposition of his holiness, and the introduction of great
ecclesiastical changes in France ; and this had the effect of weaken-
ing the power of superstition over the minds of the French courtiers,
and of impregnating them, so far, with liberal views. 4 Francis I.
threatened to wrench the Church of France from its connection with
the Papal throne, should an ecclesiastic whom he disliked be chosen
to the primacy. His mother Louise lets us see, by some passages in
her journal, how her mind had been emancipated from a blind abject
devotion to the Papacy. In December, 1522, she makes this entry :

1 Burnet's Reformation, vol. vi., p. 84.

* Reign of Henry VIII., p. 202.

3 Life of Wolsey, vol. ii., p. 41.

Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. i., p. 98.

ENGLAND.] Anne oleyn. 71

" My son and I, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, begin to know the
hypocrites, white, black, gray, smoky, of all colours from whom
may Heaven, of its clemency and infinite goodness, defend us ; for if
Jesus Christ did not speak falsely, there is not a more dangerous
rival in all human nature." 1 Margaret of Valois, the most intellec-
tual personage of the court, and a woman whose winning manners,
combined with her talents, gave her great influence over others, had
equally little veneration for the Roman pontiff and the shavelings of
the Papal hierarchy. Cardinal Wolsey, when ambassador in France
in 1521, says in one of his despatches, "I devised with the king's
sister, and she showed me many things of the Pope's act, which, if it
be as she saith, his deeds be as little to his honour as may be." 2
And when the light of the Reformation broke in upon France, bring-
ing into view the pure doctrines of the gospel, which had been for
ages obscured and overlaid by the impieties, superstitions, and
absurdities of Popery, this illustrious lady was attracted by the
simplicity and beauty of divine truth. She became devoted to the
reading and study of the sacred Scriptures, and earnestly inculcated
the reading and study of them upon others. She was the friend and
patroness of such men as Brigonnet, Lefevre of Etaples, Farel, Vat-
able, Arnold and Gerard Roussel, and other ardent apostles of reform.
She delighted in conversing with them on the great doctrines of the
gospel, and listened with the deepest attention and interest to their
interpretations of God's "Word, as well as encouraged them in boldly
proclaiming the truth in Paris. Such was the society in which
Anne Boleyn was daily and hourly mingling, and such were the excit-
ing topics which occupied no inconsiderable share of its attention
and conversation. We have, indeed, no definite information as to
its influence in the formation of her religious sentiments ; but from
what we know of them afterwards, it may fairly be concluded that
the exposures of the Popish Church she heard in the French court,

' P. 434.

2 MS. letter, dated 2d August, quoted in Turner's Reign of Henry VIII, vol. i.
p. 270.

72 Ladies of live, Reformation. [ENGLAND.

had the effect of impairing, if not of destroying, her veneration for
the Popedom, and that listening to the exposition of the pure
doctrines of the gospel, pouring like honey from the honeycomb
from the persuasive lips of Margaret of Valois, or of her proteges,
she perceived their reasonableness and their truth. English and
French historians of the best authority, agree in admitting that it
was from her residence and intercourse with Margaret of Valois
that she received the first grounds of the Protestant religion, and
that to this source is to be traced the value which, as was afterwards
shown, she attached to the Sacred Volume, and the protection she
extended to such as were active in its circulation.

Whether Burnet's supposition as to Anne's return to France be
correct or not, it is certain that she did not again appear at the
English court till after an absence of four years, namely, in 1527,
when. Henry's contemplated divorce from his queen, Katharine of
Aragon, had become generally known, 1 and formed the all-engross-
ing conversational topic of the day.

On the return of Anne from France, Heniy was as deeply ena-
moured with her as ever, and she was reappointed one of Queen
Katharine's maids of honour. Hitherto, delicacy and respect for
Katharine, her mistress, together with the shock given, by the loss
of Lord Percy, to her affections, which she could not easily transfer
to Henry, made her discourage his tender aspirations. " She stood
still upon her guard," says an old memorialist, " and was not easily
carried away with all this appearance of happiness ; first, on account
of the love she bare ever to the queen, whom she served, a personage
of great virtue ; and secondly, she imagined that there would be less
freedom in her union with her lord and king, than with one still more
suitable to her estate." 3 This was true of her feelings and conduct

1 The news " by secret ways and means " had reached Margaret, governess of Flan-
ders, in August, 1527. Letter of Wolsey to Heury VIII., dated Amyas, llth August
[1527], in State Papere, vol. i , p. 254. And about the same time they had reached
Charles V. Letter of Wolsey to Henry VIII., dated Campeigne, 5th September
[1527], in ibid., vol. i., p. 257.

2 The Life of the Virtuous, Christian, and Renowned Queen Anne Boleyn, by George

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

for some years after her dismissal from the court; and after her
return to it in 1527, she was deaf to his passionate addresses for
more than a year. 1 To gain her heart he loaded her with presents,
and, among other tokens of affection, he is said to have presented
her with a horologe. At last, the united importunities of Henry,

Horologe presented by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn.

Wyatt, written at the close of the 16th century, in Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, vol. ii
The author was grandson of the poet, George Wyatt, Esq., and sixth son and heir of Sir
Thomas Wyatt the younger, who was beheaded for rebellion in the first year of the
reign of Queen Mary. He derived his information, as he tells us, from Miss Anne
Gainsford, who attended on Anne both before and after she was queen, and from
another lady of noble birth, a relative of his own.

1 This appears from the love-letters Henry wrote to her after her return from
France. If a letter in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal, fyc., vol. ii., p. 14, translated
from Leti's Italian Life of Queen Elisabeth, said to be from Anne Boleyn to Henry,
be genuine, the fact would be quite the reverse. From internal evidence it must refer
for it is without date to the time of her appointment to be maid of honour to Queen
Katharine in 1527, and it expresses the most idolatrous affection for Henry, and a
readiness to do or become whatever he should please. But this is so contrary to the
whole tenor of Henry's unquestionably authentic love-letters to her at this period,
which show that she acted with great reserve, that we cannot believe in its authenti-
city. Leti, indeed, too often draws upon his imagination to be an authority of much
weight. Most of these love-letters of Henry to her are in French. The originals are in
the Vatican at Rome, forming part of the Codices Vaticani, No. 3731. They were
obtained, it has been supposed, " by some secret management, probably by Wolsey's
aid, and sent to Rome by Cardinal Campeggio They have been pub-
lished, incorrectly in some parts, in the third volume of the Harleian Miscellany,
pp. 52-62, and elsewhere. Mr. Gun has given the most complete edition of them, being
seventeen, in the Pamphleteer, Nos. 42 and 43, correctly copied from autographs in

74 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

her father, and others of her friends, who assured her that the
king's marriage with Katharine was contrary to the divine law,
and that the divorce was what must take place, prevailed, and she
not only encouraged his advances, but became dazzled by the gilded
splendours of royalty. The expectation of being one day the queen
of the greatest monarch in Europe, became the pivot upon which her
thoughts began and continued to turn. Still, perhaps, every now
and then she wavered, partly from compunctions of conscience at the
thought of inflicting wrong upon Katharine, and partly from the
apprehension of finding the situation of queen-consort in the circum-
stances far from enviable ; and it was not till Campeggio came to the
English court, in October, 1529, with the professed design of granting
the divorce, but with the real intention of doing nothing, that, seeing
the highest authorities in the church, and her greatest enemies to all
appearance favouring her advancement, she ceased to hesitate. 1

Wolsey, though not ignorant of Henry's vehement affection for
Anne, probably never dreamed of its going fai'ther than making her
his mistress ; or he imagined that if the monarch, in the fever of
passion, had resolved upon making her his wife and queen, he would
gradually cool and alter his intention. 2 It may be doubted whether
Henry himself, till the last half of the year 1527, had decidedly and
irrevocably formed such a resolution. Between July and October
that year Wolsey was in France, negotiating a matrimonial alliance
between his master and Een6e, daughter of Louis XII., afterwards
Duchess of Ferrara. This looks as if Henry's mind had not been
altogether made up as to whom he should marry upon the divorce of
his present queen. But his passion for Anne mightily increased

the Vatican palace, with a valuable introduction, and some fac-similies of the writing
and notes.'' Tamer's History of the Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 227. Turner
has given the most of them in that work. "Their respectful language," he justly
observes, " is an irresistible attestation of Anne Boleyn's virtue, and of the impression
it had made upon her royal admirer." Our limits prevent us from giving an abstract
of these effusions of royal affection.

1 This is proved from Henry's love-letters to her. See D'Aubigne's Reformation in
England, book xx., chap. iii.

2 Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, vol. i., p. 67.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 75

during Wolsey's absence, and obstacles being thrown in the way of
his obtaining Renee, probably by the King of France, he recalled the
cardinal, and disclosed to him his intention of making Anne his
wife. Astounded at the announcement, and disapproving of the
match, the prelate fell at the feet of the monarch, imploring him for
several hours, with the greatest earnestness, to reconsider his resolu-
tion. The monarch was inflexible. His purpose he was determined
to accomplish, cost what it might. Wolsey behoved to yield his
political and personal motives to the will of his master. '

The liberal views acquired by Anne in the court of Claude, Queen
of France, and in the court of Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre,
prepared her for reading, without prepossession, heretical books.
Among other books of this kind she read with much interest Tyn-
dale's Obedience of a Christian Man a bold performance, in which the
author vindicates the diffusion of the Scriptures in the mother
tongue, unfolds the duties of men in their different relations and
conditions of life, exposes the false power claimed by the Pope, and
condemns the Popish doctrines of penance, confession, satisfactions,
absolution, miracles, the worshipping of saints, and other Popish
dogmas.

The history of a book, could it be told, would often be as remark-
able and instructive as that of an individual. Anne's copy of Tyn-
dale's work caused some striking incidents about the year 1529. It
converted one of her household to Protestantism ; it had well-nigh
brought down upon his head the penalties of heresy ; and it ulti-
mately fell into the hands of Henry, who read it with advantage.
She had lent it to a beautiful young lady, one of her attendants,
Miss Gainsford ; or, according to another account, this lady, finding
it lying in a window where her mistress had left it, took it up to

1 Anne, in one letter addressed to the cardinal, expresses the warmest gratitude for
his efforts to obtain for her the crown matrimonial of England. In another, written to
him after he had "abandoned her interests to embrace those of the queen," she is full
of indignation. She cannot comprehend how, after " having allured her and Henry,
by so many fine promises about divorce," he had endeavoured " to hinder the con -
summation of it." Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. ii.,
pp 46,48.

76 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

read it. But in whatever way it fell into her hands, she was em-
ployed in reading it when a young gentleman, also in Anne's service,
of comely person and great suavity of disposition, named George
Zouch, who was courting her, and to whom she was afterwards
married, paid her one of his visits. Zouch, wishing to have some
tender and agreeable talk with his fair Geraldine, was annoyed at
the apparently exclusive attention she was bestowing upon the book ;
and he snatched it from her hands in frolic. At this moment, being

Hiss Gainsiori! and Zouch, her lover.

called to attend on her mistress, she left him ; and as she did not
return for a considerable time, he went away, carrying with him the
book, thinking it was her own. Retiring to his own apartment, he
began to read it ; his attention was instantly ri vetted by its contents ;
it opened up to him new views, and awakened in him new thoughts.
" The Spirit of God," says the old annalist quoted by Strype, " spake

ENGLAND.] Anne fioleyn. 77

now in the heart of the reader as at first it did in the heart of the
author of the book, so that he was never well but when he was read-
ing it." Miss Gainsford, afraid of offending her mistress, entreated
him with tears to deliver it up. So deeply had it impressed him,
and so earnest was he to master its doctrines, that " he was as ready to
weep " at the thought of parting with it, and he still kept it. He even
carried it with him when he attended the chapel royal ; and at the
very time when the music, chantings, kneelings, crossings, and mut-
terings in an unknown tongue were going on, he stood poring over
it, heedless of the superstitious services performing before him. Dr.
Sampson, dean of the chapel, who usually officiated, observing his
attention wholly absorbed in reading some book, the curiosity of the
dean was excited, and calling the young gentleman up to him, he
rudely took the book out of his hands, and perceiving from the title-
page its heretical character, demanded, in an impertinent and snap-
pish tone, as if little doubting that he had encountered a real heretic,
" What is your name, and in whose service are you V The dean
afterwards delivered the book to Cardinal Wolsey, who had enjoined
the clergy, and especially Dr. Sampson, to exercise the strictest
vigilance in order to prevent heretical books from obtaining circula-
tion, or getting into the hands of the king, lest they should corrupt
his Roman Catholic principles, and make him an enemy of the
church. Zouch being sent for by the cardinal, was fully examined
concerning the book, and he would have been brought into trouble,
had it not been found that he was in the service of a lady so beloved
by the king as was Anne Boleyn, which made the cardinal think it
would be better to delay proceeding farther till he had first consulted
his majesty. Meanwhile Zouch, having explained the whole affair to
Miss Gainsford, the young lady, in dread of having involved both her-
self and her mistress in danger, fell on her knees before Anne, and
telling her all the facts of the case, implored forgiveness. Anne
heard all without expressing the least dissatisfaction, either with the
lady or with her lover ; but knowing that for any person to have
such a book in his possession was enough to convict him of heresy,

78 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

and, consequently, to bring him to the stake, and convinced that Dr.
Sampson and Wolsey, had it been in their power, would have made
this circumstance the means of ruining her attendants, and ulti-
mately herself, her anger kindling against these men, she said, " Well,
it shall be the dearest book that ever the dean or the cardinal took
away." "Without delay she went to the king, and falling down on
her knees before him, imparted to him the whole matter, informed
him that the book was hers, prayed him to cause it to be restored,
and tenderly besought him to read it for himself, as it was not so
detestable a production as Dr. Sampson and Wolsey would have him
to believe, telling him that she had noted various passages with
the nail of her finger as being, in her judgment, especially worthy
of the attention of his majesty.

After she had withdrawn from the royal presence, Wolsey entered
with the book in his hand, to point out such of its heresies as he
thought would rouse the indignation of the monarch, and to com-
plain of the favourers of such books in general, and particularly of
women, with the design, as may be supposed, of proceeding more
directly to attack Anne, had he found the king favourably disposed.
But Henry, who before this had become cold towards the cardinal,
took the book into his hand, and opening it, observed the passages
marked by Anne with her nail, at which he hastily glanced,
remarking that they seemed very good. He examined the book
more carefully in his closet, and was so delighted with its denuncia-
tions of Papal usurpations, and its vindication of regal and niagis-
tratical authority, that he afterwards said to Anne, " This book is
for me and for all kings to read." '

1 The authorities for the preceding narrative as to Anne's copy of Tyndale's Obe-
dience of a Christian Man, are Strype, who derives his account from Foxe's MSS.
(Mem. Eccl, vol. i., part i, pp. 171-173); and Wyatt, iu his Life of Anne Boleyn,
(printed in Cavendish's Wolsey, vol. ii., pp. 200-205), who got his information from
Miss Grainsford herself. The latter authority records the anecdote less circumstantially
than the former, and with some slight variations. In the text we have combined all
the particulars supplied by the two annalists. Dr. D'Aubigne, iu his History ofihe Refor-
mation in England, book xx., chap, x., has extended the narrative to much greater
length, interweaving various extracts from Tyudale's book, and throwing them into a

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 79

According to the chronicler from whom Strype derives his nar-
rative, the reading of Tyndale's work had a powerful influence in
opening Henry's eyes to the truth, and in causing him to pursue
the course by which England was emancipated from Papal domina-
tion. " In a little time," says he, " by the help of this virtuous lady,
by the means aforesaid, the king had his eyes opened to the truth, to
advance God's religion and glory, to abhor the Pope's doctrine, his lies,
his pomp and pride, to deliver his subjects out of Egyptian darkness,
the Babylonian bonds that the Pope had brought his subjects under.
And so contemning the threats of all the world, rebellions of his
subjects at home, and the raging of so many and mighty potentates
abroad, he set forward a reformation in religion, beginning with
the triple-crowned head ' at first, and so came down to the members,
bishops, abbots, priests, and such like." To the eulogium pro-
nounced in the first part of this extract Henry is certainly not
entitled. His eyes were never opened to the truth ; his aim never
was to advance God's religion and glory; he never abhorred the
Pope's doctrine and lies. And perhaps also, in the latter part of the
extract, fully too much is attributed to the incident of the monarch's
reading The Obedience of a Christian Man. For some years after he
had no intention of throwing off the Pope's authority, a step to which
at last, contrary to his wishes, he was impelled by his violent and
impetuous temper, in consequence of the Pope's refusal to grant him
the much-wished-for divorce. Tyndale's work, however, having
been brought under his notice at a time when he was quite in a

dramatic form ; as an example of the manner in which this
gifted and popular author sometimes dramatizes his historical
compositions.

1 " The first pope who caused himself to be crowned was
Damasus It., in the year 1048; which ceremony has since been
observed by all his successors. Urban V., by others reckoned
r* -yg-^s^ay ^ VI., was the first who used the triple crown, commonly called
(j "\ W j^r i?f \\\ tne tiara, which he did to show that the pretended vicar of
ftf "StcS / fef Christ is possessed of a threefold power, the pontifical, imperial,
The Tiara. an( l rO yal. For the same reason Peter was wont to be painted,

as may be seen still in the palace of the Vatican, holding three keys in his right
hand," Bruce's Free Thoughts on the Toleration of Popery, p. 38.

80 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

temper for reading a powerfully- written book, in vindication of the
authority of kings and rulers, in opposition to the encroachments of
a usurping priesthood, may have contributed not inconsiderably to
weaken his veneration for the Roman see ; and the commendation
he pronounced upon it may therefore have been sincere, and not
merely the flattering compliment of a wooer, intended to gain the
good graces of the lady who had recommended it to him for his
perusal

At last having obtained an opinion favourable to his wishes from
the majority of foreign universities, which, at the suggestion of
Thomas Cranmer, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, he had
consulted, Henry, indignant at the dissimulation and delays of the
Pope, from whom he was now hopeless of obtaining a divorce, cut
for himself the Gordian knot by marrying Anne Boleyn about the
25th of January, 1533. This is the date assigned by Stow in his
Annals, who states that the ceremony was performed by Dr. Row-
land Lee, afterwards Bishop of Chester. Cranmer says, " It was
much about St. Paul's day," that is, the 25th of January. 1 It was
reported throughout a great part of the kingdom that Cranmer had
performed the ceremony ; but he denies the truth of this report, and
affirms that he " knew not thereof a fortnight after it was done." 2
"Whether the marriage was preceded by the private divorce of Henry
from Katharine of Aragon, though this is asserted by various con-
temporary authorities, 3 is doubtful. If no divorce preceded it, he
would satisfy himself by resting its validity on the ground that his
first marriage, being contrary to the law of God, was void from the
beginning.

1 Hall and Holinshed, perhaps erroneously, give an earlier date, namely, St. Erken-
wald's day, 14th November, 1532, the very day on which Henry and Anne arrived at
Dover, from their interview with Francis I. of Ifirance, at Calais and Boulogne.

9 Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii., pp. 33-40.

s These authorities are quoted by Turner in his Reign of Henry VIII , vol. ii., p. 333.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 81

CHAPTER II.

INDIGNATION OP POPISH PRIESTS AT HER MARRIAGE WITH HENR5T VIII.,
AND HER PATRONAGE OF THE REFORMERS AND OF LEARNING.

A VIOLENT outcry was raised against Henry's marriage with Anne
by the Popish priests, all of whom, with the exception of such as
had been infected with heresy, were in favour of Queen Katharine
and of the legality of her mai-riage. One of them, Friar Peto, of the
order of the Observants of Greenwich monastery, and Queen Katha-
rine's confessor, openly denounced the monarch in a sermon preached
before his majesty, in the royal chapel at Greenwich, on the 1st of
May. The subject of the friar's homily was the latter part of the
story of Ahab, which he boldly applied to the king, saying, " Where
the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall the dogs lick
thy blood also, O king ;" and after telling him that he had been
deceived by lying prophets, added, pretending a divine commission,
" I am that Micheas whom thou wilt hate, because I must tell thee
truly that this marriage is unlawful ; and I know I shall eat the
bread of a'ffliction, and drink the water of sorrow, yet because our
Lord hath put it into my mouth, I must speak of it." Under this
outburst of vituperation the king betrayed no symptoms of impa-
tience or displeasure ; but, to prevent its repetition, he provided that
on the following Sabbath the pulpit of the royal chapel should be
occupied by a more friendly preacher, Dr. Curwen, one of the royal
chaplains. Curwen vindicated the king's marriage, branded Peto as
a dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, close man, rebel, and traitor ;
and in the close, after calling upon him in vain to appear in self-
defence, stigmatized him as a coward. This roused the indignation
of another Observant friar of Greenwich monastery, named Elstow,
who vociferated from the gallery that Peto was necessarily absent at
a provincial council at Canterbury, but would return to-morrow,
adding, " I am here, as another Micheas, and will lay down my life

82 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

to prove all these things true which he hath taught out of the Holy
Scripture : and to this combat I challenge thee before God and all
equal judges ; even unto thee, Curwen, I say, which art one of the
four hundred prophets into whom the spirit of lying is entered, and
seekest by adultery to establish succession, betraying the king unto
endless perdition, more for thy own vain glory and hope of promo-
tion, than for discharge of thy clogged conscience and the king's
salvation." ElstoVs vehemence, like the gathering force of a tor-
rent, increased as he proceeded, and he could not be got to stop until
the king bade him hold his peace, and gave orders that he and Peto
should be brought before the privy council. This was done on the
following day, and they were rebuked for their temerity, a slender
punishment for such a tyrant as Henry to inflict for so grave an
offence. Upon their escaping so easily, the Earl of Essex told them
that they deserved to be put into a sack and cast into the Thames.
With a sarcastic smile, and as if thirsting for martyrdom, Elstow
rejoined. " Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk, which are
clothed in purple, fare deliciously, and have their chiefest hope in
this world ; for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the dis-
charge of our duties we are driven hence : and, with thanks to God,
we know the way to heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and
therefore we care not which way we go." 1 These professions of
austere sanctity and of a high sense of duty will be suspected by
such as know the real state of the English monasteries at that
period. The monastery of Greenwich was soon after suppressed,
and its friars banished the kingdom. 3

Other Popish priests were equally violent in expressing their
opposition to the new marriage. A parish priest of Kettering was
summoned before the privy council for saying it was a pity the king
had not been buried in his swaddling-clothes, and that whoever

1 Stow's Annals, p. 562.

2 Peto subsequently returned and became confessor to Queen Mary, as he had been
to her mother Katharine. His zeal was at length rewarded by a cardinal's hat. But
in that character he never set foot on English ground one cardinal, Reginald Pole,
being deemed sufficient for England, even in the reign of the bloody Mary.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 83

should venture to call the Lady Anne Boleyn queen at Bugden
should Lave his head knocked to a post.'

But the priest who filled the chair of St. Peter at Rome was, if
possible, filled with still deeper indignation, and impelled partly by
Charles V., partly by his cardinals, and partly by resentment at the
disregard of his authority, proceeded, as we have seen in the Intro-
duction, to extreme measures against Henry, the result of which was
that the English sovereign, with the assistance of his parliament,
cast off the Papal supremacy, and adopted a variety of measures
fatal to the Popish system in England.

Anne, both from judgment and from interest, heartily concurred
in these formidable innovations. To confirm her anti-Papal senti-
ments, learned and pious persons who had access to her, presented
her after her marriage with various books relating to the contro-
versies then agitated touching religion ; and especially touching the
authorit3 r of the Pope and his clergy, and their evil practices against
kings and commonwealths. 2

To the struggling cause of infant Protestantism in England, the
new queen rendered important services, for which she is entitled to
the grateful remembrance of posterity. She encouraged and ad-
vanced learned and worthy men, who promised to be useful in the
church. She protected the Reformers from the machinations and
violence of their enemies. She promoted the printing and circulation
of the sacred Scriptures ; and she maintained promising young men
at the universities.

Among the individuals of the reformed party indebted to her
patronage for advancement, was Nicholas Shaxton, a man who,
though some years after he turned out a persecutor of the reformed
faith, was at that time its ardent advocate ; and whose burning zeal
had as early as 1530 so pi-ovoked the wrath of Richard Nix, the old
Bishop of Norwich, an implacable enemy of the new learning, that

1 State Paper Office Mi&cell. Letters, quoted in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and
Jl'.ustrious Ladies, vol. ii., p. 205.

2 Wyatt.

84 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Nix, on consigning the martyr Thomas Bilney to the flames, expressed
his fears " that he had slain Abel and saved Cain alive." In May,
1534, Shaxton was appointed the queen's almoner. On the 21st of
February following, he was promoted to the see of Salisbury, in the
room of Cardinal Campeggio, an Italian ecclesiastic, who had been
deprived of that bishopric on the ground of his being a foreigner
and non-resident ; and on the 28th of that month he was preaching
before the queen.'

Another eminent man, specially favoured by Anne, was Hugh
Latimer, the noblest character at that time in England. Cranmer,
by whom he had probably been first introduced to her, being well
assured of her powerful protection, licensed him, about the close of
the year 1534, to preach throughout the entire limits of the arch-
bishopric of Canterbury. In a letter dated 9th January, 1535, he says
that for doing this he had already "suffered great obloquy;" while
Latimer, besides being similarly treated, had " lately been endan-
gered." But disregarding the wrath of Stokesly, Bishop of London,
Gardiner, and others of the same stamp, he continued to patronize
Latimer, honouring his piety and judgment so highly that, " at his
instance and request," he "licensed divers to preach within the
province of Canterbury," a degree of boldness which, considering
Cranmer's timidity and caution, could have proceeded only from his
enjoying i^he encouraging support of the queen. With the authority
of the king and queen, he also summoned Latimer to London to
preach before their majesties on all the Wednesdays in Lent, that is,
from the 10th of February to the 24th of March. Being extremely
solicitous that his friend should gain acceptance with his royal audi-
tors, he advised him through his secretary, with characteristic caution,
" to be very circumspect, to overpass and omit all manner of speech,
either apertly or suspiciously sounding against any special man's facts,
acts, manners, or sayings ;" and " in any condition, to stand no longer
in the pulpit than an hour, or an hour and a half" at the most

1 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., pp. 441, 442.

ENGLAND.] Anne, Boleyn. 85

for Latimer, it would appear, was a long preacher, which is further
confirmed from the length of his printed sermons "lest the king
and the queen wax weary at the beginning," or " have small delight
to continue throughout with you to the end." Of these sermons no
specimens now remain, and as to their subject-matter we have no
definite information. We only know in general that Latimer boldly
and faithfully spoke the truth before their majesties, which they
were seldom accustomed to hear ; and such was the favourable
impression he produced on their minds, especially on the mind of
Anne, that in September that same year he was appointed Bishop
of "Worcester, on the deprivation of Cardinal Jerome de Ghinuccii,
an Italian. 1 So highly respected was he by the queen, and such was
her confidence in his wisdom, that she entreated him to point out
what was amiss in her conduct, that she might correct it. "She had
procured to her chaplains" (Shaxton and Latimer), says Wyatt,
" men of great learning, and of no less honest conversing, whom she
with hers heard much, and privately she heard them willingly and
gladly to admonish her, and she exhorted and encouraged them so
to do."

In 1533 or 1534 she promoted Matthew Parker, a Reformer, after-
wards Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to
be her chaplain, upon the death of Mr. Betts, "a good man and
zealous and so remained" (as Foxe describes him), who held that
situation. 2 "William Barlow, afterwards Bishop of St. David's in the
time of Henry VIII., of Bath and Wells in the time of Edward VI.,
and of Chichester in the time of Queen Elizabeth, was indebted to
Anne for various preferments in the church. And in a letter to
Archbishop Cranmer, in reference to a benefice she solicited for Bar-
low, she adds, in a postscript, " My Lord, I beseech your grace to

1 Jerome de Ghinuccii was at one time auditor of the apostolic chamber. He was
the person who in 1518 summoned Luther to appear at Rome within sixty days. He
was afterwards made Bishop of Worcester, of which dignity he was deprived in 1534,
on the ground of his being 1 a foreigner and non-resident. He had, in fact, never seen
England. Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., pp. 249, 441, 442, 487.

2 Strype's Life of Parker, Oxford, 1821, vol. i., p. 14.

86 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

remember the parson of Honey Lane for my sake shortly." 1 This
was Thomas Garret or Gerard, curate ot All Hallows, in Honey Lane,
London, who, as early as 1526, being then curate of All Hallows,
was charged with having in his custody, and with distributing the
writings of Luther and of other heretics, and who though, from the
dread of being burned, he abjured at the close of that year, was never
truly gained over by the Komanists. He at last suffered at the stake
with great constancy, for denying the real presence, on the 30th of
June, 1540. 2

Among other excellent men in whose advancement she interested
herself was Dr. Crome, incumbent of St. Anthony's, a man of acknow-
ledged learning and piety, and a preacher of the true gospel ; though,
being deficient in intrepid resolution, the dread of the stake, of which
he was in danger at different times, extorted from him concessions
condemned by his better judgment. 3 By her influence he was pro-
moted to the rectorship of St. Mary's, Aldermary. But having for
some time, from causes not explained, resisted, or caused the delay of
his formal and legal admission into that benefice, the queen sent
him a letter, expressing it as her pleasure that he should no longer
throw obstacles in the way of his speedy instalment. 4

Anne had read with entire approbation the powerful arguments
in defence of the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular
tongue, contained in Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man; and
acting upon these enlightened views, she threw her broad shield over
the disseminators of the sacred volume. An interesting instance of
this we find in the protection she extended to a man who was among

1 Strype's Annals of the Reformation under Elizabeth, vol. i , part ii., pp. 266, 578.
3 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i. f pp. 92, 93. Strype's Mem. Eccl.,
vol. iii., part ii., p. 259; and his Cranmer, pp. 116, 246, 664.

3 James Bainham, who was committed to the flames for heresy iu 1532, declared on
his examination that " he knew no man to have preached the word of God, sincerely
and purely, and after the vein of Scripture, except Master Crome and Master Latimer."
Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 332. For various notices of Cromc,
see Index to Strype's Works.

4 See this letter in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. ii.,
p. 189.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 87

the first to engage in importing Tyndale's English version of the
New Testament into England, namely, Eichard Harman, a citizen of
Antwerp, and merchant in the English house of that city. Harman's
zeal had involved him in persecution, and even endangered his life.
It roused the fury of Cardinal Wolsey; and, in 1528, the cardinal,
by means of the English ambassador Hackett, resident in the Nether-
lands, requested Princess Margaret, 1 then regent of that country, to
seize Harman, with the view of his being immediately sent into
England. Margaret and her council agreed to apprehend him, and
on condition of his being found guilty, either to send him into Eng-
land or to punish him according to his deserts. In July that year
he and his wife, who was not less obnoxious for heresy than himself,
were taken prisoners at Antwerp, and an inventory was made of all
their goods for behoof of the emperor. This, however, did not satisfy
the intolerant Hackett, who, afraid that Harman might be permit-
ted by the Netherlands government to escape with impunity, urged
Wolsey -with great earnestness to call upon that government to
deliver him up as guilty not only of heresy but of treason. " In this
manner," says he, '' we may have two strings to our bow : for I doubt
greatly, after the statutes of these countries, that, revoking his
heresies, for the first time he will escape with a slender punishment;
but for treason to the king, they cannot pardon him in these parts,
after the statutes of our intercourse, dated the year 1505." 2 Acting
upon this suggestion, Wolsey transmitted to Hackett royal letters,
warranting him to seize Harman as a traitor. But Margaret
interposed her veto, wishing, before delivering up Harman, to be

1 Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, and aunt of Charles V. She died
in December, 1530, having governed the Netherlands eighteen years. Brandt's History
of the Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. i., p. 59.

* The allusion here is to the treaty in the reigu of Henry VII., 1505, in which
" there was an express article against the reception of the rebels of either prince by
the other ; purporting, that if any such rebel should be required by the prince, whose
rebel he was, of the prince confederate, that forthwith the prince confederate should by
proclamation command him to avoid the country : which, if he did not, within fifteen
days, the rebel was to stand proscribed, aud be put out of protection." Bacon's
Henry VII

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

informed of what particular acts of treason he had committed. Har-
man and his wife, after lying in prison upwards of seven months,
were set at liberty; and such was the altered state of matters in
England only a few years subsequent, that we find him in London in
1534, seeking redress for the injury and losses he had sustained by
his imprisonment, and by his excision from the privileges connected
with the English house at Antwerp, through the persecuting fury of
Hackett and Wolsey. And " every one acquainted with the history
of the Hanse towns knows how much had been involved in the for-

The English House, Antwerp.

feiture of his privileges as a merchant adventurer. The ' English
house,' like all these towns, exercised a judicial superintendence over
its members, and punished them by a species of commercial excom-
munication. Mr. Harman had evidently been suffering under this
for years." 1 Audley was now Lord Chancellor; Cromwell chief
Secretary of State; and Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury; all
favourable to the Eeformation ; but Harman applied to the queen, not
to any of them. His application was successful. Sympathizing

7 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 411.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 89

with a man who had imported the Sacred Volume, and done so at
great worldly sacrifices, she wrote a letter to Cromwell in his behalf,
the original of which is still in existence.
"ANNE THE QUEEN.

" TRUSTY and right well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas
we be credibly informed that the bearer hereof, Richard Harman,
merchant and citizen of Antwerp, in Brabant, was, in the time of
the late Lord Cardinal, put and expelled from his freedom and fellow-
ship of and in the English house there, for nothing else (as he
affirmeth) but only for that he still, like a good Christian man, 1 did,
both with his goods and policy, to his great hurt and hindrance in
this world, help to the setting forth of the New Testament in Eng-
lish . we therefore desire and instantly pray you, that with all
speed and favour convenient, ye will cause this good and honest mer-
chant, being my lord's true, faithful, and loving subject, to be restored
to his pristine freedom, liberty, and fellowship aforesaid, and the
sooner at this our request, and at your good leisure to hear him on
such things as he hath to make further relation unto you in this
behalf. Given under our signet, at my lord's manor of Greenwich,
the 14th day of May.

" To our trusty and right well-beloved, Thomas Cromwell, squire,
Chief Secretary unto my Lord the King's Highness." 2

This letter, though the date of the year is not given, was probably
written in 1534 ; and if so, Cromwell had been made chief secretary
of state only a week before, and the act of justice to Harman here
requested, must have been one of his earliest acts in his new office.

To do full justice to Anne Boleyn for her gracious interposition in
behalf of Harman, it is necessary to take into consideration the

1 In the original, the pen has been drawn across the words " still like a good Chris-
tian man." Hence Strype has omitted them altogether, and Sir Henry Ellis has
placed them in a note at the bottom of the page. But there is reason to think that
some hostile person has perpetrated this erasure. The words are in harmony with the
whole spirit of the letter, and there is no conceivable reason why, having ouce written
them, she should thus obliterate them.

58 Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii., pp. 45, 46.

90 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

violent hostility of those in high places, at that period, to the dis-
semination of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue. In March,

1526, Henry had condemned Tyndale's translation of the New Testa-
ment into English to be burned, and "sharp correction and punish-
ment" to be inflicted on "the keepers and readers of the same," under
the pretext that it contained "many corruptions of the sacred text,
as also certain prefaces and other pestilent glosses in the margins,
for the advancement and settingforth of his [Luther's] abominable here-
sies." In the same year Cuthbsrt Tonstal, Bishop of London, had, for
similar reasons, denounced it, both the copies with " glosses " and those
without them, and charged his archdeacons to warn all within their
archdeaconries to bring in and deliver up such copies as they
possessed to his vicar-general, within the space of thirty days. In

1527, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, had purchased all the
copies of Tyndale's New Testament he could meet with, that they
might be destroyed, expending in such purchases a sum equivalent
to not less than 1000 of our present money ; and in the following
year, the readers and importers of the same book were seized and
punished. In 1529 Tonstal had purchased all the copies of Tyndale's
New Testament which he could find in Antwerp ; and in May, 1530,
he made a bonfire of them, and of other heretical books, in St. Paul's
church-yard, London. In 1532 Sir Thomas More condemned to the
stake such as affirmed that it is lawful for every man and woman to
have God's word in their mother tongue. 1 Such were the times in
which Anne Boleyn lived, and such was the character of the most of
those by whom she was surrounded ; for though Wolsey and War-
ham were now in their graves, and Sir Thomas More in the Tower,
the courtiers, with few exceptions, were not less hostile to the diffu-
sion of the Scriptures in the English tongue than these men had
been. In such circumstances, to vindicate Harman as acting the
part of " a good Christian man," in his zealous exertions to disse-
minate the Scriptures, and to interpose for his restoration to the

Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. }., pp. 112, 113, 158, 262, 333.

ENGLAND.! Anne Boleyn. 91

rights and privileges of which on that account he had been unjustly
deprived, was no small proof of her enlightened understanding, her
moral courage, and her Christian humanity. Being still the object
of Henry's idolatrous affection, she could bend his will in this
instance to the side of justice; and neither Tonstal, Gardiner,
Stokesly, nor her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, much as they hated the
Scriptures and their circulation among the people, dared to express
their dissent, lest by opposing the queen they should excite the dis-
pleasure of the monarch.

The queen's friendly interference in behalf of Harman, and her
favourable sentiments as to the diffusion of the Word of God in the
mother tongue, was soon made known to Tyndale, who was now at
Antwerp, about to print in that city a new and improved edition of
his New Testament, and the tidings were felt by him as a great
encouragement. Surrounded by numerous and powerful enemies,
who were thirsting for his blood, and who to open hostility added
base and artful treachery, it cheered him to know that a woman of
Anne's influence appreciated his labours, and sympathized with the
sufferings of himself and of others engaged in the same cause. Not
one in high places in England had ventured, like her, to plead the
cause of Bible circulation, and to give the sanction of their name to
his translation. He had received this intelligence probably from
Harman himself, before he had begun to print his new and improved
edition of the New Testament, and in expression of his gratitude to
the queen, when the work was passing through the press, ' he ordered
a copy to be beautifully printed on vellum with illuminations,
intended as a present to her, and he got it bound in blue morocco,
with these words upon the gilding of the leaves, in large red letters,
" ANNA REGINA

1 The printing of this edition was finished in the month of November, 1534-

2 After passing through various hands, this elegant copy came into the possession of
the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, who bequeathed it, with his large and valuable
library, to the British Museum, into which it was brought after his death, in April, 1799,
and where it is now preserved.

92 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Anne's favour for the Reformation and the Reformers was well
known to the Popish party in England, and it disconcerted them
exceedingly. So fully were they convinced of her leanings on this
side, that when, with Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, at
their head, they had formed a plan for the destruction of Tyndale,
which was by sending a hired agent from England into the Nether-
lands to make every effort to induce the government of that country,
according to the persecuting laws then in force, to apprehend and
burn Tyndale as an heretic, the plot was carefully concealed from
Henry. No good reason can be assigned for this but their fears
lest Anne, had she been apprised of their intentions, should have
effectually defeated them, by her powerful intercessions with the
king in behalf of Tyndale. 1

There is even ground for believing that Anne had actively pro-
moted the printing of the first edition of the New Testament printed
in England ; which was Tyndale's English translation. The previous
editions had been issued from the press at Antwerp. This edition
was printed in London, by his majesty's printer, in folio, with the
valuable prologues of that Reformer prefixed to each of the inspired
books, and with his long-proscribed name exhibited on the title-
page. It was published in the year 1536, though in all probability
the printing of it had commenced in the close of the year 1535.
The name of the printer, who was Thomas Berthelet, does not indeed

1 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 417. The plot was successful.
In the beginning of the year 1535 Tyndale was arrested at Antwerp, and carried to the
castle of Vilvorde, a distance of twenty-three and a half miles. After being im-
prisoned nearly two years in that castle, he was condemned to the flames. On being
bound to the stake, he uttered aloud, with great fervour, the prayer, "Lord, open the
eyes of the King of England." He was first -strangled by the hangman, and then
consumed by the flames. This took place on the morning of Friday, 6th October, 1536,
shortly before the printing of his New Testament by the king's printer, as mentioned
in the next paragraph in the text. England must ever revere the memory of Tyndale,
the first who translated the Scriptures from their inspired originals into the English
tongue, and the father and founder of our authorized version of the Bible. He trans-
lated the whole of the New Testament, and the historical books of the Old, from
Genesis to the end of the Second Book of Chronicles, when martyrdom put an end to
his labours.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleijn. 93

appear on the title-page, but the most competent judges, as Ames,
Herbert, and Dibdin, maintain that it must have proceeded from his
press ; and the type, as well as the ornamental title of the boys in
triumph, peculiar to his press, place this beyond dispute. The his-
tory of the printing of this edition is involved in mystery ; but the
expensive style of its execution, and its issuing from the press of the
king's printer, bespeak it as undertaken under high authority. Ber-
thelet himself was indifferent about the "Word of God. In 1530 he
had officially printed a royal proclamation prohibiting any from
having copies of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongues, English,
French and Dutch, that is, German ; ' and he was not the man to
print so obnoxious and heretical a book as Tyndale's New Testament,
had he thereby been exposed to danger. He must therefore have
been employed by such as had both the ability and the will to protect
him in doing so, as well as to pay the expenses. "Would he have
deemed himself secure under any other patronage save that of
royalty 1 If not, under whose auspices but those of Anne could he
have engaged in this undertaking ? Such a supposition is certainly
in harmony with her expressed approbation of Tyndale's version,
and her earnest intercession in behalf of Harman, its most active
disseminator. In the Manual of Devotions, said to have been pre-
sented by her to her maids of honour, the following striking passage
occurs, expressing gratitude to God for the approbation the king had
given to the publication of the Scriptures in the English tongue :
" Grant us, most merciful Father, this one of the greatest gifts that
ever thou gavest to mankind, the knowledge of thy holy will and
glad tidings of our salvation ; this great while oppressed with the
tyranny of thy adversary of Rome, and his fautors, and kept close
under his Latin letters ; and now at length promulgated, published,
and set at liberty, by the grace poured into the heart of thy supreme
power, our prince, as all kings' hearts be in thy hand, as in the old
law [thou] didst use like mercy to thy people of Israel by thy high

1 Many years after this, namely, in 1546, he printed the proclamation which de-
nounced Tyndale's New Testament, and all his writings.

Ladies of t/te Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

instrument the good king Josias, who restored the temple decayed
to its former beauty, abolished all worshipping of images and idola-
try, and set abroad the law by the space of many hundred years
before clean out of remembrance." 1 This evidently expresses her
own sentiments ; and as to the change now wrought upon the king
in favour of the circulation of the Scriptures in the mother tongue,
by whose influence was it more likely to have been produced than by
that of Anne 1 This edition of Tyndale'a New Testament, it would
seem, was one of the fruits of that change.

To studious youths in narrow circumstances, particularly such as
favoured the Reformation, Anne was also a generous patroness. John
Aylmer, afterwards tutor to the celebrated Lady Jane Grey, was
indebted to her liberality for the ability to continue the prosecution

Ruing of St. Mary' Abbey, York

of his studies at Cambridge. He had been a candidate for the
situation of abbot in St. Mary's Abbey, York, but was unsuccessful,

1 Lewis's History of English Translations of the Holy Bible, vol. i., p. 97.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 95

one William Thornton having gained the election, March 2, 1530,
and received the temporalities, April 10. Anne, however, from the
highly favourable accounts she had received of his character and
capacity, made provision for his continuing to prosecute his studies.
And Thornton having, in violation of an express agreement at the
time of his election, removed Aylmer from the university, and
brought him to St. Mary's Abbey, in which he employed him in
certain menial offices, Anne, upon the complaint of Aylmer or of
some of his friends, immediately ordered Thornton to allow Aylmer
to return to the university of Cambridge. 1

Strype, in his Historical Collections, has recorded the names of
other ingenious young men, converts to the new opinions, and after-
wards celebrated in their day, who were supported by her at the
university. " She was very nobly charitable, and expended largely iu
all manner of acts of liberality, according to her high quality. And
among the rest of her ways of showing this Christian virtue, she
being a favourer of learning, together with her father, the Lord
Wiltshire, and the Lord Eochford, her brother, maintained divers
ingenious men at the universities. Among the rest were these men
of note : Dr. Hethe, afterwards Archbishop of York, and Lord Chan-
cellor ; Dr. Thirlby, afterwards Bishop of Ely ; and Mr. Paget,
afterwards Lord Paget, and Secretary of State : all whom in her
time were favourers of the gospel, though afterwards they relapsed.
Of Paget one hath observed that he was a most earnest Protestant,
and being in Cambridge, gave unto one Reynold West Luther's
book, and other books of the Germans, as Franciscus Lambertus de
Sectis, and that at that time he read Melancthon's Rhetoric openly
in Trinity Hall, and was a maintainer of Dr. Barnes, and all the
Protestants then in Cambridge, and helped many religious persons
out of their cowls." 2 Dr. Bill, master of St. John's College Cam-
bridge, Dean of Westminster, almoner to Queen Elizabeth, and a

1 See her letter to Thornton to this effect, in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Il-
lustrious Ladies, vol. ii., p. 191.
- Mem. Each, vol. i., part i., p 430.

96 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

man who bore a conspicuous part in the ecclesiastical and literary
history of his time, also shared her liberality when a poor student
at Cambridge University. 1

An imputation on the memory of Anne by her enemies is, that
her days were spent in idle frivolity, and her nights in song and dance.
For some time after her marriage some ground for such an imputa-
tion may have existed ; but she gradually became thoughtful, and
sought her happiness in devotion and in works of benevolence.
Her selecting for her attendants honourable ladies of virtuous
reputation, was one proof of at least a sound judgment and a
commendable prudence. The spare hours of herself and of her
ladies were occupied in tapestry work, and she employed her maids
and others in making garments for the poor. From her own privy
purse she relieved the wants of the needy with a princely liberality,
planned the institution of manufactures to supply them with per-
manent employment, and established bursaries in the universities
for the education of promising youths. " Also," says Wyatt, " at the
first she had in court drawn about her, to be attending on her,
ladies 2 of great honour, and yet more choice for reputation of virtue,
undoubted witnesses of her spousal integrity, whom she trained up
with all the recommendations of well-ordered government, though
yet, above all, by her own example, she shined above them all as
a torch, that all might take light of, being itself still more bright.

1 Strype'sit/e of Sir John Clerke, Oxford, 1821, pp. 8, 9.

8 ''To every one of these," says Singer, "she gave a little book of devotions neatly
written on vellum, and bound in covers of solid gold enamelled, with a ring to each
cover, to hang it at their girdles, for their constant use and meditation. One of these
little volumes, traditionally said to have been given by the queen when on the scaffold
to her attendant, one of the Wyatt family, and preserved by them through several
generations, was described by Vertue as being seen by him in the possession of
Mr. George Wyatt, of Charterhouse Square, in 1721. Vide Walpole's Miscellaneous
Antiquities, printed at Strawberry Hill, 1772, No. ii., p. 13. It was a diminutive
volume, consisting of one hundred and four leaves of vellum, one and seven-eights of
an inch long, by one and five-eights of an inch broad ; containing a metrical version
of parts of thirteen psalms ; and bound iu pure gold, richly chased, with a ring to
append it to the neck-chain or girdle. It was in Mr. Triphook's possession in the
year 1817."

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 97

Such as have seen at Hampton Court the rich and exquisite works,
for the greater part wrought by her own hand and needle, and
also those wrought by her ladies, esteem them the most precious
furniture, and amongst the most sumptuous that any prince may be
possessed of. And yet far more rich and precious were those works
in the sight of God, which she caused her maids and those about her
daily to work in shirts and smocks for the poor. But not staying
here her eye of charity, her hand of bounty passed through the
whole land ; each place felt that heavenly flame burning in her ; all
times will remember it, no room being left for vain flames, no time
for idle thoughts. Her ordinary amounted to fifteen hundred pounds
at the least yearly, to be bestowed on the poor. Her provisions of
stock for the poor in sundry needy parishes was very great. Out of
her privy purse went not a little to like purposes ; to scholars in
exhibition very much : so that in three quarters of a year her alms
were estimated at fourteen or fifteen thousand pounds.''

CHAPTER HI.

FROM HENRY'S ALIENATION FROM HER AND THE PLOTS OF HER ENEMIES,
TO THE ATTEMPTED EXTORTION OF EVIDENCE AGAINST HER FROM

HER ALLEGED ACCOMPLICES.

IT has been justly remarked that Providence often punishes us by
fulfilling our desires, and favours us by thwarting them. Had
circumstances interposed to prevent Anne's advancement to be
Queen of England, of which she was so passionately desirous, this,
though adverse to her wishes, would, had she been able to penetrate
the future, have been a mercy, calling forth her deepest gratitude.

Her situation was extremely perilous, though she was not aware
to the full extent of its perils. In the first place, Henry being one
of the most capricious of beings, to have any connection with him

98 Ladies of t/te Reformation. ' [ENGLAND.

was to stand on the brink of a precipice. The man or the woman
whom he honoured to-day, he might, from mere change of humour,
bring to the scaffold to-morrow. Anne, by her beauty, her wit, and
her accomplished manners, had subdued his heart. She seemed
necessary to his happiness. With her was associated in his mind
all that was lovable and lovely in the world. To gain her he had
perilled the peace of his kingdom. In the hey-day of his passion he
had lavished upon her honours and caresses. He had waited for
six years to obtain her in wedlock, and this, in ordinary circum-
stances, would have been good security for a permanent affection.
But Henry was not to be judged by ordinary rules. His fancy, now
when he possessed her, might soon be attracted by the blooming
charms of another, and in that event he would not hesitate to cast
her off.

In the second place, she was surrounded by malicious Popish
enemies, both male and female, in the court and elsewhere, who were
thirsting for her ruin. Her removal, it was thought, would pave
the way for the restoration of England to the Papal jurisdiction ;
and some of these leading personages were eagerly watching for an
opportunity to accomplish her downfall. Her uncle, " the Duke of
Norfolk," says Burnet, " at court, and Gardiner beyond sea [then in
France], thought there might easily be found a means to accommodate
the king both with the emperor and even Paul HI., if the queen
were once out of the way, for then he might freely marry any one he
pleased, and that marriage, with the male issue of it, could not be
disputed ; whereas, so long as the queen lived, her marriage, as being
judged null from the beginning, could never be allowed by the court
of Home."

Vain indeed would have been all the machinations of her enemies
had the king continued constant in his affection. For some time
after the marriage he was in this respect all that could be desired ;
but his fickle heart having at length gone astray after another
paragon of beauty, in the person of Jane Seymour, one of Anne's
maids of honour, it was gradually withdrawn from Anne. He

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 99

began to look upon her with altered countenance, and to speak to
her in an altered tone. His former admiration and tenderness gave
place to indifference, which at last settled into inveterate hatred.
Such was his state of feeling towards her when she was near the
period of her second confinement. On the 29th of January, 1536,
she was prematurely delivered of a dead son, and her life was believed
to be in danger. Some have attributed this premature birth to
grief caused by the king's decayed affection and unkindness, for she
had observed his rising passion for Jane Seymour, and this had
occasioned some disagreeable words between her and his majesty.
Others have ascribed it to alarm, excited by the intelligence that he
had been thrown from his horse while hunting. But whether it
was owing to the one or the other of these causes, or to both combined,
the king, it is certain, so far from cherishing and comforting his
sorrowful wife in her afflicted circumstances, treated her harshly.
He is even said to have inhumanly reproached her with the loss of
his child, telling her that he would have no more boys by her. '
These cruel, outrageous words, so different from what she had been
once accustomed to hear from his lips these words of fatal augury,
the signal of the coming storm, and the sullen tone in which they
were spoken sent pangs of agony to her wounded heart. But
though she could not fail to see the total revolution his affections
had undergone, she did not and could not now anticipate all that
was to follow.

Her enemies, on the watch for her overthrow, had observed his
growing coldness towards her, which they now laboured with malig-
nant industry to increase, by filling his ears with reports injurious
to her conjugal fidelity ; and her open frank disposition, which made
her of easy access, and led her to allow her domestics a freedom in
conversing with her not consonant to the restraints of royal eti-
quette, afforded these liers in wait an opportunity of representing
her as being on terms of unlawful familiarity with some of her at-

1 Wyatt.

100 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tendants. Jane Parker, 1 a wicked and profligate woman, to whom
Lord Rochford, Anne's brother, was unhappily married, and who
mortally hated Anne, was the most zealously active of these tale-
bearers. She had told the king, with every aggravating circum-
stance malice could invent, the story of an alleged declaration made
by Lady Wingfield upon oath on her death-bed, prejudicial to Anne's
chastity ; 2 which is said to have made a deep impression on the
mind of Henry, for he was naturally jealous, and jealousy is always
credulous. His eager desire to be released from the nuptial ties,
that he might exalt another, to whom he had now transferred his
heart, to his bed and throne, would give strength to his credulity.
These various passions combined, under the strong, irresistible,
overmastering influence of which men will harden themselves
against every feeling of compassion, and commit crimes of the black-
est dye, easily account for his haste in adopting measures against
Anne, and for his unrelenting cruelty in at length bringing her to
that dreadful end which has imparted such a tragic interest to her
history.

Before the queen had fully recovered from the sorrow of mind and
feebleness of frame caused by her premature confinement and the
loss of her boy, investigations into her conduct had been set on foot,
with the sanction of Henry. On the 24th of April, a secret com-
mission was formally appointed, consisting of certain peers and
judges, expressly for this purpose ; but previous to the formal ap-
pointment of this commission, scandalous matter against her must
have been collected, and various deliberations must have taken place
in regard to it, and its consequences as to her honour, station, and

1 The daughter of Sir Henry Parker, Lord Morley. She was a blinded devotee of
Popery, which may partly account for her hatred of the queen, whose principles she
held in detestation.

2 Lady Wingfield was Anne's intimate friend ; but who the person was to wnom she
made this solemn dying declaration, and what was her state of mind when she made it,
if she made it at all, is not known. " The safest sort of forgery," says Burnet, " to one
whose conscience can swallow it, is to lay a thing on a dead person's name, where
there is no fear of discovery before the great day." History of the Reformation, vol. i.,
p. 360.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 101

even life. The men selected for this commission were the Dukes of
Norfolk and Suffolk ; the Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, Wilt-
shire and Sussex ; Lord Sands ; Sirs William Fitz-james, William
Patilet, John Fitz-james, John Baldwin, Richard Lyster, John Porte,
John Spelman, Walter Luke, Anthony Fitz-herbert, Thomas Ingle-
field, and William Shelly, with Audley as Lord Chancellor, and Secre-
tary Cromwell. But what was the character of these men ? This is
an important question, as it will serve to assist us in determining the
amount of justice and impartiality to be expected from such judges.
All of them were slaves to the will of Henry, and, with one or two ex-
ceptions, the determined supporters of Popery. " Here was Howard,
Duke of Norfolk, who, though her maternal uncle, hated the queen
as cordially as he did ' the new learning ;' Charles Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, Henry's brother-in-law and special favourite, so ready to
gratify him in all his humours ; John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who
supported all the measures of the court ; Robert Radcli/, who had
been restored to honour by Henry as Lord Fitz-walter, in 1525, and
since then created Earl of Sussex ; William Sands, the Lord Cham-
berlain of the king's household, who had been made a barou, and
got the Buckingham estates. Here we have eleven knights, eight of
whom were compliant judges ; and as for another, William Paulett,
the Comptroller of the king's house, he was a man of the most con-
venient politics, who, when asked, at the end of a long life, how he
preserved himself through so many changes ? answered, ' By being
a willow and not an oak.' Audley was always obsequious to his
royal master ; and as to Cromwell, the share he took in this business
must speak for itself, in connection with his future career. But with
regard to the Earl of Wiltshire, the father of the queen and of Lord
Rochford, his name being inserted, was a stroke of hand quite
worthy of Henry's barbarity, and must have been done to save ap-
pearances. His name never occurs afterwards, and it is certain that
he did not preside at the mock trial." '

1 Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 462. Burnet at first inserted
Anne's father's name, but he had not then seen, as he afterwards saw, a record of the

102 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Coming distressing events often cast back their shadows to the pre-
sent, and the mind, from causes difficult to be explained, is haunted
with forebodings of some inevitable calamity. Henry IV. of France,
long before Eavaillac armed himself with the deadly weapon,
often thought he heard the tread of the assassin's foot, and felt in
his breast as it were the assassin's knife, and the fearful impression
would startle him both in his waking and sleeping hours. Anne,
too, had presentiments, warning her, like prophetic voices, of some-
thing terrible looming in the distance. Notwithstanding the affir-
mation of most historians to the contrary, she was, it appears, not
altogether ignorant of the conspiracy formed for her ruin ; and she
seems, from her knowledge of Henry's alienation from her, and from
rumours communicated to her, to have foreboded but too truly the
fatal issue. About a day or two after the appointment of a special
commission to inquire into her conduct, she had a long and serious
interview with her chaplain, Matthew Parker, to whom she expressed
great anxiety about her daughter Elizabeth, of whose religious
education she with solemn earnestness besought him to take the
charge. 1 To this scene Parker refers in a letter to one of Queen
Elizabeth's councillors, in which, while declining the archbishopric
of Canterbury, he says, " Yet I would fain serve my sovereign lady
in more respects than my allegiance, since I cannot forget what
words her grace's mother said to me not six days before her appre-
hension." 2

On the first day of May, called May-day, the court being then at
Greenwich, the king had a splendid tilting match or mock fight;
and on that day he gave the first public demonstration of his evil
intentions against the queen. Though a secret commission was at
that very time sitting to collect evidence against her, and the whole
plan for the destruction of herself and of her alleged accomplices

trial, now lost, from which he was convinced that the earl was not present. He there-
fore expunged the name from the subsequent edition of his history.

1 Lingard.

2 Burnet's Reformation, vol. iv., p. 492.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

103

had been settled, 1 two of them, her brother Lord Rochfield, and Sir
Henry Norris, were the principal actors in the amusements of the
tilt-yard, the one being the chief challenger, and the other the
defendant, while she sat by the side of the king witnessing the

Anne charging Matthew Parker to lake charge of the education of her daughter.

spectacle. In his present state of morbid jealousy he was probably
more intent upon discovering, from the conduct of his wife, some-
thing confirmatory of her guilty intimacy with the combatants, than

i Of this there can be no doubt. On the 14th of April, 1536, Henry dissolved a
Parliament which had sat for six years. On the 27th of that month writs were issued
for a new Parliament to meet 011 the 8th of June. And that the conspiracy against
Anne had been matured when these writs were issued, that is, four days before the
May-day scene, is evident from Sir Thomas Audley, the Lord Chancellor's address at
the opening of the new Parliament ; in which he tells them that his majesty's objects
in assembling them so early after the dissolution of last Parliament, were, 1, " To settle
an heir-apparent to the crown, in case he should die without children lawfully begotten;
and 2, to repeal an act of the former Parliament as to the succession of the crown, to
the issue of the king by Q,ueeu Anne Boleyn." These objects, it thus appears, were
full in view on the 27th of April.

104 Ladies oftlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

upon deriving amusement from their feats of arms. The interest
she would naturally evince, and the gratification she would natu-
rally express, on witnessing the achievements of an accomplished
and beloved brother, and of a gallant knight of her acquaintance,
anxious to win her approbation, would almost inevitably rouse
the suspicions of Henry. The particular incident upon which he
first openly expressed his displeasure is not known with certainty.
It is said to have been upon the queen's having dropped a hand-
kerchief to one of the combatants, heated in the course, to wipe
his face, a use to which he instantly applied it. l This, if true,
either excited Henry's jealousy, or afforded him, as he thought, a
plausible pretext for giving vent to his pent-up hatred against
her, and suddenly i-ising from his seat, he withdrew from the bal-
cony in great wrath. Extremely alarmed, she immediately hurried
after him to inquire the cause; which, however, from rumours
previously conveyed to her, she probably conjectured. The king,
who had renounced all idea of being ever again reconciled to
her, that she might not see him again, which she never did, had
mounted his horse for "Westminster with only six attendants, one
of whom was Sir Henry Norris, leaving orders that she should not
quit her apartments. On the way he minutely examined Norris,
putting to him a thousand questions with great earnestness, and
promising him his freedom provided he would make disclosures ;
but Norris on no consideration would criminate the queen. He
was therefore committed to the Tower next day, being the 2d of
May, and on the same day, Sir Francis Weston, with Lord Eochford,
were also imprisoned in the Tower. Anne had resolved to proceed in
the afternoon of that day to Westminster, to meet with the king, and
endeavour to allay his irritation. But she had not proceeded far
up the river on her way, when her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who,
throughout the whole of the proceedings against her, acted a very

i Sanders is the sole authority, and he is certainly not one of the best, for her
dropping the handkerchief.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

105

unfeeling and unnatural part, and several other members of council
came on board, and produced an order for her arrest. 1 "It is his
majesty's pleasure," said Norfolk, " that you should go to the Tower."
At the announcement she blanched and was unnerved for a moment ;
but, regaining her self-possession, she replied, "If it is his majesty's
pleasure, I am ready to obey." On arriving about five o'clock in the

Anne Boleyn a Prisoner at the Gate ol the Towr.

afternoon at the gate of the Tower that Tower which had once been
her palace falling down upon her knees, she uttered -with great
emotion the prayer, " O Lord, help me, as I am guiltless of this
whereof I am accused." 2 With a shudder of horror, she asked Sir
William Kingston, lieutenant of the Tower, "Mr. Kingston, do I go
into a dungeon T Kingston, who was a man of a stern unfeeling
character, but who affected great courtesy towards prisoners of dis-

1 According to others they produced their order to her before she left Greenwich.

2 Herbert's Henry VIII., p. 194.

106 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tinction.' replied softly, as if he had been her guardian angel, " No,
Madam, you shall go into your lodging, that you lay in at your
coronation." This was indeed true, for instead of being shut up in
a cell, she was allowed to occupy the royal apartments in the Tower,
usually appropriated to the queens of England, a portion of which
was called the Marten Tower. 2 But the answer awakened painful
recollections. The thought that within the building where the crown
of England had been placed upon her brow, she was now to be im-
prisoned, the contrast of the imposing splendour of her coronation
day, when she felt as if the happiest of human beings, with her pre-
sent wretched condition, almost overwhelmed her, and she cried out,
" It is too good for me Jesus have mercy on me." She then kneeled
down, weeping bitterly, and in the midst of this sorrow fell into a
fit of laughing, as she frequently did afterwards the laughter of
anguish, and not the effect merely of strong nervous agitation.
Anguish venting itself in laughter is indeed the most terrible of all.
It is anguish, in the delirium of agony or despair, betaking itself to
opposites, when its natural forms of expression by tears and cries are
felt to be inadequate. She desired Kingston to petition his majesty
" that she might have the sacrament in the closet by her chamber,
that she might pray for mercy; for," she added, "I am as clear from

1 Cardinal Wolsey well knew the character of this cold-hearted but smooth-tongued
jailer. Upon Wolsey's fall, when the Earl of Northumberland Anne's old lover had
received orders to arrest him for high treason, and to bring him to London, to un-
dergo his trial, Cavendish, the cardinal's gentleman-usher, having told his master that
Mr. Kingston and twenty-four of the guards had been sent to conduct him to his
majesty, " Mr. Kingston ! " replied the cardinal, repeating the name several times, and
then clasping his hand on his thigh, he gave a deep sigh. And when Kingston treated
him wiih all the marks of respect which had been paid to him in the pride of his glory,
and to revive his dejected spirits, reminded him of the generosity of his noble-hearted
master, Wolsey, in whose ears all this sounded very like mockery, knowing that he had
fallen, never to rise again, simply 'said, "Mr. Kingston, all the comfortable words ye
have spoken to me, be spoken but for a purpose to bring me into a fool's paradise : I
know what is provided for me." Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.

2 The autograph of her name is still to be seen in the wall of the Marten Tower.
The part where it appears is now a lobby, and represented iu the annexed engraving.
See a facsimile of the autograph, on the last page of this life.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

107

the company of men, as for sin, as I am clear from you, and am the
king's true wedded wife." She expressed much anxiety about her
brother, and also evinced the tenderest solicitude about her mother-
iu-law, with whom she was on terms of endeared affection, exclaiming,
" my mother, thou wilt die for sorrow." '

Part of the Marten Tower as now existing.

The fullest accounts of the last days of her life, from her imprison-
ment in the Tower to her death, is contained in a series of letters
written by Sir William Kingston to Cromwell. 2 From these letters

1 Her own mother died in 1512

2 These letters of Kingston, which are preserved in MS., Cotton, Otho, c x , fol. 225,
British Museum, were in part mutilated by the ravages of the fire of 1731. They are
printed in Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii , pp. 52 65 ; and in vol. ii.
of Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, edited by Singer, who has filled up the blanks from
Strype, who had seen the letters before their being damaged by fire.

108 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

we learn that female attendants, in whom she had no confidence, and
of whom she bitterly complained, Lady Boleyn' and Mrs. Cosyns,
attended her by day and by night, sleeping on the pallet at the foot
of her bed ; that these heartless and faithless women triumphed
over her misfortunes, insulted her by their unfeeling remarks, were
on the watch to catch and report every word she uttered, in the
wild frenzy of grief; and that, with the view of extorting from her
own lips a confession of criminality, they artfully questioned and
cross-questioned her, but that she persevered to the last in avowing
her innocence. Kingston and his wife slept at the outside of her
chamber door. Two other ladies, who, it would appear, were truly
friendly to her, one of whom Miss Strickland supposes was Mary
Wyatt, sister of her early and devoted friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,
were permitted to attend her, though under such restrictions, that
they were not allowed to have any communication with her except
in the presence of Kingston and his wife ; and they slept in an
adjoining apartment. During her imprisonment, she sometimes
thought that Henry was only trying her ; at other times she believed
that her doom was sealed. But she gradually disciplined her mind
to submission, whatever might happen.

Cranmer had not been made privy to what had been secretly
going on against the queen; yet as his official services would be
afterwards needed in some of the measures contemplated, he was
summoned by Cromwell, in obedience to the king's orders, from the
country, where he was then residing, to Lambeth. Only a week
before the May-day scene, namely, on the 22d of April, he was
residing at Knole, in Kent, as appears from the date of a letter
which he then wrote to Cromwell, and he was probably stil] there
when he received Cromwell's letters requiring him to return to
Lambeth, but forbidding him to come into the royal presence until
he should receive further orders ; a prohibition which, on the part
of the king, looked very like the shrinking of a self-condemned

i This lady was the wife of Anne's uncle. Sir Edward Boleyn.

ENGLAND.] Anne fioleyn. 109

wrong-doer from meeting with a man whose office it was to condemn
injustice and cruelty. But still the king, not being ignorant of
Cranmer's pliancy of disposition, had no fears that the prelate would
traverse his designs, and believed that it would be easy to convert
him into an instrument for carrying into execution that part of the
plot requiring his assistance. Cranmer arrived at Lambeth on the
2d of May, the day on which Anne was sent to the Tower. He was
now in great perplexity. Two different kinds of feelings were
struggling in his breast, a desire to vindicate the queen, whom
gratitude as well as justice bound him to protect if innocent, and a
desire to please the monarch, to whom he was too often criminally
obsequious. These two sorts of feelings will explain the peculiar
character of his letter to the king, written on the following day, a
letter which has been very oppositely described by different his-
torians. Influenced by the one class of feelings, he pleads in behalf
of Anne, of whose character he affirms he had always entertained a,
very high opinion ; impelled by the other class, he seems willing to
gratify the monarch's thirst for vengeance. Speaking of the reports
as to the queen's grace, he thus writes : " I am in such a perplexity
that my mind is clean amazed : for I never had better opinion of
woman than I had of her, which maketh me think that she should
not be culpable." And again, " I think that your highness would not
have gone so far except she had been surely culpable. Now I think
that your grace best knoweth that, next unto your grace, I was most
bound unto her of all creatures living. Wherefore I most humbly
beseech your grace to suffer me in that which both God's law,
nature, and also her kindness bindeth me unto ; that is, that I may,
with your grace's favour, wish and pray for her, that she may
declare herself inculpable and innocent. And if she be found cul-
pable, considering your grace's goodness towards her, and from what
condition your grace, of your only mere goodness, took her, and set
a crown upon her head, I repute him not your grace's faithful
servant and subject, nor true unto the realm, that would not de-
sire the offence without mercy to be punished to the example of

110 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

others. And as I loved her not a little for the love which I judged
her to bear towards God and his gospel ; so if she be proved cul-
pable, there is not one that loveth God and his gospel that ever will
favour her, but must hate her above all other ; and the more they
favour the gospel, the more they will hate her ; for then there was
never creature in our time that so much slandered the gospel. And
God hath sent her this punishment, for that she feignedly hath pro-
fessed his gospel in her mouth, and not in heart and deed

From Lambeth, the 3d day of May."

This letter, so far from being serviceable, must have been deeply
injurious to the cause of Anne. Cranmer, indeed, expresses the high
opinion he had always formed of her character, and speaks in lauda-
tory terms of the encouragement she had given to the Reformation ;
but the verbosity and emphasis with which he dwells upon the
severe punishment deserved by her if guilty, tended, as coming from
one in whose judgment Henry placed as much confidence as a mon-
arch so ungovernable and self-willed could repose in any man, to
justify to his own mind his murderous purpose. It was giving pro-
minence to that side of the question on which the thoughts of Henry
most dwelt, and in his present state of mind would rather slacken
the reins than restrain him in the course he was so furiously
driving. Why did not Cranmer introduce and dwell with equal
force on another supposition the fearful guilt the monarch would
incur should he condemn the queen if she was innocent ? This, as
he well knew, would have been ungrateful to the royal ears ; but the
life of an unprotected lady was at stake, and the whole truth should
have been plainly told at all hazards. Fain would Cranmer have
bridled the monarch's fury, and claimed even-handed justice for the
accused queen ; but his cautious timorous disposition unqualified him
to be the firm and fearless defender of the innocent and the oppressed
against the ruthless power of a royal oppressor. This letter betrays
the leading defect in his character the want of decision, so espe-
cially necessary in those stormy times to thorough integrity of con-
duct, and a facility of disposition which made him too easily led

ENGLAND.] Anne Solemn. Ill

astray by others, contrary to his own better judgment and feelings
a defect regretted by his warmest friends, and sneeringly blazoned
by the enemies of the Reformation, who can never forgive his zeal-
ous services in its behalf.

After having finished this letter, he was sent for to the star
chamber by some of the king's ministers. On his arrival they
recounted to him the tale of her alleged guilt, and succeeded -in
getting him to believe in her criminality. This we learn from the
postscript added to the letter: "After I had written this letter,"
says he, " unto your grace, my Lord Chancellor, my Lord of Oxford,
my Lord of Sussex, and [Sands] my Lord Chamberlain of your
grace's house, sent for me to come unto the star chamber, and there
declared unto me such things as your grace's pleasure was they
should make me privy to, for the which I am most bounden unto
your grace. And what communications we had together, I doubt
not but they will make the true report thereof unto your grace. 1
am exceedingly sorry that such faults can be proved against the
queen, as I heard of their relation, but I am, and ever shall be your
faithful subject." This portscript, even more than the letter, tended
to confirm Henry in his fatal purpose. Cranmer, we see, now
believed the queen to be guilty, and gives up her defence, upon the
simple authority of the story told him by these lords. Thus to
condemn her without proof, was equally uncharitable and unjust.
Had he expressed his resolute determination not to condemn her
till her guilt was established had he made the most earnest in-
tercessions in her behalf there is no reason to think that he could
h'ave preserved her from destruction ; but this course, injurious
though it might have been to his temporal interests, justice de-
manded, and it would have yielded true satisfaction to his own
mind, for no one will ever repent of leaning to the side of charity
and of mercy.

On the 6th of May Anne wrote her celebrated letter to the king
a letter universally admired for its beautiful composition, its
affecting eloquence, and indicating a highly cultivated mind. She

112 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAXD.

acknowledges her deep obligations to his majesty, for exalting her
from a comparatively low station to the highest rank to which
female ambition could aspire. She assures him that this sudden
vicissitude had not taken her by surprise, as, even in the hey-day of
prosperity, she had anticipated such an event as not improbable.
She maintains her innocence of the crimes imputed to her, demands
a lawful and open trial, and the exclusion of her sworn enemies
from acting as her accusers and judges. In short, she expresses a
generous solicitude about the preservation of the lives of the indivi-
duals criminated on her account. 1 But in vain did she appeal to
Henry's justice and mercy ; and his heart remaining impenetrably
obdurate to her touching eloquence, she could appeal to no other
quarter for her life. His will was supreme, and she had, therefore,
now to make up her mind patiently to submit to whatever treat-
ment he should doom her to undergo.

Forgetting, or not knowing, from her imperfect experience of
human character, how her fallen fortunes would change the coun-
tenances and the hearts of her friends, she placed upon those whom
she conceived to be the best portion of them a confidence doomed,
alas ! to disappointment. " I would I had my bishops," said she to
Kingston, u for they would all go to the king for me." 2 That Bishop
Shaxton, then professedly a zealous disciple of the Reformation, but
a wolf in sheep's clothing, made no effort in her behalf, need not
excite our surprise. He had pressed forward to do her honour ; he
had courted her favour, fawned upon and flattered her, so long as
he expected some brilliant advantage as the fruit of his cringing
homage ; but when calamity had now overtaken her, instead of
applauding he condemned her, instead of respectfully bowing the
knee he contemptuously shook the head. His letter to Cromwell
on the 23d of May, four days after her execution, betrays the
genuine spirit of the man. It is now much mutilated by fire, but
these imperfect passages are still legible : " She sore slandered the

1 See this letter in Appendix, No. I.

2 MS. Olho, c. x., p. 260; quoted iu Turner's Rei^n of Henry VIII., Tol. ii., p. 431.

ENGLAND.] Anne Soleyn. 113

same hath exceedingly deceived me that vice that she was found
Lord have mercy on her soul." But even the best of her bishops,
partaking of the imperfection and infirmity of human nature, and
afraid of incurring the monarch's displeasure, left her solitary and
unprotected. They shrunk from claiming for her case, what grati-
tude and justice equally bound them to do, an impartial investiga-
tion; the avoidance of precipitation, as injurious to dispassionate
inquiry and an upright decision ; and that mercy which, even
should she be found guilty, it would have been creditable for all
concerned in the prosecution to have extended to her. Finding at
length that she was thus unbefriended and forsaken by all, the
thoughts, trite, because founded on daily experience, expressed in
the Rambler, would affectingly and strongly suggest themselves to
her mind:

" When smiling fortune spreads her golden ray,

All crowd around to flatter and obey ;

But when she thunders from an angry sky,

Our friends, our flatterers, and lovers fly."

On the 10th of May, seven of those judges who had been on the
special commission for making inquiry into the conduct of the
queen, having met with the grand jury of "Westminster, consisting
of seven squires and nine gentlemen, the criminating matter col-
lected against her was considered, and by the verdict of the jury,
given upon their oaths, a bill of indictment for high treason 1 was
found against her; Sir Henry Norris, groom of the stole to the
king ; Sir Francis Weston and William Brereton, gentlemen of the

1 "Two legal explanations of this proceeding have been attempted. The first is
founded on the statute of treasons, 25 Ed. III., which made it high treason to violate
the queen; a word which had been understood as applicable to any illicit connection
with her. A.S accessory to the treason of her paramours, she became, by operation of
law, a principal in the crime. The other represents the indictment as under the late
statute, which made it treason ' to sland?r the succession of her issue* by the profes-
sion of love to others, with which she was charged. It is hard to say which of these
constructions was, the most forced and fantastic. But it seems evident, from the use
of the word violaoit in the indictment, that the prosecutors, in spite of the common
meaning of this word, which implies force, chose to rely on the statute of Edward III."
Sir James Mackintosh's History of England, vol. ii., p. 195.

114 Ladies of Hie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

privy chamber; Mark Smeaton, a man of inferior rank, who, on
account of his skill as a performer on musical instruments, had been
promoted to be groom of the chamber ; and George Boleyn, Viscount
Rochford, Anne's brother.

The indictment, which is in barbarous Latin, is too gross for the
public eye ; and the very grossness of the accusations is a strong
presumption of their being base and clumsy fabrications. It re-
presents her as being in every instance the seducer, and while the
charges go back nearly three years, there is always an interval of
several days, sometimes of several weeks, between her solicitations
and the commission of the crime, a circumstance unlike the impetu-
osity of passion, and giving the document very much the appearance
of having been manufactured for the occasion. " It is hard to be-
lieve," says Sir James Mackintosh, " that Anne could have dared to
lead a life so unnaturally dissolute, without such vices being more
easily and very generally known in a watchful and adverse court.
It is still more improbable that she should in every instance be
the seducer ; and that in all cases the enticement should systema-
tically occur in one day, while the offence should be completed
several days after." l Turner, the apologist of Henry, and by no
means a partizan of Anne, after giving an abstract of the indict-
ment from one of the Birch manuscripts, 2 observes, " These circum-
stances do not resemble those of a true case, nor suit the natural
conduct of a shameless woman. I have more doubt of her crimi-
nality since I met with this specifying record than I had before. The
regular distinctions between the days of allurement and the days of
offence are very like the made up facts of a fabricated accusation." 3
"The first alleged offence," says Miss Strickland, "is with Norris,
and is dated October 6, 1533, within a month after the birth of the
princess Elizabeth, which statement brings its own refutation, for
the queen had not then quitted her lying-in chamber."

1 History of England, vol. ii., p. 196.

* It is printed in full in Bayle's Dictionary, art. Boleyn.

1 Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 444.

ENGLAND.] Anne Bdayn. 115

As to the imputation involving her brother, the only circum-
stance adduced in proof was that he was once seen leaning on her
bed ' a circumstance to which only such as were malignantly set
on framing a criminal charge from nothing would have attached the
smallest importance. How malicious the enemies by whom she was
surrounded, and with what minute unceasing attention must her
conduct have been watched and pried into, when a harmless incident
like this was converted into a monstrous crime ! The more unna-
tural, and consequently the more improbable the crime, every prin-
ciple of reason and of justice demanded that the proof of guilt
should be so much the stronger. And if, upon the slender cir-
cumstance mentioned, her enemies in their eagerness to ruin
her honour, and blast her name, and bring her to the scaffold
pronounced her guilty of the atrocious, the unnatural crime of
incest, we may be sure that they would have little scruple in pro-
nouncing her guilty of all the other accusations, however lame the
evidence.

In their ardour to find criminating matter against her, her
enemies had recourse to the artifice of insinuating or directly say-
ing to each of the prisoners, which was a base falsehood, that his
fellows had confessed, in order to induce him to make confession.
This artifice was practised even upon Anne, who was told by her
uncle, or by his orders, that Norris had confessed the truth of all
the charges, which was false. Verily, men who could make use of
such unprincipled arts, would stick at no falsehood, however flagrant,
at no sort or size of calumny, by which they might compass the
destruction of their victim.

Smeaton was the only one of the prisoners who confessed any-
thing to her disadvantage. But how his confession was obtained,
how far it extended, or what were the conditions of it, we are igno-
rant. 2 Whatever was its amount, it is said to have been obtained

1 Harriet's Reformation, vol. i., p. 197.

- Soames's Reformation in England, vol. ii, p. 135. Sir James Mackintosh's History
of England, vol. ii., p. 196.

116 Ladies of ilie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

by means of the rack, though, from the secrecy with which his
examination was conducted, this has not been authenticated. " Upon
May-day in the morning," says Constantine, a contemporary, "he
was in the Tower ; the truth is he confessed it, but yet the saying
was that he was first grievously racked, which I could never know
of a truth." J It has also been said that he was encouraged to con-
fess by a promise of life. " He was provoked thereunto," says Graf-
ton, "by the Lord Admiral Fitzwilliams, that was after Earl of
Southampton, who said unto him, Subscribe Mark (meaning to a
confession, criminating himself, the queen, and others), and see what
will come of it." 2 A confession obtained by such means, in a case
like the present, is entitled to little credit. And what is to be
thought of statesmen who, in their eagerness to accomplish the pur-
pose of their master, were so base as to make such a promise, while
they had no intention of keeping it ? The other three, Lord Eochford,
Norris, Weston, and Brereton, persisted to the last in denying their
own criminality, and in asserting their conviction of the queen's
innocence. Norris in particular, though offered his life by Henry
if he would make confession against her, spurned the offer. His
humanity and generosity revolted at the idea of purchasing life upon
such terms, and he declared that in his conscience he believed her to
be blameless, and that he would die a thousand deaths rather than
betray the innocent. On hearing this strong protestation of Norris,
Henry cried out, "Hang him up, then ! Hang him up, then !" 3 the
words of a man who, maddened into demoniacal fury against the
woman whom he now mortally hated, could have thrust the dagger
to the very hilt in her heart with his own hand, and who was clearly
determined to get quit of her, at whatever cost. The fact that
Smeaton alone would criminate the queen, greatly perplexed her
enemies. Sir Edward Baynton thus writes with much concern to
Sir William Fitzwilliams, treasurer of the household, a very active
agent in the plot : -" Mr. Treasurer, this shall be to advertise you,

1 Archteologia, vol. xxiii., p. 64.
8 Grafton's Chronicle, edit. London, 1809, vol. ii., p. 456. * Godwiu.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 117

that here is much communication that no man will confess anything
against her, but only Mark [Smeaton]. Wherefore, in my foolish
conceit, it should much touch the king's honour if it should no far-
ther appear ;" and, as has been truly said, it never did.

CHAPTEE IV.

FROM HER TRIAL TO HER EXECUTION.

ON the 15th of May, the queen and her brother were brought to
trial before their peers. Her maternal uncle, the Duke of Norfolk,
who was constituted Lord High Steward, presided, supported on
the right hand by Lord Chancellor Audley, and on the left by the
Duke of Suffolk, while the Earl of Surrey sat as Earl Marshal in
front, before his father, the Duke of Norfolk. Only twenty-seven
peers in all were present, though the number of the peerage at that
period amounted to fifty-three ; the rest not choosing to attend, or
doubts being entertained of their subserviency to the wishes of the
monarch, they had not been summoned, or means had been adopted
to prevent their attendance. It is an important fact that these
peers were men notorious for their servility to the monarch, and
indebted to him for honourable titles and lucrative appointments, to
which must be added, that with one or two exceptions, they were
hostile to the Reformation, and therefore far from being actuated
by friendly feelings towards the queen, its friend and supporter.
From a court constituted of such men, it could hardly be expected
that either she or her brother would obtain an impartial trial.

The court was held in a temporary wooden hall, erected for the
purpose within the Tower ; and the trial was private, only Sir
Ralph "Warren as Lord Mayor, with divers aldermen and citizens,
being permitted to be present. 1 This privacy, it was pretended, pro-

1 Lord Herbert's Henry VIII., p. 195.

118

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

ceeded from motives of delicacy, from respect to Anne's feelings, to
save her the pain of being exhibited to public view under such
scandalous imputations. But it was rather intended to prevent the
manifestation of popular feeling in her favour, of which Henry, who,
notwithstanding his self-will and tyranny, was not indifferent to the
good opinion of the people, had evinced during the whole of the pro-
ceedings a sensitive dread. That this was the real motive for
excluding the public from witnessing her trial, as afterwards from
witnessing her execution, is evident from some statements in a letter
of Sir William Kingston, lieutenant of the Tower, to Cromwell, to
be afterwards quoted. " It could not be," as has been well observed,
" to conceal the heinousness of the accusation, though such might be
the pretence ; for that was published in Parliament a few weeks
after." This privacy was a strong temptation to injustice, for
whatever unfair dealing might be practised, it would not meet the
public eye ; and it seems to betray a conviction that the proceedings
would not stand the open light.

Lord Rochford was first brought to the bar of the court. His
indictment being read, he pleaded not guilty. His own wife, Jane
Parker, his principal accuser, appeared a willing witness against
him. He made an eloquent and powerful defence, and his judges
were at first divided. But he was finally found guilty, and con-
demned to be beheaded.

The trial of her brother having been concluded, Anne was brought
to the bar by a gentleman-usher. She appeared attended only by
the faithless and cold-hearted women who waited upon her as spies
in her prison. On entering the court she bowed with becoming
respect and dignity to the judges. She was desired to take her seat
on a chair which had been made for the occasion. The trial pro-
ceeded, and her manner throughout was composed, but without the
effrontery of a hardened culprit. The indictment was read, upon
hearing which, she held up her hand and pleaded not guilty. Jane
Parker, her brother's unprincipled abandoned wife, was one of the
witnesses brought forward against her. "Who the others were, and

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

119

what were their depositions, cannot now be known, the whole of
the evidence produced having perished, 1 nothing remaining but the
indictment, precepts, and conviction. "For the evidence," says
Wyatt, " as I never could hear of any, so small I believe it was. It
seems the triers themselves doubted their proofs would prove their
reproofs when they durst not bring them to the proof of the light
in open place." Whether or not use was made of Smeaton's con-
fession at the queen's trial is unknown. His evidence was perhaps
produ3ed in court; but he was never confronted with her, her
enemies being apparently afraid lest, when brought to face her,
he would shrink from the criminating testimony extorted by pro-
mises and threatenings another circumstance creating a strong
suspicion that these men were far from being satisfied themselves
as to her guilt.

No counsel being allowed to appear in her behalf, to question and
cross-question the witnesses, and to present her cause in the most
favourable light, she was left to defend herself as she best could.
This in all cases would be a hard alternative, but especially in the
case of woman. Had Anne, when placed in such unusual and
trying circumstances, made no defence, it would not have been
wonderful. But she was not altogether silent; and her defence,
though brief, left on the minds of at least some of the spectators,
the conviction that she was innocent, and that the accusations
against her were the offspring of malice and revenge. "The evi-
dence was heard, indeed," says Wyatt, " but close enough, as enclosed

1 " The records of her trial," says Lingard, the Popish historian, " have perished,
perhaps by the hands of those who respected her memory." " Whether destroyed,"
says Ellis, " by Henry VIII., or Elizabeth, is not known." It is, however, unnatural
to suppose that Elizabeth, or any who respected Anne's memory, would have
destroyed the evidence, and preserved the indictment which loads her with such
infamous crimes. It is more reasonable to ascribe the destruction of the records of
the trial to Henry, who, convinced of the lameness of the evidence, took this precaution
to prevent posterity from testing its inadequacy. This is a strong presumption in
favour of the innocence of Anne. Henry's motives in allowing the indictment to
remain, could only be to brand her name with dishonour, and to vindicate himself in the
eyes of posterity.

120 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

in strong walls. Yet to show that the truth cannot by any force be
altogether kept concealed, some belike of those honourable person-
ages who were there, more perhaps for countenance of others' evil
than that by their own authority they might do good (which also,
peradventure, would not have been without certain peril to them-
selves), did not yet forbear to say things which caused it to be
everywhere muttered abroad, that that spotless queen in her defence
had cleared herself with a most wise and noble speech." l The Lord
Mayor, and others who were present, afterwards told some of their
friends, " that they saw no evidence against her, only it appeared
that it was resolved to get quit of her." 2

But a majority, if not all of the peers on the trial, crouching
beneath the remorseless power of Henry, pronounced her guilty.
Whether any of them resisted this finding is not known, but their
opposition would have been fruitless, for unanimity is not required
to give effect to the decision of the peers, as is the case with
regard to the verdict of a jury, a majority being deemed sufficient
either for condemnation or acquittal. The sentence, which was
that she should be beheaded or burned, according to his majesty's
pleasure, was pronounced by her unnatural uncle, the Duke of
Norfolk, and she heard it with unaltered countenance. On hearing
the fatal words, lifting up her hands and eyes towards heaven,
she exclaimed, " Father and Creator ! O thou who art the way,
the truth, and the life ! thou knowest that I have not deserved
this death." 3 "It is difficult," says Turner, "to connect with Anne
Boleyn's character such a mockery of what she most venerated, as
to reconcile this ejaculation with her consciousness of guilt." 4 This
solemn ejaculation, which was like laying hold on the arm of Omni-
potence, imparted to her mind a degree of tranquillity, and turning
to the judges, she addressed them with uncommon self-possession,
in these words : " My Lords, I will not say that your sentence is
unjust, nor presume that my opinion ought to be preferred to the

' Wyatt. Meteren, Hisloire des Pays Bos, edit. Haigue, 1618, p. 21. * Ibid. p. 21.
4 Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 446.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 121

judgment of you all. I believe you have reasons and occasions of
suspicion and jealousy, upon which you have condemned me ; but
they must be other than have been produced in this court : for I
am entirely innocent of all these accusations ; so that I cannot ask
pardon of God for them. I have always been a faithful and loyal
wife to the king. I have not, perhaps, at all times shown him that
humility and reverence which his goodness to me, and the high
honour bestowed by him upon me, did deserve. I confess that I
have had fancies and suspicions of him, which I had not strength
nor discretion enough to manage; but God knows, and is my
witness, that I never trespassed otherwise against him : and at the
moment of my death I shall confess nothing else. Think not that
I say this to prolong my life : God has taught me how to die, and
by his grace he will fortify my spirit. Yet do not think ftiat I am
in such a state of mind, as not to lay the honour of my chastity to
heart. Of this I should make small account now, in my extremity,
if I had not maintained it, my whole life long, as much as ever
queen did. I know that these, my last words, will signify nothing,
but to justify my honour and my chastity. As for my brother, and
those others who are unjustly condemned, I would willingly suffer
many deaths to deliver them ; but since I see it so pleases the king,
I must bear with their death ; and shall depart with them out of
the world, under an assurance of leading with them an endless life
in peace." '

The tone of candour, subdued feeling, natural eloquence, and good
sense pervading this address, could hardly fail, in the circumstances,
to make a deep impression on all present.

1 This, as well as her ejaculation on hearing the sentence pronounced, is from Meteren,
the Dutch consul-general's Histoire des Pays Bos, who has given in prose her address
and ejaculation from a poetical narrative by Crispin, Lord of Milherve, a Frenchman,
who was in London at the time, and an eye-witness of what he describes. The poet,
for the sake of the metre, may have somewhat amplified what she really said. The
metrical Histoire d'Anne Boleyn, par un Contemporain, published a considerable
number of years ago, from a manuscript in the Bibliotheque du Roi, is supposed to be
Crispin's work. It is dated London, 2d June, only fourteen days after Anne's
death.

122 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Life is sweet, and Anne, it would appear, even after the sentence,
indulged the hope of the commutation of capital punishment into
banishment from England. This hope, during the short time of its
continuance, brightened up her countenance. She spoke of retiring
to Antwerp, and there spending the remainder of her days in peace-
ful obscurity. " This day [16th May], at dinner," writes Sir William
Kingston to Cromwell, " the queen said that she should go to Ant-
werp, and is in hope of life." But she was not to be allowed to live,
even in exile and seclusion, forgotten by the world.

On the 17th of May, Lord Eochford, Norris, Brereton, and
Smeaton were executed. The first three were beheaded, in conside-
ration of their rank, and the last was hanged. The mother and wife
of Sir Francis Weston had earnestly implored Henry for the lite of
Weston, and offered a ransom of a hundred thousand crowns. But
the relentless heart of the monarch was not to be moved by the
tempting bribe. Lord Eochford on the scaffold protested his inno-
cence, and encouraged his companions to meet death with unshrink-
ing fortitude. 1 Then turning to the spectators, he thus addressed

1 Lord Rochford was a man of great personal beauty, and possessed, in no common
degree, a talent for poetical composition ; qualities which made him the idol of the
ladies in Henry's court. He is supposed to have been the author of several poems,
published along with those of his friends, the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt,
lu Tottel's Miscellany of Songs and Sonnettes, 1568. Only one, however, has been
expressly named as his, printed in Ellis's Specimens and other Miscellanies of Ancient
Poetry. It has been much admired for its beauty, and begins thus:

" My lute, awake, perform the last
Labour that thou and 1 shall waste."

In the verses prefixed by Richard Smith to George Gascoigne's Poetical Works, he is
thus eulogized :

" Rochford clarab the stately throne
Which muses hold in Helicon."

Cavendish, too, Wolsey's gentleman-usher, though, being a Papist, he is strongly pre-
possessed against Anne on account of her favour for the reformed doctrines, and
regards her, and all who were involved in her fate, as guilty of the crimes imputed
to them, and therefore as justly punished by death, yet celebrates, in his Metrical
Legends, both the personal attractions and poetical genius of Lord Kochford. He
introduces his lordship after death as thus passing in vision before him, and speak-
ing:

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 123

them : " I am come here to die, since the king has so ordered it. I
desire you that no man will be discouraged from the gospel on
account of my fall. For if I had lived according to the gospel as I
loved it, and spake of it, I had never come to this. Wherefore, Sirs,
for God's love, leave not the gospel, but speak less and live better.
For I had rather have one good liver according to the gospel, than
ten babblers. I would exhort all who hear me, not to trust to
courts, states, and kings, but to rely on Heaven alone. For my sins
I have deserved heavy punishment, but I have deserved none from
the king, whom I have never injured. Nevertheless, I earnestly
pray God to grant him a long and happy life." ' Norris, Weston,
and Brereton, like Rochford, persisted on the scaffold in asserting
their innocence. Smeaton, who was the last executed, and who, it
has been supposed, harboured hopes of life to the last, is commonly
understood to have confessed. His words, as reported by an eye-
witness, 2 were, " Masters, I pray you all pray for me, for I have
deserved the death." This language is ambiguous, but the impres-
sion conveyed to those who heard it was that it implied a con-
fession of guilt. His dying words being reported to the queen on
the following day, she exclaimed with warmth, " Has he not, then,
cleared me from the public shame which he has done me ? Alas !
I fear his soul will suffer from his false accusation. My brother and
the rest are now, I doubt not, before the face of the greater King,
and I shall follow to-morrow." 3

To inflict additional degradation upon Anne, she was brought to
Lambeth on the morning of the 17th of May the day on which her

" God gave me grace, dame nature did hir part,
Endewed me with gyfts of natural qualities :
Dame eloquence also taughte me the arte
In meter and verse to make pleasaunt dities,
And fortune preferred me to high dignyties,
In such abondauce that combred was my witt,
To render God thanks that gave me eche nhitt."

While Anne was in favour, Rochford stood high in Henry's good graces, and notwith-
standing his youth, was exalted to an honourable place in the privy council.

1 Constantine's Memorial to Secretary Cromwell, in Archceologia, vol. xxiii , p. 65.
Meteren, p. 21.

2 Constantiue. 3 Meteren, p. 21.

124 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

brother and her other alleged accomplices were executed that
Cranmer, whose pliant temper was here again displayed, might
officially pronounce the nullity of her marriage with the king.
As to the specific grounds of this sentence we have no authentic
information. From a parliamentary statute passed about a month
after her death, 1 it appears that Cranmer pronounced the marriage
never to have been good, but "utterly void, in consequence of
certain just and lawful impediments unknown at the time of her
pretended marriage, but confessed by the said Lady Anne before
the most reverend father in God sitting judicially." What these
"just and lawful impediments" were is not mentioned in the
statute, an omission affording a strong presumption of their in-
validity. The most probable supposition is, that they were the
pretended discovery of a matrimonial contract between Anne and
the Earl of Northumberland, formerly Lord Percy, previous to
her marriage with Henry. 2 That Anne and young Percy had
contemplated marriage as the consummation of their wishes, there
can be little doubt; but no legal contract had existed, and their
courtship had been broken up by the influence of Percy's father
and of Cardinal Wolsey, at the desire of the king. At the desire of
the king, be it observed, so that if the mutual interchange of affection
and vows between her and Percy constituted the "just and lawful
impediments" to her marriage with Henry, this was no new matter
risen up against her, but an old story revived, perfectly well known
to the king at the time when he married her. The Earl of Nor-
thumberland, being examined upon oath before both the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York, denied that such a
precontract had ever existed, and in farther attestation of the
truth of this he had received the sacrament. In a letter to Secre-

' This was a statute passed in the Parliament 28 Henry VIII., c. 7, declaring the
said marriage never to have been good, nor consonant to the laws, and repealing an
act of a former Parliament, which fixed the succession of the crown to the issue of the
king by Anne Boleyn. By this act it was even made treason to assert Elizabeth's
legitimacy

2 Strype's Cranmer, pp. 48, 49.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Holeyn.

125

tary Cromwell, dated 13th May, he made a similar denial. 1 Anne
being also examined, a confession of the truth of the "just and
lawful impediments " was extorted from her, if we are to believe the
words of the statute above quoted. 2 As there had been mutual
professions of love between her and Lord Percy, and as she was
ignorant of nice legal distinctions, it is not difficult to see how such
an admission might be obtained from her, an admission also pro-
bably drawn from her in the hope of life. Did it never occur to
these men, that if her marriage with the king was null from the
beginning, she could not, though the charges against her had been
proved, have been guilty of adultery, which can only be committed
where there is legal marriage, and that if not guilty of that crime,
the sentence pronounced upon her only two days before for treason
the construction put upon the infidelity of the sovereign's wife
was illegal? It is also remarkable, as Collier has observed,
that the record of the decree pronouncing the nullity of her mar-
riage with Henry is not entered in Cranmer's register, though that
of Anne of Cleves is inserted at length. What was the reason of
this difference ? Did Cranmer, in not giving that of Anne Boleyn
a place ad perpetuam rei memoriam, act of his own accord, or had he
received orders to that effect from the king ? Either supposition
betrays a consciousness that the alleged impediments were a mere
pretext, and that, reflecting discredit on all concerned, it would be
better to consign the whole proceedings to oblivion.

" Men may justly marvel," says Fuller, " what King Henry meant
by this solemn and ceremonious divorce, which the edge of the axe
or sword was more effectually to perform the day after, her death
being then designed. Was it because he stood on this punctilio of
credit, that he might not hereafter be charged with cruelty for
executing his wife, that first he would be divorced from her, and
so could not be said to put his queen, but Anne Boleyn, to death ]
. . . . Or was it because he conceived the execution would only

Herbert's Life of Henry VI II., p. 834.

2 Strype's Cranmer, pp. 48, 49.

126

Ladies of tlie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

reach the root, the queen herself, and not blast the branch, the
Lady Elizabeth, whom by this divorce he desired to render illegiti-
mate ? " l That this last supposition is well-founded there can be
no doubt. Henry's alienation from Anne extended even to their
mutual issue. Their daughter Elizabeth, in whose favour the right
of the succession had formerly been violated, must now be degraded,
as well as the mother. 2

On the evening of the 17th, it was intimated to Anne that it had
been determined to carry the sentence of death into execution. As
a means of preparation for death, she had previously devoted herself
to religious exercises ; and now she engaged in them with renewed
earnestness. From some statements in Sir William Kingston's
letters to Cromwell, it appears that she still retained her belief in
transubstantiation. In one of these letters, probably written on
the 17th of May, he says : " Sir, The queen hath much desired to
have here in the closet the sacraments, 3 and also her almoner, whom
she supposeth to be Devet ;" and in another, probably written on
the 18th, he says : " This morning she sent for me, that I might be
with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent
I should hear her protestations touching her innocence.'" 4 It is,
however, to be observed, that at this infant stage of the Eeformation
in England, there remained in the minds of many, whose eyes had
been opened to see the truth partially, and who sincerely advocated
the diffusion of the pure doctrines of God's word, much darkness
and superstition, and they only gradually discovered the absurdity,
idolatry, and blasphemy of transubstantiation. This doctrine was
still believed in by Cranmer, one of Anne's chief instructors in reli-
gion. It was not till a later period that he adopted the doctrine,
that Christ's presence iu the sacrament is exclusively limited to his
spiritual presence.*

i Church History of Britain, vol. iii., p. 126. * See p. 124, Note 1.

3 In such cases the desire of persons to have the consecrated elements in their
closet, was for the purpose of adoration.

4 Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii., pp. 59-63.

* In a letter written the year after Anne's execution to Joachim Vadian, a native of

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

127

Since her imprisonment, Anne had often remembered with bitter
remorse the wrongs she had done to the Princess Mary, daughter of
Henry by his first queen ; and now, in the near prospect of judgment
and eternity, she could find no peace in her soul till she had made
the only reparation now in her power to make a free and humble
confession. She had not herself an opportunity of meeting with the
princess, but on the 18th of May, the day before she suffered, taking
Lady Kingston into the presence-chamber for, as has been stated
before, she was allowed to occupy the royal apartments in the Tower
and desiring her to sit down in the canopied chair of state, she
fell on her knees before Lady Kingston, and holding up her hands,
with tearful eyes, charged her, as in the presence of God and his
angels, and as she would answer to her before them when all should
appear to judgment, that she would in like manner fall down before
the Lady Mary's grace, and ask forgiveness for the wrongs she had
done her ; " for," added she, " till that is done, my conscience cannot
be quiet." z This does not look like a remorseless hardened woman,
who lay under some potent spell which prevented her from confessing
her crimes.

Henry having decided to put her to death by the less painful
method of beheading, it was determined to consummate the deed,
not with an axe, the usual method in England, but with a sword, 2

Switzerland, and distinguished as a scholar and mathematician, who had published a
work, entitled Aphorisms upon the Eucharist, intended to disprove the corporeal
presence, and sent the present of a copy to Craumer, the archbishop says, "The
subject you treat of in those six books, which you sent me as a present, is altogether
displeasing to me ; and I could wish you had bestowed your labours to better purpose,
and commenced an agreeable friendship with myself under better, or at least more
approved auspices. For unless I see stronger evidence brought forward than I have
yet been able to see, I desire neither to be the patron nor the approver of the opinion
maintained by you." Zurich Letters, first series, p. 13. Cranmer held the doctrine
of transubstantiation np to the year 1546, when, by conference with Dr. Ridley, after-
wards Bishop of Rochester, and his fellow-martyr, he renounced it, and embraced the
sentiments of Zuinglius as to the nature of Christ's presence in the supper. Ibid.,
pp. 71, 72. Strype's Cranmer, pp. 94, 97.

1 Speed.

2 An axe shown in the Tower is represented as the instrument of her decapitation,

128 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

according to the French fashion, and a French executioner, famed
for expertness in his profession, was brought over from Calais for
the purpose.

The public, who had been excluded from witnessing her trial,
were also to be excluded from witnessing the closing scene of the
tragedy. Cromwell, on the 18th of May, wrote to Kingston, order-
ing him to remove all strangers from the Tower. And from
Kingston's reply we learn that the privacy of her execution did
not proceed from the humane desire to free her from the ignominy
of a public spectacle, but from a dread of the expression of popular
sympathy. "Sir," said he, "this shall be to advertise you that I
have received your letter, wherein ye would have strangers conveyed
out of the Tower, and so they be but the number of strangers
passed not thirty, and not many others the ambassador of the
emperor had a servant there, and honestly put out. Sir, if we
have not an hour certain, as it might be known in London, I think
here will be but few, and I think a reasonable number were best ;
for I suppose she will declare herself to be a good woman for all but
the long at the hour of death." '

On the morning of the 19th of May, the day of her execution,
she sent for Kingston, to whom, after solemn protestations of inno-
cence, she said, " Mr. Kingston, I hear that I am not to die before
noon, and I am very sorry for it, for I thought ere then to be dead
and past my pain." "It will be no pain, it is so subtle," said
Kingston, ministering to her, in his usual aifected courteous man-
ner, that species of comfort so characteristic of a bai-dened jailer.
" I have heard say," she answered, " that the executioner is very
expert, and I have a little neck," upon which she put her hand
about it, laughing. She had become reconciled to her fate, and had
risen superior to the terrors of death, anticipating and it is fondly

but incorrectly, though it may have been employed in the execution of Cromwell and
others during the reign of Henry VIII.

1 MS. Cotton, Otho, c. x., fol. 223, quoted in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible,
vol. i., p. 475.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

129

to be hoped upon good grounds rest from all sorrow, and perfect
happiness in a better world. Her jailer Kingston bears testimony
not only to her calm and collected, but even to her joyful state of
mind, in the prospect of what was awaiting her. " I have seen
many men," says he, "and women also, executed, and they have
been in great sorrow, but to my knowledge this lady hath much
joy and pleasure in death. Her almoner is continually with her,
and has been since two of the clock after midnight."

Immediately before being brought out for execution, she sent a
verbal message to the king, by a gentleman of his privy chamber,
solemnly protesting her innocence, a message remarkable for its
dignified and yet mild tone : " Commend me to his majesty," said
she, " and tell him he hath been ever constant in his career of
advancing me; from a private gentlewoman he made me a mar-
chioness, from a marchioness a queen, and now that he hath left no
higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency the crown of mar-
tyrdom." " But the messenger," says Lord Bacon, who relates the
anecdote, " durst not carry this to the king, then absorbed in a
new passion, yet tradition has truly transmitted it to posterity." '

On the 19th of May, a little before noon, she was brought to the
scaffold. The chief of the select company admitted as spectators
were the Duke of Suffolk, the Duke of Eichmond, Lord Chancellor
Audley, Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen
of London ; the most of whom, not long ago, cringed for her favour,
and were elated with her smile, but who now left her, when aban-
doned by the tyrant, unpitied, to her fate. On the scaffold her forti-
tude did not forsake her. With the utmost composure she addressed
a few words to the spectators: " Christian people ! I am come
hither to die according to law : by law I am judged to death, and
therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to
accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused

1 Bacon is a good authority, for, though not contemporary, he had access to the best
means of information. His grandfather. Sir Anthony Cooke, was tutor to Edward VI. ,
and a courtier, while his mother, Lady Bacon, and his aunt, Lady Cecil, had from their
youth moved in the circle of the court, and were maids of honour to Queen Mary.

130 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

and condemned to die. But I pray God save the king, and grant
him long to reign over you, for a gentler and more merciful prince
was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sove-
reign lord. If any person will meddle with my cause, I require him
to judge the best And thus I take my leave of the world and of
you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord, have
mercy on me ! To God I commend my soul." "

Surprise has often been expressed that Anne, at her death, should
have eulogized a monarch as lenient and merciful, the effects of whose
bloody and malignant temper she was now suffering. This may have
proceeded from a wish not to provoke him against their daughter
Elizabeth, maternal feeling having triumphed over the desire to pro-
test against her own wrongs ; and Cranmer, in his private interviews
with her on the preceding day, may have advised her to speak in
this guarded manner. It may, however, be doubted whether her
dying words, as reported, may not have passed under the revision of
Henry, who, to save his own reputation, represented her as using
language which she never uttered.

Having concluded her address, she prepared for the fatal catas-
trophe, removing with her own hands her hat and collar ; and such
were her composure and fortitude, that she would not consent to
have her eyes bandaged, saying that she had no fear of death. On
kneeling down, she continued for some time in prayer, and her last
words, which she repeated several times before the fatal stroke, were :
" To Christ I commend my soul. Jesus, receive my soul !" The
moment the blow fell, amidst the shuddering horror and shrieks of
the spectators, who felt as if they had received it upon their own
necks, there was a discharge of artillery, a novel accompaniment of
an execution, but which, as we shall presently see, had been ordered
for a special object. After her head was cut off, her eyes and lips
were observed to move, and a faithful attendant or two, in testimony
of their devotion to their mistress, with deep emotion and dissolved
in tears, washed away the blood which now made her once fair face

1 Wyatt.

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 131

ghastly, and a terror to behold. Her body was then barbarously
thrown by the executioner into a box of elm-tree, used for holding
arrows, and was interred without ceremony, in the chapel of the
Tower, before twelve o'clock. Tradition, however, reports that during
the night after her execution her remains were secretly removed by
her friends, and conveyed for interment to Salle church, the burial-
place of her family. A plain black marble slab is still pointed out
in that church, as marking the spot where her ashes repose. 1 This
tradition receives confirmation from Wyatt's indefinite but grateful
allusion to her final resting-place. " God," says he, " provided for
her corpse sacred burial, even in a place, as it were, consecrate to
innocence."

Henry did not witness with his own eyes the perpetration of this
deed of blood. He was to spend that day in the chase, and sur-
rounded by his dogs and attendants, had breakfasted under an oak
in Epping Forest, still standing, and known by the name of Henry's
oak. But by the tragedy about to be enacted he was greatly excited;
and he had arranged that, the moment the queen fell under the
stroke of the executioner, the news should be heralded to him by the
discharge of artillery. As the appointed hour drew near, he was
anxiously listening to hear the signal. At length the report of
cannon booming through the wood announced, to the delight of his
heart, that he had now got rid of the hated queen, and could wed
the new object of his affections. In the delirium of depraved pas-
sion, and exulting with ferocious infernal glee, he started up, and
cried out, " Ah ! ah ! it is done ! the business is done ! uncouple the
dogs, and let us follow the sport !" 2

"We have read few trials, bringing out at every stage of the pro-
ceedings so many grounds of suspicion of evil intention and premedi-
tated murder, as the trial of this unfortunate queen. The secrecy of
the plot till it was ripe for execution ; the corrupt and venal char-
acter of the junto appointed to collect the criminating matter, of
the jury and judges who found a bill of indictment for high treason

1 Miss Strickland's Queens of England. 2 Tyndal's Rapin Tytter,

132 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

against her, and of the peers, who were carefully selected for trying
her, men who had no rule, save the capricious will ot the monarch
to regulate their determinations ; the privacy of her trial, depriving
her of one of the most effectual safeguards of justice publicity, and
indicating a consciousness, on the part of her prosecutors, of the
incompetency of the evidence ; the haste of the whole procedure, so
prejudicial to calm and impartial investigation ; the slender occur-
rence upon which she was pronounced guilty of incest ; the unprin-
cipled arts resorted to in order to extract from her pretended
accomplices confessions against her ; the testimony borne by them
all, with only one exception, to her innocence ; the suspicions resting
on his testimony, and the fact that he was never confronted with
her ; the judgment confidentially expressed by one of her most active
prosecutors, that the evidence was so glaringly defective, that her
condemnation would damage the popularity of the king, unless the
other culprits should testify to her guilt ; the consideration that had
she been so abandoned as the indictment represents her to have been,
evidence would not have been wanting, as in that case she would,
what invariably happens when every modest feeling is extinguished
from the breast, have thrown off circumspection, laying herself open
to conviction, upon proofs of criminality so abundant and manifest,
as to leave no room for doubt, the more especially as many hostile
eyes were upon her in the court : these, and other circumstances,
stamp suspicion upon the whole proceedings, and force upon us the
conviction, that though the forms of a trial were gone through, they
were a mere mockery of justice, a shocking and shameless pretence ;
and that her condemnation and execution were the triumph of power
and calumny over the weak and defenceless.

The reflecting mind is appalled at the precipitate violence, the cool
deliberation, the unshrinking steadiness of purpose displayed by
Henry in this transaction, from the commencement to the close.
Never for a moment did he exhibit a single symptom of relenting,
or betray the slightest returning tenderness of feeling, but, as in
his whole career, evinced a determined resolution, a carelessness of

ENGLAND.] Anne Boleyn. 133

the means employed to effect his purposes, and a disregard of all
consequences.

One cannot always

Finish one's work by soft means.

'Dash and through with it.' That's the better watchword.
Then after come what may come. 'Tis man's nature
To make the best of a bad thing once past." *

That such was the temper of Henry is attested by Cavendish, who
informs us that Wolsey said of him : " Rather than miss or want
any part of his will or appetite, he would put the loss of one-half of
his kingdom in danger, and that he had often kneeled before him the
space of an hour or two to persuade him from his will and appetite,
but could never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom." To a man
of this reckless and violent character, the sacrifice of the life of a
queen towards whom he had conceived an aversion, or whom he
suspected of conjugal infidelity, was nothing; especially when she
stood in the way of the consummation of his union with a new object
of affection.

On the day of Anne's execution he arrayed himself in white, as if
he meant to express his joy or his innocence of the brutal murder.
His marriage the next day to Jane Seymour, eldest daughter of Sir
John Seymour, of Wolf Hall, Wilts, goes far to explain the mystery
of these proceedings, by showing that he had determined the destruc-
tion of Anne, to make way for another to occupy her place. What
seems very surprising is the eagerness of Jane Seymour to ascend
the perilous eminence of becoming the wife of a monarch whose hands
were yet reeking with the blood of his former queen. Young and
inexperienced, and perhaps believing in the guilt of Anne Boleyn,
she little thought how brittle and transitory that happiness was
which depended on the changeful temper of a ruthless tyrant like
Henry, who might be loving to-day, and animated by the fury of a
demon to-morrow. From a hardened conscience, or from the boil-
ing frenzy of passion, the monster himself, in the meantime, appa-

' Schiller.

134 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

rently felt no compunction. But the crime met him on a future day
the day of his death when the horrors of remorse and the dark-
ness of despair gathered around and settled on' his soul. At that
solemn period, when conscience forced upon his memory the past,
and unveiled to him at but a short, an almost imperceptible dis-
tance in the future, the dreadful tribunal of a righteous God, who
will bring every work into judgment, and with whom there is no
respect of persons, he is said to have confessed to some around him
the bitter anguish he felt on account of the severity with which he
had treated this unfortunate queen. "Many English gentlemen," says
an old Roman Catholic writer, " have assured me that Henry VIII.,
on his death-bed, greatly repented of the offences he had committed,
and, among other things, of the injury and crime committed against
Anne de Boleyn, in her condemnation and death on the ground of
the false charges brought against her." l

This horrible tragedy was bewailed by the secret tears of many of
the good in England, who traced it to a secret Popish conspiracy, in
combination with the furious passions of the monarch ; 2 though, over-
awed by his terrible decision, even the leaders of the reformed party
had pusillanimously deserted the hapless queen. The friends of the
Reformation in other countries were shocked, and deeply lamented
her unmerited fate. Viewing all the circumstances, the States of
Germany confederated for the defence of the reformed religion, con-
sidered her guilt so improbable, that they now laid aside all further
thoughts of an alliance with him. 3 Melancthon, who had contem-
plated visiting England, now abandoned the idea, and, moved with a
generous pity, pronounced her innocent. In a letter to Joachim
Camerarius, written in June, 1536, he thus writes : " I am altogether
released from concern about my English journey. After events so
tragical have happened in England, a great change of counsels has
followed. The late queen, rather accused than convicted of adultery,

1 Thevet, Cosmograpfiie Universelle, liv. 16, c. v^, p. 657, quoted in Turner's Reign of
Henry VIII, vol. ii., pp. 458, 459.

' 2 See Appendix, No. II. * Godwin.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Boleyn.

135

has undergone the last sentence of the law. How wonderful are the
turns of things, my Joachim; how great the wrath of God they
denounce against mankind ; into how great calamities, also, do the
mightiest of earthly potentates at this day fall. When I think upon
these things, the conclusion to which I am brought is, that our
afflictions and our dangers should be borne with a more patient
mind." ' The tidings created a great sensation in France, and must
have struck with horror Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre,
Anne's old patroness and friend, who could hardly fail of being
impressed with a feeling of gratitude to Providence that, when the
offer was made to her, she refused to supplant Katharine of Aragon,
by becoming the queen of a sovereign who, under similar charges,
might have brought her to the same terrible end.

" Melancthon's Epist., quoted in Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 65.

ANNE ASKEW,

DAUGHTER OF SIR WILLIAM ASKEW, KNIGHT, OF KELSEY/.

this lady, whose story we are now to relate, we
have a noble example of female Christian heroism.
She fell a martyr for denying the doctrine of tran-
substantiation, during the reign of Henry VIII., and
her name must ever stand among the foremost in
the list of the venerated martyrs of the English Reformation. Her
calm unshrinking fortitude in maintaining the truths of God's Word
in opposition to the Popish doctrines, and in suffering a cruel death
rather than abjure them, places her on a level with the most illus-
trious martyrs of any age or country.

ANNE ASKEW was the second daughter of Sir William Askew,
knight, of Kelsey, in Lincolnshire, 1 a gentleman of an ancient and
honourable' family. Of her education and early life nothing is now
known. She is said to have been "a lady of great beauty, of gentle
manners, and warm imagination." 2 The earliest notice in her

1 Sir William, besides Anne and an elder daughter, had a third, named Jane, who
was married, first to Sir George St. Paul, and secondly to Richard Disney, Esq., of
Norton Disney, ancestor of the present John Disney, Esq., of the Hyde, Essex. He
had also two sons, Francis, the eldest, and Edward, who was one of his majesty's
body-guard. Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii., pp. 190, 191.

2 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i., p. 634.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 137

history respects her marriage with the son and heir of Mr. Kyme,
who had extensive property in Lincolnshire. Her father lived
on terms of familiar intercourse with Mr. Kyme, who resided in
the same county, and was his near neighbour ; and, allured by the
prospect of a wealthy connection, he had engaged to give his eldest
daughter in marriage to the son and heir of his friend, without, how-
ever, asking or obtaining the consent of the young lady herself ; such
were the worldly views which regulated the formation of marriages
in England among persons of rank at that period, as in later times.
The lady having died before the marriage was completed, Sir William,
unwilling to lose so rich an alliance, entered into new engagements,
to give his second daughter, Anne, to be the wife of his friend's son
and heir. This engagement was not less objectionable than the
former. The young man was but of indifferent character, and the
proposed union was the reverse of agreeable to Anne, whose affections
were either fixed elsewhere, or did not rest upon him. His prospec-
tive wealth made no impression on her mind, and she earnestly
objected. But her father, dazzled and blinded by the prospect of
wealth, deemed the match to be most eligible, and would listen to no
objections, nor break his engagements, not reflecting that he was
perilling the happiness of his daughter, by forcing her into a relation
so important, contrary to her inclinations. She yielded to his com-
mands, and is said to have conducted herself like a Christian wife.
She bore to her husband two children. But marriages originated
and formed in such circumstances are seldom happy, and the present
instance formed no exception to the general rule. The tender emo-
tions, feeble before the marriage, had not been subsequently improved ;
causes of domestic disquiet arose between Anne and Mr. Kyme, and
the bitter preponderated over the sweet in their conjugal cup.

The conversion of Anne to the reformed faith, like that of many
others at the period of which we now write, was principally owing
to the reading of the Scriptures, which, after being locked up for
ages, had recently been unsealed by being translated, printed, and
circulated in the English tongue.

138 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

In the year 1536, Tyndale's English translation of the New Tes-
tament was printed by Henry the Eighth's printer. 1 At the same
time the printers, Grafton and Whitchurch, who subsequently
became so eminent in their profession, undertook the expense of
completing at the press at Antwerp the printing of the folio edition
of the whole Bible in English, which the martyr John Eogers, who
was resident in that city, had secretly begun to print there, consist-
ing of Tyndale's version of the New Testament, and such portions of
the Old Testament as Tyndale had translated, with the other books
supplied frornCoverdale's translation of the whole Bible, made in 1535.
This edition of the entire Scriptures was dedicated to Henry VIII.
The whole was completed before the 4th of August, 1537, for on that
day we find Archbishop Cranmer, to whom a copy was presented by
Grafton, sending Grafton with his Bible to Cromwell, and requesting
that statesman to show it to the king, and to obtain, if possible, the
royal " license that the same may be sold, and read of every person,
without danger of any act, proclamation, or ordinance, heretofore
granted to the contrary." 2 The license was obtained, and thus the
people of England might now read in their own tongue the whole
Word of God, which they could not do before, only certain portions,
as the five books of Moses, some of Paul's epistles, or the gospels,
having been previously printed. Numerous new editions of the
Bible were afterwards printed during the reign of Henry VIII., with
the sanction of that monarch, obtained chiefly through the influence
of Archbishop Cranmer and Cromwell, to whom is to be attributed
whatever steps Henry made in the reformation of the church at that
period. 3

Anne Askew had procured a copy of the Bible, which she read
with the freshness and intensity of interest, inspired by the novelty
and importance of the truths which beamed, for the first time, upon

1 See Life of Anne Boleyn, p. 92.

2 Biographical notice of Tyudale, prefixed to his Doctrinal Treatises, printed for
Parker Soc., pp. Ixxiv-lxxvi.
5 Strype'* Mem. Eccl, vol. i., part i., pp. 472-476, 546-548, 573, 574.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 139

her mind. A permanent change was wrought upon her understand-
ing and her heart. Finding the doctrines of Popery at complete
variance with the doctrines of the Bible, she renounced the former,
and embraced the latter, as professed by the Lollards or followers of
Wickliffe, to which she continued to adhere, till her life was closed by
martyrdom. The defection of a lady of her position in society greatly
enraged the priests ; and her husband, partly prompted by his own
Popish intolerance, on which no restraint was imposed by warmth of
affection for his wife, and partly instigated by the priests, who, with
despicable meanness, have very frequently shown a peculiar propen-
sity to meddle with domestic affairs, and to create quarrels between
Protestant ladies and their Popish husbands, and vice versa, treated
her with great cruelty on account of the change in her religion ; and
as, acting on the principle that God alone was the Lord of her con-
science, she would not renounce her convictions of truth and duty at
his bidding, he even proceeded so far as to expel her from his house.
In consequence of this violence, she is said to have actually applied
for a legal divorce, and to have vindicated the proceeding from 1 Cor.
vii. 15 : " If a faithful woman have an unbelieving husband, which
will not tarry with her, she may leave him, for a brother or sister is
not in subjection to such." This contemplated step was the cause, it
would appear, of her going to London. During her abode in the
capital, she obtained introduction to those illustrious personages in
the court who either professed, or were friendly to the reformed
sentiments, among whom were Queen Katharine Parr, the Duchess,
of Suffolk, and other ladies of distinction. She is even said to have
been one of Queen Katharine Parr's maids of honour. To these
ladies, some of whom had experienced domestic trouble from a simi-
lar source, she made known her cause. Whether she persevered in
seeking a divorce is uncertain. The probability is, that being soon
involved in cruel persecution on account of her religion, she aban-
doned all thoughts of prosecuting a cause which, there could be little
doubt, would have gone against her, as her heresy would, by Popish
judges, have been deemed, in those times of judicial corruption, a

140 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

sufficient justification of whatever harshness or even brutality she
had suffered from her husband. She, however, never thought of
returning to him again, and resumed her maiden name.

Before proceeding to narrate the sufferings and martyrdom of this
lady for her adoption of the reformed doctrines, it will be necessary,
for the clearer understanding of the narrative, briefly to bring under
the notice of the reader the leading particulars as to the penal sta-
tute she was accused of violating, and for the violation of which she
was condemned and put to death. This was an act of Parliament
respecting what is commonly called the Six Articles. Henry VIII.,
in his zeal to maintain the Catholic faith, and prompted by the
bishops, especially by Bishop Gardiner, desired the Parliament which
met in 1539 ' to appoint a committee to draw up a series of articles,
expressing the faith of the English Church. The result was, that
six articles were embodied in a bill, which, having passed both
houses of Parliament, in opposition to the influence and arguments
of Archbishop Crannier, who strongly opposed it, 2 and received the
royal assent, thus became the law of England. 3 The act was entitled,
" An act for abolishing diversity of opinion in certain articles of the
Christian religion." The Six Articles, which Fuller, in his usual
quaint manner, has styled "Gardiner's Creed," 4 from the principal
share which that prelate had in this business, were as follows :
" 1. That in the most blessed sacrament of the altar, by the strength
and efficacy of Christ's mighty word (it being spoken by the priest),
is present really, under the form of bread and wine, the natural body
and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary;
and that after the consecration there remaineth no substance of
bread or wine, or any other substance but the substance of Christ,
God and man. 2. That the communion in both kinds is not necessary

1 This Parliament assembled April 28, aud ended June 28.

2 Cromwell, though opposed in sentiment and heart to the bill, gave to it a tem-
porizing assent.

3 Fuller's Church History of Britain, vol. ii., p. 98. Strype's Mem. EccL, vol. i.,
part i., p. 542.

4 Worthies of England, vol. ii., p. 331.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 141

to salvation, by the law of God, to all persons. 3. That priests may
not marry by the law of God. 4. That vows of chastity or widow-
hood, made to God advisedly ' by man or woman, ought to be observed
by the law of God. 5. That it is meet and necessary that private
masses be continued and admitted in this English Church, as by them
good Christian people receive godly consolation and benefit ; 2 and
they are also agreeable to God's law. 6. That auricular confession
is expedient, and necessary to be retained and continued, used, and
frequented, in the church of God.

The act or law as to these six articles was sanctioned by bloody
penalties. For enforcing the first article it was enacted, that who-
ever within the realm of England, or any other part of the king's
dominions, after the 12th of July ensuing, "by word, writing, print-
ing, or otherwise, should publish, preach, teach, affirm, argue, or hold
any opinion " contrary to that article ; or whoever aided and abetted
such as did so, should, on conviction, be adjudged heretics, and should
suffer death by burning, without benefit of abjuring " an unheard of
severity,'' says Hume, "and unknown to the Inquisition itself" with-
out benefit of clergy or sanctuary, and should, as in the case of high
treason, forfeit to the crown all his honours and possessions whatso-
ever. As to the other five articles it was enacted, that speaking,
writing, printing, or otherwise publishing sentiments contrary to
them ; that the marriage of priests ; that the incontinence of unmar-
ried priests ; that abstaining from confession, and from receiving the
eucharist at the accustomed times ; that every such offence commit-
ted after the aforesaid day should, for the first time, be punished by
forfeiture of goods and possessions of whatever kind, and by impri-
sonment during the king's pleasure. The punishment for the second
offence was forfeiture of life and goods, as in the case of felony, with-
out benefit of clergy or sanctuary. The marriages of priests con-
tracted previous to this Parliament were declared void ; and the same

1 " Advisedly " means made above the age of twenty-one, in the case of all except
priests.

2 By this benefit of private masses is meant the helping of souls in purgatory.

142 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

penalties incurred by priests who married were to be enforced against
women who married priests.

For the more effectual execution of these enactments, commis-
sioners were to be appointed in every shire by the authority of the
Parliament, to make inquiries as to the violations of the act. These
commissioners, of whom three were to form a quorum, of which the
archbishop or bishop, or his chancellor, or his commissioner, were
always to be one, were to sit four times at least in the year, and had
full power to take informations, accusations, the depositions of wit-
nesses n ot less than two witnesses being necessary before a jury
of twelve men upon their oaths, and to proceed to a final sentence.
The justices of peace in their sessions, and every steward or under-
steward, or his deputy, in their law-days, were invested with the
same powers.

The act of the six articles afterwards underwent several altera-
tions. As it was first enacted, an offender, when once convicted,
could not save his life by recantation. But by the Parliament held
in 1543, it was decreed/ that for the first offence he should be
admitted to recant in such form as his ordinary should dictate. In
case of his refusal, or if after recantation he offended again, he was,
for the second offence to be admitted to abjure and bear a fagot. 2
Should he refuse life on a condition so humiliating, or should he,
after abjuration, offend the third time, the penalties of law were to
be inflicted without mercy In a subsequent Parliament, held in
1544, 3 other qualifications or alterations on the side of moderation
were made on the act. As it originally stood, when a complaint was
lodged against any of his majesty's subjects for violating the act by
any person, though from pure malice, the accused was immediately
to be indicted. But by this Parliament it was ordained that no

i This session of Parliament closed May 12, 1543.

8 The allusion here is to the public ceremony of recantation, according to which the
person recanting brought a fagot of dry sticks and burned it publicly, to signify that
he was destroying that which should have been the instrument of his death. Calder-
wood's History, vol. i., p. 109 ; and Knox's History, vol. i , p. 58.

3 This session of Parliament closed March 29, 1 544.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 143

person should be brought to trial before the authorized commis-
sioners, upon an accusation of violating the act, till after he had been
legally presented with an indictment, on the oath of twelve men of
reputation, purged of corruption and malice. It was also enacted,
that such accusations or indictments were not admissible, unless
within a year from the time when the offence was committed ; that
the accused should not be arrested or committed to ward before he
was indicted, except by special warrant from the king ; and that a
preacher could not be accused of words publicly spoken against the
six articles, unless within forty days after they were spoken. The
accused had also the right to challenge any juryman.

Such was the state of the law as to the six articles at the time
when Anne Askew fell under its dreadful operation. From the
bloody cruelty with which it was enforced, it received the sobriquet
of "the whip with the six strings." 1 Yet in the face of its terrible
penalties, the reformed doctrines gained ground in different parts
of the country, and even at court.

In consequence of this severe law against heresy, and the cruel
deaths inflicted on heretics, Anne exercised considerable reserve in
disclosing to others her reformed sentiments. But it was difficult
for her to refrain at all times from expressing sentiments, of the truth
and importance of which she was deeply convinced ; and this, com-
bined with her earnest devotion, created suspicions of her heretical
pravity. During her abode in the capital, a worthless Papist, named
Wadloe, a cursitor of the chancery, rented lodgings about the Temple,
next to the house where she had taken up her temporary residence,
with the view of finding grounds upon which to accuse her of heresy,
being probably bribed for the purpose. But he was constrained to
confess to Sir Lionel Throgmorton that she was the most devout
woman he had ever known ; "for," said he, "at midnight she begins
to pray, and ceases not for many hours, when I and others are
addressing ourselves to sleep or to work." 2 She had more malignant

1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v., pp. 262-265, 502-505, 526-528.
2 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part i., pp. 597, 598.

144

Ladies of ttie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

and persevering enemies than Wadloe. Her own husband and the
Romish priests had combined for her destruction. Surrounded by

---. *ir

Anne Askew at her midnight devot:on.

spies, who watched her every word and action, it was hardly possible
for her to escape being ensnared. They succeeded in getting hold of
certain heretical opinions to which she had given utterance. For
example, she had said on one occasion that she would rather read
five lines of the Bible, than hear five masses in the chapel. She had
also expressed her disbelief as to the efficacy of the sacrament of the
eucharist being dependent on the character or intention of the priest ;
and observed, that whatever was the character or intention of the
priest who administered to her the eucharist, he could not prevent
her from receiving spiritually the body and blood of Christ. These
expressions were reported to the legal authorities, and she had not
been long in London when she was arrested on the charge of heresy,
and examined concerning her faith. In all the examinations she
underwent the question most strongly pressed was, what her senti-
ments were as to the doctrine of transubstantiation.
The anxiety evinced, and the arts resorted to, both on this occa-

jflN GLAND.] Anne Askew. 145

sion and at her subsequent examinations, to draw from her an
expression of her sentiments, prove that she had not been given to
disputation, but held her sentiments quietly, her great delight, indeed,
having been in secret devotion, and in reading the Scriptures.

Anne's first examination took place in March, 1545, before a
London inquest, probably a standing one, specially intended for
heretics, at Sadler's Hall, Cheapside. Her principal examinator was
Christopher Dare. His questions related chiefly to transubstantia-
tion, the sacrifice of the mass, the dependence of the efficacy of the
sacrament of the Lord's supper on the good intention of the priest,
and auricular confession. To some of the questions she refused to
answer, not choosing to criminate herself ; others she answered with
great freedom, point, and scriptural accuracy. The questions, with
her answers, taken from her own account, 1 with which we inter-
sperse a few explanatory observations, are as follows

Christopher Dare. " Do you believe that the sacrament upon the
altar is the very body and blood of Christ T

Anne AsJccw. '' Please inform me why Stephen was atoned to
death ?" Had she answered the question in the negative, agreeably
to her sentiments, this would have been to confess herself guilty of

1 Anne while in prison wrote a full account of her examinations, at the earnest request
of certain Christian ladies and gentlemen. It is an artless and an affecting tale, and
proves the writer to have been a woman of no common talents. Bishop Bale published
this account, accompanied with numerous remarks of his own, written iu his peculiar
pungent style, and other particulars he had collected respecting- her birth, marriage,
sufferings, and martyrdom. The work was printed at Marburg, in Hesse, January 16,
1547. It has recently been printed by the Parker Society. Each examination has a
different title-page, but the same wood-cut in the centre, namely, the representation of
an angel holding the Bible, and trampling on a dragon wearing a triple crown. At
these two pieces, edited and published by Bale, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who
had a chief hand in the death of Anne, and whom Bale satirizes as "the Pope's great
dancing bear," was mightily enraged, calling them pernicious, seditious, and slanderous.
On the accession of Edward VI., he wrote from Winchester a long letter of complaint
on the subject to Protector Somerset. His great exceptions were that Bale made her
die a martyr, " whereas she was a sacramentary, and so by the law worthy of the death
she suffered; that he had falsely set forth her examination, misrepresenting it; and
that thereby his late master, King Henry, was slandered, religion assaulted, and the
realm troubled."- Strype's Mem. Eccl.,\ol. ii., part i., p. 56.

146 Ladies oft/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

denying a doctrine, the denial of which had been made capital by
act of Parliament. Determined, therefore, not to put into their
hands the means of putting her to death, she answered Dare's ques-
tion by asking him another.

C. D." I cannot tell."

A. A. "Neither will I tell you whether I do or do not believe
the sacrament upon the altar to be the very body and blood of
Christ."

C. D. " A woman has testified that you told her you had read
in the Scriptures that God was not in temples made with hands."
Her inquisitors understood her to employ these words as an argu-
ment against transubstantiation.

A A. "As to this I would refer you to the 7th chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles, verses 48-50, where Stephen says, ' Howbeit
the mosc High dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; as saith
the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool ; what
house will ye build me 1 saith the Lord ; or what is the place of my
rest?' and to the 17th chapter of the same book, verse 24th, 'God
that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of
heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands."'

C. D. " Why did you say that you would rather read five lines
in the Bible than hear five masses in the church ?"

A. A. " I confess that I said no less, because the one greatly edi-
fies me, the other nothing at all." " And without animadverting upon
the idolatry of the mass, she quoted, in proof of the uselessness of
performing the service connected with it in a dead tongue, the words
of Paul, in 1 Cor. xiv. 8, " If the trumpet give an uncertain sound,
who shall prepare himself to the battle T The apostle, in the
19th verse of the same chapter, still more explicitly says, " In the
church I had rather speak five words with my understanding,
that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand
words in an unknown tongue ;" on which Bishop Bale well ob-
serves, " This proves the temple service of the Papists all the year
to be worth nothing.''

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 147

C. D. " You also said, did you not, that if a wicked priest minis-
tered, it was the devil and not God ?"

A. A. "I deny that I ever said any such thing. What I said
was, that whoever ministered unto me, his bad character could not
injure my faith, but that I, notwithstanding, received in spirit the
body and blood of Christ.

C. D." If a mouse eat the host, does it receive God or no ?"
To this question she made no answer, as it deserved none, but
smiled. And yet the question has been gravely discussed among
learned Popish doctors; and the Pope, it would appear, having given
no infallible deliverance on the subject, they have been divided in
their opinions about it, some asserting that the sacrament eaten of a
mouse is the very and real body of Christ; 1 others, as Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, maintaining, "that a mouse cannot devour
God," though " Christ's body may as well dwell in a mouse as in
Judas." 2 "The sacraments are not eaten of mice," says another,
" though they seem so to be in the exterior similitudes ; for the vir-
tues of holy men are not eaten of beasts when they are eaten of
them." "That which is material," says a fourth, "in the bread, is
consumed by digestion ; but that which is spiritual remaineth uncor-
rupted." 3 Such is a specimen of the gabble of Popish casuistry in
dealing with questions as contemptible as the quidlibets and quod-
libets of the schoolmen, not to speak of their impiety and blasphemy.
C. D. " What are your sentiments concerning confession T
A. A. "I believe, as the apostle James teacbeth, that Christians
ought to confess their faults one to another, and pray one for another."
C. D. " What is your opinion as to the king's book ? '
A. A. "I can pronounce no judgment upon it, as I never saw it."
The book here referred to was the Erudition of a Christian Man.
In 1537 a book, entitled The Institution of a Christian Man, was com-
piled by a commission, consisting of several bishops and other divines,

1 Three Notable and Godly Sermons, by W. Peryn, friar.

2 See the Bishop's Detection of the Devil's Sophistry, pp. 16, 21.

3 Bishop Bale's Select Works, p. 154.

148 Ladies nft/te Reformation. [ENGLAND.

appointed by Henry VIII., and was intended to be a standard of
.orthodoxy to the nation. 1 It asserted the leading dogmas of Popery,
with some leanings towards the sentiments of the Eeformers. In
1543 a second edition, with alterations and additions so numei'ous as
to make it almost a new work, was published by the authority of the
king, under the superintendence of Archbishop Cranmer and other
learned bishops and divines. This book, which is the one referred
to in the question, was entitled the Erudition of a Christian Man;
and among other things it included the seven sacraments, the ten
commandments, the Lord's Prayer, called the Pater Noster, the Salu-
tation of the Angel, called the Ave Maria, and separate articles on
freewill, justification, good works, and prayer for souls departed.
It made considerably nearer advances to the reformed sentiments
than the former work. In the former the worship of images, pray-
ing to saints, masses for the dead, and various Popish rites were
approved and confirmed. In the latter these points were spoken of
more doubtfully and cautiously, or rejected altogether. An article
on purgatory occupied a prominent place in the former ; in the latter
it is entirely omitted. 2

G. D. " Have you the Spirit of God ?" This he said mockingly.
A. A. " If I have not, I am but a reprobate and a castaway."
C. D. " I have brought a Popish priest to examine you, and he is
at hand." The priest then proceeded to examine her. He asked her,
among other things, what she said as to the sacrament of the altar,
and strongly urged her to give her opinion on this point ; but know-
ing him to be a Papist, and suspecting him of the crafty design of
involving her in the confession of sentiments punishable by death,
she requested to be excused in declining to answer the question.
C. D. " Do you not think that private masses help souls departed ?"
A. A. "It is great idolatry to believe more in these than in the
death which Christ died for us."

1 The Institution of a Christian Man is reprinted in the addenda to the first volume
of Burnet's History of the Reformation.
" Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part i., pp. 485, 436, 583-590.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 149

The examination being closed, she was sent from Sadler's Hall to
the Lord Mayor, Sir Martin Bowes, who, after having, with the
Bishop of London's chancellor, Thomas Bage or Williams, examined
her on the same topics, and received similar answers, illegally ordered
her to be committed to prison. 1 Some of her friends, deeply inte-
rested in her safety, were ready to become her sureties, provided she
could be admitted to bail ; but the Lord Mayor, in answer to her
inquiries, harshly told her that such a favour would not be granted.
She was therefore conducted to the Compter, where she remained
seven days, so secluded that no friend was admitted to speak with
her. A priest, however, was sent by Bonner to examine her again
as to " the sacrament of the altar" and other Popish doctrines. He
affected a humane sympathy for her sufferings, but distrusting his
professions of kindness, she answered his questions with prudent
reserve. " If the host," said he, " should fall, and a beast should eat
it, does the beast receive God or no ?" " Seeing you have taken the
trouble to ask this question," she replied, " I desire you also to take
the trouble to answer it yourself : for I will not, because I perceive
you are come to tempt me."

On the 23d of March her cousin Brittayne, who felt for her deep
sympathy, paid her a visit in the Compter. After an interview, he
immediately repaired to the Lord Mayor, with the view, if possible,
of getting her admitted to bail. But his lordship, with professions
of readiness to do his utmost to befriend her, declared that the sanc-
tion of a spiritual officer, which had been necessary in order to her
committal, was equally necessary in order to her liberation on bail,
and desired him to call upon the Bishop of London's chancellor.
But neither would the chancellor, when waited on, interfere without
the consent of the bishop. He, however, promised to speak to Bon-
ner on the subject, and desired her cousin to call back on the morrow,
when the bishop's pleasure might be known. Brittayne returned on
the morrow to the chancellor, and met at the same time with Bonner, 2

1 In proof that her imprisonment was illegal, see act of Parliament referred to, p. 144.

2 Edmund Bonner, who figures so conspicuously in the prosecution of this lady,

150 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

who appointed her to appear before him for examination on the fol-
lowing day, being the 25th of March, at three o'clock in the afternoon.
The prelate at the same time expressed his desire that Dr. Crome.
Sir William Whitehead, and Huntington, for whom she had a par-
ticular respect, might be present to be able to report from observa-
tion that she was humanely treated a crafty proposal, intended not
to advantage her, but to afford an apportunity of arresting these
gentlemen and throwing them into prison, as he boasted to some of
his own party. He also besought Brittayne to urge her freely to
disclose her sentiments, protesting in the most solemn manner that
her freedom of speech should not be turned to her prejudice, and that
all he should do, did she say anything amiss, would be to put her
right by godly counsel and instruction.

On the 25th of March she was brought before Bouner for exami-
nation. So intent was the blood-thirsty prelate upon extracting
a confession of heresy from her own mouth, by which she might be
condemned without the aid of witnesses, that he again entreated her
cousin Brittayne, who, with several others of her friends, was pre-
sent, to urge her unreservedly to declare her sentiments ; and with
expressions of warm concern for her welfare, and assurances that no
hurt should be done to her for a single word she should utter, he
himself endeavoured to persuade her to speak her mind without
apprehension. " If a man," said he, " have a wound, no wise sur-

was the natural son of John Savage, a richly-beneficed priest in Cheshire, who was the
sou of Sir John Savage, knight of the garter, and privy councillor to King Henry VII.
Savage, the name he inherited from his father, was most befitting him, and he should
never have received another. He was educated at Oxford, and under Henry VIII.,
who appointed him Archdeacon of Leicester, he was employed in several embassies on
the Continent. During this time he had not developed his real character. In 1539,
he was advanced to be Bishop of London by Cromwell and Cranmer, who believed him,
as he pretended to be, a friend to the Reformation. Not long after he appeared in his
true colours. On the enactment of the law of the Six Articles, he immediately erected
his crest, and displayed his fangs and talons. In brutal cruelty he is hardly surpassed
by any name in English history. " He had," says Fuller, "sesqui corpus, a body and
half (but I hope that corpulency without cruelty is no sin) ; and towards his old age
he was overgrown with fat, as Mr. Foxe, who is blamed for having persecuted perse-
cutors with ugly pictures, doth represent him." Worthies of England, vol. ii., pp.
468, 469.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 151

geon would minister to its relief without first seeing it uncovered.
In like manner, I can give you no counsel unless I know wherewith
your conscience is burdened." "My conscience," she replied, "is
clear in all things, and it would appear very foolish to apply a
plaster to a whole skin." She placed no reliance on his professions
of good- will, and as little on his promise and oath ; for what depend-
ence could be placed on the promise and oath of a man who held, as
ah 1 Papists do, that no faith is to be kept with heretics.

The examination was substantially the same with that which she
underwent before Christopher Dare and the Lord Mayor. Bonner,
who was her principal examinator, grossly misrepresented her
answers to Dare and the Lord Mayor, and made every endeavour,
by artfully questioning and cross-questioning her, to extract from
her own mouth a confession of her faith ; but her guarded answers
rendered it impossible to found a charge of heresy upon them. '' I
believe as the Scripture teacheth," was the only reply she would
make to the fatal question, whether the consecrated host is, or is not,
the real body of Christ. To Dr. Standish and other priests, who as-
sisted Bonner in attempting to entangle her, she uniformly answered,
"What I have said to my Lord Bishop of London, I have said."
Standish having desired Bonner to bid her explain the sense in
which she undei'stood the language of Stephen and Paul, as to God's
not dwelling in temples made with hands, she told them that it was
against St. Paul's learning, that she, being a woman, should inter-
pret the Scriptures, especially where so many wise and learned men
were present

Glad woujd her persecutors have been had they been able to
blacken her name with some odious imputation, in addition to the
charge of heresy ; but so unblemished had been her reputation, that
they could accuse her life of nothing inconsistent with the Christian
character. " There are many," said Bonner, not daring to make a
direct charge against the sanctity of her life, but malignantly
intending to convey insinuations against it, " that read and know
the Scripture, and yet do not follow it, nor live according to it."

152

Ladies of t/te Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

" I would, my lord," said she, with the confidence of conscious integ-
rity, " that all men knew my conversation and living in all points ;
for I am so sure of myself this hour, that there is none able to
prove any dishonesty in me. If you know any that can do it, I
pray you bring them forth."

Failing to extract from her answers any proof of heresy, Bonner.
whose ensnaring arts were not yet exhausted, retired to commit to
writing the substance of her answers, as he pretended, which she
might subscribe as the confession of her faith. The document he
drew up, which was false in every particular, is as follows : " Be it
known to all faithful people, that as touching the blessed sacrament
of the altar, I do firmly and undoubtedly believe that, after the
words of consecration be spoken by the priest, according to the
common usage of this Church of England, there is present really
the body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, whether the minis-
ter that doth consecrate be a good man or a bad man ; and that,
also, whensoever the said sacrament is received, whether the
receiver be a good man or a bad man, he doth receive it really and

corporally. And, moreover, I do be-
lieve, that whether the said sacrament
be then received of the minister, or else
reserved to be put into the pix, 1 or to
be brought to any person that is impo-
tent or sick, there is the very body and
blood of our said Saviour. So that,
whether the minister or the receiver
be good or bad, yea, whether the sacra-
ment be received or reserved, always
there is the blessed body of Christ
really. And this thing, with all other

1 The pix is a covered vessel, various in form and material, used in Catholic countries
as a depository for the consecrated wafer or host. One form of this vessel is shown
in the engraving, but it was sometimes simply a chalice with a cover, and at others, a
small square chest or box These were not unfrequently very richly ornamented,
made of the richest metals, and enriched with costly gems.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Askew.

153

things touching this sacrament, and other sacraments of the church,
and all things else touching the Christian belief, which are taught and
declared in the king's majesty's book, lately set forth for the erudi-
tion of the Christian people, I, Anne Askew, otherwise called Anne
Kyme, do truly and perfectly believe, and so do here presently con-
fess and acknowledge. And here I do promise, that henceforth I
shall never say or do anything against the premises, or against any
of them. In witness whereof, I, the said Anne, have subscribed my
name unto these presents." l

Having read to her this fabrication, in which she is made to
acknowledge, in the most explicit terms, doctrines which in her exa-
minations she had steadily refused to admit, he asked her whether
it did or did not contain the confession of her faith. " I believe," she
answered, " as much thereof as is agreeable to the Holy Scripture,
and I desire that you will add to it this sentence." The bishop
stormed, and cried out in a furious rage that he was not to be die-

Anne Askew examined before Bonner,

tated to by her as to what he should write ; and required her to

affix her name to the document. She at first objected, but impor-

' Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v., pp. 537-553.

154 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tuned by her friends, she appended the following sentence, "I,
Anne Askew, do believe all things contained in the faith of the
Catholic Church." Had she used the phrase, " the Roman Catholic
Church," this would have satisfied the prelate ; but rightly judging
that by " the Catholic Church" she meant such pestiferous sects as
the Waldenses, Albigenses, Hussites, Wickliffites, and the numerous
heretics then living in the different countries of Europe, and that
she hereby ignored the Popish Church as a part of the Church of
Christ, he became yet more infuriated, and rushed into an adjacent
chamber. " For God's sake, treat her kindly," said her cousin Brit-
tayne, alarmed at the bishop's wrath. "She is a woman," said
Bonner, his choler towering still higher, " and I am nothing deceived
in her." " Take her as a woman, then," said Brittayne gently, wish-
ing to allay his fury, " and do not set her weak woman's wit to your
lordship's great wisdom." Bonner's resentment, which at first
seemed uncontrollable, was at last so far overcome that he was per-
suaded to come out of the chamber, and take her name, with the
names of her sureties, who were Brittayne and Mr. Spilman of
Gray's Inn. This being done, it was expected that, agreeably to the
forms of law, she should be immediately admitted to bail. But Bon-
ner, reluctant to let go his grasp of the victim, ordered her to be led
to prison until the next day, when he again commanded her to ap-
pear in Guildhall, which she did, and was again conducted thence to
prison. At last, by the exertions of her friends, the bishop's storm
was in some measure laid, and a bail-bond being taken of her sureties,
she was set at liberty.

Anne felt deeply grateful to her cousin Brittayne, and Mr. Spil-
man, who had brought her out of prison. But her enemies, resolved
to bring her to the stake, did not give her a long respite. Bonner
and Gardiner had already tasted blood, and it was their purpose now,
when heretics were in their power, to strike terror by making a ter-
rible example of this lady.

In less than three months after, she was again in the hands of her
persecutors. On Saturday, June 19, she and her husband, Mr. Kyme,

ENGLAND."] Anne Askew. 155

were brought before the lords of privy council at Greenwich. He
was dismissed ; but " for that she was very obstinate and heady in
reasoning of matters in religion, seeing no persuasion of good reason
could take place, she was sent to Newgate, to remain there to answer
to the law." '

She was again examined on Friday, the 25th, and her examination
lasted about five hours. "Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor of Eng-
land, 2 having asked her what was her opinion as to the bread in the
eucharist, she answered, " I believe that as oft as I, in a Christian
congregation, receive the bread in remembrance of Christ's death,
and with thanksgiving, according to his holy institution, I receive
therewith the fruits also of his most glorious passion." Gardiner
required her to give a direct answer, charged her with speaking in
parables, and, forgetting the dignity becoming a member of the privy
council, scornfully called her a parrot. " I am ready," she calmly
replied to his insolent sneers, " to suffer all things at your hands ;
not only your rebukes, but all that shall follow besides, yea, and that
gladly." Others of the council reprimanded her for not being free
and ingenuous.

On the following day she was examined on the same vexed ques-

1 Harl. MS., 256, fol. 224, b., quoted in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible,
vol. ii., p. 193.

2 Thomas Wriothesley " was a warm adherent of the old faith ; and, with the Duke
of Norfolk and Gardiner, he formed the party actually opposed to the Reformation,
who procured the passing of 'the six articles.'" Lord Campbell's Chancellors of
England, vol. i., p. 628. On the 1st of January, 1543, he was created by Henry VIII.
Baron of Titchborne, and on April 30th, next year, Chancellor of England. He was
a man of undoubted ability; but that he was, at the same time, narrow-minded,
bigoted, and cruel, is abundantly proved from his treatment of Anne Askew. On the
accession of Edward VI. he was removed from his place as Lord Chancellor, though, as
some compensation, he was raised to be Earl of Southampton. He was also excluded
from the privy council, but was afterwards restored to it. He died at his house in
Holborn, on the 30th of July, 1550. Fuller's Worthies of England, vol. ii., p. 70. It
is worthy of notice that the famous Rachel, wife of the illustrious patriot, William,
Lord Russell, who suffered on the scaffold in the reign of Charles II., was the great-
great-grand-daughter of Wriothesley, and her father dying without male issue, she was
his sole heiress. See Introduction to Lady Russell's Letters. Her son, who succeeded
his grandfather in 1700, became Duke of Bedford ; and thus, the old Chancellor
Wriothesley is at present represented by that honourable family.

156 Ladies of ilie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tion. After being teazed for some time with interrogations, she was
ordered to stand aside till the lords of council should consult to-
gether. During the interval Lord Lisle, Lord Essex, and Gardiner,
entering into conversation with her, earnestly pressed her to confess
the sacrament to be flesh, blood, and bone. " It is a great shame
for you," said she to Lord Parr and Lord Lisle, whose sentiments,
she had reason to believe, very much coincided with her own, " to
counsel contrary to your knowledge." The Lord Chancellor having
renewed the examination, her answers as to the corporal presence
not satisfying Gardiner, that bloody prelate cried out, " You will be
burned." " I have searched all the Scriptures," she promptly rejoined,
unterrified by his sanguinary threat, " yet could I never find that
either Christ or his apostles put any creature to death." She was
again commanded to stand aside ; and to Mr. Paget, who, its seems,
had a greater share in her confidence than the others, she then opened
her mind more freely. "How can you avoid," said he, "the very
words of Christ, 'Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you.' "
" Christ's meaning," she replied, " in that passage, is similar to the
meaning of these other places of Scripture, ' I am the door,' ' I am the
vine,' ' Behold the Lamb of God,' ' That rock was Christ,' ' and such
like. You are not in these texts to take Christ for the material
thing which he is signified by, for then you will make him a very door,
a vine, a lamb, a stone, quite contrary to the Holy Ghost's meaning.
All these indeed do signify Christ, even as the bread signifies his
body in that place. And though he said there, ' Take, eat this in
remembrance of me,' yet did he not not bid them hang up that bread
in a box and make it a god, or bow to it."

Not only did Anne condemn the absurd doctrine of transubstan-
tiation, but what shocked her pious mind still more was the Popish
adoration of the host, making the consecrated wafer a god, and yield-
ing to it divine worship. Idolatry more manifest than this there
cannot be. The body of Christ being now in heaven, and there being
only bread and wine in the eucharist as our senses, our reason, and
1 John x. 7; xv. 1 ; i. 36; 1 Cor. x 4.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 157

the Scriptures unitedly testify the obvious conclusion is, that those
who adore the host adore bread alone, and are therefore idolaters.
This outmatches, in folly and grossness, even much of the heathen
idolatry. " Among the old idolaters," says Bale, " some took the sun,
some the moon, some the fire, some the water, with such other like,

for their gods Now come our doting Papists here, wading yet

deeper in idolatry, and they must have bread for their god, yea, a
wafer-cake, which is scarce worthy to be called bread. In what sor-
rowful case are Christian people now-a-days, that they may worship
their Lord and Eedeemer, Jesus Christ, in no shape that his heavenly
Father hath set him forth in, but in such a shape only as the wafer-
baker hath imagined by his slender wit! God's creatures are they
whom the idolatrous took for their gods, but the cake is only the
baker's creature, for he alone made it bread, if it be bread."

On Sabbath, the day after her examination, Anne being seized
with severe sickness, and thinking herself dying, earnestly requested
that Mr. Latimer ' might be permitted to visit her. She felt desir-
ous of opening up the state of her mind to this excellent man, and of
receiving from him instruction and comfort. But her request was
denied.

Under her present and prospective sufferings, this confessor betook
herself to Him who has ever proved the unfailing refuge of His
people in the time of trial ; and, sustained by the power of His grace

1 This was the famous Reformer and martyr, Hugh Latimer, formerly Bishop of
Worcester. The act of the six articles placed him at the mercy of his persecutors.
Upon the passing of that act, he resigned his bishopric, and returned to a private
life. On laying aside his robes of office, which was on the 1st of July, 1539, he exult-
iiigly exclaimed, " I am now rid of a great burden, and never felt my shoulders so
light before." Gardiner having sent for him. and expressed surprise that he would
not submit to the authority of the traditions then enjoined by the Council, Latimer
answered, " I will take the Word of God alone as my rule, and rather than depart one
jot from it, I will submit to be torn in pieces by wild horses." The sequel proved that
this was not an empty boast Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part 1, pp. 542-546. Soon
after he was imprisoned in the Tower, where he was lying at the time when Anne
Askew expressed a strong desire to see him, and where he continued to lie till the
accession of Edward VI., when he was releaseil, after an imprisonment of more than
six years. As is well known, he suffered at the same stake with Ridley, at Oxford,
on the 16th of October, 1555.

158 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

and the consolations of His Spirit, she was enabled to glory even in
tribulation ; to rejoice that her afflictions, though severe in themselves,
were yet light compared with that far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory which was prepared for her in heaven. This is evi-
dent from the poem she composed during her imprisonment in New-
gate. In this poem, which has been justly praised for its simple
beauty and sublimity of sentiment, and for its euphony, too, when com-
pared with the poetry of even more than a century later, she declares
her resolution, by Divine grace, to stand by the truth of Christ even
in the face of death ; celebrates the power of faith in overcoming the
united opposition of earth and hell ; rejoices in Christ, assured that
he was on her side, and would finally deliver her from all evil ; be-
seeches God, on whom she cast all her care, to strengthen her by his
grace, and to fight her battles, that her soul might escape her nume-
rous enemies uninjured; denounces the tyranny, oppression, and
cruelty which had usurped the throne of justice ; anticipates the
awful doom awaiting unjust judges at the great day of righteous
retribution ; and closes with an earnest prayer to God for forgive-
ness to her persecutors.

Like as the armed knight,

Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight,

And Christ 1 shall be iny shield.

Faith is that weapon strong,

Which will not fail at need :
My foes, therefore, among

Therewith will I proceed.

As it is had in strength

And force of Christ's way,
It will prevail at length,

Though all the devils say nay.

Faith in the fathers old

Obtained righteousness ;
Which makes me very bold

To fear no world's distress.

1 " Faith " in another copy.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 159

I now rejoice in heart,

And hope bids me do so ;
For Christ will take my part,

And ease me of my woe.

Thou say'st, Lord, whoso knock

To them wilt thou attend :
Undo, therefore, the lock,

And thy strong power send.

More enemies now I have

Than hairs upon my head :
Let them not me deprave,

But fight thou in my stead.

On thee my care I cast,

For all their cruel spite :
T set not by their haste,

For thou art my delight.

I am not she that list

My anchor to let fall,
For every drizzling mist,

My ship substantial.

Not oft use I to write,

In prose, nor yet in rhyme;
Vet will I show one sight

That I saw in my time.

1 saw a royal throne,

Where Justice should have sit,
But in her stead was one

Of moody, cruel wit.

Absorbed was righteousness,

As of the raging flood ;
Satan, in his excess,

Sucked up the guiltless blood.

Then thought I, Jesus, Lord,

"When thou shalt judge us all
Hard is it to record

On these men what will fall.
Yet, Lord, I thee desire,

For that they do to me,
Let them not taste the hire

Of their iniquity. l

1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v.. Appendix, No. xix.

160 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Anne had hitherto cautiously avoided, under all her examinations,
giving a definite answer as to the deadly question of transubstan-
tiation. But at last convinced, from the persevering zeal with
which the proceedings against her were conducted, that she could
only avert the dreadful fate of perishing at the stake by recantation,
and resolved that, by the grace of God, she never would recant, she
at last thought it needless any longer to conceal her sentiments. She
therefore wrote to the Privy Council the confession of her faith as to
the eucharist, in these terms : " That the sacramental bread was left
us to be received with thanksgiving in remembrance of Christ's
death, the only remedy of our souls' recovery, and that thereby we
also receive the whole benefits and fruits of his most glorious passion."

On Monday, June 28, she was brought before the council at Guild-
hall. They told her that she was a heretic, and condemned by the
law, unless she fell from her opinion. She repelled the imputation
of being a heretic: "Neither do I deserve," she added, " death by
the law of God. But as concerning the faith which I uttered and
wrote to the council, I will not deny it, because I know it to be
true." They next desired to know whether she denied the sacrament
of the eucharist to be Christ's body and blood. " Yes," she unhesi-
tatingly answered, " for the same Son of God that was born of the
Virgin Mary is now glorious in heaven, and will come again from
thence at the last day in like manner as he went up. And as to
what you call your god, it is but a piece of bread. As an additional
proof of this (mark it when you please), let it lie in the box but
three months and it will be mouldy, and so turn to nothing that is
good. I am therefore persuaded that it cannot be God." "Do
you deny the bread in the pix to be God?" She replied "that
God is a spirit," and not a wafer-cake, and " that he is to be wor-
shipped in spirit and in truth," not by the impious superstitious
homage paid to a wafer, converted, by Popish jugglery, into a god.
" Do you plainly deny Christ to be in the sacrament T her interro-
gators further demanded. " I believe," she answered, " the eternal
Son of God not to dwell there," in proof of which she referred to

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 161

various passages of Scripture, 1 concluding with these words, "I
neither wish death nor yet fear his might. God have the praise
thereof, with thanks." They requested her to take the benefit of a
priest, at which she smiled, observing that she would confess her
faults to God, from whom alone forgiveness could be obtained.

It was probably at this time that Sir Martin Bowes, the Lord
Mayor, an ignorant, blustering Popish devotee, 2 who, it appears, was
sitting with the council, asked leave to examine the prisoner. Leave
being granted, he tried his skill in the interrogatory art, in whioh,
from Anne's adroitness, he made a somewhat ludicrous figure. Lord
Mayor. " Thou foolish woman, sayest thou that the priest cannot
make the body of Christ ?" Anne Askew. " I say so, my lord, for I
have read that God made man, but that man can make God I never
yet read, nor I suppose ever shall." L. M. " Thou foolish woman,
after the words of consecration, is it not the Lord's body V A. A.
" No, it is but consecrated or sacramental bread." L. M. " What if
a mouse eat it after the consecration ? What shall become of the
mouse ? What sayest thou, foolish woman T A. A. " What shall
become of it, say you, my lord?' L. M." I say that that mouse is
damned." A. A. "Alack, poor mouse!" "By this time/' says
Strype, " my lords heard enough of my Lord Mayor's divinity, and
perceiving that some could not keep from laughing, proceeded to the
butchery they intended before they came thither." 3

1 As Acts vii. 48-50 ; xvii. 24 ; and Matt. xxiv. 23, 24. She also quoted a passage
quite in point from the History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon, in the
Apocrypha :" Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and there was spent
upon him every day twelve great measures of fine flour, and forty sheep, and six vessels
of wine. And the king worshipped it, and went daily to adore it ; but Daniel wor-
shipped his own God. Then said the king unto him, Thinkest thou not that Bel is a
living God? seest thou not how much he eateth and drinketh every day? Then
Daniel smiled and said, O king, be not deceived : for this is but clay within, and brass
without, and did never eat or drink any thing."

2 " Sir Martin left a sum for an anniversary sermon to be preached in St. Mary,
Woolnoth, where the venerable John Newton so long proclaimed such doctrine as the
poor mayor never heard. Bowes lies there interred, under a close marble tomb."
Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii., p. 191.

3 Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part i, pp. 597, 598.

162 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Anne's plain confessions being deemed sufficient proof of her hereti-
cal guilt, she, with two other persons, were condemned to be burned,
without a formal trial by jury, to which they were entitled. " On
Monday " [June 28], says a contemporary authority, " Mrs. Askew,
Christopher White, and a tailor [Adams], who came from Colchester
or thereabout, were arraigned at Guildhall, and received their judg-
ment of my Lord Chancellor [Wriothesley] and the council, to be
burned, and so were committed to Newgate again." ' Wriothesley
and Gardiner were the leading agents in their condemnation.

From the relentless severity with which the six articles were at
this period enforced, there was little hope that Anne, now when the
condemning sentence had been pronounced upon her, would escape.
Gardiner, whose chosen function was the suppression of heresy by
the most desperate means, and who never swerved from pursuing
his bloody purposes to their appalling issue, had her fully in his
power ; and what could she expect from him ? Of only one resource
did she attempt to take advantage, that of appealing from the unjust
tribunal that condemned her to the mercy of the sovereign. This
resource, indeed, offered but a very slender ground of hope. Henry
had never been particularly susceptible to the emotions of pity, and
during his latter years his heart had become hardened into stone by
the many cruelties he had committed. He who " sent a minister or
a wife to the scaffold with as little compunction as he would have
shown in ordering a dog to be drowned," was not likely to feel the
smallest concern about the life of any other human being. Besides,
still believing, as he had been taught from infancy, that heresy was
the greatest of all crimes, and still proud of the title he had earned
as "defender of the faith," he held it to be an acceptable service to
the Deity, as well as necessary to establish his reputation for ortho-
doxy, to burn heretics, the punishment denounced against them by
the Eomish Church, and especially to burn whoever denied transub-
stantiation, his favourite doctrine. Anne, however, purposed to

1 Otwel Johnson to his brother, 2d July, quoted in Anderson's Annals of the English
Uille, vol. ii., p. 195.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 163

make the appeal, and wrote out a brief confession of her faith, to be
laid before the monarch, in which, while asserting the injustice of
her condemnation, she speaks, perhaps intentionally, of the eucharist
in language so general and indefinite, that it would be impossible for
the monarch to gather from it whether she believed in transubstan-
tiation or no. " I, Anne Askew, of good memory, although God
hath given me the bread of adversity and the water of trouble, yet
not so much as my sins have deserved, desire this to be known to
your grace : That forasmuch as I am by the law condemned for an
evil-doer, here I take heaven and earth to record, that I shall die in
my innocence : And according to what I have said first, and will say
last, I utterly abhor and detest all heresies. And as concerning
the supper of the Lord, I believe so much as Christ hath said
therein, which he confirmed with his most blessed blood. I believe
also so much as he willed me to follow and believe, and so much as
the Catholic Church of Him doth teach : for I will not forsake the
commandment of his holy lips. But look ! what God hath charged
me with his mouth, that have I shut up in my heart. And thus
briefly I end, for lack of learning. " ANNE ASKEW."

This confession of her faith she sent to Wriothesley, the Lord
Chancellor, accompanied by the following letter, in which she requests
him to communicate it to the king :

" The Lord God, by whom all creatures have their being, bless
you, with the light of his knowledge. Amen.

" My duty to your lordship remembered, &c. May it please you
to accept this my bold suit, as the suit of one who, upon due conside-
ration, is moved to the same, and hopeth to obtain. My request to
your lordship is only that it may please your lordship to be a means
for me to the king's majesty, that his grace may be certified of these
few lines, which I have written concerning my belief ; which, when
it shall be truly compared with the hard judgment given [against]
me for the same, I think his grace shall well perceive me to be
weighed in an uneven pair of balances. But I remit my matter and
cause to Almighty God, who rightly judge th all secrets. And thus

164 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

I commend your lordship unto the governance of Him, and fellow-
ship of all saints. Amen. By your handmaid, ANNE ASKEW."

It would be a mistake to conclude, as some did, from this appeal to
the monarch, that Anne shrunk from the dreadful fate to which she
had been doomed. " O friend," said she, in a letter to her fellow-
sufferer, John Lascels, who had been her tutor, "most dearly be-
loved in God, I marvel not a little what should move you to judge
in me so slender a faith as to fear death, which is the end of all
misery. In the Lord I desire of you not to believe of me such
wickedness ; for I doubt it not, but God will perform his work in
me, like as he hath begun." Her appeal proceeded not from the
fear of death, but from the principle on which she had all along
acted, that she was not only entitled, but bound to avail herself of
every legitimate and honourable means of defending her liberty and
life, of pleading for them on the grounds of universal justice, if not
of English law, and of submitting to death only when she could pre-
serve her life in no other way than by denying the truths of Christ.
This is the rule laid down in the New Testament for the guidance of
Christians, on their falling into the hands of their persecutors, and
by this rule were the apostles governed on every such occasion.
Had Anne, like the Christians of the third century, actuated by a
false heroism, delivered herself up to her persecutors, and evinced a
carelessness about life, and an impatience to earn the crown of mar-
tyrdom, instead of making a calm and spirited defence, exercising
caution under her examinations, that she might not criminate her-
self, 1 and appealing to the monarch after being condemned, she
would have been guilty of violating apostolic precept and example.
But, like the great body of the martyrs of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century throughout Europe in England, France, Spain,
and Italy she understood divine truth and Christian duty better
than the Christian confessors and martyrs of the third century.

1 This caution she had carefully observed till her last examination at Guildhall,
when she saw that her death had been determiued upon, unless she should distinctly
recant.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 165

Anne's appeal to her sovereign, as might have been expected, was
in vain. Endeavours were, however, made to bring her to recant,
and, by yielding, she probably might still have saved her life. On
the 13th of July, she was brought from Newgate to the Sign of the
Crown, where Mr. Eich, Mr. Nicholas Shaxton, who had recently
renounced the reformed faith, 1 and the Bishop of London, did their
utmost by promises, as threatenings had been found ineffectual, to
persuade her to abjure her faith. The gentler arts had as little suc-
cess as the sterner appliances. She was neither to be smiled nor
frowned into a denial of the truth. Shaxton in particular, whom
she regarded as a traitor to her Lord and Saviour, might as well
have spared his pains. She told him that it had been good for him
had he never been born. She was next sent to the Tower, where
remaining till three o'clock in the afternoon, she then underwent a
new examination.

One great object of this examination was to extract from her
discoveries as to others, her instructors, or participators in heresy,
and especially as to several ladies and gentlemen of the court, who
were suspected of holding the reformed opinions. The ladies of
rank belonging to the court, whom the persecutors were extremely
anxious to involve in a charge of heresy, were the Duchess of
Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, Lady
Denny, and Lady Fitzwilliams. 2 From the kindness of soms of

1 Shaxton, as we have seen before, was raised to the see of Salisbury by Queen
Anne Boleyn. On the passing of the act of the six articles, rather than renounce
his sentiments, he resigned his bishopric, and languished seven years in prison. At
length he was indicted for denying transubstautiation, and sentenced to the flames.

" The prospect of the fiery trial overcame his courage, and Bishops Bouner and Heath
having visited him by the orders of the king, he professed to be convinced by their
arguments, and subscribed a paper expressing his belief in the six articles; upon
which he was pardoned and set at liberty, on the 13th of July, 1545. He subsequently
took an active part in the persecution of the Protestants, both in the reigns of
Henry VIII. and of Mary. He was poorly rewarded by the party to which he went
over, having been merely constituted a suffragan iu the diocese of Ely, in which situa-
tion he died in 1556. Burnet's Hist. Records, vol. i., pp. 386, 526. Strype's Hem.
Eccl, vol. i., part i., pp. 542-546. Many of Shaxton's letters are contained in Mis-
cellaneous Correspondence, second series, vol. xxxvii.

2 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. i., part i., p. 597.

166 Ladies oftfo Reformation. [ENGLAND.

these ladies in sending her money for her support in prison, it
was concluded that she and they had been on intimate terms, and
hopes were entertained that she might be made their accuser.
Aware of their malignant purpose, and too generous to betray her
friends, she would disclose nothing as to what she knew of their
religious sentiments. From the examination it appears that, dur-
ing her imprisonment, she had chiefly, if not altogether depended
for 'her subsistence upon the private bounty of charitable indivi-
duals. " Tell us," said her examinators, " how you were maintained
in the Compter, and who willed you to stick to your opinion."
" There was no creature," she replied, " that strengthened me therein.
And as for the help which I had in the Compter, it was by means of
my maid ; for as she went abroad in the streets, she made moan to

Anne i Maiu lottciting aid from the Apprentice.

the prentices, and they by her did send me money, but who they were
I never knew." "Were there not several ladies who sent you money ?"
they asked. " There was a man in a blue coat," she answered, " who
delivered me ten shillings, and said that my Lady of Hertford sent
it me ; and another, in a violet coat, gave me eight shillings, and said
my Lady Denny sent it me. Whether it was true or not I cannot
tell ; for I am not sure who sent it me, but as the maid said."

Defeated in their attempts to inveigle Anne into a discovery of
the heresy of these ladies and of others, they determined to gain

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 167

their object by putting her to the torture, a horrible custom then
common in judicial proceedings, and not altogether abolished in
England for nearly a century later. " They did put me on the rack,"
says she, " because I confessed no ladies or gentlewomen to be of my
opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time." She was let down
into a dungeon in the Tower, where Sir Anthony Knevet, the lieu-
tenant, ordered the jailer to apply the instrument of torture. This
being done, without any of the wished-for discoveries being extorted,
the lieutenant ordered her to be taken down. But Wriothesley, the
chancellor, incensed at her obstinacy in making no confessions, and
observing that she lay quiet without uttering a cry or groan, insisted
that the torture should be renewed. Touched with compassion, the
lieutenant objected, excusing himself from the weak and delicate
frame of the young lady. The proud chancellor, whose indignation
waxed hotter at finding that he, the highest judge in the land,
should be disobeyed, threatened him with the displeasure and ven-
geance of the sovereign. But the lieutenant was not to be brow-
beaten and menaced into a mean-spirited compliance. Upon which
the chancellor and Eichard Eich, afterwards lord chancellor, one
of Bonner's creatures, throwing off their gowns, plied the machine
with their own hands, first asking Anne whether she was with child.
" Ye shall not need to spare for that," she answered, " do your wills
upon me." With great barbarity they continued to stretch her on
the rack, 1 till her bones were almost broken and her joints pulled

1 The torture of the rack, or stretching,
was applied in various ways, but it is ordi-
narily understood as the fearful agonies
produced by the extension of the criminal
or sufferer on the machine shown in the
engraving;. This consisted of two rollers
or windlasses, placed horizontally, seven
or eight feet apart, to which the arms and
feet were fastened by sharp cutting cords;
the windlasses were then turned by levers
uutil the body of the tortured was in a
state of tension, sometimes so great as not only to dislocate the limbs, but also to tear
the muscles, and the agony was farther increased by the cords cutting through the
flesh of the wrists and ankles to the very bone.

168 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

asunder; 1 but her fortitude was not to be subdued. Torture,
which has often wrung secrets from the stoutest hearts, and made
them betray their dearest relatives and friends, was applied in vain
to this gentle and delicate female. This she might suffer till even
life itself was extinguished ; but not a word would she utter crimi-
nating others, and more especially the noble ladies from whom she
had received the warmest kindness and sympathy. Baffled in their
object, Wriothesley and Rich desisted, afraid lest she should die
among their hands. Immediately upon their loosing her from the
rack, she swooned from the dreadful agony. By the use of means
they succeeded in recovering her to consciousness, after which she
was kept sitting two long hours on the bare floor disputing with the
chancellor, who, notwithstanding his ruthless inhumanity, urgently
importuned her, with great professions of good-will, to renounce her
faith. " But," says she, " my Lord God I thank his everlasting
goodness gave me grace to persevere, and will do, I hope, to the
very end. Then," she adds, " was I brought to a house, and laid in
a bed, with weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job ; I
thank my Lord God therefor." By the torture she lost the use of
her limbs, and was left in a condition so dangerous that she could
not have lived long, though her enemies had spared her the fire ;
but severe as were her bodily agonies, it was a great alleviation to
think that under the torture she had said nothing to peril the safety
of any Christian friend.

Wriothesley and Rich, immediately after leaving the Tower, pro-
ceeded on horseback to the court by land, while the humane lieu-
tenant, taking boat, proceeded in haste by water, that he might, if
possible, arrive before them, and obtain the royal ear before it was
prejudiced against him by their misrepresentations. He was the
first in reaching the court, and being admitted into his majesty's
presence, represented the whole matter exactly as it stood how
Anne Askew had been tortured how, not knowing his majesty's
pleasure, he refused, at the simple bidding of the chancellor, to pro-
> Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v., pp. 537-553.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 169

long her torture, which, from compassion, he could not find in his
heart to do and humbly craved forgiveness if he had thereby
offended his majesty. The king, who seemed somewhat displeased
with the extreme severity of the chancellor and Rich, approved of
the lieutenant's conduct, and dismissed him with assurances of con-
tinued favour. The officers of the Tower, who much respected the
lieutenant, were anxiously waiting for his return, and were delighted
to hear of his gracious reception at court. 1 It would have been
honouring to the memory of Henry, and a redeeming act in his
history, amidst the numerous atrocities by "which it is blackened,
had he given orders that the proceedings against this lady should
be stopped. But an idea so merciful seems never to have entered his
mind ; and the displeasure he expressed at the severity of the chan-
cellor and of Rich, proceeded, there is reason to believe, merely from
a capricious impulse, and not from sentiments of compassion, which,
if he ever felt, were, " like angels' visits, few and far between."

The lord chancellor afterwards sent a notification to Anne, assur-
ing her that, provided she would renounce her opinion as to the
eucharist, she should want nothing ; but that if she continued obsti-
nate, she should be forthwith sent to Newgate, and should undergo
the ignominious death to which she had been condemned. Her
reply was brief but decisive " that she would rather die than re-
nounce her faith." In giving this account to a friend, she concludes
with these words, so expressive of her forgiving and pious spirit
" Lord, open the eyes of their blind hearts, that the truth may find
entrance. Farewell, my dear friend, and pray, pray, pray !"

The council, and especially "Wriothesley and Rich, though hardened
by the frequent repetition of cruel deeds, yet not altogether indiffer-
ent to public censure, were anxious to have the torture of Anne
concealed, dreading that they might incur, barbarous as was the age,
the odious imputation of torturing a lady. " I understand," says she,
in a letter to John Lacels, " the council is not a little displeased that
it should be reported abroad that I was racked in the Tower. They
1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v., pp. 537-553.

170 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

say now that what they did there was but to fear me ; whereby I
perceive they are ashamed of their own uncomely doings, and fear
much lest the king's majesty should have information thereof.
Wherefore they would no man to noise it. Well, their cruelty God
forgive them." If the council desired to conceal their barbarity,
Bale was determined to give it the widest publicity : " It is so
honest a part ye have played, that ye will not have it noised. But
I promise you so to divulge this unseemly fact of yours in the Latin,
that all Christendom over it shall be known what ye are."

To damage Anne's reputation in the estimation of the public, and
to abate the sympathy which her condemnation and death might
excite, Bonner and his confederates, after her condemnation, printed
and circulated the paper which he had fabricated, before her libera-
tion after her first imprisonment, as the confession of her faith, '
with her own name as subscribing to it unreservedly, and with the
names of upwards of a dozen of ecclesiastics and laymen appended
to it as witnesses. This paper, which obtained a place in the public
registers, bore the following title : " The true copy of the confession
and belief of Anne Askew, otherwise called Anne Kyme, made
before the Bishop of London, on the 20th of March, in the year of our
Lord God, after the computation of the Church of England, 1544, 2
and subscribed with her own hand, in the presence of the said
bishop and other whose names hereafter are recited, set forth and
published at this present, to the intent the world may see what
credence is now to be given unto the same woman, who in so short
a time hath most damnably altered and changed her opinion and
belief; and therefore rightfully in open court arraigned and con-
demned." The date of the paper is incorrect ; 3 and Anne, as we
have seen, subscribed it only with such qualifications as amounted
to a disavowal of it as the confession of her faith. Upon the moral
baseness of this malicious attempt to blast her good name by a false

1 See p. 152.

2 As at that period the year began on the 25th of March, the date here assigned to
Anne's confession, according to our present computation, would be 20th March, 1545.

3 It should have been dated 25th March, 1546.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 171

imputation, it is unnecessary to dwell. It was worthy of such a
man as Bonner, and of men who identified themselves with a system
which teaches that the end sanctifies the means, and that to forge
false accusations to ruin the credit of heretics is a venial sin, or
rather no sin at all. The evil was that many, and even some Chris-
tian acquaintances, on seeing the paper with the names of so many
witnesses attesting its genuineness, believed that her liberation after
her first imprisonment had been purchased at the price of abjura-
tion. She had an approving conscience, the best of all comforters ;
but still as malicious calumnies, especially when credited by esteemed
friends, cause deep concern to an ingemious mind, she felt uneasy till
she had publicly explained that the circumstances connected with
her release involved no desertion or compromise of principle. She
accordingly drew up a " purgation or answer against the false sur-
mises as to her recantation." " I have read," says she, in this pur-
gation, " the process which is reported of them that know not the
truth, to be my recantation. But as sure as the Lord liveth, I never
meant anything less than to. recant. Notwithstanding this, I con-
fess that in my first troubles I was examined of the Bishop of
London about the sacrament. Yet had they no grant of my mouth
but this, that I believed therein as the Word of God did bind me to
believe. More had they never of me. Then he made a copy, which
is now in print, and required me to set thereunto my hand ; but I
refused it. Then my two sureties did will me in no wise to stick
thereat, for it was no great matter, they said. Then, with much
ado, at the last I wrote thus : ' I, Anne Askew, do believe this, if
God's Word do agree to the same, and the true Catholic Church.'
Then the bishop, being in great displeasure with me, because I made
doubts in my writing, commanded me to prison, where I was a
while; but afterwards, by means of friends, I came out again.
Here is the truth of that matter. And as concerning the thing that
ye covet most to know, resort to John vi., and be ruled always
thereby. Thus fare ye well, quoth Anne Askew."

The number of her enemies, and the many iniquitous forms in

172 Ladies of tJte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

which they had exercised their cruelty upon her, as il to make her
taste again and again the bitterness of death before they committed
her to the excruciating flames, deeply oppressed her spirit for this,
to a pure mind, must ever give dark distressing views of human
nature and extorted from her earnest appeals to the justice and
compassion of God. But it is delightful to witness the meekness of
spirit she cherished towards these miserable and hardened men, even
when she most agonizingly felt the iron entering her soul. She can-
not make her appeal to God against their injustice and cruelty, with-
out, like Christ in his passion, and like the proto-Christian martyr
Stephen, earnestly praying for their forgiveness, and that their
understandings might be enlightened by the knowledge of the truth,
and their hearts changed by Divine grace. " O Lord," says she, in a
brief prayer which she composed and committed to writing when in
prison, " I have more enemies now than there be hairs on my head ;
yet, Lord, let them never overcome me with vain words, but fight
thou, Lord, in my stead, for on thee cast I my care. With all the
spite they can imagine, they fall upon me, who am thy poor creature.
Yet, sweet Lord, let me not set by them that are against me ; for in
thee is my whole delight. And, Lord, I heartily desire of thee that
thou wilt, of thy most merciful goodness, forgive them that violence
which they do and have done unto me. Open also thou their blind
hearts, that they may hereafter do that thing in thy sight which is
only acceptable before thee, and to set thy verity aright without all
vain fantasies of sinful men. So be it, O Lord, so be it !"

When in Newgate she drew up a confession of her faith, probably
with the intention of leaving it as a memorial to her Christian friends.
In this confession, while acknowledging herself to be a sinner before
God, though not a heretic, and while maintaining that she was un-
justly condemned to suffer death, she denies the doctrine of transub-
stantiation, repudiates the authority of traditions, defends the suffi-
ciency of the Scriptures in all matters of Christian faith and practice,
and asserts the offering of the mass to be idolatry. Of this document
the following is a copy : " I, Anne Askew, of good memory, although

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 173

my merciful Father hath given me the bread of adversity and the
water of trouble, yet not so much as my sins have deserved, do con-
fess myself here a sinner before the throne of his heavenly Majesty,
desiring his eternal mercy. And forasmuch as I am by the law
unrighteously condemned for an evil-doer concerning opinions, I take
the same most merciful God of mine, who hath made both heaven
and earth, to record that I hold no opinions contrary to his Holy
Word. And I trust in my merciful Lord, who is the giver of all
grace, that he will graciously assist me against all evil opinions, which
are contrary to his most blessed verity. For I take him to witness
that I do, and will unto my life's end, utterly abhor them to the
uttermost of my power.

" But this is the heresy which they report me to hold : that after
the priest hath spoken the words of consecration, there remaineth
bread still. They both say, and also teach it for a necessary article
of faith, that after those words are once spoken, there remaineth no
bread, but even the self-same body that hung upon the cross on
Good Friday, both flesh, blood, and bone. To this belief of theirs
say I nay. For then were our common creed false, which saith,
' that he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' Lo, this
is the heresy that I hold, and for it must suffer the death. But as
touching the holy and blessed supper of the Lord, I believe it to be
a most necessary remembrance of his glorious sufferings and death.
Moreover, I believe as much therein as my eternal and only Ee-
deemer, Jesus Christ, would I should believe.

" Finally, I believe all those Scriptures to be true which he hath
confirmed with his most precious blood. Yea, and as St. Paul saith,
those Scriptures are sufficient for our learning and salvation that
Christ hath left here with us ; so that I believe we need no unwritten
verities to rule his church with. Therefore, look, what he hath said
unto me with his own mouth in his holy gospel, that have I, with
God's grace, closed up in my heart. And my full trust is, as David
saith, that it shall be ' a lantern to my footsteps ' (Psalm cxix. 105).

174 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

" There be some that do say that I deny the eucharist, or sacrament
of thanksgiving ; but those people do untruly report of me. For I
both say and believe it, that if it were ordered like as Christ insti-
tuted it and left it, a most singular comfort it were unto us all. But
as concerning your mass, as it is now used in our days, I do say and
believe it to be the most abominable idol that is in the world ; for
my God will not be eaten with teeth, neither yet dieth he again.
And upon these words that I have now spoken will I suffer death."

The day of her execution having arrived, 1 she was brought to
Smithfield in a chair ; for she had been racked till the dreadful tor-
ture had deprived her limbs of the power to carry her. Three others
were executed with her for the same opinions, Nicolas Belenean, a
priest of Shropshire, John Adams, a tailor, and John Lacels, a gentle-
man of the family of Gatford in Nottinghamshire, and of the king's
household. The four martyrs were bound to three separate stakes ;
Anne to one stake, to which she was fastened by a chain passing
round her middle ; one of her fellow-sufferers to a second, and the
other two to a third. They mutually encouraged one another to a
calm and willing self-immolation. Anne in particular confirmed the
rest, who, though not deficient in fortitude, 2 became more intrepid

1 According to Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, she was executed about the month
of June; according to Bishop Bale, in his work, De Scriploriuus Britannicis, fol. ed.,
p. 670, on the 16th of July. Southey, in his Book of the Church (vol. ii., p. 92), says,
' The execution was delayed till darkness closed, that it might appear the more dread-
ful " This, there is reason to believe, is a mistake. Executions of this kind in Eng-
land, so far as we have discovered, uniformly took place iu the broad light of day, and
generally in the morning. Southey, even in his second edition, in which he supplies
an omission iu the first an entire want of references does not note his authority for
this statement ; but we apprehend it rests solely on an indefinite expression used in a
brief notice of the martyrdom by an eye-witness, found among Foxe's MSS., and
printed iu Strype's Memorials, vol. i., part i., p. 599. The expression is, " When the
hour of darkness came and their execution," the allusion of the writer, there can be
little doubt, being to these words of Christ to his enemies, "This is your hour and the
power of darkness."

2 Lacels, on returning to prison after his condemnation, was not only tranquil, but
cheerful. To some Christian friends who paid him a visit, though at the risk of their
personal safety, he said, " My Lord Bishop would have me confess the Roman Church
to be the Catholic Church; but that I cannot do, for it is not true." Strype's Mem.
Eccl., vol. i., part i , pp. 599, 600. A letter, which he wrote when in prison, refuting

?_ -J

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 175

on witnessing her invincible constancy, and hearing her Christian
exhortations. The place of execution was defended from the pressure
of the crowd by a rail. In those days unceasing efforts were made
to the last to convert condemned heretics. After they had been
bound to the stake, a Popish priest from a pulpit, which it was com-
mon to have erected beside them, endeavoured to convince them of
their pretended errors, and bring them to recant. In the present
instance the usual practice was followed. But if the object of the
persecutors was to convert the sufferers, they could hardly have made
a worse selection of a priest to officiate. Dr. Shaxton. whom they
had appointed, being a renegade from the reformed faith, his charac-
ter on that account was damaged in the estimation of all the martyrs,
and' especially of Anne, in whose mind he was associated both in
character and in doom with Judas the traitor. Shaxton mounted
the pulpit and began his homily ; but he might as well have spent
his oratory on the desert air. It made no impression on those for
whom it was professedly intended. Anne, who remarkably preserved
her powers of attention and presence of mind at the stake, expressed
her approbation when he spoke the truth ; but her dissent on his
advancing anything contrary to the Scriptures, saying, " There he
misseth, and speaketh without the book." On the conclusion of the
sermon the martyrs began their devotional exercises.

To witness the appalling scene, an immense multitude of spectators
had assembled. Here were to be seen, as at every public execution,
the scum, the most barbarous and brutal of the London population,
who had come out of their dens of filth, and vice, and infamy, from
an all-devouring eagerness to gratify their curiosity, and gorge their
eyes with spectacles of cruelty. Here, too, were the fanatical Papists,
in whom Popery had extinguished the common feelings of humanity
uttering, like fiends in vindictive triumph over the destruction of
their victims, wild cries of jubilee. Wriothesley. Chancellor of Eng-
land, the old Duke of Norfolk, the old Earl of Bedford, the Lord

transubstantiation, and proving that Christ is received in the supper only spiritually,
is preserved iu Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v , pp. 550-553.

176 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Mayor, and several other persons of rank, were all here, sitting on a
bench under St. Bartholomew's Church. They had no commisera-
tion for the sufferers, hut they were afraid of any harm accidentally
befalling themselves. Before the fire was lighted, one of them, under-
standing that a quantity of gunpowder was to be used in the execu-
tion, became alarmed lest the fagots, by the explosion, should come
flying about their ears. His alarm was allayed by the Earl of Bed-
ford, who assured him that, as the gunpowder was lodged about
the persons of the sufferers, with the view of hastening their death,
not under the fagots, there was no danger. All of them, therefore,
remained on the bench, remorselessly looking on till the fire had
consumed the devoted martyrs. Other lords of council were enter-
taining themselves by looking on, leaning over the window of a
neighbouring house. The gratification felt by these Popish council-
lors in witnessing this horrible scene, is not altogether to be accounted
for from the influence of the frequent atrocious punishments inflicted
at that period, in hardening the hearts of all classes. It is very much
to be attributed to the influence of Popery in brutalizing, or rather
demonizing, the human character This is confirmed from the fact,
that in every country, and especially in the most intensely Popish
countries, the execution of heretics was witnessed with every demon-
stration of satisfaction and delight, by Papists of all ages, sexes, and
conditions, from the monarch to the peasant, from " the tender and
delicate lady, that would not adventure to set her foot upon the
ground for delicateness and tenderness," down to the lowest of her
sex ; while yet the execution of ordinary malefactors excited the
compassion of the very same spectators.

Others, however, were present at this tragedy from very different
motives, and witnessed it with very different feelings. " These dread-
ful spectacles," says Southey, " were attended not by the brutal multi-
tude alone," and the brutal of the nobility, " who cam* as to a pastime,
and by those who, for the sake of gratifying their curiosity, chose to
endure the sight : the frieuds and fellow-believers of the sufferer seem
generally to have been present, as an act of duty; they derived,

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 177

from his example, strength to follow it when their hour should come ;
and to him it was a consolation to recognize sympathizing faces
amid the crowd ; to be assured that in his agony he had their silent
but fervent prayers to support him ; and to know that, as faithful
witnesses, they would do justice to his memory, which else was at
the mercy of his enemies. For it was one of the pious frauds of the
Komanists to spread reports that their victims had seen and ac-
knowledged their error, when too late to save their lives, and had
asked pardon of God and man for their heresies with their latest
breath." '

A new temptation to unfaithfulness to God and conscience, this
lady and her fellow-sufferers had to encounter just on the eve of their
execution ; but in the strength of God's grace they nobly overcame
it, and it added "a fresh garland to their crown of martyrdom."
Before the fire was lighted, Wriothesley, the chancellor, sent letters
to Anne, to which was affixed the great seal, offering her the king's
pardon, provided she would abjure her heretical opinions. This he
did in conformity with an Act of Parliament, 1543, by which it was
ordained, that such as were convicted of the violation of the law as
to the six articles, for the first time, should be admitted to recant.
Not a moment did she hesitate as to her duty ; with letters offering
her pardon on such a condition, she would have nothing to do ; she
would not even look at them. " I am not come here," she said heroi-
cally, " to deny my Lord and Master." She indeed appears to have
experienced a large measure of the support and consolations of the
Holy Spirit ; and her very countenance reflected the peace and joy
of her soul. An eye-witness bears testimony, that on the day before
her execution, and on the day of it, " she had an angel's countenance,
and a smiling face." Similar letters were offered to her three fellow-
sufferers, who, imitating her constancy, nobly refused to recant. All
four were therefore dealt with as obstinate, irreclaimable heretics.
The lord mayor, thinking that as they had the offer of their lives
on such easy terms, their blood was on their own heads, and not on
1 The Book of the Church, vol. ii., p. 13.

178 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

his, cried with a loud voice, " Fiat justitia," ' and the fire was imme-
diately kindled.

At the first lighting of the fire, the sky all of a sudden became
gloomy, a thunder-clap was heard, and a slight shower of rain de-
scended. Very different were the interpretations put upon these
phenomena by different spectators, according to their respective reli-
gious creeds. By the reformed party they were accounted tokens
of God's approbation of the martyrs, and of his indignation against
the persecutors. " God knows," said a friendly spectator, " whether
I may truly term it a thunder-crack, as the people did in the gospel,
or an angel's, or rather God's own voice. But, to leave every man to
his own judgment, methought it seemed rather that the angels in
heaven rejoiced to receive their souls into bliss, whose bodies these
Popish tormentors cast into the fire, as not worthy to live any longer
among such hell-hounds." 2 "The sky," says Bale, "abhorring so
wicked an act, suddenly altered colour, and the clouds from above
gave a thunder-clap, not at all unlike to what is written in Psalm
Ixxvi. 8 : 'Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven ; the
earth feared and was still.' The elements both declared therein the
high displeasure of God for so tyrannous a murder of innocents, and
also expressly signified his mighty hand present to the comfort of
them which trusted in him." The Popish priests, on the other hand,
observing the sudden gloom, and hearing the thunder, not doubting
that these were signs of the perdition of the sufferers, cried out with
fanatical fury, gnashing their teeth, "They are damned, they are
damned." 3

The interpretation put upon these phenomena by the Eeformers
has the merit of being humane and pious ; that put upon them by

1 i. e., "Let justice be done."

2 Strype's Mem. Ecd., vol. i., part i., pp. 599, 600.

3 These executions struck terror into the English refugees on the Continent. John
Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, in a letter to Henry Bullin-
ger, without date, hut probably written from Basle about the close of the year 1546,
says, " For his impious mass the king has this last summer committed four respectable
and godly persons to the flames." Zurich Letters, first series, printed for Parker Soc.,
p. 41.

ENGLAND.] Anne Askew. 179

the Papists has the discredit of being savage and vindictive. "Yet
as a guide in determining God's love or hatred towards the sufferers,
we are not disposed to lay much stress on these phenomena, which
were too vague and indefinite to enable either the martyrs or others
to form anything like a correct judgment on the point, and which
might be easily explained from natural causes. As to the martyrs
themselves, they needed no outward signs to convince them that God
loved them. From the workings of love to him in their own hearts,
and from the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit to their adoption,
they knew that he loved them. This knowledge confirmed their
faith and strengthened their courage when they were called to the
honourable though very trying distinction of sacrificing their lives
" for the witness of Jesus, and for the "Word of God ; and because
they would not worship the beast, neither his image, neither would
receive his mark upon their foreheads, nor in their right hands."
It inspired them with the triumphant hope a hope of which the
wicked and cruel men who put them to this terrible death could
not deprive them that the flames which consumed their bodies
Avould be a chariot of fire, in which they would ascend to heaven,
that having suffered for Christ on earth, they might reign with him
there for ever.

Anne Askew, at her martyrdom, was in the twenty-fifth year of
her age, in the prime of youth, in the meridian and summer of her
existence, when life is generally most full of enjoyment, and the
future most kindles into brightness to the eye of youthful hope.
This made the sacrifice she made of her life the nobler, the more
heroic ; for, as Foxe observes, K she might have lived in great wealth
and prosperity, if she would have followed the world rather than
Christ ;" ] and it fixes a blacker, a more indelible brand of infamy
upon the cruelty of her murderers.

1 Acts and Monuments, vol. ii., p. 489.

Balni of Kendl Cutle, We.taiorelnd.

KATHARINE PARR,

SIXTH QUEEN OP HENRY VIII.

CHAPTER I.

FROM HER BIRTH TO THE RETURN OF HENRY FROM FRANCE TO
ENGLAND, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1544.

lATHABINE PARR was born at Kendal Castle, in
Westmoreland, 1 about the year 1513. She was the eld-
9 [!*' N Wr * est daughter of Sir Thomas Parr, of Kendal, knight,
]J^LV^! ky Matilda or Maud Green, his wife, daughter and co-
heiress of Sir Thomas Green, of Boughton and Green's
Norton, in Northamptonshire. At the time of her birth, her father

1 Kendal Castle is situated on a knoll in the middle of a valley, about half-a-raile on
the east side of the town of Kendal. Its situation is both strong and beautiful, com-
manding a delightful prospect of wood, pasture, and running water. In Camden's

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 181

was Master of the Wards and Comptroller of the Household to
Henry VIII. He enjoyed the favour of the monarch, by whom he
was presented with a gold chain, valued at .140. He died in 1517,
leaving Katharine, by his last will, a fortune of .400, a small inherit-
ance for a lady who afterwards became Queen of England. He left
a similar fortune to her only sister, Anne, and bequeathed the gold
chain he had received as a token of the royal favour, to his only sou,
William, afterwards Earl of Essex, and Marquis of Northampton.

Having lost her father when only in her fifth year, Katharine
owed her education mainly to her mother, a woman, it has been
said, of much wisdom and good management, who carefully culti-
vated the talents of all her children. Not only was she educated in
the ordinary branches of learning, in the art of music, in the use of
the needle, then deemed a necessary accomplishment to ladies of the
highest distinction, and in the modern languages, but she was taught
the Latin and Greek tongues, in which, since the revival of letters in
England, it had become fashionable for English ladies of rank to be
instructed. From her good natural abilities, her progress in learning
corresponded to her opportunities and her mother's expectations.
She soon acquired as high a reputation for intelligence and sound
discretion as for learning ; and on reaching womanhood, though of
small stature, she is described by our historians as possessing great
personal beauty ; as remarkable for her amiable, engaging, and po-
lished manners ; and as adorned with many virtues, especially humi-
lity, the crown and ornament of all others.

An anecdote has been recorded, illustrative of her liveliness of
disposition and her ready ingenuity, if not of her ambition in early
life. The belief in astrology, or in the existence of some pre-ordained
and unchangeable connection between the fate of an individual in
life and the position of the stars at his birth, was common at that
time; and Katharine, like many others, consulted some professed

time it was " decaying with age," and in 1670, according to the Pembroke Memoirs, it
was " ruinous." Since that period it has suffered still more from the destroying hand
of time. Beauties of England and Wales, vol. xv., p. 193. The prefixed engraving
represents it in its present state.

182 Ladies of the Re/urination., [ENGLAND.

astrologer, to know, from the revelations of his science, her future
destiny. Casting her nativity, he told her that she was born to sit on
a throne, encircled by all the stars and planets. That this prognos-
tication, if not pure imposture, was entitled to no credit, no one now
needs to be told. As some hundreds, if not thousands of females
would be born in England at the same time, and under the same
astrological aspect of the stars, the same prediction might have been
uttered, but could not prove true as to them all. Whether or no
Katharine believed in astrology, and had faith in the prediction of
the star-seer she consulted, it was usual for her after this, when her
mother called her to work, to say, " My hands are ordained to touch
crowns and sceptres, not needles and spindles." 1 This she may
have spoken partly in jest, and partly in earnest. Doubts of the
truth of the nativity-caster's vaticination may have mingled with
flattering, though vague and undefined, dreams of her being elevated
one day to the dizzy eminence of royalty. She, however, did not
neglect the use of the needle, and attained a degree of perfection in
the art of embroidery equalled by few.

At a very early age the exact date is unknown Katharine was
married to Edward Lord Borough, of Gainsborough, a wealthy
widower, distantly related to her, who could easily have been her
grandfather. To this nobleman, with whom she resided at his manor
of Gainsborough, she had no children ; and by his death, which took
place in 1528-9, she became a widow, when she could not have ex-
ceeded her fifteenth year. She became, secondly, the wife of another
wealthy aged widower, John Neville, Lord Latimer, 2 who had been
previously twice married. The date of her marriage with this noble-
man is uncertain, but she did not, perhaps, at the time exceed twenty

1 Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol. ii., part i., pp. 203-209.

2 He possessed large property in Worcestershire and other couuties. George
Neville, Lord Latimer, a previous representative of the house, marrying Elizabeth,
daughter and heir of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, had the manors of Great
Cumherton, Wadborough, and other estates in the county of Worcester. These John
Lord Latiiner, on his marriage with Katharine Parr, settled in jointure on her, and she
held them during her life.

ENGLAND.]

Katharine Parr.

183

years of age. She now resided with him, chiefly at his stately man-
sion of Snape Hall, in Yorkshire, a goodly castle, distant about two
miles from Great Tanfield. By this second marriage she had no

Snape Hall.

children, and she / again became a widow early in 1543. Lord Lati-
mer was a decided Roman Catholic, and died in that faith, as is
evident from his leaving, by his will, funds " to endow a grammar-
school at Wells, and to pray for him, the founder." Katharine's ami-
able dispositions, her good sense, and her conscientious performance
of her duties as a step-mother, gained her the esteem and affection
of the children of both the noblemen to whom she had been united.

At what period she became a convert to the reformed doctrines it
is difficult, perhaps impossible, now to determine. It is a mistake
to suppose, as has been done by some writers, that the knowledge and
belief of them were instilled into her mind from childhood. From
a treatise written by her after her marriage with Henry VIIT., and
found among her papers after her death, ' it is evident that she had

1 This work, with a preface from the pen of Secretary Cecil, was printed at London.

184 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

been educated in Popery, and, during a great part of her life, had
observed and trusted to its idolatrous and superstitious services,
conceiving, in her ignorance, frequent though her opportunities were
of becoming acquainted with the reformed principles, that the Popish
religion, since the vast majority embraced it, behoved to be right,
and the only way to heaven. " "What a wretch and caitife," says she,
" am I, that when the Prince of princes, the King of kings, did speak
many pleasant and gentle words unto me, and also called me so
many and sundry times that they cannot be numbered, and yet, not-
withstanding these great signs and tokens of love, I would not come
unto him, but hid myself out of his sight, seeking many crooked and
by-ways, wherein I walked so long that I had clean lost sight of
him. And no marvel or wonder, for I had a blind guide, called
Ignorance, who dimmed so mine eyes that I could never perfectly
get any sight of the fair, goodly, straight, and right ways of his doc-
trine, but continually travelled uncomfortably in foul, wicked, crooked,
and perverse ways ; yea, and because they were so much haunted of
many, I could not think but that I walked in the perfect and right
way, having more regard to the number of the walkers than to the
order of the walking ; believing also most assuredly, with company,
to have walked to heaven, whereas, I am most sure, they would have
brought me down to hell. I forsook the spiritual honouring of the
true living God, and worshipped visible idols and images made of

in 1548, under the title, The Lamentation or Complaint of a Sinner, made by the most
virtuous and right gracious Lady, Queen Katharine, bewailiny the ignorance of her blind
life, led in superstition ; very profitable to the amendment of our lives. It was again
printed at London in 1563 " at the instant desire of that right gracious lady, Katharine,
Duchess of Suffolk, and the earnest request of Lord William Parr, Marquis of North-
ampton, brother to Queen Katharine Parr." It has been reprinted in the Harleian
Miscellany, vol. v., pp. 277-298. It is an original work, not a compilation, and though
posthumous, is the best of all her writings. As a piece of English composition, it
reckons with the very first productions of that age. Without assuming a controversial
form, it yet condemns the leading dogmas of Popery, and vindicates the doctrines of
the Reformation. It is pervaded by a Christian wisdom, a knowledge of the human
heart, and a just estimate of the comparative value of heavenly and earthly things,
which must leave on the mind of every candid reader an impression highly favourable
to her talents and Christian excellence of character.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 185

men's hands, believing by them to have gotten heaven Fur-
thermore, the blood of Christ was not reputed by me sufficient for to
wash me from the filth of my sins, neither such ways as he had
appointed by his Word, but I sought for such riffraff as the Bishop
of Home hath planted in his tyranny and kingdom, trusting, with
great confidence, by the virtue and holiness of them, to receive full
remission of my sins." ' At length, however, by the study of the
Sacred Scriptures, and of the writings of the Reformers, accompanied
by sincere humble prayer for the illuminating grace of the Holy
Spirit, her faith in Popery became unsettled, the truth in its purity
beamed with serene effulgence upon her mind, and receiving it cor-
dially, as impressed with the seal of Heaven, she was brought under
its saving power. This change upon her sentiments and feelings, it
is probable, took place during the lifetime of Lord Latimer, though
she may not then have made open profession of her faith. After his
death her house, it appears, became the resort of the most learned
and zealous of the Reformers, and conventicles were held in it for the
celebration of the Protestant worship.

Being again loosed from the matrimonial tie by the death of her
second husband, Katharine soon found new candidates for her hand
and heart. Among these appeared no less a personage than her
sovereign, Henry VIII., thus bidding fair to verify to the full the
astrological soothsayer's flattering prediction. Henry, in his former
selections of a wife, had been resolutely bent on wedding a maid, but
having some doubts whether in this respect he had not hitherto been
imposed upon, he purposed now to marry a widow, who had given
proof of chastity and loyalty to her former husband. He fixed upon
Katharine, who still retained so many charms as captivated his fickle
heart; and for once he found a lady whose piety, discretion, and
many excellent qualities, surpassed even her personal attractions.

To this flattering offer her heart at first gave a cold response : her
affections were placed elsewhere. She passionately loved a nobleman
of captivating person and manners, though not of corresponding ex-
1 Harlelan Miscellany, vol. v., p. 280.

186 Ladies of ttte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

cellence of character, who, on the death of Lord Latimer, attracted
by her beauty and winning deportment, and no doubt also by her
wealth for she posessed two ample jointures sought her in mar-
riage. This was Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England,
and brother of the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector during the reign
of Edward VI. ; and, as we learn from an amatory letter she wrote
from Chelsea to Seymour, after the death of Henry, it cost her a
severe struggle to renounce the idol of her heart for the old de-
bauched worn-out monarch. " I would not have you," says she, " to
think this mine honest good-will towards you to proceed of any
sudden motion or passion, for, as truly as God is God, my mind was
fully bent, the other time I was at liberty, to marry you before any
man I know. Howbeit, God withstood my will therein most vehe-
mently for a time, and through his grace and goodness made that
possible which seemed to me most impossible, that was, made me
renounce utterly mine own will, and to follow his most willingly."

Another serious objection she must have felt to this marriage was
the character of Henry. In the prospect of becoming his wife, it can
hardly be doubted that she would feel secret presentiments of calamity.
Little as the young, to whom time has not yet brought the changes
and misfortunes which it has brought to the old, are disposed to form
gloomy presages of the future, and prone as they are, in the flushing
luxuriance of health and of animal spirits, to paint it as the golden
age, as the scene only of enjoyment and happiness, there was much
in the character of Henry, and in the tragic history of his former
queens, to dispel pleasing dreams, and to create dark forebodings in
the mind of any young lady, and especially in the mind of a lady so
reflective and intelligent as was Katharine Parr. She might win the
proud name of queen, but she would win it with more than its ordi-
nary cares, anxieties, and sorrows. On becoming the wife of Henry,
while invested with the dazzling splendours of royalty, she would, in
reality, " put on the poisoned robe of Nessus, which, though given as
a token of affection, would be found, in the experiment, to eat into
the flesh and burn up the vitals of the person who wore it." She

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr, 187

could only anticipate tliat, amidst imperial honours, wealth, and
enjoyments, her rest by night and her tranquillity by day would be
often disturbed, from the dread of a sudden reverse ; from the appal-
ling visions of the capricious affections of Henry changed into jea-
lousy, suspicion, mortal hatred ; of her incarceration in the Tower
under false charges ; of a mock trial, with none to show her mercy ;
and all ended by the axe of the executioner. Nor could the most
exalted virtue, any more than the most dazzling beauty, afford secu-
rity against such a fate. By a word or a look, on her part meaning
nothing, but construed by jealousy into something criminal, or by a
slight accidental circumstance, or simply because he had transferred
his affections to another object, his caresses of to-day might be
exchanged for frowns and mortal feud to-morrow. That such a train
of thought actually passed through her mind, is manifest from the
answer she returned to Henry when he first disclosed to her his in-
tention of making her the sharer of his bed and throne, "that it was
better to be his mistress than his wife ;" a sarcasm overlooked by
him at the time, from the ardour of his new affection, but which, had
he lived long enough, might afterwards have cost her, though nothing
else could have been laid to her charge, her life. ' Had she then
been left to her voluntary choice, never would she have become his
wedded wife. But she had satisfactory reasons for consenting to the
proposed union. If it was dangerous to accept of his proposal, to
have declined it would have been equally perilous.
- To Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, this contemplated marriage
was a cause of great uneasiness. The fall of Katharine Howard had

l When, on looking out for another queen-consort, after the death of Jane Seymour,
his third wife, Henry made his first offer to Christiana, the duchess-dowager of Milan,
then in Flanders, at the vice-regal court, that lady is said to have given an answer still
more cutting that she had but one head; if she had had two, one should have been at
his majesty's service. Ellis's Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 123. From other ladies
he would have received similar answers, had they as freely spoken their mind. They
had too much respect for their heads to be disposed to contest an alliance with a
monarch who could, with the utmost unconcern, decapitate his wives whenever he tired
of them, and kick about their severed bleeding heads as indifferently as he would an
old hat.

188 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

inflicted a heavy blow on him and on the -whole Popish party,
of which she was the avowed protectress; and desirous to see a
devotee of the Romish Church in the influential position of queen-
consort, he had taken every opportunity of recommending to Henry
an alliance with some of the royal families of Europe who continued
adherents of the old faith. His advice was not followed ; and great
were his terror and distress on learning one morning, from the mo-
narch's own mouth, that it was his intention to marry the Lady
Katharine Parr. 1 The bigoted chancellor dreaded that, as the con-
sequence of this marriage, an arrest would be put on the attempts
now making to suppress the reformed doctrines, and that, from the
influence she might acquire over Henry, facilities hitherto withheld
would be given for their propagation, which, despite the deadly per-
secution maintained against them, were making steady progress in
England. He had, however, more discretion than to oppose the
monarch's inclinations. Keeping his chagrin concealed within his
own breast, he assumed the appearance of satisfaction with what he
could not prevent, and was present at the marriage ceremony. 2

The requisite arrangements being made, the marriage took place
at Hampton Court, July 12, 1543, the bride being at the age of
twenty-nine. The union was formed by Gardiner, Bishop of Win-
chester. On the morning of that day, being in attendance on his
majesty at Hampton Court, Gardiner, without previous notice, was
ordered, to his great surprise and mortification, immediately to pro-
ceed. Like Wriothesley, he was extremely desirous, for the sake of
Romanism, of seeing a lady of indisputable orthodoxy elevated to
the throne ; and though too prudent to condemn the marriage, dis-
tasteful as it was to him, he complacently reminded his majesty that
it behoved him, as an example to his subjects, to observe ecclesias-
tical forms, and that the banns not having been proclaimed, nor
other requisite preliminaries observed, it would be irregular and
tin canonical, in the meantime, to celebrate the intended marriage.

1 It is observable that, though a widow, she was called by her maiden name.
* Lord Campbell's Chancellors of England, voL i., p. 629.

ENGLAND.]

Katharine Parr.

189

Henry had provided against this objection, by obtaining from Arch-
bishop Cranmer, who was delighted that his sovereign had chosen a
queen who patronized the new faith, a license dispensing with the
publication of banns, and allowing the ceremony to take place at
any hour, and in any place, " for the honour and weal of the realm."

Hampton Court, time of George II.

On being informed of this by his majesty, the prelate shrewdly sus-
pected that it was intended to play a trick upon him, by employing
him to perform a service, to which, it was well known, he was in
heart vehemently opposed. But with great self-command he re-
strained his feelings, and being conducted into a small private chapel
in the palace, performed the ceremony as if entirely satisfied with the
king's choice ; but his haughty spirit felt as if insulted ; as he retired
to his own house his proud blood boiled with indignation, and he re-
solved to watch his opportunity, when he might at once gratify his
thirst for vengeance, and do the old faith good service, by ridding
England and the world of this heretical queen. 1

Wriothesley and Gardiner were not mistaken as to Katharine's
sincere and ardent devotion to the reformed faith, though she may
not have openly professed it. In her Lamentations of a Sinner,
1 Lord Campbell's Chancellors of England, vol. ii., pp. 45, 46.

190 Ladies oft/te Reformation. [ENGLAND.

her sentiments on the subject are expressed in the strongest terms ;
and though this work was not committed to writing till some time
after her marriage with Henry, she had previously formed a matured
judgment on its great leading principles. At present it will be suffi-
cient to quote only, as a specimen, the passage in which she com-
pliments Henry with somewhat extravagant adulation, it must be
allowed, according to the manner of the times, and from conjugal par-
tiality for having shaken off the Papal authority, and for allowing
the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue among his
subjects, and in which she denounces the Pope as a persecuting monster
and a soul-deceiver, unequalled in all preceding ages. " Thanks be
given," says she, " unto the Lord, that hath now sent us such a godly
and learned king, in these latter days, to reign over us ; that, with
the virtue and force of God's Word, hath taken away the veils and
mists of errors, and brought us to the knowledge of the truth, by
the light of God's Word ;' which was so long hid, and kept under,
that the people were nigh famished and hungered, for lack of spiritual
food. Such was the charity of the spiritual curates and shepherds.
But our Moses, and most godly wise governor and king, hath deli-
vered us out of the captivity and bondage of Pharaoh. I mean
by this Moses King Henry VIII., my most sovereign favourable
lord and husband; one (if Moses had figured any more than Christ),
through the excellent grace of God, meet to be another expressed
verity of Moses' conquest over Pharaoh. And I mean by this
Pharaoh the Bishop of Home, who hath been and is a greater perse-
cutor of all true Christians than ever was Pharaoh of the children
of Israel : for he is a persecutor of the gospel and grace, a setter
forth of all superstition and counterfeit holiness, bringing many

1 By the close of the year 1541, only four years and four months from the time that
Rogers's English Bible, before referred to (see p. .139), was imported to this country,
there had issued from the press not fewer than twelve editions of the entire Bible, ten
in folio, and two in quarto. The impression of each of these editions, it has been cal-
culated, amounted, on an average, to 2000 copies, thus furnishing in whole 24,000
Bibles. Besides this ample supply, thousands of copies of the New Testament, printed
at home, with numerous foreign editions, were in circulation among the people, and
ardently read. Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii., p. 153.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 191

souls to hell with his alchemy and counterfeit money, deceiving the
poor souls tinder the pretence of holiness ; but so much the greater
shall be his damnation, because he deceiveth and robbeth under
Christ's mantle. The Lord keep and defend all men from his jug-
glings and sleights, but specially the poor, simple, and unlearned
souls. And this lesson I would all men had of him, that, when they
begin to mislike his doing, then only begin they to like God, and
certainly not before." '

The persecuting Papists having thus some reason to dread that
such a woman as Katharine would exercise a powerful influence
over the mind of Henry against Popery, and in favour of heresy,
her marriage had hardly been consummated, when Gardiner and
others began to plot against her and the reformed members of
her household. He found a ready tool in Dr. London, a canon
of Windsor, formerly one of Cromwell's most active agents in the
visitation of the monasteries. 2 London having collected matter
sufficient to criminate, under the act of the six articles, four pious
individuals, Anthony Person, a priest, Eobert Testwood and John
Marbeck, both choristers, and Henry Filmer, who had impugned
the doctrine of transubstantiation, transmitted this information to
Gardiner, >who resolved not only to bring them to the stake, in defi-
ance of the queen, but to convert, if possible, the discovery of their
heresy into the means of her ruin. He laid the information before
the king and council, moving, at the same time, that a warrant
should be issued, authorizing a search to be made for prohibited
books and heretical papers, both in the town and in the castle of
Windsor, the very residence of the queen. Henry, either thinking
it would be something like an insult for his palace to be rummaged
by officers of justice, or shrewdly guessing that the repositories of
his queen contained prohibited books, would not permit inquisition
to be made within the precincts of his own residence, but he allowed
search to be made in the town, upon which several heretical books
and papers were seized. About the same time, besides the four
i Harleian Miscellany, vol. v., p. 289. 2 Ellis's Letters, first series, vol. iL, p. 79.

192 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

persons accused, Sir Philip Hoby, one of the gentlemen of the royal
household, and Dr. Haines, a canon of Windsor and dean of Exeter,
all suspected of heresy, were committed to prison. Person, Testwood,
Marbeck, and Filmer were brought to trial, and a packed jury hav-
ing found them guilty of heresy, they were condemned to the flames.
Marbeck's life was saved at the intercession, it would appear, of the
queen. Some MS. notes upon the Bible, and a MS. English con-
cordance, carried down to the end of the letter L, which he had taken
from a Latin concordance (having acquired some knowledge of the
Latin tongue when a boy), by comparing the references in it with the
corresponding passages in the English Bible, had been found in his
house. As he was evidently illiterate, his examinators doubted his
veracity when he asserted that these papers were exclusively the fruits
of his own industry : but he soon removed their doubts, for being
allowed the use of a Latin concordance and of an English Bible, he
filled, in the course of a single day, no less than three sheets of paper
with words under the letter M. The circumstance being told to
Henry, it would seem by Katharine, who pleaded the cause of the
condemned, he exclaimed, in a spirit of sympathy to which his bosom
was generally a stranger, " Poor Marbeck has been in the habit of
employing his time far better than those who examined him." It
was, however, difficult to manage the fierce and intractable spirit of
the monarch, and Katharine was unable to save the lives of the other
three, who suffered at the stake with unshrinking fortitude, July 26,
exactly a fortnight after her marriage.

Gardiner was still intent upon the destruction of Katharine and the
heretical members of her court; for he never lost sight of an object
he was earnest to accomplish ; and his caterer, Dr. London, in concert
with a lawyer named Simons, had, as the fruit of their vile ferreting
labours, sent him pretended criminating matter affecting some mem-
bers of the royal household, together with additional papers contain-
ing others of their machinations, by a person named Ockham, who
had acted as clerk of the court which condemned the martyrs just
mentioned. But the plot was discovered ; for intelligence of what

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 193

was going on being communicated to one of the gentleman accused,
Ockham, while on his way to the prelate, was seized, with all the
papers upon his person. It was certainly contrary to Gardiner's
usual prudence thus to attempt to invade the peace of Katharine's
household before the honeymoon was over, as a preliminary step to
making an attempt upon herself, and Henry resented the audacity.
Gardiner, however, had kept himself behind the scenes, and escaped.
London and Simons, less fortunate, were apprehended and examined.
Ignorant of the seizure of Ockham, they alleged upon oath false
pretences in self-vindication, after which, to their utter confusion,
their own papers were produced. They were sentenced to be
publicly paraded through the streets of Windsor, Eeading, and
Newbury, on horseback, with their faces towards the horses' tails,

London and S!inon paraded through

and having fastened on their heads a paper proclaiming their per-
jury. They were next placed iu the pillory. This ignominious
punishment made so deep an impression on the mind of London,
that he died soon after in prison.'

Katharine in all respects performed the duties of a faithful wife,
and conducted herself with uncommon prudence. Being a very
amiable woman, as well as a person of great good sense, she studied
to humour Henry, whose temper, in addition to its imperiousness,

1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v , p. 486. Soames's Hist, of Ike Ref. in England,
Tol. ii., pp. 538-512.

194 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

had, in consequence of his bodily infirmities, become peevish and
fro ward. At all times she greeted him -with looks of affection,
and paid him every kind attention, which, together with her unim-
peachable virtue, secured his affection, respect, and confidence. She
was, in truth, rather his nurse than his wife, his intemperance
having brought on him prematurely the infirmities of old age.

Though, from the smallness of her stature, without the command-
ing majesty of some other ladies, Katharine yet had something in
her countenance and bearing peculiarly charming, and her winning
suavity, and polite vivacity of manner, was eminently fitted to give
dignity and grace to the court, to which she had been suddenly and
unexpectedly elevated. The notices of the interview which Don
Manriquez de Lara, Duke of Najera, a Spanish nobleman, had with
her and Henry, and the Princess Mary, during the close of the year
1543, and in the beginning of the year 1544, are interesting, as
giving the impressions of a stranger as to the etiquette of the Eng-
lish court, and the personages who came under his observation.
"Before the duke arrived," says his secretary, "at the king's
chamber, 1 he passed through three saloons, hung with tapestry ; in
the second of which were stationed, in order on either side, the
king's body-guard, dressed in habits of red, and holding halberts.
In the third saloon were nobles, knights, and gentlemen, and here
was a canopy made of rich figured brocade, with a chair of the same
material. To this canopy and chair the same respect was paid by
all as if the king himself were present, every one standing on foot,
with his cap in his hand. Here the brother of the queen 2 and the

1 This was at Westminster Palace.

2 William Lord Parr, of Kendal, created Earl of Essex, Dec. 23, 1543, aud by Ed-
ward VI. Marquis of Northampton, Feb. 16, 1545-6. Bishop Hooper, in a letter to
Henry Bullinger, dated London, June 29, 1550, describes this nobleman, who was then
Lord High Chamberlain of England, as " a man active in the cause of Christ." Zurich
Letters, first series, pp. 88, 93. King Edward used to call him " his honest uncle."
On the accession of Queen Mary he was deprived of his honours for having supported
the claims of Lady Jane Grey to the crown; but was restored by Queen Elizabeth.
He is said to have excelled in the arts of war, music, and poetry. He died about the
beginning of August, 1571, and was buried in St. Mary's Church, Warwick. Granger's
Biog. Hist, of England, vol. i., p. 234. Zurich Letters, second series, vol. i., p. 257.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 195

other noblemen entertained the duke a quarter of an hour, until it
was announced that he should enter the chamber of the king. Don
Eodrigo de Mendoga and Tello de Guzman entered with him, and
no one else, nor did .they permit us even to see the king. I do not
know the motive of this, unless it be according to a saying of the
ancients, 'that he whom many dread, must necessarily himself be
subject to fear and distrust.' I say this, because for many centuries
there has never been Christian prince nor infidel who has ordered so
many executions as this king, as well of his immediate relations, as of
gentlemen, clergy, and other persons, for having spoken against his
proceedings, and against the opinions he maintains, that the Pope is
only Bishop of Eome, that his power extends not beyond his bishop-
ric, and that he cannot ordain bishops ; yet, although a layman, he
holds himself capable of ordaining them ! Throughout his kingdom
obedience to the Pope is forbidden, and he constitutes himself head
of the church ! The duke remained with the king half-an-hour, and
when he came forth he went with the above noblemen to the
chamber of the queen, who was accompanied by the Princess Mary,
daughter of the king and Queen Katharine, daughter of our good
monarch Don Ferdinand and Donna Isabel. Many ladies attended
the queen, and amongst them a daughter of the Queen of Scot-
land, 1 and another called the Queen of Mongoga? The duke kissed
the queen's hand, by whom he was received in an animated manner.
. . . The king is said to be a man of great authority and beauty.
The queen has a lovely and pleasing appearance, and is praised as a
virtuous woman. She was dressed in a robe of cloth of gold, and a
petticoat of brocade, with sleeves lined with crimson satin, and
trimmed with three-piled crimson velvet : her train was more than
two yards long. Suspended from her neck were two crosses, and a
jewel of very rich diamonds, and in her head-dress were many and
beautiful ones. Her girdle was of gold, with very large pendants." 3

1 Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII., who married,
first, James IV. of Scotland, and secondly, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus.

2 Can this be Anne of Cleves ? 3 Archieologia, vol. xxiii., pp. 351-354.

196 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

It is not, however, from seeing Katharine mingling, as from her
situation it was necessary for her to mingle, in the pageantry, eti-
quette, and amusements of the court, that we can learn her true
character. To do this we must follow her into seclusion, observe
how much time she spent there in meditation and devotion, and see
the deep fountains of piety opened and welling out in her soul.
Though not beyond the period of youth, she was not inexperienced,
and her heart was less caught than it might have been some years
earlier by her great, her sudden elevation, and by the mere glare of
external splendour. These did not blind her mind to the littleness
of all earthly things, and the greatness of eternal interests. She
aspired after the better part, the one thing needful, an interest in
God, and in the Saviour of men, as necessary equally for all, for
kings and queens as well as for peasants and beggars. In proof of
this, reference might be made to the various pious works she wrote,
and some of which she published during the period of her union
with Henry. A few extracts from one of them may suffice, namely,
from The Manual of Devotion she published, 1 which, though a com-

' This work was entitled Prayers or Meditations, wherein the mind is stirred pa-
. liently to suffer all afflictions, to set at nought the vain prosperity of this world, and
always to long for everlasting felicity. Collected out of Holy Works, by the most virtu-
ous and gracious Princess Katharine, Queen of England, France, and Ireland. These
prayers or meditations are arranged in verses or sentences. They were twice printed
by Berthelet in 1545, and a third time, without date or printer's name, in 48 pages,
16mo, with the additions of A Prayer for the King A. Prayer for Men to say entering
into Battle A Devout Prayer to be daily said Another Prayer and A Devout
Prayer; making in all above 60 pages. Herbert's Ames, p. 449. The whole of this
manual, with the exception of the additional five prayers, is printed in the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1790, vol. Ix. Katharine gave to the world some other fruits of her
studies on divine things, all indicating the pious temper of her mind ; as, Fifteen
Psalms, composed by her in imitation of David's Psalms, and abounding in quotations
from them, as well as from other parts of Scripture. Each psalm has its proper sub-
ject, and is arranged into verses. To these is subjoined the Twenty-first Psalm, en-
titled, The Complaint of Christ on the Cross, and a Psalm of Thanksgiving. She also
published a tractate of St. Jerome's, translated by her from Latin into English, under
the title, A Godly Exposition, after the manner of a Contemplation upon the Fifty-first
Psalm, which Hierom, of Ferrary, made at the latter end of his days. To this are added
short essays on Faith The Power of Faith The Work of Faith Good Works, to-
gether with the Prayer of the Prophet Daniel. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i ,

Katharine Parr. 197

pilation from various authors, may, as consisting of passages form-
ing, in her estimation, a casquet of devotional gems, be regarded as
a genuine expression of her sentiments and feelings.

" Wherefore, Lord Jesus," says she, " I pray thee give me the
grace to rest in thee above all things, and to quiet me in thee above
all creatures, above all glory and honour, above all dignity and
power, above all cunning and policy, above all health and beauty,
above all riches and treasure, above all joy and pleasure, above all
fame and praise, above all mirth and consolation that man's heart
may take or feel besides thee.

" For thou, Lord God, art best and most wise, most high, most
mighty, most sufficient, and most full of all goodness, most sweet
and most comfortable, most fair, most loving, most noble, most glori-
ous, in whom all goodness most perfectly is.

" And therefore, whatsoever I have beside thee, it is nothing to
me, for my heart may not rest, nor fully be pacified, but only in thee.
O Lord Jesus, most loving spouse, who shall give me wings of per-
fect love, that I may fly up from these worldly miseries and rest in
thee?

" O when shall I ascend to thee, and see and feel how sweet thou
art ? When shall I wholly gather myself in thee so perfectly, that I
shall not for thy love feel myself, but thee only above myself, and
above all worldly things, that thou mayest vouchsafe to visit me in
such wise as thou dost visit thy most faithful lovers.

" Jesus, King of everlasting glory, the joy and comfort of all
Christian people that are wandering as pilgrims in the wilderness of
this world, my heart crieth to thee by still desires, and my silenca
speaketh unto thee, and saith, How long tarrieth my Lord God to
come to me 1

" Make me strong inwardly in my soul, and cast out thereof all

pp. 204-207. Her Lamentations of a Sinner, as we have already seen, breathes through-
out, like all these pieces, an eminently devout and Christian spirit. Among her
various letters still extant, one addressed to Lady Wriothesley. comforting her under
the loss of her only son, may be referred to as particularly excellent. It is inserted in
Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii , part ii., p. 339.

198 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

unprofitable cares of this world, that I be not led by unstable desires
of earthly things, but that I may repute all things in this world (as
they be) transitory and soon vanishing away, and myself also with
them drawing to mine end.

" Send forth the hot flames of thy love, to burn and consume the
cloudy fantasies of my mind.

" Let me, thy humble and unworthy servant, joy only in thee, and
not in myself, nor in anything else beside thee.

" For thou, Lord, art my gladness, iny hope, my crown, and all
mine honour.

" Lord, give me peace, give me inward joy, and then my soul shall
be full of heavenly melody, and be devout and fervent in thy lauds
and praisings. But if thou withdraw thyself from me (as thou hast
sometime done), then may not thy servant run the way of thy com-
mandments, as I did before." 1

The prayer for his majesty and soldiers to offer up OH entering
battle, included in the same Manual, breathes an eminently humane
Christian spirit, and has been considered preferable to the prayer
directed by the English Liturgy to be used in time of war : " O
Almighty King and Lord of hosts, which by thy angels thereunto
appointed dost minister both war and peace, who didst give unto
David both courage and strength, being but a little one, unversed
and inexpert in feats of war, with his sling to set upon, and over-
throw the great huge Goliah, our cause now being just, and being
enforced to enter into war and battle, we most humbly beseech thee,
O Lord God of hosts, so to turn the hearts of our enemies to the
desire of peace, that no Christian blood be spilt ; or else grant, O
Lord, that with small effusion of blood, and to the little hurt of inno-
cents, we may, to thy glory, obtain victory, and that, the wars being
soon ended, we may all, with our heart and mind knit together in
concord and unity, laud and praise Thee, who livest and reignest
world without end. Amen." " This, to my ears," says Dr. Nash,
" sounds better than ' Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and
1 Gentleman'* Magazine, TO! In, pp. 701, 785, 986, 937.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 199

confound their devices.' " l The prayer was probably composed in
1544, when Henry having, in co-operation with Charles V., concerted
a plan for invading France with a powerful army, and having en-
gaged to undertake the- expedition in person, appointed Katharine
regent of the kingdom in his absence.

Henry did not remain long in France. 2 Charles V., apprehensive
of the difficulty of subduing that kingdom, and earnestly desirous of
turning his arms against the Protestant princes of Germany, con-
cluded a peace with France on the 18th of September, without con-
sulting Henry, who upon this, judging it hopeless to persevere
unaided in the attempt to conquer France, returned to England on
the 30th of September, 1544.

CHAPTER II.

FROM NOTICES OF HER DOCTRINAL SENTIMENTS TO THE DEATH OF
HENRY VIII.

THE doctrinal sentiments of Katharine are more fully brought out in
her Lamentations of a Sinner than in any of her other writings. The
accuracy of her views as to the doctrine of justification by faith in
Christ's righteousness, without any works or merits on the part of the
sinner, and the importance she attached to this, the great central doc-
trine of revelation, are exhibited in every part of that work. "I have
no hope nor confidence in any creature, neither in heaven nor earth,
but in Christ, my whole and only Saviour. He came into the world

1 Archteoloyia, vol. ix., p. 9.

2 A letter, written by her to Henry, during his absence, is to be found in Strype's
Mem. EccL, vol. ii., part ii., p. 331. Three additional letters, written by her when
regent at this time, one to the council attendant on the king's person, and two to the
king himself, are inserted in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal, &c, vol. iii., p. 171, &c.
In Ellis's Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 130, is a letter from Henry to her, dated Sept.
8, 1544, from before Boulogne, which he was then besieging.

200 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

to save sinners, and to heal them that are sick, for he said, ' The
whole have no need of the physician.' " After adverting to the
confidence she formerly placed in Popish observances for justifi-
cation on hearing mass, praying to departed saints, and especially
to the Virgin Mary, worshipping relics, giving alms, performing pil-
grimages, submitting to penances and bodily mortifications she
laments her sin in thus derogating from the all-sufficiency of the
Saviour's merits, the only ground of a sinner's hope : " And so I did
as much as was in me obfuscate and darken the great benefit of
Christ's passion, than the which no thought can conceive anything of
more value. There cannot be done so great an injury and displea-
sure to Almighty God, our Father, as to tread under foot Christ, his
only begotten and well-beloved Son. All other sins in the world,
gathered together in one, be not so heinous and detestable in the
sight of God. And no wonder, for in Christ crucified God doth
show himself most noble and glorious, even an Almighty God and
most loving Father in his only dear and chosen blessed Son. And
therefore I count myself one of the most wicked and miserable sin-
ners in the world, because I have been so much contrary to Christ
my Saviour. Saint Paul desired to know nothing but Christ cruci-
fied ; after he had been rapt into the third heaven, where he heard
such secrets as were not convenient and meet to utter to men, but
counted all his works and doings as nothing, to win Christ. And I,
most presumptuously thinking nothing of Christ crucified, went
about to set forth mine own righteousness, saying, with the proud
Pharisee, ' Good Lord, I thank thee I am not like other men ; I am
none adulterer, nor fornicator,' and so forth." l

While holding the doctrine of justification by faith in the righte-
ousness of Christ without works of law, she, on the one hand, attached
no merit to faith, nor, on the other, disparaged good works. Faith
she regarded as only the hand of the soul which embraces the Saviour
and a free salvation ; and good works, though not imputed to us for
our justification, as necessarily springing from justifying faith.
1 Harleian Miscellany, vol. v., p. 280.

ENGLAND. I Katharine Parr. 201

" St. Paul saith, ' We be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the
deeds of the law ; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ
died in vain.' St. Paul meaneth not here a dead human and histo-
rical faith, gotten by human industry, but a supernatural and lively
faith, which worketh by charity, as he himself plainly expresseth.
This dignity of faith is no derogation to good works, for out of this
faith spring all good works ; yet we may not impute to the worthiness
of faith or works our justification before God, but ascribe, and give
the worthiness of it, wholly to the merits of Christ's passion, and
refer and attribute the knowledge and perceiving thereof only to
faith, whose very true and only property it is to take, apprehend,
and hold fast the promises of God's mercy, the which maketh us
righteous." 1

Tn regard to the Scriptures, she taught " that they are so pure
and holy that no perfection can be added unto them." Eenouncing
"men's traditions and inventions" as of no authority in religion,
and condemning the Popish priesthood for " extolling men's inven-
tions and doctrines before the doctrine of the gospel," she expressly
asserts the supremacy of the Scriptures in all matters of faith and
practice. " Truly, in my simple and unlearned judgment, no man's
doctrine is to be esteemed or preferred like unto Christ's and the
apostles', nor to be taught as a perfect and true doctrine, but even as
it doth accord and agree with the doctrine of the gospel." 2

There is one, and only one doctrine of Popery, to which she has
been said to give countenance in this work the celibacy of the
clergy. In describing what is required of the children of God in
their several vocations, she thus expresses herself: " The true fol-
lowers of Christ's doctrine have always a respect and an eye to their
vocation. If they be called to the ministiy of God's Word, they preach
and teach it sincerely to the edifying of others, and show themselves,
in their living, followers of the same. If they be married men, 3 hav-
ing children and family, they nourish and bring them up, without all

1 Harldan Miscellany, vol. v., p. 283. - Ibid., pp. 290, 295, 296.

3 Here, on the margin of the first edition?, the word " laymen " is inserted.

202 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

bitterness and fierceness, in the doctrine of the Lord, in all godliness
and virtue, committing the instruction of others which appertain not
to their charge to the reformation of God and his ministers, which
chiefly be kings and princes, bearing the sword even for that purpose
to punish evil-doers." ' From this passage it has been inferred that
" Katharine evidently approved of clerical celibacy." 2 Even had she
approved of a dogma so contrary to Scripture, and so unnatural,
this would by no means be surprising. The wonder is, not that
she should remain in error on some particular point, but that, in the
imperfect state of the English Reformation during the reign of Henry
VIII., she should have attained such clear and comprehensive views
of Divine truth as her writings prove her to have possessed. 3 But the
justice of the inference may be fairly questioned. Celibacy being
then enforced by Henry upon the functionaries of religion, " priests "
and ''married men" was the phraseology often employed simply to dis-
tinguish between ecclesiastics and laymen, without any judgment being
thereby pronounced either for or against clerical celibacy. " Priests "
is a designation claimed by the Popish clergy, from their pretending
to offer, in the mass, Christ as a true, proper, and propitiatory sacri-
fice for the living and the dead, and this appellative they now uni-
versally receive, from Protestants as well as from Papists ; but no

1 Harleian Miscellany, vol. v., p. 296.

2 Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. v., p. 42.

s In her time there were not wanting ecclesiastical reformers who were favourable to
the perpetual continence of the clergy, and who wrote in defence of it, erroneously judg-
ing that this was most becoming the sacred character of their office, forgetting that, to
impose such a law upon ecclesiastics, was to impose a restraint in a matter which God
had left free was to do violence to the constitution of man's nature, and to perpetuate
the enormous evils of which Popish celibacy had been for ages the prolific source.
Even under the reign of Edward VI., the prejudices of the Parliament and of the
nation were so strong against the marriage of ecclesiastics that, had it not been for
the persevering exertions of Archbishop Cranmer, who, having himself a wife and'
children at that time in exile, was deeply interested in settling the question in favour
of the marriage of ecclesiastics, it is probable that the reformed ministers would not
have obtained, as they finally did, in the reign of that monarch, the sanction of the
legislature to marry. Among others, besides Cranmer, who vindicated from the press,
or who approved of the marriage of the clergy, were Cox, P'oult, Hooper, with some of
whom Katharine was on terras of intimacy. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., p. 8.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 203

one concludes from this that Protestants maintain the doctrine of
the sacrifice of the mass, though the premises for drawing such a
conclusion are about as good as those from which it is attempted to
deduce Katharine's belief in clerical celibacy.

To Henry's children, some of whom, as Mary, were not many years
younger than herself, 1 Katharine acted the part of a mother. Under
her superintendence the Princesses Maiy and Elizabeth prosecuted
their studies in the various branches of learning ; and while aiming at
their improvement in knowledge, and in every suitable accomplish-
ment, she particularly turned their attention to the study of the Scrip-
tures, and of the writings of the Reformers. Elizabeth, when only
eleven years of age, probably at her suggestion, translated into English
Margaret, Queen of Navarre's poetical work, entitled Le Mirroir de
LAme Pecheresse, i.e., The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, into English
prose. 2 After having completed the translation, she sent it to Ka-
tharine for examination and revision, accompanied with an interest-
ing letter. 3

Immediately after this Elizabeth translated Katharine's Prayers or
Meditations, &c., above referred to, into Latin, French, and Italian,
and dedicated the translation to Henry, her father. The dedication
is dated Hatfield. December 30, 1545. 4 Under the care of Katharine
Parr, and Dr. Grindal, Elizabeth's tutor, who, solicitous about her
improvement in Christian knowledge and piety, engaged her in this
and similar exercises, this princess acquired no inconsiderable know-
ledge of theology and of the Sacred Scriptures.

Upon her son-in-law, Prince Edward, the youngest of Henry's

1 Mary was born February 18, 1516, and consequently was Katharine's junior by
about three years.

2 Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 212.

3 See this letter in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal, &c., vol. iii., pp. 177-179.

4 Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p, 213. These translations are to be found
among the Royal Manuscripts, in the British Museum, iii a small volume in em-
broidered binding. " Elizabeth had great fondness for the Latin and Italian tongues,
but, late in life at least, seems, like her sister, Mary I., to have had but small love for,
and probably little skill in French ; though Mary and Elizabeth were both instructed
in that language under the direction of Queen Katharine Parr." Note of Ellis, in his
Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 246.

204

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

three children, and the heir-apparent to the throne, Katharine be-
stowed particular attention. Over his education she watched with
maternal care and tenderness, endeavouring to give the sapling
the hope of the nation in the freshness of its prime, its proper direc-
tion. Several of Edward's letters addressed to her, in English, Latin,
and French, probably written in 1546, when the prince was in the
ninth year of his age, are still extant, and are full of the warme&t
expressions of affection and gratitude for her kind and endearing
attentions. 1

Henry's war with France being extremely expensive, had exhausted
his coffers, and reduced him to great pecuniary difficulties. To raise
money he had adopted various expedients, as adulterating the coin,
procuring " benevolences," and raising loans which he never meant
to pay. All this being inadequate to supply his necessities, he was
obliged to summon Parliament and the Convocation. They met on
the 23d of November, 1545. The Convocation granted him a liberal
percentage on their incomes for two years. The House of Commons
voted him a still larger subsidy ; and, apprehensive of additional de-
mands being made upon their purses, placed all colleges, chantries, 2
and hospitals in the kingdom, with their lands and entire property,
at his sovereign disposal ; thus exposing the universities to the risk
of sharing the fate of the monasteries. On this occasion Katharine,
in her zeal on behalf of the interests of education, extended her pro-
tection to these seats of learning. The University of Cambridge, in

1 In the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts a volume is preserved, containing a fair
transcript of Edward's Latin letters to Katharine and others, entitled, Epistola Ed-
wardi Principis illustrissimi, quas suopte marte composuit et scripsit anno atatis nono.
From the tenderness of Edward's age, as well as from the quotations from Erasmus,
Job, Solomon, Ludovicus, Vives, St. Paul, Horace, Cicero, and Aristippus, which they
contain, it may be fairly concluded that his majesty was assisted in the editing of them
by his Latin tutor." Ellis's Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 133. Some of Edward's
letters to Katharine are printed by Ellis (Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 131, 132), and by Strype,
Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., pp. 53-60.

2 " A chantry was a little church, chapel, or particular altar in some cathedral
church, &c., endowed with lands or other revenues, for the maintenance of one or more
priests, daily to say mass, or perform divine service, for the use of the founders, or
such others as they appointed." Hume's History of England, chap, xxxiii., note 27.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 205

dread of being broken up, as the monastic institutions had been, sent
letters to her in Latin, by Dr. Smith (afterwards Sir Thomas Smith,
the learned secretary of state to King Edward), praying her to lay
their representation before his majesty, and employ her influence for
preserving intact institutions of such indisputable utility. Entering
with the ardent sympathies of a scholar into the sentiments and
feelings of the learned men of the university, she earnestly pled
their cause with the sovereign, and so successfully, that needy and
greedy as he was of money, waiving the right granted him by act of
Parliament to the property of all such establishments, he consented
to leave this university, and also that of Oxford, in full possession
of their revenues. Her answer to the university, dated February 26,
1546, bears testimony to her correct and comprehensive views of
what constitutes a good education, not confining it to mere instruction
in the various branches of secular knowledge, however important
in their own place, to mere instruction in the vernacular tongue, in
the learned languages, in mathematics, philosophy, natural and moral,
but extending it to what must rank still higher, to instruction in
the great truths of revealed religion, as the best means of cultivating
the moral and religious feelings of the young, improving and regu-
lating their temper, and forming them to virtuous habits, thus ren-
dering them useful and ornamental members of society, and preparing
them for the eternal state. She strongly combated a separation
between the Bible and secular knowledge in the education of youth,
and contended for the combination of moral and religious with in-
tellectual training. " Your letters," says she, " I have received by

Mr. Doctor Smith, your discreet and learned advocate

And forasmuch as I do well understand all kind of learning doth
flourish amongst you in this age, as it did amongst the Greeks at
Athens long ago, I require and desire you all not so to hunger for
the exquisite knowledge of profane learning, that it may be thought
that the Greeks' university was but transposed, or now in England
again revived, forgetting our Christianity ; since their excellency did
only attain to moral and natural things : but rather, I gently exhort

206 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

you to study and apply those doctrines, 1 as means and apt degrees
to the attaining and setting forth the better Christ's reverend and
most sacred doctrine, that it may not be laid against you in evidence
at the tribunal of God, how you were ashamed of Christ's doctrine ;
for this Latin lesson I am taught to say of Saint Paul, Non me pudet
evangelii. To the sincere setting forth whereof, I trust universally,
in all your vocations and ministries, you will apply ; and conform
your sundry gifts, arts, and studies, to such end and sort, that Cam-
bridge may be accounted rather an university of Divine philosophy,
than of natural and moral, as Athens was.

" Upon the confidence of which, your accomplishment of my expec-
tation, zeal, and request, I, according to your desires, attempted my
lord, the king's majesty, for the stay of your possessions ; in which
(notwithstanding his majesty's property and interest through the
consent of the high court of Parliament) his highness, being such a
patron to good learning, will rather advance and erect new occasion
therefor, than confound these your colleges ; so that learning may
hereafter ascribe her very original, whole conservation and sure
stay, to our sovereign lord, her only defence and worthy ornament :
the prosperous estate and princely government of whom, long to
preserve, I doubt not but every one of you will, with daily invo-
cation, call upon Him, who alone and only can dispose all to every
creature." 2

Katharine's zeal was not limited to the dissemination of the re-
formed doctrines among the comparatively small number who at-
tended the universities. She earnestly desired their diffusion among
the great body of the people, and with this view advocated the circu-
lation of the Bible in the vernacular tongue. In her Lamentations of
a Sinner, she laments "the ignorance of the people as great" in those
things " which were most necessary for Christians to know ;" and
combats the reasoning of such men as Bishop Gardiner, who argued
that the circulation of the Bible in English made men contentious,

1 That is, the various branches of human learning.

2 Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol ii., part ii., p. 337.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 207

arrogant, and vain-glorious. "These men," says she, "might be
enforced by this kind of argument to forsake the use of fire, because
fire burneth their neighbour's house ; or to abstain from meat and
drink, because they see many surfeit. blind hate ! They slander
God for man's offence, and excuse the man whom they see offend,
and blame the Scripture which they cannot improve." l

To promote the knowledge of the Scriptures among the people,
Katharine resolved upon translating into English Erasmus's Latin
Paraphrase of the New Testament, 2 in order to its being printed for
general circulation. This work, from its intrinsic value, as well as
from the fame of its author, which would induce many to read it,
who would not have read a similar work by an author of inferior
reputation, was well adapted for the proposed object. By exhibiting
the doctrine of justification by faith, and the necessity of repentance
and purity of life ; by condemning the worship of images and of
saints, pilgrimages, and superstition in various forms ; by exposing
the tyranny, blasphemy, hypocrisy, ambition, and usurpations of the
see of Eome, the abuses of monasteries and the jugglery of priests ;
by describing the duties of a Christian pastor, and particulary how
his lessons of instruction ought to be drawn from the fountain of the
Sacred Scriptures, it was fitted to open men's eyes to the errors,
absurdities, and impieties of Popery, and to give increased currency
to the reformed sentiments.

That the translation of this paraphrase might be executed in a

1 Ilarleian Miscellany, vol. v., p. 294.

2 The paraphrase on the various books appeared at distant intervals. If we may
judge from the dates of the dedications, that ou the Epistle to the Romans was pub-
lished in 1517 ; that on the First Epistle to Timothy, on the First Epistle to the
Corinthians, and on the Epistle to the Ephesians, in 1519; that on the Epistle of
James, in 1520; that on Matthew, in 1522 ; that ou John and Luke, in 1523; that
on the Acts of the Apostles, in 1524 ; and that on Mark, in 1533. The paraphrase on
Matthew is dedicated to Charles V., Emperor of Germany; that on John, to Ferdinand,
Archduke of Austria ; that on Luke, to Henry VIII. of England; and that on Mark,
to Francis I. of France, it being Erasmus's object "to dedicate the four gospels to the
four principal mouarchs of the world. And," adds he, " would to God that, as the
evangelical books appropriately join together your names, so the evangelical spirit may
harmoniously unite your hearts." The paraphrase on the Book of Revelation was
executed, not by Erasmus, but by Leo Jude.

208 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

creditable manner, Katharine engaged the services of some of the
best scholars of that period. The general superintendence of the
work was committed to Nicolas Udal, 1 then master of Eton school ;
and he translated the paraphrase on the Gospel of Luke, which he had
finished in 1545, as appears from his epistle dedicatory, addressed to
Katharine, bearing the date of that year. That on Mark's Gospel
was translated by Thomas Key, registrary of Oxford, who was recom-
mended by Dr. Owen, the king's physician ; that on the Gospel of
Matthew was, according to the supposition of Strype, translated by
Katharine herself; and at her earnest solicitation the Princess Mary
undertook to translate the paraphrase on John's Gospel : while the
other portions of the work engaged the labours of various learned
men. 2

Katharine was not ignorant of Mary's dislike of everything con-
nected with the Reformation ; but the princess having previously
made her submission to the will and religious creed of her father,
the queen, if she did not altogether believe in the sincerity of this
submission, might think that it would have a beneficial effect on the
mind of Mary, to get her to engage in the translation of a paraphrase
on one of the gospels, written by a man then universally admired
for his learning, and from whose writings, considering his well-known
moderation, she might more readily imbibe correct and liberal sen-
timents, than from the writings of the avowed opponents of the
Romish church. This literary exercise unfortunately neither softened
the temper, nor enlightened the understanding of that princess.
She is, however, said to have taken much pains upon the translation
of the portion assigned her ; but falling sick before it was completed,
she desisted, leaving the remainder to be executed by Dr. Francis
Mallet, 3 her chaplain. Strype ascribes her sickness to "overmuch
study in this work ;" on which Walpole, who, it seems, imagined that

1 Udal was rewarded, in 1551, with a prebend of Windsor, and, in the following
year, with the parsonage of Colborn, in the Isle of Wight.

2 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., pp. 41-49.

3 Mallet, on her becoming queen, was promoted to the deanery of Lincoln, and, at
her death, was on the eve of being raised to the see of Salisbury.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 209

her sickness was fully as much owing to her aversion to the task as
to over-exertion, observes, that " she would not so easily have been
cast into sickness had she been emploj^ed on the legends of St.
Teresa, or St. Catherine of Sienna." An elegant letter in Latin from
the queen to Mary, in reference to this translation, has been pre-
served, from which we learn the anxiety of the queen to have the
whole work executed with accuracy, and ushered into the world
with every recommendation promising to procure it acceptance and
popularity. Of this letter the following is a translation :

"Although, most noble and dearest lady, many considerations
readily induce me to write to you at present, yet I am chiefly influ-
enced by a solicitude for your health, which I hope is now perfectly
restored, and concerning which I am greatly desirous to be made
acquainted. I have, therefore, despatched this messenger, whom I
doubt not you will kindly welcome, both on account of his eminent
skill in music, which affords most delightful entertainment at once
to you and to myself, and because, coming immediately from me, he
can give you certain information as to my health and my whole cir-
cumstances. It was indeed my intention, before now, to have paid
my respects to you in person, but things have not fallen out in all
respects as I could have wished. I now hope that during this
winter, and at no distant day, we shall meet together, than which
nothing will aiford me greater pleasure.

" As I have been informed that the finishing hand has been put
by Mallet to the translation of Erasmus's paraphrase on John, and
that nothing now remains but that all diligence and care be taken
in revising it, I entreat you to transmit to me this most elegant and
useful work, now amended by Mallet or some of your learned friends,
that it may be committed to the press in due time, and that you
would also signify whether you wish it published with your name,
which would be most advantageous to the work, or anonymously.
In my opinion, you will considerably obstruct its success if you
refuse to let it go down to posterity under the sanction of your name.
You have bestowed much labour in accurately translating it for the

210 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

great good of the public, and would have undertaken still more, as
is well known, had the health of your body permitted. Since, there-
fore, the great pains you have taken on this work is universally
known, I see no reason why you should reject the praise deservedly
awarded you by all. But I leave all to your own prudence, and am
ready to approve of whatever you shall think best to be done.

" I return you abundant thanks for the purse you have sent me
as a present. I beseech the all gracious and Almighty God to vouch-
safe to bless you with long life, and with true, unalloyed happiness.
From Hanworth, the 20th of September. Your most attached and
affectionate friend, ' KATHARINE THE QUEEN. K. P." '

The whole expense connected with the translation of Erasmus's
work was defrayed from the queen's privy purse. This we learn
from Nicolas Udal's epistle dedicatory to her, before referred to, in
which he says, that " at her exceeding great costs and charges, she
had hired workmen to labour in the vineyard of Christ's gospel, and
procured the whole paraphrase of Erasmus upon all the New Testa-
ment, to be diligently translated into English by several men, whom
she employed upon this work." He at the same time expresses his
hope that the king would not allow it to remain buried in silence,
but would cause it to be printed, as the queen intended, " to the
commodity and benefit of good English people, now a long time sore
thirsting and hungering after the sincere and plain knowledge of
God's Word." Henry, it thus appears, was privy to the undertaking^
and had he lived till the work was ready for the press, it would pro-
bably have been printed and published under his patronage.

During the lifetime of Katharine, the only portion of it printed
was that on the Gospels and on the Acts of the Apostles, which was
printed at London in 1548, in folio, accompanied by three epistles
composed by Udal, one to King Edward, another to Queen Katha-
rine, and the third to the reader. 2

1 The original is in Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part ii., p. 330.
- The translation of the remainder, forming the second volume, was published about
a year later, accompanied with a dedication to King Edward, by Myles Coverdale. A

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 211

In his epistle dedicatory to Katharine, Udal pays a merited com-
pliment to the ladies of rank in England, many of whom at that
period cultivated with enthusiasm prot'ane and sacred learning ; and
pronounces a high eulogium on the devotion of the queen to the study
of letters, and of divine things. " A great number," says he, " of
noble women at this time in England are not only given to the study
of human sciences and strange tongues, but also so thoroughly expert
in Holy Scriptures, that they are able to compare with the best
writers, as well in enditing and penning of godly and faithful trea-
tises, to the instruction and edifying of realms in the knowledge of
God, as also in translating good books' out of Latin or Greek into
English, for the use and commodity of such as are rude and ignorant
of the said tongues. It is now no news in England to see young
damsels in noble houses, and in the courts of princes, instead of cards
and other instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their
hands either psalms, homilies, and other devout meditations, or else
Paul's epistles, or some book of Holy Scriptui'e matters, and as fami-
liarly both to read and reason thereof in Greek, Latin, French, or
Italian, as in English. It is now a common thing to see young vir-
gins so trained in the study of good letters, that they willingly set
all other vain pastimes at nought for learning's sake. It is now no
news at all to see queens and ladies of most high estate and progeny,
instead of courtly dalliance, to embrace virtuous exercises, reading
and writing, and with most, earnest study, both early and late, to
apply themselves to the acquiring of knowledge, as well in all other
liberal arts and disciplines, as also most specially of God and his
Holy Word. And in this behalf, to your highness as well for com-
posing and setting forth many godly psalms, and divers other con-
templative meditations, as also for causing these paraphrases to be
translated into our vulgar tongue, England can never be able to

second impression of the whole work was issued in 1552. In the reign of Edward, a
copy was ordered to be placed in every parish church in the kingdom, to be read ou
the Sabbaths and holy days to the people. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., pp.
101, 102.

212 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

render thanks sufficient." 1 He then proceeds with a mixture of
flattery, the common fault of learned men in that age, and even at a
later period, to praise the Princess Mary's diligence and ability in
prosecuting, till interrupted by sickness, her part of the under-
taking.

The zealous endeavours of Katharine for the translation and pub-
lication cf Erasmus's paraphrase, excited the bitter opposition of
Bishop Gardiner, and deepened his enmity against her. After it
was published he violently urged his objections in a letter to the
Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector, and in other ways. He agreed
with those who said that Erasmus had laid the eggs and that Luther
had hatched them. He represented the paraphrase as hostile to the
power of princes, as well as full of other dangerous doctrines, and as
powerfully tending to foster in evil men the monstrous opinions
which had lately sprung up. He might term it, in one word, " abo-
mination," on account both of the falsehood and malice of much of
its matter. In Latin it was bad enough, but much worse in English,
the translators, who knew neither of the two languages, having often
from ignorance, and often from design, misrepresented the meaning.
Besides, being written by Erasmus in his youth, it contained many
sentiments which, in his mature judgment, he had renounced. And
as to the law requiring every parish to purchase a copy, it was. calcu-
lating from the price of the book and from the number of probable
purchasers, equivalent to the imposition of a tax of ,20,000. 2 But
Gardiner, much as he detested the English translation of Erasmus's
paraphrase, had it not in his power to suppress it till the accession
of Mary to the throne.

Besides devoting herself to the reading and study of the Holy
Scriptures, Katharine retained several learned and pious chaplains
for the improvement of herself and her household. Every afternoon,
and especially in Lent, a discourse upon some portion of the Sacred

1 Ballard's Learned Ladies, pp. 127-130.

2 Strype's Mem. of Cranmer, book ii., chap. iiL, p. 151. Jortin's Life of Erasmus,
London, 1808, vol. i., pp. 120, 121, 384 ; and vol. ii., pp. 103, 104.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 213

Volume, extending to about an hour's length, and frequently touching
upon some abuses rampant in the church, was delivered by one of
her chaplains in her privy chamber, she herself, her ladies, and such
of her household gentlemen and others as were inclined, being pre-
sent. Of these exercises she by no means made a secret, and they
were neither unknown nor disagreeable to the king, who at first, and
for a considerable time, seemed rather pleased than dissatisfied with
them, though he himself never attended.

Gathering confidence from his tolerance, if not approbation of her
house conventicles, Katharine began to take the liberty to converse
with him, in their hours of social intercourse, on religious questions,
defending the Protestant doctrines from Scripture and reason with
much ability and spirit. So far did she carry this freedom, as fre-
quently, from her Protestant zeal, to urge him, by all the gentle arts
of persuasion, to purge the Church of England from the remaining
dregs of Popish superstition and idolatry, and thus complete the work
of reformation he had commenced, to the glory of God and his own
honour, by delivering England from the thraldom of the Pope. In
pressing religious subjects on his attention, she was influenced by
another reason, chiefly affecting himself. Perceiving that his natu-
rally vigorous constitution was broken down by a complication of
diseases, to all appearance mortal, though lingering, and knowing that
the dreadful burden of the unpardoned, because unrepented, guilt of
some of the most dreadful crimes which man can commit was lying
upon his soul, she was desirous of bringing him, while yet he had time
and space to repent, seriously to think of the awful account he be-
hoved soon to render at the bar of the righteous Judge of all, and
" to lament, sigh, and weep for his life and time so evil spent," to use
in application to him the language she applies to herself, and to seek
" absolution and remission through the merits of Christ," trusting to
him as " the only advocate and mediator between God and man."
This led her in her converse with him to advert to the most solemn
topics of religion, ungrateful to him at all times, and not more grate-
ful now, when he ought especially to have felt their importance ; and

214 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

though she exercised a wise discretion, none in possession of the
royal ear would have ventured to use equal plainness of speech.

In arguing with Henry on theological questions, Katharine was
exposing herself to no small personal danger. Having towards the
close of his life become increasingly opinionative, as well as increas-
ingly fierce in temper, by reason of his bad health, he would listen
to counsel from very few, and still less would he bear to be opposed
by argument on points of theology, as to which, proud of his title of
Defender of the Faith, and as strenuous an asserter of his own in-
fallibility as the Pope, he thought that every one should think exactly
as he thought ; but, from the singular affection he unquestionably
felt for her, till prejudices against her were successfully infused into
his mind, he listened to her counsels and arguments on such topics
with respect, or at least without any indication of his taking offence.
Even when his ulcerated leg, which gradually waxed worse, had re-
duced him to a state of sickness, and rendered him still more cross
and difficult to be pleased, she continued, on visiting him at his re-
quest or of her own accord, to endeavour, after her usual manner, to
move him zealously to proceed in the reformation of the church. And
though his aggravated pain and restlessness made him listen less
patiently than formerly to such discourse, so much of his favour and
affection did she enjoy, that there was some prospect of liberty being
granted freely and fully to preach the gospel throughout England,
and of the Reformation being carried to a much greater extent than
before.

These promising appearances were, however, soon blasted, partly
from the caprice of the king, and partly from the malicious conspira-
cies formed against her life. Gardiner and Wriothesley, with other
ferocious and implacable enemies of the Reformation, both of the
king's privy chamber and of the privy council, about a year after the
king's return from Boulogne, that is, towards the close of the year
1545, indignant at learning not only of the king's connivance at the
sermons preached in her privy chamber, but at the influence she was
exerting over him in private in favour of the new opinions, and

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Parr.

which, if continued, would issue in the utter ruin of Popery in Eng-
land, formed a plot not only to decrown but to decapitate her, that,
having removed out of the way the most illustrious patroness of the
Eeformers, they might openly, and without fear of control, fall upon
and exterminate, with fire and sword, the whole of that hated body.
Great as was the influence they had acquired over Henry by pander-
ing to his worst passions, they yet judged it prudent to proceed
with caution. His great favour and warm affection for the queen
made them doubtful of success, and for some time they did not dare
once to open their lips against her in his presence, or even behind
his back, save to their own confidants. But their deep malignity
determined them to watch the course of events, in the hope that
an opportunity would occur of infusing into the royal mind ill-will
against her. At no distant date an opportunity did occur, and it was
eagerly seized upon. Gardiner, happening to be present at one of
the visits she paid to the king, at a time when the more than ordi-
nary pain he suffered from his ulcerated leg rendered him unusually
irritable, observed the impatience of the monarch as she began to
plead the cause of the oppressed, and to xirge upon him the impor-
tance of carrying on the reformation of the church how, not seem-
ing to relish the theme, he made an abrupt transition to more agree-
able topics. On that occasion, indeed, the king conversed with her
on other subjects with courteous affection, and in taking farewell called
her, as usual, " sweetheart ;" but immediately upon her departure he
gave vent to his chagrin, deeming it the highest presumption for
her to pretend to instruct him. " A good hearing it is," said he to
the bishop, " when women become such clerks, and a thing much to
my comfort, to come in mine old age to be taught by my wife."

Gardiner, observing the king's displeasure at the queen, and think-
ing that now the hour of vengeance had at last arrived, resolved to
strike the iron when it was hot, by stirring up in Henry such sus-
picious, jealousies, and prejudices against her as might lead to her
overthrow, and thus defeat all her endeavours in behalf of the Refor-
mation. " I dislike," said the impudent and malignant prelate,

216

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

eagerly, "that the queen should so much forget herself as to take
upon her to stand in any argument with your majesty, so eminent
for your rare virtues, and especially for your learned judgment in
matters of religion, above not only princes of this and other ages,

Gardiner inciting Henry against Katharine.

but also above doctors professed in divinity. It is an unseemly thing
for any of your majesty's subjects to reason and argue with you so
malapertly, and it is grievous to me, and others of your majesty's
counsellors, to hear the same. They all know from experience your
wisdom to be such that you do not require to be instructed in these
matters. How dangerous and perilous is it, and ever lias been, for
a prince to suffer such insolent words from his subjects ; who, as they
have boldness to contradict their sovereign in words, want only the
power to oppose him in deeds ! Besides, the religion so stiffly main-
tained by the queen, not only disallows and dissolves the civil go-
vernment of princes, but also teaches the people that all things ought
to be in common. So odious are these opinions, and so perilous to the
estate of princes, whatever may be pretended, that, notwithstanding
the reverence I bear her for your majesty's sake, I am bold to affirm

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 217

that the greatest subject in the land, speaking such words as she
spake, and defending such arguments as she defended, had deserved
death. Yet I will not and dare not, without good warrant from your
majesty, speak what I know in the queen's case, although I have
good grounds for doing so, and such as my dutiful affection towards
your majesty, and my zeal for the preservation of your estate, will
scarcely permit me to conceal, though the uttering thereof may,
through her and her faction, be the destruction of myself, and of
such as have most at heart their prince's safety, unless your majesty
become their protector. Which if you do (and for your own safety
you ought not to refuse), I, with others of your faithful counsellors,
can within a short time disclose such treasons, covered with the cloak
of heresy, that your majesty will easily perceive the danger of cher-
ishing a serpent within your own bosom. Howbeit, I will not for
my parb willingly meddle with the matter, both from reverent re-
spect to the queen for your majesty's sake, and also lest the faction
should be grown already too great to render it consistent with your
majesty's safety to discover it."

In this speech Gardiner, affecting, with malignant craft, a tone and
manner of great concern for the preservation of the authority and
rights of the crown, assured his majesty that the toleration of these
Reformers was inconsistent with his safely enjoying his crown ; that
their sole, though disguised motives, were to undermine the royal
authority, to destroy the distinctions of rank, to place all men on an
equality, and that the queen, by embracing and advocating their
sentiments, had become the supporter of traitors to the throne, and
of the enemies of social order. This was the common slang brought
against the Reformers by their enemies, either ignorantly or mali-
ciously, probably both, in every country of Europe ; and calumnious
though it was for the Reformers earnestly inculcated submission
to the lawful authority of princes, and respected the distinctions
of rank in society it contributed powerfully in creating preju-
dices in the minds of monarchs against the Reformation, and in
exciting them to attempt to crush it, if possible, by deadly persecu-

218 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tion. Gardiner's fierce invectives against the Reformers, and the
extravagant flattery he lavished upon Henry, were not without their
effects. So jealous did the king become of his authority and rights,
and so displeased with the queen for adopting rebellious principles
and patronizing rebels, that before Gardiner's departure he gave
warrant for articles of impeachment to be drawn up against her, so
that she might forthwith be brought to trial, declaring it to be his
fixed resolution not to spare her should she be found to have violated
the statutes of the realm. With this commission Gardiner departed,
fully anticipating that ere long this Protestant queen would follow
the way of Henry's former wives.

The more effectually to compass their purpose, Gardiner and
Wriothesley suborned accusers, and adopted measures for discover-
ing what books forbidden by law she had in her possession. They
thought it best to begin with some of those ladies of her privy
chamber suspected of heretical pravity, with whom she was living
on terms of intimate friendship. The chief of these were her sister,
Anne, wife of Sir William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke ;
Lady Lane, her cousin-german ; and Lady Tyrwhit. 1 These ladies,
like the queen, were friendly to the reformed principles, and in their
social confidential intercourse they would discuss the great questions
now contested by the Reformers, and now shaking the long-established
ecclesiastical fabrics of Europe transubstantiation, the adoration of
the host, purgatory, praying to angels, saints, and the Virgin Mary,
pilgrimages, the virtues of saiuts' relics, and other Popish dogmas,
each bringing the force of her understanding to bear on the point at
issue, and contributing her store of remark, derived from the Scrip-
tures, or from the writings of the Reformers, and thus opening up
new sources of mutual intellectual enjoyment. It was agreed upon
by the conspirators that these three ladies should first be accused of
violating the statute of the six articles, and that, upon their appre-
hension, their chambers and cabinets should be searched, in the
hope that something, as prohibited books, might be found, supplying
1 The wife of Sir Robert Tvrwhit.

ENGLAND.] KatJiarine Parr. 219

matter for criminating the queen herself; in which case she was to
be instantly arrested and carried prisoner, by barge, during night,
to the Tower. Articles of impeachment were drawn up, and brought
by Wriothesley to the king. His majesty signed them without
hesitation, so that, to all appearance, the tragedy of the execution
of another queen would speedily be enacted.

According to Foxe, Henry acted throughout dissemblingly, having
no real intention of bringing Katharine to the block, but merely
wishing to see how far her enemies would carry their persecuting
cruelty. From the frequency with which the martyrologist interjects
a clause to this effect during the course of his narrative of this affair,
he seems very anxious to impress on the minds of his readers a belief
of the generous intentions of Henry, which are extremely doubtful.
" If he were not in earnest," says Lord Herbert, " it was thought a
terrible jest, especially to a queen that had the reputation of a virtu-
ous, humble, and observant wife." ' Besides, if the monarch in this
instance was governed by generous feeling, lie acted somewhat at
variance with his past character and conduct. He had hitherto
shown no reluctance to shed the blood of his wives ; he had already
butchered two of them, and from an ominous clause of an act passed
at his dictation in the Parliament which met January 14, 1544,
regulating the succession to the crown, only six months after her
marriage, and from a clause equally significant in his will, it appears
that, notwithstanding her youth and health, and his advanced years
and declining health, he contemplated surviving her, and wedding
another wife. In the act of Parliament referred to is the following
sentence: " And forasmuch as it standeth in the only pleasure and
will of Almighty God, whether the king's majesty shall have any
heirs begotten and procreated between his highness and his most en-
tirely beloved wife, Queen Katharine, or by any other his lawful
wife.'"' And in his will, dated December 30, 1546, settling the
succession, after nominating Prince Edward his immediate successor,

1 Life of Henry VIII., p. 5G1.

2 Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., pp. 503-506.

220 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

he appoints that, in default of issue by that prince, the crown shall
come to the heirs of his own body, lawfully " begotten of the body
of our entirely beloved Queen Katharine, that now is, or of any other
our lawful wife that we shall hereafter marry." 1

Meanwhile the queen, ignorant and unsuspicious of the fatal snares
laid for her destruction such was the secrecy observed dwelt, as
formerly, on paying her accustomed visits to the king, on the impor-
tance of church reformation. And he listened to her without con-
tradiction or displeasure ; her strong good sense, and her winning
gentleness of manner, gaining on his heart, hard as it was, and caus-
ing him to relent, if he ever really intended to permit the bloody
purpose of her enemies to take effect.

For her first knowledge of the conspiracy she was indebted to an
accidental circumstance. Wriothesley having casually dropped from,
his bosom the articles of impeachment, they were providentially
found by one of Katharine's friends, who immediately put them into
her hands. On reading the document, and observing the royal sig-
nature appended to it, the sudden and unexpected discoveiy of a
wicked plot against her life came upon her like a sti'oke of light-
ning ; and, stunned with the blow, she fainted away. On recovering
consciousness she was in the deepest distress, and felt as if her doom
was sealed. The fate of Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard
rushed with horror upon her mind ; and the truculent temper and
past conduct of the monarch made it but too probable that she would
now end her days upon a scaffold ; " for," as has been justly observed,
" hitherto the king had never relented in any capital prosecution,
once commenced, against wife or minister." 2 Her agitated feelings
affecting her bodily frame, brought upon her an illness which even
threatened her life. Hearing of her dangerous condition, the king
sent Dr. Wendy and others of his physicians to attend her. Dr.
Wendy alone knew that the real cause of her illness was mental
distress ; for the king himself, one evening after the queen's depar-

1 Fuller's Church History.

- Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors of England, vol. i., p. 037-

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 221

ture, expressed to this physician his dislike of her religion, professing
that he intended no longer to be troubled with such a doctress, and
disclosed to him the plot formed for her destruction, charging him
with secrecy upon peril of his life, naming at the same time the con-
spirators, all the circumstances of the conspiracy, and how it would
issue. 1 Dr. "Wendy, who was an excellent man, revealed to her the
secret. " I know," said he, " that articles of impeachment have been
devised against you, and though I stand in danger of my life, should
it be discovered that I make this known to any human being, yet
from concern for your life, and to discharge my own conscience, by
preventing, as far as in my power, the shedding of innocent blood, I
feel constrained to give you warning of the ruin impending over
you. I beseech you instantly, and with due secrecy, to consult
your own safety, and to conform somewhat to the king's inclina-
tions ; assured that by humble submission you will find him
exorable."

Not long after, Henry, understanding that she still continued in a
dangerous state, his sympathy being awakened, he personally visited
her, remaining with her about an hour, and assuring her of his con-
stant fidelity and affection.

Encouraged by his majesty's gracious visit, and by Dr. "Wendy's
confidential communications, she gradually recovered ; and that no
time might be lost, she embraced an early opportunity of repairing
to the king, in the hope that by her address and submissions she
might still avert the threatened crushing calamity. From her know-
ledge of his moods and habits, she judged that the most effectual
method of producing a favourable impression on his mind, would be
to act as if entirely ignorant of the hostile purpose of her enemies,
so that her soothing and submissive language might seem the spon-
taneous effusion of the heart, and not assumed for any personal
object. Having commanded her ladies to remove the prohibited
heretical books in their possession, she went the following night into

1 Foxe's favourable judgment as to the king's intentions with regard to the queen,
appears to rest upon this part of Dr. Wendy's testimony.

222 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

his majesty's apartment, attended only by Lady Herbert, her sister,
and Lady Lane, who carried the candle before her, and she there
found him sitting, engaged in conversation with some of the gentle-
men of his chamber. He welcomed her with courteous affection ;
and, contrary to his former manner, entered at once into conversa-
tion with her on some controverted theological questions, as to which
he professed a desire that she might resolve his doubts. With great
presence of mind, she concealed her emotions of alarm, though her
life, it may be said, hung upon the chances of this interview, and
answered his questions with coolness and even vivacity, without,
however, greatly committing herself. To have spoken her whole
mind, explaining and vindicating all her views of religious truth to
a monarch like Henry, who was too self-willed to listen to his wives
as oracles, either on political, ecclesiastical, or religious questions,
and too ferociously arbitrary to tolerate any creed materially differ-
ent from his own, would have been a somewhat perilous task.
" Your majesty," said she, " right well knows, nor am I myself igno-
rant, what great imperfection and weakness, by our first creation, is
allotted unto us women, who are ordained inferior and subject unto
man, as our head, from which head all our direction ought to pro-
ceed ; and that as God made man in his own likeness, whereby he,
being endued with higher gifts, might rather be stirred to the con-
templation of heavenly things, and to an earnest endeavour to obey
his commandments, even so, also, made he woman of man, of whom
and by whom she is to be governed, commanded, and directed; whose
womanly weaknesses and natural imperfection ought to be aided and
borne with, 80 that by his wisdom, such things as be lacking in her
onght to be supplied. Since, therefore, God hath appointed such a
natural difference between man and woman, and your majesty, ex-
celling so much in gifts and ornaments of wisdom, and I a silly poor
v o.nan, so much inferior in all respects of nature unto you, how then
cometh it now to pass that your majesty requireth my judgment on
theological problems ? as to which, when I have said what I can,
yet must I, and will I refer my judgment in this and in all other

Katharine Parr.

223

cases to your majesty's wisdom, as my only anchor, supreme head
and governor here on earth, next under God to lean upon. 1 '

This speech, framed so dexterously as to chime in with Henry's
extravagant ideas of his own superiority, and of the inferiority of
woman, whom, in fact, he only regarded as a slave to his passions,
and delivered with the fascinating, the easy -humoured conversa-
tional vivacity in which she excelled, so mollified the heart of the
stern monarch, that he exclaimed, " Not so, by St. Mary, you are
become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us (as we take it), and not to be
instructed or directed by us."

" If your majesty take it so," replied the queen, following up her
success, "then hath your majesty very much mistaken me, who have
ever thought it very unseemly and preposterous for the woman to
take upon her the office of a teacher to her lord and husband, of

Reconciliation of Henry and Katharine.

whom she ought rather to learn. And whereas I have, with your
majesty's leave, been formerly bold, in conversing with yonr majesty,
sometimes to express and defend opinions different from yours, I have

224 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

done this not so much to dogmatize as to beguile the weary hours,
by diverting your majesty in this the painful time of your infirmity,
and to receive some profit to myself from your majesty's learned
discourse ; in which last, I assure your majesty, I have not missed
any part of my desire, always referring myself in such matters to
your majesty, as by the ordination of nature it is my bounden duty
to do."

" And is it even so, sweetheart !" replied the king, " and tended
your arguments to no worse end ? Then, perfect friends we are now
again, as ever at any time heretofore." And as he sat in his chair,
he affectionately embraced and kissed her, adding, that it did him
more good at that time to hear these words from her mouth, than if
he had heard of a hundred thousand pounds having come into his
possession.

Katharine thus bowed to the storm, and it passed over her head.
It was fortunate for her that Henry, the violence of whose amorous
propensities was somewhat subdued through age and excess, had
not conceived a passion for any of the beautiful ladies of the court,
else Katharine's good sense and adroitness, her eloquence and sub-
mission, her engaging manners and virtuous character, would have
availed little in appeasing his wrath, and in saving her from being
beheaded or burned .on Tower Hill for treason or heresy, to make
way for the elevation of the new favourite to the throne. As he
had fixed his affections upon no rival, she succeeded the more easily
iu mollifying his hard heart, and retired with assurances of his con-
tinued favour and protection. After her departure, he was as loud
in her commendation as formerly in her condemnation.

Gardiner and Wriothesley, ignorant of this interview, and of the
favourable impression she had produced on the mind of Henry, had
made all necessary preparations for arresting her, and carrying her
prisoner to the Tower on the succeeding day, accompanied with Lady
Herbert, Lady Lane, and Lady Tyrwhit ; for they had altered their
former purpose of apprehending first these three ladies, and after-
wards the queen. But Providence ordered things differently from

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 225

the intentions of these implacable ami unprincipled men. At the
time they had fixed upon for the apprehension of their victims,
which was in the afternoon, the weather being fine, the king, attended
only by two gentlemen of his bed-chamber, was amicably conversing
in the garden with the queen, whom he had sent for, and who was
attended by the three ladies already named. While the royal party
was thus engaged, the lord chancellor entered the garden, with forty
of the royal guard at his back, in the full expectation that his majesty
would say to him, " See these four heretics forthwith lodged in the
Tower." In this he was completely disappointed. The king, who
knew his errand, looked with indignation at him and the guards,
and stepping aside to a short distance from the queen and her atten-
dants, called to the chancellor, who on his knees addressed a few
words to his majesty, inaudible to the others in the garden. " Knave !
arrant knave! beast! fool !" replied his majesty gruffly, in a low
whispering tone, and yet so vehemently as to be overheard by the
queen and her ladies, at the same time commanding him instantly to
quit his presence. Mortified at being thus cheated of his prey, and
in terror for the wrath of the monarch, the chancellor withdrew and
till his train. Thus was the plot entirely broken, though no punish-
ment was inflicted on the culprits who had committed this grievous
outrage on the Queen of England, an outrage which, if committed on
the humblest woman in the kingdom, ought to have been severely
punished.

Immediately after the departure of Wriothesley, Henry returned
to the queen, who was ignorant of the hostile purpose of the chan-
cellor. Perceiving his majesty, though he still spoke kindly to her,
offended at him, she interceded for her enemy, urging that, though
ignorant of the chancellor's offence, it must have proceeded from
ignorance, and not perversity of will ; and therefore beseeching his
majesty, if the cause was not very heinous, to regard it in this light
at her humble suit. " Ah ! poor soul," replied the king, " thou little
knowest how ill he deserveth this grace at thy hands. Upon my word,
sweetheart, he hath been towards thee an arrant knave, and so let

22G Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

him go !" Her reply breathed no malice, but a Christian forgiving
spirit towards the man who, could he have compassed his purpose,
would have speedily brought her to an ignominious execution. 1

Thus was Katharine at this time indebted for her escape to a tem-
porary impulse of generosity on the part of Henry. But there is
reason to fear, from the persevering malignity of her enemies, and
from the capriciousness of the monarch, that had not death soon
after overtaken him, she would at last have fallen a sacrifice on the
scaffold ; 2 and the terrors of a sudden reverse, it is probable, clung
to her imagination so long as he lived ; for what dependence could
be placed on a selfish, cruel voluptuary, who was governed by ever-
varying impulses ; who, in regard to his wives, never observed the
laws of chivalry and honour ; whose all-engrossing devotion to his
own gratification blunted his heart into callous indifference to the
happiness or misery of every other human being but himself. In
living with him she was in the tiger's den, and all the chances were
that, though the savage monster might spare her for a time, he would
one day, and all of a sudden, falling upon her, ramp and rend, with
the ferocity proper to his nature, leaving her a mangled, lifeless
victim. Thus haunted by funereal images, the splendour of a court
was stripped of its attractions, and seemed darkened by the shadow of
death. Such feelings were destructive of earthly happiness, but they
powerfully promoted the religious turn of her mind, and excited her,
more frequently than ever, to retire from the gaiety and pomp of
fashionable life, to indulge in serious and solemn meditation on
Divine things, that, come what may, she might be prepared.

Henry was now approaching the close of his earthly career. He
did not live long after Katharine had made so narrow an escape ;

' Oar chief authority in the preceding narrative of the conspiracy against Katharine
is Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. v., pp. 553-561.

* The Jesuit Parsons affirms that " the Icing, notwithstanding, purposed to have
burned her as a heretic, if he had lived." Fuller calls in question the truth of this
assertion, observing, that Parsons was neither confessor nor privy-councillor to King
Henry VIII. Church History of Great Britain, vol. ii., pp. 116, 11". Worthies of
England, vol. ii., p. 9.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 227

and his closing scene, as might have been expected, was embittered
by the agony of remorse. His last words, as one of his attendants
presented to him a cup of white wine to allay his scorching death-
thirst, were, " All is lost !" He died on the 28th of January, 1547,
in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and the fifty-sixth of his age,
leaving Katharine a widow, after she had been his wife three years,
six months, and five days. The death of this tyrant, whatever were
the feigned expressions of sorrow uttered on the occasion, must have
been felt as a merciful deliverance to multitudes of his subjects.
There is no reason to believe, as is asserted by some of our histo-
rians, that he retained to the last the affection with which, at his ac-
cession to the throne, and even long after, he was universally regarded.
From the sudden and violent outbursts of fury to which in the latter
period of his life he was liable, from the imperious caprice which
rendered it impossible for any human being long to please him, even
such as stood highest in his favour could hardly contemplate his
death with regret. To the privy-councillor, whom he might exalt
to the highest honours to-day, and consign to the axe of the execu-
tioner to-morrow ; to the monks, whom he had disgraced and beg-
gared, that he might appropriate to himself their accumulated wealth;
to staunch Roman Catholics, whom he remorselessly committed to
the flames for impugning his ecclesiastical supremacy ; and to the
Reformers, on whom he as unscrupulously inflicted the same punish-
ment for denying transubstantiation, he was equally an object of
terror ; and his death must have been equally a cause of secret con-
gratulation. How different this state of feeling from the enthusias-
tic joy with which his accession was hailed by his united subjects !
William Montjoy at that time thus wrote to Erasmus, from the court
at Greenwich : " I doubt not, my Erasmus, but that when you have
once heard of the succession of our prince, Henry VIII., to the king-
dom, on the death of his father, this will banish all sadness from
your mind. Did you see how all here leap for joy, how they are
delighted with so great a prince, how they desire nothing more cor-
dially than the prolongation of his life, you could not refrain from

228 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

shedding tears of gladness. The sky smiles, the earth exults, all
things are full of milk, of honey, of nectar. Our king covets not
gold, nor jewels, nor metals, but virtue, glory, eternity." 1 How dif-
ferent a man did Henry turn out from the portrait here sketched !
and how did his reign, when brought to its close, disappoint, in all
respects, the flattering hopes expressed at its commencement in these
extravagant hyperboles !

On the death of Henry, Edward VI., his son and successor, wrote
letters of condolence to his mother-in-law, whom he loved with filial
affection, and to his sisters. Three letters of this description, in Latin,
the earliest he wrote as king, are still extant. From the tenderness
of his youth, he doubtless experienced, on the death of his father,
bitter pangs of sorrow ; and yet these letters are not written in the
style and tone of deep, heartfelt grief. They appear rather as if
dictated by his Latin tutor, Cox, than the free effusions of Edward's
own feelings. " Cox," as Ellis observes, " it should seem, could not
assume for his pupil that expression of natural grief which he did
not personally feel." a

CHAPTER III.

FROM HER MARRIAGE WITH LORD ADMIRAL SEYMOUR TO HER DEATH.

AFTER Henry's death Katharine resided for some time at Chelsea, 3
which was part of her jointure. During her residence there, her
affection for the former object of her choice, Thomas Seymour, Lord
High Admiral of England? and brother to the Duke of Somerset, the

1 Erasrai Epist., torn, i., p. 7.

2 lillis's Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 141.

The Manor-house had been built by Henry. It was pulled down many years ugo,
when Cheyne Walk was erected.

* The admiral was also brother to the deceased Jane Seymour, third queen of
Henry VIII., and mother of Edward VI.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 229

Lord Protector, revived. To this nobleman, whom she had looked
upon with eyes of affection before her marriage with the deceased
monarch, she now surrendered her heart, and they were soon upon
terms of courtship. Seymour " was a man of insatiable ambition,
arrogant, assuming, implacable ; and though esteemed of superior
capacity to the protector, he possessed not to the same degree the
confidence and regard of the people." l A. marriage with the queen-
dowager would, therefore, be highly flattering to the pride of such a
man. It has indeed been said, and not without foundation, that his
first thoughts were of a more ambitious kind than even a union with
her ; that marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, and the acquisition
of the English crown, were his most potent wishes.

Before receiving from Katharine explicit declarations of her attach-
ment for she seems to have been first in making blushing confes-
sion of her love Seymour was apprehensive that by his addresses
he might fail in insinuating himself into her good graces, and there-
fore he solicited the friendly assistance of the Princess Mary, who,
however, from various circumstances, declined to interfere. 2 But, in
reality, Seymour did not need the services of any to assist him in
gaining the heart and hand of Katharine. He had every external
accomplishment calculated to captivate the female heart; and in
courting her he certainly experienced no difficulties. Like himself,
she was desirous of his obtaining the consent of his brother, the lord
protector, and of other influential parties, to his marrying her, though
she by no means imagined that any obstacles thrown in the way by
them ought to be a sufficient bar to^tne union. In one of her letters
to him about this time, signed, " Your humble, true, and loving wife,
during her life, Keteryn the Quene, K.P.," after adverting to his
letter to her brother-in-law, Herbert, from which she gathered that
he dreaded his brother, the Protector's opposition to the marriage,
and expressing it as her wish that he should account it sufficient
once to have sought his brother's good-will, she bids him endeavour

1 Hume. - See Mary's letter to him, dated June 4, in Ellis's

Letters, first series vol ii., pp. 149-151.

230 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

to obtain favourable letters from the king, and also the friendly aid
of the most notable members of council. " My Lord," she adds, with
playful affection, " whereas ye charge me with a promise 'written
with mine own hand, to change the two years into two months, I
think ye have no such plain sentence written with my own hand ; I
know not whether ye be a paraphraser or not ; if ye be learned in
that science, it is possible ye may of one word make a whole sen-
tence, and yet not at all times after the true meaning of the writer,
as it appeareth by your exposition upon my writing." '

The marriage took place clandestinely, about the middle of May,
1547, 2 so soon after the death of Henry, that, as has been said, had
Katharine immediately proved pregnant, a doubt would have arisen
to which husband the child belonged. This haste exposed her at
the time to censure, and though it involved no immorality, it was
certainly a breach of the laudable usages of society, which dictated
the propriety of her allowing a longer period of time to elapse before
entering into a new conjugal alliance. Henry, indeed, had little
claim upon her sorrow ; but whatever were his demerits, it would
have been wise in her to have avoided seeming to offer any disre-
spect to his memory. Hardly, indeed, had a longer period elapsed
from the death of her second husband, Lord Latimer, when she was
married to Henry ; but in that case she had no choice. The author
of her life, published by the London Religious Tract Society, apolo-
gizes for her listening to the addresses of a man of rank and power
sooner than modern ideas of propriety would countenance, from the
circumstance that the provision made for her by Henry, namely,
four thousand pounds, in addition to her jointure, was inadequate ;
and that she was thus left an unprotected female in troublous times.
But Katharine was by no means in narrow circumstances, having,
besides, ample jointures left her by her two first husbands. The
real explanation of this precipitate marriage was the strength of a
revived passion for Seymour, hurrying her on, in disregard of the
prudence that usually marked her conduct.

1 Kills'* Letters, first series, vol. ii., pp. 151-153. 2 King Edward's Journal.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 231

The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were deeply offended at the
precipitation of their step-mother in entering into a new marriage,
though they judged it prudent to conceal their displeasure from
others. Mary wrote to Elizabeth in terms strongly condemnatory
of Katharine's conduct; and Elizabeth, who partook of the same
feelings with her sister, thus writes in reply : " Princess, and very
dear sister, you are very right in saying, in your most acceptable
letters, which you have done me the honour of writing to me, that,
our interests being common, the just grief we feel in seeing the ashes,
or rather the scarcely cold body of the king, our father, so shame-
fully dishonoured by the queen, our step-mother, ought to be com-
mon to us also. I cannot express to you, my dear princess, how
much affliction I suffered when I was first informed of this marriage,
and no other comfort ca.n I find than that of the necessity of sub-
mitting ourselves to the decrees of Heaven ; since neither you nor I,
dearest sister, are in such a condition as to offer any obstacle thereto,
without running heavy risk of making our own lot worse than it is ;
at least so I think. We have to deal with too powerful a party,
who have got all authority into their hands, while we, deprived of
power, cut a very poor figure at court. I think, then, that the best
course we can take is that of dissimulation, that the mortification
may fall upon those who commit the fault." ' King Edward, on the
contrary, was well-pleased with the marriage, and sent Katharine a
congratulatory letter on the occasion. 2

After the nuptials, Katharine and Seymour left Chelsea to reside
at Hanworth, in Middlesex, one of Henry the Eighth's favourite
royal seats, which he had settled in dower upon her. Here, as at
Chelsea, subsequently to Henry's death, she had residing with her
the celebrated Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Marquis of Dorset,
afterwards Duke of Suffolk, a lady whose tragic history will here-
after be related. Whilst resident with Katharine, who herself was

1 Leti, Vita Elisabetta, vol. i., p. 180, quoted in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and
Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, vol. iii., p. 193.

2 See his letter to her in Strype's Mem. Ecd., vol. ii., part i., pp. 203-209,

232 Ladies oftfie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

a cultivator and patron of literature, young Jane was not likely to
suffer any loss in the prosecution of her literary studies. And in
regard to elegance of manners, mental refinement, the knowledge
of the Scriptures, and all that can improve the female character and
render it attractive, there was, perhaps, no lady of the age from
whom she could have derived greater benefit.

The Princess Elizabeth, whose education was committed to the
care of Katharine, who was kind to her as if her own daughter, also
joined the new married pair. Auguring, from the distinguished
abilities of Elizabeth, that Providence intended to elevate her to
sovereign power, Katharine gave her much wise and pious counsel.
" God," she would often say, " has given you great qualities ; culti-
vate them always, and labour to improve them, for I believe that
you are destined by Heaven to be Queen of England." ' But the
accession of Elizabeth to the family added to the comfort of neither
of the parties. Seymour soon began to use indelicate freedoms with
the young princess, which he carried so far as to give rise to scan-
dalous reports, exceedingly prejudicial to her good name ; and these
freedoms exciting the jealousy of Katharine, caused a degree of
domestic discord. This we learn from the depositions of the wit-
nesses examined on the lord admiral's impeachment, subsequently
to Katharine's death. Mrs. Katharine Ashley, Elizabeth's gover-
ness, and Parry, her cofferer, bore explicit testimony to that effect. -
The consequence was, as the latter witness deponed, that she was
sent from the "queen, or else that her grace parted from the queen."
The probability is that she was sent away. Had Elizabeth's charac-
ter been ruined, of which there was some danger, Katharine would
have been severely blamed, and her concern for the safety of the
princess, as yet only fifteen years of age, would naturally suggest to
her that the most effectual means of putting a stop to these unbe-
coming scenes was removing her from the family.

Seymour was, indeed, an unprincipled and irreligious character,

1 Lett's Elisabeth, quoted in Miss Strickland's Queen* of Ewjland, vol. vi., p. 28.
" See Hayues's State Papers, London edit., 1740, p. 99.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 233

and this rendered Katharine's union with him less happy than she
had anticipated. As to the celebration of the offices of religion she
was particularly strict, having established family worship in her
mansion every morning and evening, besides having sermons fre-
quently preached in it ; but, as might be expected, such was Seymour's
neglect or contempt of these exercises, that on all such occasions he
was sure to be absent. In a sermon preached before Edward VI., l
Hugh Latimer discloses this piece of domestic history : " I have
heard say that when the good queen who is gone had ordained in
her house daily prayer, both before noon and after noon, the admiral
gets him out of the way, like a mole digging in the earth. He shall
be Lot's wife to me as long as I live. He was, I heard say, a covet-
ous man, a covetous man indeed : 1 would there were no more in
England ! He was, I heard say, an ambitious man : I would there
were no more in England ! He was, I heard say, a seditious man,
a contemner of common prayer : I would there were no more in
England ! Well, he is gone. I would he had left none behind
him." " In another sermon, preached before the same monarch, Lati-
mer says, " He was a man, the farthest from the fear of God that
ever I knew or heard of in England." 3 The admiral's whole life,
indeed, showed that he had no regard to the obligations of equity
and justice, or to moral and religious obligations of any kind, never
shrinking from dishonourable practices, if his objects of ambition or
of pleasure could thereby be promoted.

Katharine did not give birth to an infant till considerably more
than a year after her marriage. In the prospect of this auspicious
event, both she and her husband were desirous that the child should
be a son. Writing some time before to Seymour, who was then
absent from her, she says, " This shall be to desire you to receive my
humble and most hearty recommendations and thanks for your let-
ter, which was no sooner come than welcome. ... I gave your
little knave your blessing, who, like an honest man, stirred apace

1 April 19, 1549. 2 Latimer's Sermons, printed for Parker Soc., p. 228.

3 Ibid., p. 164.

234

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

after and before It hath stirred these three days every

morning and evening, so that, I trust, when ye come it will make
you some pastime. And thus I end, bidding my sweetheart and
loving husband better to fair than myself. From Hanworth, this
Saturday, on the morning. By your most loving, obedient, and
humble wife, Kateryn the Quene. K.P." 1 Previously to her confine-
ment she retired to Sudley Castle, in Gloucestershire, accompanied

Ruins of Sudley Guile.

with the youthful Lady Jane Grey. Here she received a friendly
letter from the Princess Mary, expressing the hope that her grace
would have a safe delivery. On the 30th of August, 1548, the
expected little stranger, who turned out to be a daughter, made her
appearance, to the great joy of Seymour, though a boy would doubt-
less have gladdened him still more. But the birth of the child
proved fatal to the mother, in whom, on the third day after the
birth, unfavourable symptoms began to make their appearance.
On the fifth day, namely, September 3, Dr. Huick, her physician,
having informed her of her dangerous condition, she made her
i Haynes's State Papers, p. 62.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 235

will, ' by which she, " lying on her death-bed, sick of body, but of
good mind and perfect memory and discretion, being persuaded, and
perceiving the extremity of death to approach her," bequeathed all
she possessed to her husband, " wishing them to be a thousand times
more in value than they were." Two days after, namely, on
Wednesday, the 5th of September, being the seventh day after she
was delivered, she expired, between two and three o'clock in the
morning, at the castle of Sudley, in the thirty-sixth year of her
age. 2

It has been often said that she died of a broken heart, caused by
the harsh treatment of her profligate husband, and not without suspi-
cions of having been poisoned by his orders, suspicions probably first
created by his enemies, and the more readily received from a very pre-
valent impression that he aimed at a match with the Princess Eliza-
beth, who, he anticipated, might one day become queen of England.
That Seymour ill-used his wife was much talked of at the time. Parry,
Elizabeth's cofferer, in his examination on the trial of Seymour, states
that he said to Mrs. Ashley, in a conversation with her as to Eliza-
beth's marriage with Seymour, after the death of Katharine, " I had
heard much evil report of the lord admiral, that he was not only
a very covetous man and an oppressor, but also an evil jealous man ;
and how cruelly, how dishonourably, and how jealously he had xised
the queen." From the evidence of Elizabeth Tyrwhit, 3 in her ex-
amination on the same occasion, we learn that Katharine on her
death-bed reproached him for having treated her with unkindness,
an idea which seems to have taken possession of her mind, to the
exclusion of all other cares. But this paper bears internal evi-
dence, that through the violence of disease Katharine's reason had
become affected. " Two days before the death of the queen," says

J Miss Strickland's Queens of England has the 5th of September as the date of the
will, evidently a typographical error.

2 A breviate of the interment of the Lady Katharine Parr, &c., in Archceologia, vol. v.,
p. 232.

3 This is the lady formerly mentioned (p. 218), whom Gardiner and Wriothesley in-
tended to prosecute for heresy in the same bill of indictment with Katharine.

236 Ladies of tfte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Lady Tyrwhit, " at my coming to her in the morning, she asked me
where I had been so long, and said unto me she did fear such things
in herself that she was sure she could not live ; whereunto I answered,
as I thought, that I saw no likelihood of death in her. She then,
having my lord admiral by the hand, and divers others standing
by, spake these words, partly, as I took it, idly : ' My Lady Tyrwhit,
I am not well handled, for those that be about me care not for me,
but stand laughing at my grief ; and the more good I will to them,
the less good they will to me ;' whereunto my lord admiral an-
swered, ' Why, sweetheart, I would you no hurt !' And she said to
him again, aloud ' No, my lord, I think so ; ' and immediately she
said to him in his ear, 'but, my lord, you have given me many shrewd
taunts.' Those words I perceived she spake with good memory, and
very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was sore unquieted. My
lord admiral, perceiving that I heard it, called me aside and asked
me what she said, and I declared it plainly to him. Then he con-
sulted with me that he would lie down on the bed by her, to look if
he could pacify her unquietness with gentle communication ; where-
unto I agreed. And by that time he had spoken three or four words
to her, she answered him very roundly and shortly, saying ' My
lord, I would have given a thousand merks to have had my full
talk with Hewyke, the first day I was delivered, but I durst not for
displeasing of you ;' and I, hearing that, perceived her trouble to be
so great that my heart would serve me to hear no more. Such like
communication she had with him the space of an hour, which they
did hear that sat by her bedside." '

If what Katharine uttered at this time proceeded, as it evidently
did, from a distempered imagination, if it was the broken and incohe-
rent ravings of delirium, it is entitled to no great weight ; for that per-
sons under a partial or total eclipse of reason will reproach with un-
kindness friends who have ever treated them with the tenderest
affection, and whom they themselves have loved with idolatrous at-
tachment, is a fact which, however explained, frequently occurs in
1 Haynes's Stale Papers, p. 103.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 237

the history of mental derangement. But that Katharine's reproaches
were not altogether unfounded, seems implied in the depositions of
Lady Tyrwhit, from her representing Katharine, in her censures of
Seymour, as speaking only " partly idly," and " with good memory,"
from her saying that she declared plainly to Seymour what Katharine
had said against him, and from the entire absence of even a single
word in favour of his past conjugal kindness. Under her illness he,
indeed, acted with apparent affection, endeavouring by tender words
to divert her thoughts from the distressing ideas preying upon her
mind ; but observation frequently furnishes examples of persons acting
with similiar kindness towards relatives on a death-bed whom they
have been far from treating well during life, their sympathy, perhaps,
being excited at the moment, or this apparent affection being assumed
to save their reputation.

The suspicion that she was poisoned, in order to make room for his
intended marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, is totally destitute of
evidence. That, from his boundless ambition, he contemplated gain-
ing the hand of the princess before marrying Katharine, there seems
little room to doubt. From a letter of Elizabeth to him, we learn
that he had made proposals of this kind to her immediately on her
father's death. " I confess to you," says she, " that your letter, all
elegant as it is, has very much surprised me, for, besides that neither
my age nor my inclination allows me to think of marriage, I never
could have believed that any one would have spoken to me of nuptials
at a time when I ought to think of nothing but sorrow for the death
of my father. And to him I owe so much, that I must have two years
at least to mourn for his loss. And how caft I make up my mind to
become a wife before I shall have enjoyed for some years my virgin
state, and arrived at years of discretion." ' After the death of Ka-
tharine he again paid his addresses to Elizabeth ; and, notwithstand-
ing the disparity of their ages, though she was only in her sixteenth
year, while he was many years older, yet such were his advantages
of person, and his insinuating manners, that he succeeded in captivat-
1 Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. iii., p. 191.

238

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

ing her young heart. 1 It may, however, be doubted, whatever im-
proper freedoms he had used with her, whether during the lifetime
of Katharine he had formed any project of this sort, and there is no
evidence of his having attempted, as a means of carrying it into
effect, to get rid of Katharine by poison. The state of preservation
in which her body was found when discovered, as we shall afterwards
see, towards the close of the last century, nearly two hundred and
forty years after the breath had quitted it, is a strong presumption
against her having been poisoned ; for, had she been so, the effect of
the poison would have been to cause a rapid putrefaction and decay.
Seymour had many crimes to repent of, but this is one of which
there is every reason to believe he was innocent.

The body of Katharine was wrapped in cerecloth and chested in
lead ; and on the part of the lead which covered the breast was en-
graved a simple inscription. The body then remained in her privy

Chspel of Sudley Cattle.

chamber till the day appointed for interment. It being intended to
bury her in the chapel of Sudley, preparations were made for the

1 This is evident from the testimony of Mrs. Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, of the
princess herself, and of others examined on the impeachment of Seymour. Elizabeth

ENGLAND.] Katharine Parr. 239

performance of the funeral service in the chapel. On the morning
of the funeral day her corpse was carried from the castle of Sudley
to the chapel, with all the marks of distinction due to her rank, Lady
Jane Grey being chief mourner.' The corpse, when carried into the
chapel, was set down within the rails, and the mourners having taken
their places, the whole choir commenced singing certain psalms in
English, after which three lessons were read. At the close of the
third lesson the mourners, according to their degrees, and in confor-
mity with the custom on such occasions, put their offerings into the
alms-box ; such solemn circumstances being eminently fitted, by

herself acknowledges that slie loved him, and Mrs. Ashley secretly encouraged the
project of a marriage between them. Parry, the princess's cofferer, depones that the
governess said to him, " I would wish her [Elizabeth] his wife of all men living." For
this reason the lords of council, much against the will of the princess (Ellis's Letters,
vol. ii., pp. 153-158), dismissed her governess, and substituted Lady Tyrwhyt in her
place. The Duchess of Somerset blamed Mrs. Ashley for indulging the princess with
too much liberty. In their letter to Elizabeth, informing her of the change, dated
February, 1548, the lords of council simply state, as their reason for depriving Mrs
Ashley " of the special charge, to see to the good education of Elizabeth's person,"
that she "had shown herself far unmeet to occupy any such place about her grace."
See Haynes's State Papers, pp. 95-107.

! The order of the procession, and the badges of mourning worn, are recorded in
A Breviate of her Interment, written at the time, and printed in Archceologia, vol. v.,
pp. 232-236. It is also inserted in Rudder's History of Gloucestershire.

The place of Katharine's interment was long unknown. George Ballard, the indus-
trious antiquary of Camden, a town about ten miles from Sudley, says, in his Memoirs
of Learned Ladies (p. 96), that the particulars of her death and burial are desiderata;
and his ignorance of these facts appears the more extraordinary, as his business of a
staymaker must often have led him into those parts. He had not seen the Breviate of
her Interment just referred to, which determines the points he desiderated. The read-
ing of this document in Rudder's History of Gloucestershire, by some ladies interested
in the history of Katharine, led them to the discovery of the spot of her sepulture, and
of some curious particulars respecting her remains, in May, 1782, when they happened
to be at the castle of Sudley. They found her grave at the north wall, within the
ruined chapel ; and having pierced the leaden envelope, and removed the portion of
the cerecloth covering the face, they discovered the features, and particularly the eyes,
in a state of uncommon preservation. In 1784, some other persons visiting the chapel
had the curiosity again to open the grave. And on October 14, 1786, the Rev. l)r
Nash went to Sudley Chapel, in company with two gentlemen, to gratify his curiosity
by a personal investigation of the grave and remains of Katharine ; and they were
satisfied that the body was in entire preservation. A particular account of these
several visits to her last resting-place is given in Archceologia. vol. ix., pp. 1-9, accom-
panied with an engraving of Katharine's incased body as found by Dr. Nash.

240 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

reminding those in possession of this world's goods how the grave
ultimately reduces all mankind to a level, to soften their hearts and
open their hands to relieve the sorrows and privations of poverty.
The mourners having made their contributions, the others, both
gentlemen and ladies, followed their example, each giving as a sense
of duty or as inclination prompted. Then Dr. Myles Coverdale,
almoner of the deceased, as a means of leading the living to improve
the affecting dispensation, preached an appropriate and impressive
sermon, in which, among other things, he warned his hearers against
thinking, or spreading abroad the idea, that these offerings were made
for the benefit of the dead, being intended solely for the poor. He also
took occasion to caution them against supposing that the lights carried
and stationed about the corpse were for any other purpose than the
honour of the departed lady. The sermon being concluded, he offered
up a solemn and an affecting prayer, in which the whole audience
joined with becoming seriousness. The corpse was then deposited in
the earth, and during the time of interment the choir sung Te Deum
in English. The last offices of respect having been thus performed
to the mortal remains of this excellent woman, the mourners and
others, after partaking of a dinner prepared for them, returned to
their homes. 1

Katharine's chaplain, Dr. Parkhurst, 2 subsequently Bishop of Nor-
wich, wrote a Latin epitaph commemorative of her many virtues. Of
this epitaph, which was probably engraven on the monument erected
to her memory in the chapel of Sudley, the following is an English
translation :

" In this new tomb the royal Kath'rine lies,
Flower of her sex, renowned, great, and wise.
A wife by every nuptial virtue known,
And faithful partner once of Henry's throne.

' A Breviate, &c , in Archceologia, vol. v., pp. 232-236.

2 Parkhurst, in a letter to Heury Bullinger, dated Ludham, August 10, 1571, while
informing him of the death of her brother, the Marquis of Northampton, which took
place in the beginning of that month, designates her " my most gentle mistress, whom
I attended as chaplain twenty-three years since." Zurich Letters, second series, vol. i.,
P. 257.

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Parr. 241

To Seymour next her plighted hand she yields

(Seymour who Neptune's trident justly wields) ;

From him a beauteous daughter bless'd her arms,

An infant copy of her parents' charms.

"When now seven days this tender flower had bloom'd,

Heaven in its wrath the mother's soul resum'd.

Great Kath'rine's merit in our grief appears,

"While fair Britannia dews her cheek with tears ;

Our royal breasts with rising sighs are torn ;

"With saints she triumphs we with mortals mourn." '

Within less than a year after Katharine's death, namely, on
March 17, 1549, Seymour perished on the scaffold, under a bill of
attainder for high treason.

Their only child, whose name was Mary, upon the death of both her
parents, after remaining a short time at her uncle Somerset's house,
at Sion, was, according to her father's dying request, conveyed to
Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, the residence of Katharine, Duchess-
Dowager of Suffolk, a Protestant and intimate friend of the deceased
mother, to be brought up under the care of that lady. She was
accompanied by her governess, Mrs. Aglionby. her nurse, two maids,
and other servants. Her mother having made her will in favour of
Seymour, and his property having been confiscated on his condemna-
tion, the little helpless orphan was left upon the charity of her
friends. At the time of her leaving Sion, her uncle, the Duke of
Somerset, promised that a pension should be settled upon her for
her support, and that a portion of her nursery plate and furniture,
brought to Sion House, should be sent after her to Grimsthorpe ;
promises which, to the disgrace of that nobleman, were never ful-
filled, notwithstanding the persevering efforts of the Duchess of
Suffolk to prevail upon him to fulfil them. 2 This noble lady re-
peatedly wrote to him, to his duchess, and to William Cecil, after-
wards the celebrated Lord Burghley, on the subject. Miss Strick-
land, who has given specimens of the letters to Cecil, which are
written in a familiar tone, and with a vein of humour running
through them quite characteristic of the writer, asserts that they

1 Archaologia, vol. ix., pp. 1-9. * Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol. ii., p. 201.

242 Ladies of t/te Reformation. [ENGLAND.

betray a " worldly spirit and sordid temper," and that " the help-
less little one," though the child of a lady who had honoured the
duchess with her friendship, and shielded her from persecution,
and whom she regarded as a saint, "had become the unwelcome
recipient of her charity."' But the letters by no means warrant
this uncharitable construction. The case, as brought out in them,
only requires to be fairly represented in order to vindicate the
duchess from these hard censures. The maintenance of the babe,
with her train, consisting of some dozen of persons, involved consi-
derable expense, and the duchess found herself unable, without
running into debt, to support this large train, considered suitable,
according to the etiquette of the times, to the child of the Queen-
Dowager and of the Lord Admiral of England. Again, Somerset, as
has been just now said, had promised that a portion of the nursery
plate should be delivered with the child when she was sent to
Grimsthorpe, and that a pension should be granted for her mainte-
nance. Under these circumstances was it unreasonable, was it any
proof of ingratitude to Katharine Parr, or of unkindness to her
daughter, was it worldly or sordid for the Duchess of Suffolk to be
urgent in endeavouring to obtain from Somerset the fulfilment of
these promises, the more especially as the child had been wrongfully
deprived of the vast wealth which she ought to have inherited from
her parents 1 This, so far from being blameworthy, was what she
was bound in duty to do. In other cases the gifted authoress of
the Queens of England can carry her charity to a somewhat ex-
travagant extent. She attempts, even in the face of facts prov-
ing the contrary, 2 to screen Queen Mary from the guilt of the
Protestant blood shed under her reign ; and yet, upon such totally
inadequate evidence as these letters, she holds up the Duchess of
Suffolk to contempt as an ungrateful, sordid, selfish being, who,
while pretending piously to venerate the memory of Katharine Parr
by " editing and publishing the devotional writings of that queen/'
" grudged a shelter and food to her only child."
1 Queens of England, vol. v., pp. 125-129. 2 ee Introduction, p. 2].

ENGLAND.]

Katharine Parr.

243

Mary Seymour continued, it appears, for some years at least, under
the care of the duchess, and she was ultimately married to Sir Ed-
ward Bushel a respectable alliance, though inferior to what she
would probably have obtained had her parents' wealth come into her
possession.'

1 Queens of England, vol. v., pp. 129-131.

of BradgaU House

LADY JANE GREY

CHAPTEE I.

FROM HER BIRTH TO THE CLOSE OF HER CORRESPONDENCE WITH
CONTINENTAL DIVINES.

JEW characters in English history have occupied, within
so short a time, a more important part in the political
transactions of their day, than the lady whose life we
are now to relate, and few are fraught with a deeper
and more permanent interest The purity and loveli-
ness of her character, the vigour of her intellectual powers, the extent
of her literary acquirements, the seraphic fervour of her devotion,
were enough of themselves to have rendered her an engaging object.
But the interest derived from these attractions has been greatly

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 245

enhanced, and the sympathies ot the human heart powerfully en-
listed on her behalf, from the romantic events crowding the narra-
tive of her brief course, and from the tragic death by which it was
closed.

LADY JANE GREY was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, third
Marquis of Dorset, by his second wife, 1 Lady Frances Brandon, eldest
daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by Mary, widow of
Louis XII., King of France, second daughter of Henry VII. of Eng-
land, and youngest sister of Henry VIII. Thus she was of the blood-
royal of England on the mother's side, and she was also connected,
though not by consanguinity, with the royal family on the father's side,
her paternal great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, 2 relict of
Sir John Grey of Groby, having been queen-consort to Edward IV.
Her father. Henry Grey, when he succeeded to the honours of his
family, on the death of his father, which happened in 1530, was, in
point of rank, one of the first noblemen of his time. In 1547, the
first year of the reign of Edward VI., he was made lord high-con-
stable for that monarch's coronation, and was elected a knight of the
garter ; in 1550 he was constituted justice-itinerant of all the king's
forests ; in the following year he was appointed warden of the east,
west, and middle marches towards Scotland ; and on October 15,
1551, he was created Duke of Suffolk. If not entirely without am-
bition, he appears to have been a man quietly disposed ; and though
not possessed of those powerful talents and that force of character
which exert a commanding influence over others, and which, seizing
upon circumstances, can convert them into the means of promoting the
success of great undertakings, he was a warm friend of the Reforma-
tion, and a patron of learned men.

The date of Lady Jane's birth has not been exactly ascertained. If,
according to Fuller, she was eighteen years of age at the time of her

1 His first wife was Katharine Fitz-Alin, daughter of William, Earl of Arundel.
She is supposed to have died without issue.

2 Elizabeth Woodville and her family have been immortalized by Shakspeare in his
King Richard III.

246 Ladies of tlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

execution, February 12, 1554, this would make the date of her birth
about the year 1536. The place of her nativity was Bradgate, her
father's seat, a magnificent mansion about five miles from Leicester,
and the ruins of which are yet remaining. She was the eldest of
three daughters, the names of the other two being Katharine and
Mary, and she had no brothers. In her early years she was remark-
able for gentle and engaging dispositions, combined with more than
ordinary natural abilities, and a passionate love of learning. Among
her earliest tutors were Thomas Harding ' and John Aylmer, 2 her
father's chaplains, both learned men, and supporters of the reformed
doctrines, though the former, who had not the high principle of the
latter, relapsed into Popery on the accession of Mary to the throne.
Aylmer being a kind-hearted man, as well as an eminent scholar,
treated Jane, whom he soon discovered to be a girl of superior talents,
with affectionate gentleness ; and under his care she assiduously
studied, and became deeply versed in the Latin aud Greek languages,
which she both wrote and spoke with great facility and purity. She
also got lessons in Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, French, and Italian ;

i Thomas Harding was educated at Winchester, and at New College, Oxford, of
which he was elected a fellow in 1536. He was afterwards appointed by Henry VIII.
Hebrew professor iu that university. Of a temporizing character, he was just a bom.
as much a Reformer as Henry VIII. during the life of that monarch, and on Edward's
accession to the throue, he professed the reformed faith then established. After this
he became chaplain in the family of the Marquis of Dorset, aud was accounted a very
good Protestant ; but no sooner had Mary ascended the throne, than he embraced
Popery. He was preferred by the queen to a prebend of Winchester, and the treasurer-
ship of Sarum. Upon the accession of Elizabeth he withdrew to th.3 Continent, and
engaged in warm and protracted controversy with Bishop Jewel.

3 John Aylmer was, as we have seen before (p. 94), patronized in early life by Queen
Anne Boleyn. Lady Jane's father had supported him at school, and also at the university
of Cambridge, where he took his degree of master of arts, and made him tutor to his
children. Aylmer was a superior Latin and Greek scholar, and a steady, active pro-
moter of the Reformation. He was for some time, according to the testimony of
Thomas Becon, who knew him well, the only Protestant preacher in Leicestershire.
On the accession of Mary, he boldly opposed Popery, which, exposing him to danger,
he retired to the Continent, where he remained till Elizabeth came to the throue. In
1576 he was appointed Bishop of London, and died June 3, 1594, being, at least,
seventy-three years of age. Becon's Jewel of Joy, in his works printed for Parker Soc.,
vol. iii., p. 424. See his Life, by Strype.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 247

but it was hardly possible for her to attain, as some have affirmed,'
to great proficiency in all these languages, which it would require the
study of a long life to master. The lighter branches of education she
successfully cultivated. She played admirably on various musical
instruments, and accompanied them with a voice of exquisite sweet-
ness. In embroidery and other works of the needle she eminently
excelled, and the hand she wrote was remarkable for its beauty,
which may be accounted for from her having received, with her sis-
ters, lessons in the art of writing from Roger Ascham, 2 an exquisite
penman, and one of Queen Elizabeth's tutors. She was also probably
taught, as ladies then generally were, some knowledge of physic and
surgery, and even spinning. In the extent of her attainments, and
in the ready acquisition of every kind of knowledge, she surpassed
all her equals. Prince Edward, her second cousin, though a boy of
uncommon capacity, and nearly of her age, being born October 12,
1537, was considered decidedly her inferior. She was frequently
brought to court by her parents ; and though little more than a child,

1 Sir Thomas Chaloner, for example, in his Latin elegy upon her. This piece is in-
serted in Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., App., No. IX,

2 Roger Ascham, who was bom at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton, in Yorkshire,
about the year 1515, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, was one of the
most accomplished scholars of his day. He was elected fellow of his college at the
early age of eighteen, and in 1548 was appointed tutor to the Princess (afterwards
Queen) Elizabeth, whom he taught writing, as well as the Greek and Latin languages,
of which he was a consummate master. He was afterwards made Latin secretary to
Edward VI., and in 1550 he accompanied Sir Richard Morison on his embassy to the
Emperor Charles V. On his return to England, Mary was the reigning sovereign,
but, though he continued to profess himself a Protestant, he was allowed, in considera-
tion of his great abilities, to retain his fellowship in his alma mater, together with his
office as public orator. On the elevation of Elizabeth to regal power, he was rewarded
by his former pupil with a prebend in the church of York. He died of ague, according
to some accounts, in December, 1568, according to others, on the 4th of January, 1569.
His last words were, " I am suffering much pain, I sink under my disease ; but this is
my confession, this is my faith, this prayer contains all that I wish for, ' I desire to
depart hence, and to be with Christ.' " His published letters in Latin have been ad-
mired at once for the excellence of the inatter and for their classic style. He is also
the author of various poems, of the Schoolmaster, and of a somewhat whimsical work,
entitled Toxophilus; a treatise of shooting in the long-bow, to which he was passion-
ately addicted. Granger's Biographical History of England, vol. i., pp. 326, 327.
Ackermann's History of Cambridge College, vol. ii., pp. 117, 118.

248 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

was, from her learning, set up <as a pattern for imitation and emula-
tion to the young prince. 1 To her natural abilities and acquired
scholarship were added early piety and an enlightened cordial at-
tachment to the reformed principles, for which she was indebted to
Aylmer, and probably in no small degree to Queen Katharine Parr,
who, as Henry VIII. "was her grand-uncle, was her grand-aunt by
marriage.

Lady Jane, who was a great favourite with Katharine, lived with
her, as has been seen before, 8 at Chelsea, subsequently to the death
of Henry VIII., and at Hanworth after Katharine's marriage with
Lord Seymour of Sudley, Lord Admiral of England, and derived
much advantage from being placed under her superintendence. She
was residing with her at Sudley Castle at the time of Katharine's
death, in September, 1546, and was chief mourner at her funeral. A
letter written by her, when a child only eleven years old, to the lord
admiral, the month following the death of Katharine, is still extant.
Its penmanship is remarkably beautiful; and having escaped the
notice of all her biographers, it is here subjoined, as being the first
specimen now remaining of her epistolary writing : " My duty to
your lordship in most humble wise remembered, with no less thanks
for the gentle letters which I received from you. Thinking myself
so much bound to your lordship for your great goodness towards me
from time to time, that I cannot by any means be able to recompense
the least part thereof, I purposed to write a few rude lines unto your
lordship, rather as a token to show how much worthier I think your
lordship's goodness, than to give worthy thanks for the same ; and
these my letters shall be to testify unto you that, like as you have
become towards me a loving and kind father, so I shall be always
most ready to obey your godly monitions and good instructions, as
becometh one upon whom you have heaped so many benefits. And
thus, fearing lest I should trouble your lordship too much, I most

1 Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, p. 131.

2 See Life of Katharine Parr, p. 231.

ENGLAND.] Jane Grey. 249

humbly take my leave of your good lordship. Your humble servant,
during my life, " JANE GREY.

" To the right honourable, and my singular good lord, the Lord
Admiral, give these." '

So long as Katharine Parr was living, young Jane's parents had
every confidence that their daughter would, in all respects, be care-
fully watched over; but on the death of that virtuous and pious
woman, alarmed at the thought of leaving their daughter under the
charge of a man so ambitious, intriguing, and unprincipled, as was
the lord admiral, they were exceedingly desirous to have her restored
to them, and a curious correspondence took place in consequence
between them and his lordship, who was not less desirous to retain
her. From this correspondence we learn that her parents, from
causes which can only now be conjectured, had promised to be guided
by the advice of the admiral in the disposal of her hand ; a promise
of great importance in his account, as it might be rendered subser-
vient to his ambitious projects. " Where it hath pleased you," says
the Marquis of Dorset in a letter to the lord admiral, dated Brad-
gate, September 19, [1548], " by your most gentle letters to offer me
the abode of my daughter at your lordship's house, I do as well
acknowledge your most friendly affection towards me and her herein,
as also render unto you most deserved thanks for the same : Never-
theless, considering the state of my daughter and her tender years
(wherein she shall hardly rule herself as yet without a guide), lest
she should, for lack of a bridle, take too much the head, and conceive
such opinion of herself, that all such good behaviour as she hereto-
fore hath learned, by the queen's and your most wholesome instruc-
tions, should either altogether be quenched in her, or at least much
diminished, I shall, in most hearty wise, require your lordship to
commit her to the governance of her mother ; by whom, for the fear
and duty she oweth her, she shall most easily be ruled and framed
towards virtue, which I wish above all things to be most plentiful

' Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. in., p. 197. It is en-
dorsed. "My Lady Jane, 1st October, 1548."

250 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

iu her. And although your lordship's good mind concerning her
honest and godly education, is so great that mine can be no more,
yet weighing that you be destitute of such one as should correct her
as a mistress, and [ad]monish her as a mother, I persuade myself
that you will think the eye and oversight of my wife shall be in this
respect most necessary. My meaning herein is not to withdraw any
part of my promise to you for her bestowing, for I assure your lord-
ship I intend, God willing, to use your discreet advice and consent ou
that behalf, and no less than my own. Only I seek, in these her young
years wherein she now standeth, either to make or mar (as the com-
mon saying is) the dressing of her mind to humility, soberness, and
obedience. Wherefore, looking upon that fatherly affection which
you bear her, my trust is that your lordship, weighing the premises,
will be content to charge her mother with her, whose waking eye in
respecting her demeanour shall be, I hope, no less than you as a
friend, and I as a father, would wish." ]

A letter from the marchioness to the admiral, to the same effect,
accompanied this from the marquis, and the result was that Lord
Seymour, much against his will, permitted Lady Jane to return
to her parents. He, however, made strenuous efforts to get her
back ; and by promising to her father that he would marry her to
King Edward, and by offering him, what he greatly needed, a large
sum of money, he succeeded in inducing him to send her back
to Hanworth. On her return he immediately sent her father .500,
as part of ,2000 which he had promised to lend him, and for which
he had refused any bond, saying that the Lady Jane should be the
pledge. Whether he ever seriously thought of striking a match
between her and King Edward maybe doubted. It has been conjec-
tured that, having no male children of his own, he had intended to
marry her to Lord Hertford, son of his brother, Duke of Somerset,
the protector. This conjecture derives plausibility from the fact
that at the time when he evinced such anxiety about her marriage,
he had become reconciled to his brother, with whom, from jealousy

1 Haynes's State Papers, p. 78.

ENGLAND.] Jane Grey. 251

of his power, he had been at variance. It is, besides, certain, from a
letter written by her father to the Duke of Somerset, that an alliance
had been projected between her and the Earl of Hertford. "For the
marriage of your grace's son to be had with my daughter Jane,"
says he cautiously to the duke, as if leaving an opening for a change
of purpose, should the chapter of accidents offer a more splendid
alliance, as a match with her royal cousin Edward, " I think it not
meet to be written, but I shall at all times avouch my saying." ' Or
the admiral, in the event of his being thwarted in his hope of obtain-
ing the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, may have contemplated
making Lady Jane his own wife. She was indeed his junior by
many years ; but as he regarded the disparity of years between him
and Elizabeth as no obstacle to his union with her, there is no reason
to think that, though Lady Jane was three or four years younger
than Elizabeth, he would have considered this difference as an insu-
perable impediment to his wedding her, had the step been recom-
mended by ambitious or political considerations. The admiral's
motives, in the uncommon interest he took as to the marriage of this
lady, it is impossible now to determine with certainty. " The pro-
bable conclusion," says Nicolas, " is that he was merely anxious to
obtain the power of disposing of her, when she became of a marriage-
able age, in such a manner as would best advance his views or support
his interest, without at any time being determined whether he should
espouse her, or whether she should become the wife of his nephew,
or of some other nobleman on whom he could depend. Such, in all
probability, were the speculations relative to this amiable girl in her
childhood, and who, even at that early period of her life, seemed des-
tined to be the victim of ambition. At no period of our history,"
adds this writer, " was the detestable disposition to render every
connection subservient to political purposes, so much the prevailing
feeling, as in the reigns of the Tudors ; the ties of friendship or of
kindred were seldom suffered to interfere when opposed to the pro-
spect of advancement ; self-interest superseded every other considera-

1 Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, p. 161.

252 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tion ; and little as honesty and generosity are to be looked for in
courtiers, the total absence of these virtues was never so manifested
as when their dynasty swayed the English sceptre." '

Having left Seymour's roof, Lady Jane returned to her father's
house, living for the most part at the family seat at Bradgate. Here
she pursued with increasing assiduity her favourite studies, encour-
aged by her amiable tutor, Aylmer, for whom she felt no common
reverence and affection. It is somewhat remarkable that so docile
and obedient a child should have been treated with undue severity by
her parents. Acting apparently on the unreasonable principle that
children should become perfect in everything all at once, they would
harshly chide, threaten, or punish her, if on observing any defect in
her manner of speaking, or keeping silence, sitting, standing, or walk-
ing, eating or drinking, sewing, playing on musical instruments, or
dancing, though she did all in her power to please them. It is, how-
ever, to be observed that this injudicious severity, though, doubtless,
it proceeded more from an anxiety to see her thoroughly accomplished
than from a defect in parental tenderness, was, at that period,
deemed necessary in the education of the young. " Severity," says
Howard, a was the most frequent engine of both classes, gentry and
citizens, for improving their children ; and whether at home or at
school, the youth of both sexes were kept in order more by fear than
love. Daughters in particular, even in womanhood, are described as
being obliged to stand at the cupboard-side during visits, except when
permitted to have a cushion to kneel on ; and then, also, it was not
unusual, even before company, for ladies of the first rank to correct
their grown-up daughters with the large fans which it was the fashion
to carry." 2

On the sensitive mind of Lady Jane, this austere discipline made
a deep impression ; and the consequence was that she preferred the
society of Aylmer to that of her parents. The hours spent in their
company being frequently hours of unmerited harsh treatment, were
associated in her mind with restraint and terror. The hours spent

1 Nicolas's Memoirs of Lady Jane Grey. 2 Lady Jane Grey and her Times, p. 110.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 253

with Aylmer at her lessons were, from his affectionate manner of
instructing her, explaining to her difficulties, correcting her mistakes,
and encouraging her to proceed, associated with enjoyment, and when
called from him she would often fall a-weeping. This gentleness of
her preceptor, so favourably contrasted with the harshness of her
parents, was, as she acknowledges, one reason of the great delight
she took in learning. " And thus," says she, " my book hath been so
much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more and more pleasure,
that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles
and troubles unto me."

To her intimate knowledge of the Greek language, and her ardent
study of the Grecian orators and philosophers, a high testimony is
borne by an eminently qualified judge, Eoger Ascham. This cele-
brated man visited her in the summer of 1550, at her father's seat
at Bradgate, when on his way to London to attend Sir Eichard
Morison, on his embassy to Charles V. She was then about the
fourteenth year of her age. On his arrival, her father and mother,
with all the ladies and gentlemen of the household, were hunting in
the park, while the fair scholar was in her own apartment, engaged
in reading Plato's Phcedon in the original Greek, with as much de-
light, to use Ascham's illustration, as the gentlemen of that day felt
in reading the merry tales of Boccaccio. ' Astonished at this devotion
to study, after saluting her, he inquired why she had not gone with
her parents and the rest of the family to the park, to enjoy the amuse-
ment of the chase. " I wisse," ' she replied with a, smile, " all their
sport in the park is but a shadow to the pleasure I find in Plato. Alas !
good folk, they never felt what true pleasure means." "And how came
you, madam," asked Ascham, still more astonished that a lady of her
age should be so enchanted both with the language and philosophy
of Plato, " to this deep knowledge of pleasure 1 and what did chiefly
allure you into it, since not only few women, but even very few men,
have attained thereunto ?" " I will tell you," she answered, " and
tell you a truth, which, perchance, you will marvel at." She then

1 i.e., "I think." .

254 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

proceeded to inform him how, as we have already stated, the harsh-
ness of her parents and the tenderness of Aylmer had combined in
strengthening in her mind the love of learning ; how, when depressed
and perturbed by the indiscreet fault-finding propensities of her
parents, she longed to return to her own chamber, to hold delightful
communion with Demosthenes and Plato, or to receive instructions
from her beloved preceptor, who never spoke to her an unkind word
or gave her an unkind look. 1 This was the last interview Ascham
had with her ; but one or two letters subsequently passed between
them, and, at his urgent request, she promised to write him a letter
in Greek, provided he would first send her one in that language from
the emperor's court. 2 In his correspondence with his learned friends,
he lavished upon her the highest encomiums. Understanding that
his much-respected friend, John Sturmuis, rector of the Protestant
academy of Strasburg, had translated some orations of JEschines
and Demosthenes into Latin, and intended to publish them, he ad-
vised him to dedicate the volume to Lady Jane, both on account of
her skill in the Greek language, and because of her admiration of
learned men, and particularly of himself. He reckoned her and Lady
Mildred Cook, Sir William Cecil's wife, who spoke and understood
Greek almost with equal facility as English, to be the two most learned
women in England ; but he gave Lady Jane the preference, pronounc-
ing on her the eulogium, " that however illustrious she was by her
fortune and royal extraction, this bore no proportion to the accom-
plishments of her mind, adorned with the doctrine of Plato and the
eloquence of Demosthenes." 3

A testimony not less nattering to her general accomplishments,
und equally entitled to credit, is borne by a Swiss scholar of high cha-
racter and no mean attainments, John ab Ulmis, who, in the reign
of Edward VI., had come to this country, and studied at St. John's
College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship in 1549, and was
admitted master of arts in 1552. This young man, who was patron-

1 Ascham's Schoolmaster, book i., p. 37. 2 Ascham's Epist., lib. i., ep. 4.

3 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., part i., pp. 140-143.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 255

ized by the Marquis of Dorset, 1 and who resided for some time in the
marquis's family, thus writes concerning her, in a letter to Conrad
Pellican, dated [Bradgate] May 29, 1551 : "In truth I do not think
that among all the English nobility for many ages past, there has
arisen a single individual, who, to the highest excellencies of talent
and judgment, has united so much diligence and assiduity in the cul-
tivation of every liberal pursuit. For she is not only conversant with
the more polite accomplishments, and with ordinary acquirements,
but has also so exercised herself in the practice of speaking and
arguing with propriety, both in Greek and Latin, that it is incredible
how far she has advanced already, and to what perfection she will
advance in a few years ; for I well know that she will complete what
she has begun, unless, perhaps, she be diverted from her pursuits by
some calamity of the times;" 2 an anticipation which, unhappily, at
no distant period was painfully realized.

From her amiable character, her fervent piety, the purity of her
faith, and her high rank, Lady Jane became early an object of pecu-
liar interest to the friends of the Eeformation, both in this country
and on the Continent. Martin Bucer, who had been invited to
England by Edward VI., and the Lord protector, at the recom-
mendation of Archbishop Cranmer, and appointed professor of di-
vinity in the university of Cambridge, took a friendly interest in her
intellectual, religious, and moral training. Lamenting the death of
this celebrated divine, of whom, says she, " I was bereaved," she
acknowledges her obligations to him, commending him as "that most
learned man and holy father, who unweariedly did not cease, day
and night, and to the utmost of his ability, to supply me with all

1 Hooper, in a letter to Bullinger, dated London, March 27, 1550, says, " John ab
Ulmis is also well, and as I hear very diligent in his studies. He has been munifi-
cently and honourably presented by the Marquis of Dorset with a yearly stipend of
thirty crowns." This he had in addition to his fellowship. Zurich Letters, first series,
pp. 84, 389. He was recalled to Switzerland "by a letter from his family," and, on
his return, resigned his fellowship in St. John's College, Oxford. [bid., pp. 326, 396.
He died in 1580, and his descendants took the name of Ulmer. Ibid., second series,
vol. ii., p 306.

2 Zurich Lettfrs, first series, pp. 432, 433.

256 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

necessary instructions and directions for my conduct in life ; and
who, by his excellent advice, promoted and encouraged my progress
and advancement in all virtue, godliness, and learning." '

Among the foreign reformed divines attracted by her promising
talents and excellent character, Henry Bullinger, one of the ministers
of the reformed church of Zurich, in Switzerland, a man of uncommon
learning, wisdom, benevolence, and piety, is entitled to special notice."
He had received from his young friend, John ab Ulmis, very high
commendations of her laudable diligence and unusual acquirements
in letters at her age, united with fervent piety and ardent devotion
to the reformed cause. At the incitation, in a great measure, of this
worthy youth, he. sent her occasionally such small religious treatises
as might tend to confirm her piety and faith in God's Word, and com-
menced an epistolary correspondence with her exceedingly gratifying
to her, and also very pleasing to himself. Ab Ulmis, in a letter to
him, dated Oxford, December 31, 1550, says, "If you intend to present
any book to the Earl of Warwick, send it together with the rest to

me I hope you will send a copy to the daughter of the

marquis, and, take my word for it, you will never repent your hav-
ing done so. Let this be the form of the address: 'To Jane Grey,
daughter of the Marquis of Dorset, &c.,' and you will elicit from her
a most learned and courteous letter. She has herself rendered into
Greek a good part of that book, On Marriage, which I translated

1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 4-7.

2 Henry Bullinger, who was born at Bremgarten, near Zurich, Switzerland, on
July 18, 1504, studied at the university of Cologne, into which he entered in 1519,
and connected himself with the Reformers in the course of the year 1524. On tne
death of Zuingle, in the close of the year 1531, he was chosen to fill his place as chief
pastor of the reformed church of Zurich. Though he had never been in England, he
vt as well known to the friends of the Reformation in this country, from his generous
hospitality towards the English Reformer?, consisting of nobles, clergy, gentry, and
scholars, who had fled their native country to escape persecution iu the reign of
Henry VIII., when the sis articles were rigorously enforced, aud in Queen Mary's
reigu. He corresponded with the leading English Reformers, to whom he was of great
use by his judicious counsels. He is styled by Bishop Jewel oraculum ecclesiamm,
He died Sept. 17, 1575, in the seventy-first year of his age. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii.,
part ii., p. 144. Zurich Letters, second series, vol. i., p. 156. Adami Vita Germanorum
Theologorum.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane, Grey. 257

into Latin, and presented it to her father on the last day of Decem-
ber, for a New-year's gift." 1

The date of Bullinger's first letter to Lady Jane, written in Latin,
appears to have been in the early part of the year 1551, when she
was only about the fifteenth year of her age ; and, like his other
letters to her, all of which are now lost, it chiefly consisted of coun-
sels on topics suited to her age, sex, and rank in life, as on the best
method of prosecuting her studies, and on the cultivation of the
Christian character; and of encouragements to perseverance in the
excellent path of religion and virtue upon which she had entered.
Considering herself highly honoured with this mark of attention from
a minister whom she had been taught to venerate for his personal
worth and learning, she speedily sent him a reply in Latin, written
from Bradgate, July 12, 1551. The style is remarkably elegant for
a girl of her years, and the whole strain bespeaks a mind smitten
with an eager desire to excel in every liberal accomplishment, and
especially in Christian knowledge and godliness. Our limits will ad-
mit only of a few extracts. " I have received," says she, " from you
a most weighty and eloquent epistle, which was, indeed, very gratify-
ing to me, not only because, to the neglect of more important engage-
ments, you have condescended to write from so distant a country, and
in your declining age to me, who am unworthy of the correspondence
of so distinguished a personage, but also because your writings are
of such a character, as that they contain not mere ordinary topics
for amusement, but pious and divine thoughts for instruction, admoni-
tion, and counsel, on such points especially as are suited to my age

and sex, and the dignity of my family From that little

volume 2 of pure and unsophisticated religion which you lately sent
to my father and myself, I gather daily, as out of a most beautiful
garden, the sweetest flowers. My father, also, as far as his weighty
engagements permit, is diligently occupied in the perusal of it . ...

1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 427.

- This was a treatise on Christian Perfection, printed in 1551, and dedicated to
Henry II. of France.

258 Ladies of tlte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

To conclude, as I am now beginning to learn Hebrew, if you will
point out some way and method of pursuing this study to the great-
est advantage, you will confer on me a very great obligation. Fare-
well, brightest ornament and support of the whole church of Christ,
and may Almighty God long preserve you to us, and to his Church !
Your most devoted, JANE GREY." l

Her father, who was hopeful, in his anxiety for her intellectual and
religious improvement, that she would derive much advantage from
the wise and pious counsels of Bullinger, was desirous that he should
maintain a correspondence, so delightful to her, thus begun. In a
letter to Bullinger, dated December 21, 1551, after thanking him for
his exceeding courtesy in dedicating to him his fifth Decade, 3 he adds,
" I acknowledge myself also to be much indebted to you on my
daughter's account, for having always exhorted her in your godly
letters to a true faith in Christ, the study of the Scriptures, purity
of manners, and innocence of life, and I earnestly request you to con-
tinue these exhortations as frequently as possible." 3 Others of Bul-
linger's correspondents in England, who were great admirers of this
gifted young Lady, excited him to persevere in stimulating, by his
epistolary communications, her ardent mind in the pursuits of know-
ledge and Christian excellence. "You can, indeed," says one of
them, 4 in a letter to him, dated December 28, 1551, "confer no greater
obligation upon his grace than by continuing (as you have once done
already) to impart godly instruction to his daughter. For although
she is so brought up that there is the greatest hope of her advance-
ment in godliness, yet your exhortations afford her encouragement,
and at the same time have their due weight with her, either as

1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 4-7.

2 This is the last part of Bui linger" s principal work his Decades, or Fifty Sermons
on the chief heads of the Christian religion, divided into five Decades which was
published in Latin. It was translated into English; and the translation, which passed
through three editions in the siiteenth century, has recently been repoiited by the
Parker Society.

3 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 4.

4 Mr. James Haddon, " a minister of the word."

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Gray. 259

proceeding from a stranger, or from so eminent a person as your-
self/'

The study of theology engaged no inconsiderable share of her at-
tention, and Bullinger's Decades wax one of the chief works on this
subject which she read and studied. " I can bear testimony," says
John Banks, an English Eeformer, in a letter to Bullinger, after her
death, " which, if not very abundant, is that of an eye-witness, that
the whole family of the Greys, and Jane especially, derived incredible
benefit from your writings. She, indeed, had not only diligently
perused, but also committed to memory, almost all the heads of your
fifth Decode. 1 ' 2

The strong interest taken in Lady Jane by the friends of the
Reformation, both at home and abroad, was increased, from reports
which began to be circulated, that she was to become the consort of
Edward VI., an event thought by many, from the similarity of their
ages, dispositions, talents, and from their near relationship, not im-
probable, and greatly desired by the reforming party, as promising
the most important advantages to the reformed cause, to which, from
her course of education, she was known to be extremely devoted.
On this subject one of the Reformers thus writes : " A report has
prevailed, and has begun to be talked of by persons of consequence,
that this most noble virgin is to be betrothed and given in marriage
to the king's majesty. O, if that event should take place, how happy
would be the union, and how beneficial to the church ! But the
supremely great and good God will preside in this matter, who alone
causes to prosper, and cares for, and remembers, and foresees and
disposes of all things according to his good pleasure." 3 Katharine
PaiT, an excellent judge of the kind of wife suitable to such a prince
as Edward, was favourable to this talked of union ; and Lady Jane
was doubtless well worthy of an earthly crown. But the Reformers,
iu dreaming of her as the future protectress of the Protestant faith,

1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 280. * Hid., p. 305.

3 Letter of John ab Ulmis to Henry Bulliuger, dated Bradgate, May 29, 1551, in
Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 429-431.

260 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

iu the character of Queen of England, were building castles in the
air. There is no reason to think that Edward, who, as we learn
from his journal, with the pride natural to his exalted station, con-
templated marrying only some rich foreign princess, would have
listened to the proposal of wedding a subject, however illustrious.

As observed before, Lady Jane's father was created Duke of Suf-
folk on the llth of October, 1551, her maternal uncles, Henry
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and Charles his brother, having died of
the sweating-sickness, without issue, at Bugden, the Bishop of Lin-
coln's palace, in July preceding. 1 On the same day John Dudley,
Earl of Warwick, to whom she afterwards became so nearly related,
was created Duke of Northumberland. She now resided for some
time in the metropolis with her father's family, who lived at their
own mansion in Suffolk Place. But though occasionally appearing
at court, she still continued, under the superintendence of Aylmer,
to prosecute with avidity her literary studies.

Kind and affectionate as was Aylmer to her, and careful as he was
to encourage her to persevere, by duly commending her diligence
and success, he did not spoil her by injudicious flattery. His literary
instructions were accompanied with the inculcation of a meek and
humble temper of mind, and hence, though some learned men, who
courted her friendship or the friendship of her father, might, accord-
ing to the custom of those times when the great were addressed,
pay her homage with a somewhat extravagant profusion of adulation,
she was preserved by the admonitions of her preceptor, notwith-
standing her high scholarship and accomplishments, from the vice
of pedantry, so great a blemish in all, especially in a young lady.
In his anxiety to repress in her pride, affectation, and vanity, he
made it a special object to train her to the love of simplicity and
plainness in her apparel. He aimed at impressing her with the folly
of going to excess in costly attire, of allowing her mind to be engrossed
with a fondness for finery and expensive decorations. He taught

1 See an account of these young noblemen iu the Life of their mother, the Duchess
of Suffolk.

ENGLAND.]

Lady Jane Grey.

261

her that inward sanctity, the renewal of the soul into the Divine
image, constituted the most attractive and durable beauty, enforcing
his lessons from the exhortation of the apostle Peter to Christian
women: "Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of
plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel ;
but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not cor-
ruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in
the sight of God of great price." ' Nor did he neglect to set before
her the example of the Princess Elizabeth, of whom, regarding her
as a model of Christian propriety in the article of dress, he says in
his Harbour for Faithful Subjects " I am sure that her maidenly
apparel, which she used in Kiug Edward's time, made the noblemen's

Costly attire, time of Edward VI.

wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and painted like pea-
cocks, being more moved with her most virtuous example, than
with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote touching that matter." 2 So

i i Peter iii. 3, 4. 2 Her plainness of dress, he adds, was especially noticed

on the occasion of the visit of the Queen-Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, to
the court of Edward VI. Elizabeth afterwards, however, as we shall see in her Life,
carried her fondness foe finery of dress to the highest pitch of extravagance.

262 Ladies of ilie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

earnest was Aylmer to bring Lady Jane up to what he conceived to
be the Christian standard in the matter of apparel, that he expressly
requested Bullinger, in the next letter he wrote to her, to confirm
these lessons by his eloquent pen. " It now remains for me," says
he, in a letter to him, 1 "to request that, with the kindness we have
so loag experienced, you will instruct my pupil in your next letter
as to what embellishment and adornment of person is becoming iu
young women professing godliness. In treating upon this subject,
you may bring forward the example of our king's sister, the Princess
Elizabeth, who goes clad in every respect as becomes a young maiden ;
and yet no one is induced by the example of so illustrious a lady,
and in so much gospel light to lay aside, much less look down upon,
gold, jewels, and braidings of the hair. They hear preachers declaim
against these things, but yet no one amends her life." 2

The inculcations of her tutor had the desired effect on Lady Jane,
who was always a very docile scholar. When urged to wear a costly
dress presented to her by the Princess Mary, she replied, " Nay, that
were a shame to follow my Lady Mary, who leaveth God's Word,
and leave my Lady Elizabeth, who followeth God's Word." 3 It is
doubtless well to admonish young ladies against vanity in dress, as
in everything else ; but we are not quite sure whether Aylmer, like
honest old Latimer, whose thundering philippics against the ladies'
dress in his day are still so edifying to antiquarian readers, would
not have carried the principle of negation into the ladies' wardrobes
to a rather unnecessary extent, and to an extent which, had the
attempt been made to enforce it, would have been in some danger
of raising a female rebellion.

In the summer of 1552, when Lady Jane was on a visit to her
cousin, the Princess Mary, at her mansion at Newhall, in Essex, an
occurrence happened, which, while it displayed her ready ingenuity
and her pious zeal against Popery, had, it is believed, no inconsider-
able influence on her subsequent unfortunate destiny. One after-

1 Dated from the house of the Duke of Suffolk, London, Dec. 3, 1551.

* Zurich Letters, first series, p. 278. 3 Aylmer's Harbour for Faithful Subjects.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 263

noon, while she was accompanying Lady Anne Wharton 1 in a walk,
at the invitation of that lady, Lady Anne, on their passing by the
Popish chapel of the place, made a low courtesy in honour of the
host, which, according to custom, was suspended, enclosed in a
box, over the altar. Lady Jane, who, educated in Protestantism,
had never been accustomed to practise this species of idolatry, and
not thinking at the time of the object to which the lady's homage
was paid, asked her whether the Princess Mary was in the chapel.
" No," said Lady Wharton, " but I make obeisance to Him who
made us all." " Why," replied Lady Jane, " how can that which the
baker made be He who made us all?" This ingenious sarcasm,
savouring so strongly of heresy, being reported to the Princess Mary,
that priucess, saturated with Popish bigotry, was shocked at her
cousin's profaueness, and from that moment became her personal
enemy. " She did never love her after," says Foxe, who has pre-
served this anecdote, " as credibly reported, but esteemed her as the
rest of that profession ;" 2 and how she esteemed them, we may leave
it to the cruelties of her reign to tell. Lady Jane, therefore, would
have had little to hope for from her royal cousin in after times, even
though she had not, by being dragged by the ambition of her rela-
tives, into the usurpation of the crown, incurred the vengeance of
that sullen and unmitigable princess.

Among other eminent continental Protestant divines who corre-
sponded with Lady Jane, was Conrad Pellican, professor of theology
and Hebrew in the university of Zurich. He was led into this cor-
respondence by John ab Ulmis, who, finding, while resident in the
family, that she was bent upon learning Hebrew, was anxious, from
grateful and fraternal feelings, to secure for her the assistance and
encouragement of Pellican in the study of that language. " I am
more bold in writing to you," says ab Ulmis, in a letter to him, 3 "by

1 This lady, apparently, was the daughter of George, Earl of Shrewsbury, and second
wife of Thomas, first Lord Wharton. She was probably one of the attendants of the
princess.

2 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. viii., p. 700.

3 Dated [Bradgate] May 29, 1551.

264 Ladies of the Reformation. | ENGLAND.

reason of the daughter of the most noble the Marquis of Dorset, a
lady who is well versed both in Greek and Latin, and who is now
especially desirous of studying Hebrew. I have been studying with
her these two days ; she is inquiring of me the best method of
acquiring that language, and cannot easily discover the path which
she may pursue with credit and advantage. She has written to
Bullinger upon this subject ; but if I guess right, he will be very
willing to transfer the office to you, both because he is always over-
whelmed with affairs of greater importance, and because all the world
is aware of your perfect knowledge of that language. If, therefore,
you are willing to oblige a powerful and eminent nobleman, with
honour to yourself, you will by no means refuse this office and duty

to his daughter I promise you, indeed, and solemnly

pledge myself, that I will bear all the blame, if you ever repent of
this deed, or if the marquis's daughter do not most willingly acknow-
ledge your courtesy. Write, therefore, a letter to her as soon as
possible, in which you will briefly point out a method of learning
the sacred language, and then honourably consecrate to her name
your Latin translation of the Jewish Talmud. You will easily
understand the extent of her attainments by the letter which she
wrote to Bullinger." '

Yielding to the solicitations of ab Ulmis, Pellican sent a letter to
her, replete with judicious counsels as to the best method of prose-
cuting her studies in general, and particularly the study of Hebrew,
as well as full of pious exhortations. His letter was delivered to
her by ab Ulmis, and the gratification felt both by herself and by
her parents at Pellican's paternal interest in her progress in learn-
ing, is testified by ab Ulmis in a letter to the learned professor.-
" You must know," says he, "in the first place, and take my word
for the fact, that this mark of your respect to the most godly daugh-
ter of the Duke of Suffolk has been very gratifying and acceptable
to her. For I delivered your letter to her in person, and easily per-

1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 431-433.

2 Dated Oxford [before June 19], 1552.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 265

ceived the great veneration that is both entertained and expressed
for you by the whole of the duke's household. Your reputation
here is very great, as is the commendation of your well-spent life,
and the remembrance of your writings. I could wish you, therefore,"
he adds, " my very dear father in Christ, to continue to assist and
advance the studies of the daughter of a most valued nobleman, and
one, too, who has deserved so much at my hands ; and as you find
her well prepared, and making a steady progress, do not cease to
exhort her, that she may daily more and more excel herself in learn-
ing, and in the cultivation of her mind." 1 In token of her gratitude
to Pellican, she wrote him an answer in Latin, not now extant,
which he received June 19, 1552, and chai-acterizes as " written with
admirable elegance and learning."

About the same time Lady Jane, having before received a second
letter from Bullinger, sent him an answer in Latin, written with her
usual elegance of diction, and breathing the fervent, unaffected piety
characteristic of all her writings. 2

As a small token of her gratitude for Bullinger "s kindness to her,
she sent a pair of gloves to his wife, through their common friend,
John ab Ulmis, and would have sent her at the same time a gold
ring, had not ab Ulmis, for reasons of which he does not inform us,
declined to receive it. This we learn from one of his letters to Bul-
linger. " The gloves," says he, " which the daughter of the duke
had given me to be sent over yonder to your wife, cannot conveni-
ently be forwarded before the fair. She wished also to send her a
beautiful gold ring, but I did not receive it, for certain reasons which
would be too long to enumerate in this letter." 3

Her third letter to Bullinger, though without date, appears to
have been written in the first half of the year 1553, and was a reply
to another letter she had received from him. " I entertain the hope,"

1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 451, 43?.

2 See this letter in Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 7, 8. It is without date. The
editor supplies, "Eradiate, July 7, 1552."

3 Ibid., p. 457. The letter is dated Oxford, August 16, 1552.

266 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

says she, " that you will excuse the more than feminine boldness of
me, who, girlish and unlearned as I am, presume to write to a man
who is the father of learning." * The original word for girlish is
virgo, showing that this letter was written before her marriage, which
took place about the end of May or the beginning of June, 1553. 2

CHAPTEE II.

FROM HER MARRIAGE WITH LORD GU1LDFORD DUDLEY TO HER IM-
PRISONMENT IN THE TOWER.

WE now enter upon the tragical part of Lady Jane's life. This
may be said to commence with her marriage. The health of King
Edward was now in a very precarious state. In the year 1552 he
had been affected with measles and small-pox, and in the beginning
of the year 1553 he caught a severe cold, which, it is said, was ag-
gravated by injudicious treatment, and ultimately exhibited all the
symptoms of consumption, creating great apprehensions as to the
result. At this conjuncture the Duke of Northumberland, whose
ambition was either unsatisfied with the high authority which, after
the fall of Protector Somerset, he had acquired, or whose fears of a
sudden reverse of fortune, in the event of the king's death, were
awakened, conceived the double plan, first, of forming a matrimonial
alliance between Lady Jane, who was of the blood royal, and his
fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, "a very comely, tall gentle-
man," 3 his three other sons being already married ; and, secondly,
of effecting a change in the succession to the crown in favour of Lady
Jane. The former of these objects he had no difficulty in accom-

1 See this letter in Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 9-11.

2 Howard is therefore mistaken iii supposing that it was written after her marriage,
from Sion House, where she then resided for some time. Lady Jane Grey and her
Times, p. 221.

3 Graftoii's Chronicle, London edit , 1809, vol. ii., p 544.

ENGLAND. 1

Lady Jane Grey.

267

plishing. The nuptials of the youthful pair were celebrated about
the end of May or the beginning of June, at Durham House, in the
Strand, the town mansion of Northumberland, with much pomp and

Durham House, from the Kiver, time of Charles L

splendour. On that occasion King Edward, who was greatly pleased
with the marriage, ordered much rich dress and jewels to be de-
livered out of his own wardrobe to the Duchesses of Suffolk and
Northumberland, to the Marchioness of Northampton, to Lady Jane
herself, and to Lord Guildford Dudley, for wedding apparel. 1

Northumberland's other project, to which this was only subordi-
nate, could not be carried into execution with equal ease. Though
Lady Jane had the honour to be of the blood royal, and to have her
name on the list of the heirs to the throne, others in the meantime
had prior claims. This will be seen by attending to the state of the
law at present in existence in regard to the succession. In the
Parliament which met January 14, 1544, in the thirty-fifth year of

2 These articles were not new, but the property of the late Duke and Duchess of
Somerset, which had been forfeited to the crown on the attainder of that nobleman.

268 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

the reign of Henry VIII., an act was passed by the will of that
monarch, restoring the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth to their right
of succession, of which they had been deprived by preceding par-
liamentary statutes. It was enacted that, provided his majesty's
only son and nearest heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, should die
without lawful issue, and provided his majesty himself should die
without issue by his "most entirely beloved wife, Queen Katharine"
Parr, or any other wife he might afterwards marry, which issue,
male or female, were to be next in the order of succession, the impe-
rial crown should descend to his eldest daughter, the Princess Mary,
and her legitimate offspring, on such conditions as he might impose
by his letters-patent or by his last will ; and in the event of her
dying without " heirs of her own body lawfully begotten," that the
crown should, on like conditions, descend to his daughter, the Prin-
cess Elizabeth, and her legitimate children ; failing which, his
majesty was invested with full power to dispose of the crown as he
pleased by his letters-patent, or by his last will. 1 Henry's last will,
dated December 30, 1546, in the thirty-eight year of his reign, cor-
responded with the provisions of this settlement, but with two
important additions, which the act of Parliament just now referred
to authorized him to make, 1st, that the Princesses Mary and
Elizabeth should inherit the crown, only upon condition of their
not marrying without the consent of the majority at least of the
privy councillors and others appointed by him for the government
of Prince Edward, or of the majority of such of them as should
be then alive ; and, 2dly, that next to the Princess Elizabeth, and
provided she should die without lawful issue, the royal dignity
should descend to the heirs of the body of Lady Frances Brandon,
Duchess of Suffolk (the mother of Lady Jane), eldest daughter of
Henry's youngest sister, Mary, by her second husband, 2 Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; failing which, to the lawful children

1 This act of Parliament is printed in Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII , pp.
503-506.
- To her first husband, Louis XII., King of France, she had no children.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 269

of Lady Eleanor, the second daughter of the same sister, and the
wife of Henry Clifford, Eai'l of Cumberland ; failing which, " to
our next lawful heirs." 1 It is observable that, according to this
will, the daughters of Henry's youngest sister could not themselves
have inherited the crown, but only their legitimate children, a cir-
cumstance which, perhaps, may be explained on the supposition
that Henry's children being so much younger than these ladies, it
had not been contemplated that the latter would survive the former.
But it is still more worthy of observation, as illustrating the caprice
of the monarch, that in these deeds of settlement, his eldest sister,
Margaret, queen of James IV. of Scotland, 2 mother of James V.,
by that monarch, and consequently grandmother of Mary Queen of
Scots, was, contrary to the general rules of succession, overlooked to
make way for the descendants of the youngest sister. 3 Such was

1 Henry's will is printed in Fuller's Church History, in Heylin's History of the
Reformation, and in Ryraer's Fcedera.

" After the death of James IV. she married Archibald I/ouglas, seventh Earl of
Angus, by whom she had the Lady Margaret Douglas, who married Matthew Stewart,
fourth Earl of Lennox, by whom she had Henry Lord Darnley, the future husband of
Mary Queen of Scots. Next to Mary and Elizabeth, the daughters of Henry V1IL, '
Mary Uueen of Scots was, according to the general rules of succession (though not
according to Henry's will), next heir to the throne of England.

3 At the time when Henry made his will he was greatly irritated against Scotland,
with which he had been at war for more than two years, in consequence of the Regent
of Scotland, James Earl of Arran, having violated a treaty of pacification between the
two kingdoms, and a matrimonial contract between Henry's son and heir, Prince Ed-
ward, and the infant Mary Uueen of Scots, whose father, James V., died at Falkland
on the 13th or 14th of December, five or six days after her birth. The treaty was
sanctioned by the Scottish Parliament, on the 8th of June, 1513, concluded at Green-
wich on the 1st of July, and ratified by the Regent of Scotland on the 25th of August.
But Cardinal Beaton and the French faction, who contemplated the union of the infant
Mary with the Dauphin of France, as promising security to the old religion in Scot-
land, the overthrow of which they dreaded, should the treaty with England be carried
into effect, opposed that treaty to the uttermost, and prevailed with the regent, a man
of a weak and vacillating character, to break it, which he did within nine days of his
having ratified it in the most solemn manner. Knox's History of the Reformation in
Scotland, Wod. Soc. edit., vol. i., pp. 101-110, 182. The antipathy thus created in the
mind of Henry against the Scotch, and increased by protracted hostilities, combined,
it is believed, with alienated affection from his sister Margaret, Uueen-Dowager of
Scotland, because of her understood preference of the French to the English alliance,
may account for his setting aside her and her issue in the settlement of the succession
to the throne.

270 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

the state of the law as to the succession to the throne at the
death of Henry VIII.; and in the first year of the reign of Edward
VI., it was not only solemnly ratified by Parliament, but the penal-
ties of treason were denounced against any of the heirs of the crown
who should usurp or claim it otherwise than in conformity with the
provisions of that settlement.

Thus it is evident that, as the law then stood, the right both of
the Princess Mary and of the Princess Elizabeth to the throne was
prior to that of Lady Jane. It is equally manifest that the attempt
of Northumberland to effect Jane's succession to the throne, in defi-
ance of the claims of these princesses, was a hazardous as well as a
difficult enterprise an enterprise which, if unsuccessful, would in-
volve himself, the young lady, and all her supporters in the penal-
ties of high treason. But blinded by ambition, he thought only of
success, not of failure. His argument for setting aside the Prin-
cesses Mary and Elizabeth was, that both these princesses had been
declared illegitimate and incapable of inheriting the crown, by Par-
liamentary statutes in the twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth years of
the reign of Henry VIII., and that though by a subsequent Par-
liamentary statute that above quoted, enacted in the thirty-fifth
year of the reign of that monarch they were placed next to Ed-
ward as heirs of the throne, they are described in that statute only
as his daughters, without any reference to the question of the legi-
timacy of their birth.' But plausible as this reasoning might appear
to himself, it made little impression on others, who naturally felt
that, though the statute left the ban of illegitimacy, pronounced
against them in former statutes, unrecalled, it secured to them the
crown, and until it was repealed by Parliament it was indisputably
valid.

After Lady Jane's marriage, the health of Edward declining so ra-
pidly as to afford little hope that he would long survive, Northum-

1 In the proclamation of Lady Jane as queen, to be afterwards quoted, which was,
no doubt, either written by or under the authority of Northumberland, this is pre-
cisely the line of argumentation adopted.

ENGLAND.] Lady J ane. Grey , 271

berland saw that no time was to be lost in the execution of his
plans. He endeavoured, in the first place, to obtain from Edward
letters-patent, appointing Lady Jane heir to the crown of England,
and the heirs male of her body, and to procure the subscriptions of
the privy councillors and other persons of influence to that docu-
ment. Taking advantage of the young monarch's well known
devoted attachment to the reformed cause, he represented to him
the danger to which the Reformation would be exposed in the event
of the successsion of the Princess Mary, from her determined adher-
ence to the Popish Church, and the advantages it would derive from
the elevation of Lady Jane, its enlightened and ardent supporter, to
the sovereign power. Edward showed some reluctance to pass over
his other sister, Elizabeth, of whose attachment to the reformed faith
there was no doubt ; but Northumberland, arguing that the injus-
tice would be too glaring were Mary to be set aside on the ground of
illegitimacy, when the same objection was equally applicable to the
succession of Elizabeth, at last obtained Edward's consent. 1 Influ-
enced partly by promises and partly by threatenings, all the judges,
with a single exception, and that a Protestant, Sir John Hales, one
of the judges of the court of common pleas, and all the lords of the
privy council, with other persons of distinction, amounting to above
a hundred, signed the letters-patent, which are dated the 21st day
of June, 1553. Nothing more was done to give validity to the
change of succession. In consequence of Edward's death, which took
place soon after, namely, on the evening of Thursday, the 6th of the
following month, the letters-patent were confirmed neither by his
will and testament, nor by act of Parliament, as was intended. 2

' Baker's Chronicle, London edit., 1730, p. 311.

2 " Scarcely any of our historical writers show an acquaintance with these letters-
patent, though they have been conversant with the substance of them, from the recital
which is made in Queen Jane's proclamation It is set forth in these letters-
patent that the king intended to complete this settlement of the crown by making a
will, and by an act of Parliament ; thus following the precedent of his father Henry
the Eighth's settlement, which this was to supersede. (See an essay by the present
writer in the Arclxeologia, vol. xxx., p. 464). But the rapid termination of King Ed-
ward's illness prevented these final acts of ratification; and Northumberland, in con-

272 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

On the death of the young monarch, his sister, Lady Mary, ought
immediately to have succeeded to the imperial sceptre. But her
claims were in the meantime set aside. The measures adopted to
secure the succession of Lady Jane to the throne had, it appears,
been wholly concealed from her for some time. The first informa-
tion she received of them was from her mother-in-law, the Duchess
of Northumberland, shortly before the death of Edward, as we learn
from a statement written by herself. "When it was publicly re-
ported," says she, "that there was no more hope of the king's life,
as the Duchess of Northumberland had before promised that I should
remain in the house with my mother, so she, having understood this
soon after from her husband, who was the first that told it to me,
did not wish me to leave my house, saying to me that if God should
have willed to call the king to his mercy, of whose life there was no
longer any hope, it would be needful for me to go immediately to the
Tower, I being made by his majesty heir of his realm." 1 But at this
announcement, so far from being elated, she rather felt perplexed
and unhappy. "Which words," says she, "being spoken to me
thus unexpectedly, put me in great perturbation, and greatly dis-
turbed my mind as yet, [and] soon after they oppressed me much
more."

On the evening of the 9th of July, when the Duke of Northum-
berland, the Marquis of Northampton, the Earl of Aruudel, the
Earl of Huntingdon, and the Earl of Pembroke, coming to Sion

sequence, could only rely upon the validity of the letters-patent, which had passed the
great seal upon the 21st of June." Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Note
by Editor, p. 4. The letters-patent for the limitation of the crown are inserted in
Appendix to that work, pp. 91-100.

1 This is part of a letter written by Lady Jane, after her condemnation, to Queen
Mary, printed in Pollini's Istoria Ecclesiastica Delia Rivoluzion D' 'Inghilterra, p. 355.
The original is not now extant, and, as given by Pollini, the letter has no address or
subscription, but its authenticity is generally admitted. It contains a somewhat
minute detail of the circumstances connected with her assumption of royalty, showing
that the whole scheme originated entirely from the political motives of her relatives;
and it is an appeal to the mercy of the sovereign. We quote from a translation of
this document, in Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. iii.,
pp. 272-279.

ENGLAND.]

Lady Jane Grey.

273

House, 1 where she then was, announced to her the death of the
king, and that she was the heir named by his majesty to succeed him,
she felt in a similar manner, and showed great reluctance to accept

of the crown, though it must be admitted that the motive disinclin-
ing her to accept of it, appears rather to have been a modest diffi-
dence of her own abilities, than a conviction that, by the laws of the
kingdom and natural right, it was the inheritance of the Princess
Mary, 2 "Which things," says she in her letter to Mary, "as soon as
I had heard, with infinite grief of mind, how I was beside myself,
stupified and troubled, I will leave it to those lords who were pre-
sent to testify, who saw me overcome by sudden and unexpected
grief, fall on the ground, weeping very bitterly ; and then declaring
to them my insufficiency, I greatly bewailed myself for the death of so
noble a prince, and at the same time turned myself to God, humbly
praying and beseeching Him, that if what was given to me was
rightly and lawfully mine, his Divine majesty would grant me such

1 Heylin fixes this scene at Durham House. But in Jane's letter, just quoted,
Sion House is expressly named as the place.

2 This conviction was the result of after thoughts.

274: Ladies of tlte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

grace and spirit that I might govern it to his glory and service, and
to the advantage of this realm." This disinclination to accept the
crown, it also seems, was increased from a sense of the danger to
which she might be exposed should the country fail to support her
assumption of the supreme authority ; for, young as she was, from
recent events she could not have been ignorant of the capricious-
ness of fortune, which might adorn her with a crown to-day, and
make sport of her ruin to-morrow. " With what crown," said she,
"does fortune present me? A crown which hath been violently
and shamefully wrested from Katharine of Aragon ; made more un-
fortunate by the punishment of Anne Boleyn, and others that wore
it after her. And why, then, would you have me add my blood
to theirs ; and be the third victim from whom this fatal crown may
be ravished, with the head that wears it! But in case it should
not prove fatal unto me, and that all its vemon were consumed ; if
fortune should give me warranties of her constancy; should I be
well advised to take upon me these thorns, which would lacerate
though not kill me outright? My liberty is better than the chain
you proffer me, with what precious stones soever it be adorned, or of
what gold soever framed. I will not exchange my peace for honour-
able and precious jealousies, for magnificent and glorious fetters.
And if you love me sincerely, and in good earnest, you will rather
wish me a secure and quiet fortune, though mean, than an exalted
condition, exposed to the wind, and followed by some dismal fall." '

In this reply Lady Jane reasoned wisely, and had she been left to
her own determination she would have remained in a private sta-

' Heylin's History of the Reformation, London, 1661, p. 159. This author, in de-
scribing the interview which took place between the councillors and Lady Jane on this
occasion, states at considerable length the whole argument pro and con. There is
reason to think that he has himself constructed the speeches of the respective parties,
as they cannot be traced to any earlier authority; but if he has not given the ipsistsima
verba, he has given die spirit of what was said on both sides, and, in particular, of what
was said by Lady Jane. This is confirmed from her letter to Queen Mary, and from
a passage in the Duke of Northumberland's speech to the lords of council, recorded in
Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 6, " Who, by your aud our enticement,
is rather of force placed therein than by her own seeking and request."

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 275

tion, contented with the wealth and honours which by birth and
marriage were indisputably her own. But, besieged by the urgent
entreaties of Northumberland, and the expostulations of her father,
to which, it has been said, were added the tender and insinuating-
persuasions of her aspiring husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, on
whom the brilliant prospect of a kingdom acted with the spell of
enchantment, she yielded her own inclination, and the dictates of
her own judgment, to these combined influences brought to bear
upon her mind. Another motive of great weight a motive highly
creditable to the tenderness of her filial piety, and to her self-sacri-
ficing disinterestedness of spirit was the apparent impossibility of
otherwise saving from destruction her father and her father-in-law,
who had carried matters so far, that in the event of her refusing the
crown, they would, on the accession of Mary, have incurred the
mortal vengeance of that princess. Her accepting the royal dignity,
perilous as this might be to herself and to her friends, should Mary
and her supporters finally triumph, seemed to be the only course
she could adopt, by which, perchance, their safety might be secured.
While, therefore, granting that it was criminal in her to usurp what
belonged to another, yet, taking all these circumstances into ac-
count, and reflecting too on her early age, we are disposed more to
pity her as the victim of ambition, than to condemn her for at
last yielding to accept of the crown under the operation of influences
so difficult to resist.

Lady Jane's consent having been thus extorted, preparations were
made to invest her with the government of the kingdom ; and for
two or three days appearances promised her a quiet succession. For
though some of the common people, in the parts of the country
where Lady Mary now was, gave decided indications of a purpose to
support the claims of that princess, they were joined by few of the
nobility and gentry, who seemed rather disposed to throw the
weight of their influence on the side of Lady Jane, and it was con-
fidently anticipated that this opposition would be speedily subdued.

On the 9th of July, the chief officers and the guard were sworn at

276 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Greenwich, to bear true and faithful allegiance to Jane as queen ;
and as it had been the long-established practice for the sovereigns
of England to take up their residence for a few days after their
accession in the Tower of London, she was on the following day con-
ducted with great state to that fortress, between four and five
o'clock in the afternoon, attended by her father-in-law, and a
numerous retinue of noblemen and noble ladies, the Duchess of
Suffolk, her mother, bearing up her train, and the Tower batteries
firing a royal salute. 1 On her passing through the city to the
Tower, as Bishop Godwin remarks, no acclamations saluted her,
though vast crowds flocked around her, drawn rather, it seemed, to
gratify their curiosity than to express their joy ; and this, he adds,
was the first circumstance which encouraged Mary's friends, who
regarded it as a favourable omen, to the resolution of making some
attempt in her behalf when a proper occasion should offer. At six
o'clock she was proclaimed Queen of England, with the usual
formalities, by two heralds and a trumpet blowing, first at Cheap-
side, and then in Fleet Street. The proclamation Explained the
grounds on which it was attempted to vindicate her title, referring
to Edward's death-bed settlement of the crown in her favour ; and
to set aside the superior claims of Mary and Elizabeth, founded on
the act of Parliament relating to their right of succession, passed
in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII., the two
princesses are declared to be illegitimate, in conformity with acts of
Parliament passed in the twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth years of
that monarch's reign, and never abrogated, ratifying the sentence
annulling his marriage with Katharine of Aragon and his divorce
from Anne Boleyn, and bastardizing his children by these two
queens. The proclamation was heard by the assembled multitude
in silence, without those demonstrations of popular joy usually made
at the proclamation of a new sovereign ; but no opposition or dis-

1 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., part i., pp 1-5.

2 it is inserted in Burnet's History of the Reformation. In speaking of Edward VI.,
it designates him "late King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of ttie Faith,
and on earth, the supreme head, under Christ, of the Church of England and Ictlaud "

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 277

satisfaction was shown, save by a young man, the apprentice of a
vintner, who uttered certain expressions in favour of Mary's right-
ful title to the throne. The young man being apprehended, was
next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, set in the pillory, and had
both his ears nailed and cut off, at which infliction a trumpet was
blown, and a herald in a coat of arms read the offence of the culprit
in presence of one of the sheriffs of London. He was then again
cast into prison. 1 This punishment was not only cruel but impolitic,
being only calculated to render the new government unpopular.
Orders were issued by the council that Jane should be proclaimed
throughout England, but these orders were executed only in London
and the neighbourhood.

On the same day on which she entered the Tower, letters were
issued to the lieutenants of the different counties, signed by herself,
but probably the composition of Northumberland, or of some of his
agents, announcing her succession to the throne, vindicating her
title, and expressing her confidence that they would support her " in
her rightful possession of this kingdom, and repel and resist the
feigned and untrue claim of the Lady Mary, bastard daughter to her
great-uncle, Henry VIII., of famous memory." The originals of two
of these letters, both addressed to the Marquis of Northampton, 2 one
of them to him. as lieutenant of Surrey, and the other, which is
similar, addressed to him as lieutenant of the counties of Surrey,
Northampton, Bedford, and Berks, are still extant. 3

Some time before the death of her brother Edward, the Princess
Mary, while resident at Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire, had received an
invitation to come and see her dying brother. But having been pre-
viously apprised of the conspiracy formed to exclude her from the
succession, she suspected that the invitation was a mere stratagem
of Northumberland, as it really was, to get possession of her person
for his own purposes ; and therefore, instead of going to court to see
her brother, she set off from Hunsdon, to her manor of Keuninghall,

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 610. 2 William Parr, brother of Katharine Parr.

8 Ella's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii , pp. 183-188.

278 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

iu Norfolk, whence she very soon proceeded to her castle at Fram-
lingham, in Suffolk. ' At Framlingham, on the 8th of July, two
days after Edward's death, she received her first intelligence of the
event, and naturally indignant at the attempts made to supplant her,
she was not supine in the assertion of her rights. She immediately
assumed the royal title. On the same day she wrote to Sir George
Somersall and others, claiming the crown as. her birthright, and
commanding them to repair to her as their lawful sovereign, at her
manor of Kenninghall, whither she intended speedily to return, from
Framlingham, provided she found the nobility, gentry, and people
generally, favourable to her interest. 2 On the following day she
wrote to the council, expressing her surprise that no intimation of
her brother's death had been conveyed to her, and claiming the crown
as hers, equally by the laws of nature and the laws of the kingdom.
In their answer the council inform her that their "sovereign lady,
Queen Jane," was invested with the just title to the imperial crown,
"by their late sovereign lord's letters-patent, signed with his own
hand, and sealed with the great seal of England, in presence of the
most part of the nobles, councillors, judges, with divers other grave
and sage personages assenting and subscribing to the same." They
also have the boldness to tell her, what must have been peculiarly
painful to her feelings, that in consequence of the divorce effected
between her mother, Katharine of Aragon, and her father, Henry
VIII. a divorce demanded "by the everlasting laws of God, and
also by ecclesiastical laws," sanctioned by the judgment of "the most
part of the noble and learned universities of Christendom, and con-
firmed by sundry acts of Parliament remaining yet in their force,
she was justly made illegitimate, and uninheritable to the crown im-
perial." And, in conclusion, they warn her of her danger, should
she, "under any pretence whatsoever, vex and molest any of our
sovereign lady Queen Jane's subjects from their true faith and alle-

J Baker's Chronicle, pp. 311, 314.

2 Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, p. 232.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane, Grey. 279

giance due uiito her grace." The council's letter is dated "From
the Tower of London, 9th July, 1553." '

To the council's caution in the close of their letter Lady Mary
paid no attention. Setting them at defiance, she unremittingly
persevered, and with great success, in asserting her right to the
throne. Her right was indeed so manifest, not simply because she
had been appointed heir, next to her brother, by the will of her father
and by Parliament, but because she was the eldest daughter of
Henry VIII., and the transference of the royal power from a
brother to his second cousin, in preference to his sister, was so unna-
tural, arbitrary, and unjust, that her claims powerfully recommended
themselves to men's natural sense of justice. Bright an ornament
as was Lady Jane to the Protestants, the great body of that party
regarded her elevation as a mere political intrigue of Northumber-
land for the aggrandizement of his family ; and they supported Mary,
though they knew that she was a bigoted Romanist, so effectively,
that to them she was mainly indebted for being placed securely on
the throne. The two great counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, though
generally professing, or friendly to the reformed religion, enlisted
themselves in her cause. The inhabitants of the county of Suffolk,
notwithstanding their apprehensions of danger to the Reformation
from her accession, were not kept back on that account from acknow-
ledging her as their queen ; and when, to allay the fears they ex-
pressed while tendering their allegiance to her, she pledged herself
to make no alteration in the laws of the late sovereign with respect
to religion, 2 they were prepared, in the ardour of their loyalty, to
shed the last drop of their blood on her behalf. Many of the chief
nobility and gentry tendered their homage to her as their legitimate

1 Holinshed's Chronicles, London edit., 1808, vol. iii., pp. 1066, 1067.

2 To this engagement Mary, alas ! proved unfaithful, as soon as she got secure pos-
session of the throne, and there is reason to think that she never intended to fulfil it.
When the Suffolkshire people afterwards reminded her of it, she replied, " Forsomuch
as ye, being but members, desire to rule your head, ye shall one day well perceive that
members must obey their head, and not look to bear rule over the same." Foxe's Acts
and Monuments, vol. vi., p. 387.

280 Ladies oft/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

sovereign ; and she found herself, much more rapidly than she had
at all anticipated, in a condition for maintaining her right by an
appeal to arms.

The friends of Lady Jane, dreading that the Emperor Charles V.
would not only dispute her pretensions, but would extend his pro-
tection and assistance to his relative Mary, the council were less
prompt than usual in communicating with him as to the accession
of the new sovereign. Sir Philip Hoby, Sir Eichard Morison, and
the Bishop of Norwich, who had been appointed by Edwai'd VI.
commissioners for mediating a peace between the emperor and the
King of France, were now at Brussels, at the court of Charles. To
these commissioners letters were sent from the council, dated the
8th and 9th of July, conveying to them the mournful tidings of the
king's death, and requiring them to acquaint the emperor with
the event, not doubting that he would remember the ancient amity
between the two crowns, and to assure him that nothing should be
wanting on their part to maintain it. Such is the whole amount of
the despatch. A total silence is preserved as to Edward's successor,
a proof of the suspicions entertained by the council as to the friendly
feelings of Charles. Soon after, a special messenger, Mr. Eichard
Shelley, was despatched to Brussels with a letter from the council
to the commissioners, a letter from Queeu Jane to them, and an-
other from her to the emperor. The council in their letter, dated
llth July, in which they style Jane "our sovereign lady," require
the commissioners to communicate to the emperor the tidings of
King Edward's death ; the accession of Jane to the throne ; the ap-
pointment of Sir Philip Hoby as resident ambassador at the empe-
ror's court; the willingness of the government to continue that
knight and the other two commissioners at his court, should the
emperor be so inclined, with the view of carrying into effect a treaty
of peace between his majesty and the King of France. Jane's letter
to the commissioners, 1 announcing to them her succession, chiefly
consists of a reiteration and ratification of the instructions given
1 It is dated from the Tower of London, 12th July.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 281

them in the council's letter. In her letter to the emperor she in-
forms him of the death of her cousin, Edward VI., and of her suc-
cession to the crown, desiring the continuance of the same good un-
derstanding between him and herself which had been maintained
between him and her predecessor.' None of these letters, as we
shall afterwards see, were delivered to the emperor.

It was not until the 16th of July that the English commis-
sioners waited upon Charles, and officially conveyed to him the in-
telligence of King Edward's death, assuring him, at the same time,
of the readiness of the lords of council, at all times, to maintain the
amity which had always existed between the realm of England and
the emperor's dominions. But not having as yet received official
information of Jane's assumption of royal authority, they made no
communication to him on that subject. Charles, in jeply, expressed
his sorrow at hearing of the death of the young king, on whom he
pronounced the highest eulogiums. " And touching," said he, "the
amity which hath been betwixt me and my late good brpther, our
countries and subjects, as I have always had good-will to the observ-
ance of the same, according to such treaties as were betwixt us ; so
now, understanding by you, my lords of the council's good inclina-
tion and mind to entertain and observe this amity for correspond-
ence, I both now have and shall have like good- will to keep and
continue the same, and I thank them for making me to understand
their good-will herein." 2

Having, however, learned from other sources the state of affairs
in England, the emperor was greatly dissatisfied at the innovation
in the order of the succession, not simply on political grounds, but
from the near consanguinity between himself and Mary, who was his
cousin on the mother's side. 3 He accordingly, soon after, summoned

1 Strype's Mem Eccl., vol. iii., part i., pp. 5-14 Howard's Lady Jane Grey and
Jter Times, pp. 246-252.

2 From letter of the commissioners to the council, dated 17th July, in Howard's
Lady Jane Grey and her Times, p, 260.

a Katharine of Aragon, Mary's mother, was the sister of Joanna, the mother of
Charles.

282 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

the English commissioners to wait upon him without delay. While
they were preparing to obey the summons, Mr. Shelley arrived at
Brussels, and they would have examined his despatches before at-
tending the emperor, but were prevented from doing so by a second
messenger, requiring their attendance at court immediately. In his
interview with the commissioners, Charles expressed himself as far
from satisfied with what Edward had done, in declaring his sister
to be illegitimate, and in changing the succession as fixed by his
father. He reminded them that the pretensions of Mary Stuart,
Queen of Scotland, and wife of the Dauphin of France not to speak
of his cousin Mary and her sister Elizabeth were better founded
than those of Lady Jane Grey, the former being a descendant of the
eldest sister of Henry VIII., while the latter was only a descendant
of the youngest sister of that monarch. In short, he declined giving
audience to Mr. Shelley, until he knew from whom he was sent, and
gave them to understand that he could receive none in an official
capacity from England but the accredited agents of his relative Mary.
Thus Mr. Shelley never had an opportunity of delivering to Charles
the letters with which he was intrusted, nor had the commissioners
ever an opportunity of officially communicating to him the import of
the instructions brought to them from Queen Jane and her council
by Shelley. 1 Intelligence of the triumph of Mary's party soon arriv-
ing at Brussels, Shelley returned to England, carrying with him a
letter from the three commissioners at the emperor's court to Queen
Mary's lords of council, tendering their allegiance to her for they
had changed with the tide and desiring to know her majesty's
pleasure, to which they should conform themselves most willingly. 2

1 These facts are contained in a letter of the commissioners to the council, extant in
one of the Harleian MSS. See Nicolas's Memoirs of Lady Jane Grey, pp. Ixv-lxvii.
Strype, who, it would appear, had not seen this letter, says that Shelley " seemed to
make no haste in the delivery of his letters from Queen Jane and the council to the
emperor ; waiting to see the issue and success of the contests in England between
her party and that of Lady Mary." Mem. Eccl, vol. iii., part i., pp. 13, 14. The text
assigns the true cause why the letters were not delivered.

* Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol. iii., part i., p. 14. These commissioners were, however,
deprived of their diplomatic offices by a despatch from Mary's council, dated from the
Tower, 5th August, 1553. Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, pp, 299, SOO.

EXGLAND.

Lady Jane Grey.

283

At London the eloquence of the pulpit was exerted, but with little
success, in vindicating Jane's title and authority. On Sabbath, the
9th of July, Eidley, Bishop of London, in a sermon preached at St.
Paul's Cross, by order of the council, congratulated his auditors on

liidley preaching at St. Paul Cross.

her accession, and expatiated on the calamities into which the
nation would have been plunged by the certain overthrow of the
reformed religion, so happily established under King Edward, had
Lady Mary succeeded to the throne a sermon for which he was
afterwards burnt at the stake. The following Sabbath, July 16th,
Mr. Eogers, the learned reader of that cathedral, who officiated in
the same place, was more cautious than Eidley, preaching only upon
the gospel of the day ; but this availed him nothing, for he was the
first victim committed to the flames during the Marian persecution. 1
A crown, dazzling as it is with its diadems of glory, is often lined
with thorns, and the brief period of Lady Jane's possession of the

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 611. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. Hi., part i., p. 5.

284 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

imperial dignity was, perhaps, the least happy portion of her exist-
ence. Besides proving a source of constant anxiety, it became, from
her refusal for reasons of state policy, and, perhaps, also from a
newly excited ambition in her mind to make her husband king, the
occasion of disagreement between her and Guildford, who had ill put
into his head against her by his own mother. In giving an account
of what took place after she had been conducted to the Tower, she
thus speaks on this subject: Whilst "I was reasoning of many
things with my husband, he assented that if he were to be made
king, he would be made so by me, by act of Parliament. But after-
wards, I sent for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and said to
them, that if the crown belonged to me, I should be content to mako
my husband a duke, but would never consent to make him a king.
Which resolution of mine gave his mother (this my opinion being
related to her) great cause for anger and disdain, so that she being
very angry with me and greatly displeased, persuaded her son not
to sleep with me any longer, as he was wont to do, affirming to me,
moreover, that he did not wish in any wise to be a duke, but a king.
So that I was constrained to send to him the Earls of Arundel and
Pembroke, otherwise, I knew that the next morning he would have
gone to Sion, where his mother now was, and she would have fanned
the flame of his resentment." 1 The fact, too, that she believed that,
during the few days she was queen, two attempts had been made
upon her life, is an additional proof of the unhappy state of her
mind in the situation in which she was now placed. " I know for
certain," says she, " that twice during this time poison was given
to me, first in the house of the Duchess of Northumberland, and
afterwards here in the Tower, as I have the best and most certain
testimony." 8 Whether this, her affirmation, is well founded or not,
cannot now be positively determined. The probability is that it is
not, and that her indisposition, caused by the upbraidings of her

' Letter of Lady Jane, after her coudemnation, to Queen Mary, in Miss Wood's
Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. iii., pp. 271-279.

2 Ibid., vol. iii., p. 279. She adds, " Besides, since that time all my hair lias fallen
off."

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 285

mother-in-law, and by the irritation of Guildford at her refusing to
invest him with the regal power, led her groundlessly to imagine
that they had given her poison. But the suspicion which haunted
her mind, that those nearest and dearest to her were plotting to take
away her life, must have rendered her truly miserable.

It has formerly been noticed that the counties of Norfolk and
Suffolk had declared in favour of Mary. As early as the 12th of
July, news was brought to the council that the inhabitants of these
counties were rising in arms for her support. To quell this opposi-
tion, it was determined to despatch a strong body of troops with all
possible speed. Northumberland, who seems from the first to have
entertained strong suspicions of the fidelity of the Londoners, and
even of some of the councillors, forseeing that his presence would
probably be more important in the city than in the proposed expe-
dition, intended to intrust the Duke of Suffolk with the command
of the troops ; but Jane, alarmed for the safety of her father, with
tears besought the whole council that he might remain in her society.
Northumberland, accordingly, constrained to yield to the tenderness
of her filial piety, took the command himself. 1 On the 13th of July
he marched out of London with an army of 6,000 ; but he was much
discouraged, in passing through Shoreditch, to observe that among
the crowds that collected to see their march, not a single individual
wished them success. " The people press to see us," said he to Lord
Grey, "but not one of them saith God speed you." 2 His troops
were afterwards increased to 8,000 foot, and 2,000 horse. This body,
however, was altogether insufficient to enable him to cope with
Mary's forces, which, on his reaching Edmond's-Bury, he had the
mortification to find amounted to at least double that number ; and
he repeatedly wrote to the council, urgently requesting reinforce-
ments, which the council were in no hurry to send.

Meanwhile, the spirit of disaffection to Jane began to work among
many members of council, from reports they had received that the
great body of the people were in favour of Mary, that many of the
1 Stowe's Annals, p. 611. 2 Ibid., p 611.

286

Ladies oftlw Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

nobility who were at liberty were her zealous supporters, and that
the prospect of Northumberland's success was extremely doubtful.
Impatient to desert a sinking cause, the well affected towards Mary
among them, on receiving Northumberland's letters importuning
additional forces, quitted the Tower, where, in fact, they were in a
manner prisoners, avowedly to raise new recruits with all possible
haste, but in reality to shake off his tyranny, and concert measures
for effecting the succession of the Princess Mary. At a meeting of
such members of council and others of the nobility as favoured Mary,
held on the 19th of July, at Baynard's Castle, 1 at that time the resi-
dence of the Earl of Pembroke, it was unanimously agreed to acknow-

Baynard's Castle.

ledge her as their rightful sovereign. The mayor and aldermen of
London were sent for, and the whole assembly proceeded to Cheap-
side, where they proclaimed her Queen of England, by four trumpet-

i Baynard's Castle was situated on the banks of the Thames, end was founded by
Baynard, a follower of William the Conqueror. After passing through various hands,
it was repaired, or rather rebuilt, in 1501, by Henry VII., who frequently lodged in it.
In 1666 it was destroyed in the great fire of London. A fragment of the building, in-
corporated with a coal wharf, marks its exact site, near the west extremity of Thames
Street.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jam Grey. 287

ers and three heralds at arms, in presence of an immense concourse
of spectators, whose enthusiastic acclamations formed a striking con-
trast to the cold indifference betrayed by the cro\v d at the procla-
mation of Lady Jane. They immediately after went to St. Paul's
cathedral, where was sung Te Deum laudamus, with songs and the
organs playing. 1 An eye-witness thus describes the scene presented
by the metropolis on that occasion : " Great was the triumph here
at London ; for my time I never saw the like, and by the report of
others the like was never seen. The number of caps that were
thrown up at the proclamation was not to be told. The Earl of
Pembroke threw away his cap full of angelles. I saw myself, money
was thrown out at windows for joy. The bonfires were without
number; and what with shouting and crying of the people, and
ringing of bells, there could no one man hear almost what another
said; besides banqueting and skipping the streets for joy." 2 Mary
was speedily proclaimed with acclamation throughout England. The
recognition of the equity of her claim to the throne was the sole
cause of the enthusiastic loyalty of the Protestants. As to the fana-
tical Papists of all classes, the aristocracy, the gentry, the priests,
and the mob, another consideration gave a stimulus to their extrava-
gant demonstrations of joy the prospect of seeing the tables turned
against " the gospellers," as they called the Eeformers, whom, in their
excitement, they threatened with flames, hanging and drowning.' 1

No sooner was the Duke of Suffolk informed of what had taken
place at Cheapside, than he came out of* the Tower, saying he was
but one man ; and attended by a few of his men, whom he com-
manded to leave their weapons behind them, he proclaimed Mary
on the Tower Hill; after which he immediately entered London.
Northumberland, whose army was melting away, and who discovered
that everywhere the general feeling strongly inclined to Mary, upon
receiving the same intelligence, hopeless of success, left Bury for

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 612. Strype's Mem. Eccl , vol. iii., part i., pp. 20, 21.

2 Quoted in Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, pp. 269, 270.

3 Zurich Letters, fast series, pp. 365-374.

2S8 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Cambridge, whither he arrived with a few followers on the 21st of
July ; aud making a virtue of necessity, he went with the mayor of
the town to the public cross, and proclaimed Mary, " the behold-
ers whereof," to use the quaint language of a contemporary, " more
believing the grief in his eyes, when they let down tears, than the
joy professed by his hands, when he threw up his cap." His pre-
tended loyalty availed him nothing. Being arrested at Cambridge,
he was brought a prisoner to the Tower of London, and on his way
to it was treated with unbounded abuse by the London people, who
hated him ever since he had shed the blood of the Protector Somer-
set, and rejoiced in his fall, as the just punishment of his ambition
and cruelty. 1

Lady Jane was now to reap the bitter fruits of her father-in-law's
and her father's ambition. This sudden reverse of fortune was first
made known to her by her father, who, upon hearing that Mary was
proclaimed in the city, entered th'e apartment of his daughter, and
told her that she behoved to put off the robes of royalty and return
to a private station. At this announcement, though not ignorant of
her danger, she was not depressed. She assured her father that she
would more willingly put them off than she had put them on, which
last she would never have done but in obedience to him and her
mother. 2 No sooner was Mary proclaimed, than an order was sent
by her council to the Tower, requiring the surrender of that fortress,
and orders were issued that Jane and her husband, as well as her
father and mother, should be made state prisoners in the Tower. On
being informed of this she summoned up all her powers of fortitude,
and in her interview with Guildford, previously to their separation,
exhibiting that magnanimity of mind often displayed by the softer
sex under great calamities, she set herself, tender as were her years,
to the painful task of affectionately supporting his courage. This,

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 612. Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol. iii., pp. 19, 20. Zurich Letters,
first series, pp. 365-374. Sir John Hey ward, quoted in Singer's Cavendish's Life of
IVolsey, vol. ii., p. 144.

2 Baker's Chronicle, p. 315.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 289

her last interview with him, is well delineated by Eowe, in his Tra-
gedy of Lady Jane Grey?

"Outtdford. Thou stand'st unmov'd;
Calm temper sits upon thy beauteous brow ;
Thy eyes, that flow'd so fast for Edward's loss,
Gaze unconcern'd upon the rum round thee,
As if thou hadst resolv'd to brave thy fate,
And triumph in the midst of desolation.

Lady Jane. And dost thou think, my Guildford, I can see
My father, mother, and ev'n thee, my husband,
Torn from my side, without a pang of sorrow ?
How art thou thus unknowing in my heart ?
Words cannot tell thee what I feel : there is
An agonizing softness busy here,
That tugs the strings, that struggles to get loose,
And pour my soul in wailings out before thee.

Guildford. Give way, and let the gushing torrent come;
Behold the tears we bring to swell the deluge,
Till the flood rise upon the guilty world,
And make the ruin common.

Lady Jane. Guildford ! no ;
The time for tender thought and soft endearments
Is fled away and gone; joy has forsaken us;
Our hearts have now another part to play ;
They must be steel'd with some uncommon fortitude,
That fearless we may tread the path of horror,
And, in despite of fortune and our foes,
Ev'n in the hour of death be more than conquerors."

Before the close of the day on which Mary was proclaimed, Lady
Jane, who had been queen only nine days, her husband, and her
parents were all prisoners, and strict orders were given to confine
them in distinct apartments in the Tower. This cruel separation,
heart-rending to them all, was peculiarly so to the youthful couple,
who were thus deprived of the alleviation to be derived in their try-
ing circumstances from mutual endearing sympathy. The Duchess
of Suffolk was soon set at liberty, and at her intercession, whether
with Queen Mary, or with some councillor, we are not informed, the
Duke of Suffolk was liberated on the 31st of July, on engaging to
1 This tragedy is included in British Theatre, vol. x.

290 Ladies oftJw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

return to prison whenever required by the queen. 1 But no such
favour was granted to Lady Jane and Lord Guildford.

CHAPTEE III.

FROM HER IMPRISONMENT IN THE TOWER TO HER EXECUTION.

AT that period the part of the Tower called Beauchamp's Tower was
appropriated for state prisoners ; " but Lady Jane was confined in
the house of one of the warders, whose name was Partridge, and she
was permitted to retain two of her female attendants. The day after
she had become Mary's prisoner, namely, on the 20th of July, she
was commanded by the Marqiiis of "Winchester, Lord Treasurer, to
deliver up all the crown jewels ; and under this pretext she and her
husband were unmercifully stripped of every farthing they possessed.
On the 18th of August the Duke of Northumberland was arraigned
as a traitor, and condemned to the block. At his trial he had the
generosity to declare before the court that Lady Jane, so far from
aspiring to the crown, had been brought to accept of it only by
enticement and force." The 21st of August was the day appointed
for his execution ; but it was delayed, that, according to his desire,
he might hear mass and receive the sacrament after the Popish form.
On the following day he was executed on Tower Hill, with Sir John
Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer. On the scaffold he confessed himself

1 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., pwt i , p. 24.

2 Here the Duke of Northumberland was confined. About sixty years ago it was
converted into a mess-room for the officers of the garrison. When the alterations
were making, a great number of names, inscriptions, arms, crests, devices, &c., were
discovered on the walls of the prison, made at different periods, probably for the most
part with nails, by illustrious and unfortunate prisoners, who being generally denied
the use of books to alleviate the tedious hours of imprisonment, thus endeavoured to
amuse themselves. Among other memorials of this description was a curious device
of Northumberland, with his name in the spelling of the age, and an inscription.
Archaeologist, vol. xiii., pp. 68-71. Nicolas's Life of Lady Jane Grey, pp. cii.-cvii.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 291

worthy of death, regretted that he had so much supported the new
religion, which he stigmatized as false, and as the cause why God had
punished the nation with the loss of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.,
then with the rebellion, and after that with the sweating-sickness.
He admonished the spectators to cleave to the religion of their fore-
fathers, rejecting that of modern date, and thanked God for having
vouchsafed to call him now to be a Christian ; " for," said he, " these
sixteen years I have been none." ' Whatever he had pretended, to
serve his own purposes, he had certainly been governed by other
motives than love to the Reformation in attempting the elevation of
Lady Jane to regal dignity. He perished unregretted, for he was a
man more dreaded than beloved. His body, with his head, were
buried in the Tower, beside the late Duke of Somerset. 2

Lady Jane, who was too young profoundly to scan human charac-
ter, never dreamed that Northumberland had professed and favoured
the Reformation solely to advance his ambitious schemes. She be-
lieved that, like herself, he had done so from conviction ; and hence
her surprise on hearing that, previously to and at his execution, he
had renounced the Protestant faith for Popery. Nor could she con-
ceal how low he had thereby sunk in her estimation, whether his
relapse to Popery proceeded from the hope of pardon, or was the
avowal of his real sentiments, which he had hitherto dissembled.
That these were her feelings, and that she expressed them strongly,
we learn from a record of her conversation one day at dinner, by the
author of Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, who dined
with her on that occasion. This record we shall give in his own
words. " On Tuesday, the 29th of August," says he, " I dined at
Partridge's house with my Lady Jane, she sitting at the board's end,

1 Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, written by a resident in the Tower,
supposed to have been Rowland Lea, an officer of the mint, edited by John Gough
Nichols, Esq., and printed for the Camden Society, pp. 18, 19, 21. The duke's eldest
son, the Earl of Warwick, died in prison. His younger sons, Lord Ambrose, Robert,
and Henry, were incarcerated, and received sentence of death; but they were ulti-
mately pardoned. Sir Andrew Dudley, the duke's brother, who was condemned to
death, was also pardoned.

3 Store's Annals, p. 615.

292

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLANH.

and there being present Partridge, his wife, Jacob, my lady's gentle-
woman, and her man. She commanding Partridge and me to put on
our caps, amongst our communication at the dinner this was to be

Lady Jane at dinner in Partridge'! house.

noted : after she had once or twice drunk to me, anil bade me hear-
tily welcome, saith she, ' The queen's majesty is a merciful princess ;
I beseech God she may long continue, and [that He may] send his
bountiful grace upon her.' After that we fell in [discourse of] mat-
ters of religion ; and she asked who he was that preached at Paul's
on Sunday before ; and so it was told her to be one [blank in MS.].
' I pray you,' quoth she, ' have they mass in London ? ' Yea, for-
sooth,' quoth I, ' in some places.' ' It may so be,' quoth she : ' it is
not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late duke ; for who
would' have thought,' said she, 'he would have so done? It was
answered her, ' Perchance he thereby hoped to have had his pardon.'
; Pardon !' quoth she, ' wo worth him ! he hath brought me and our
stock in most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambi-
tion. But for the answering that he hoped for life by his turning,
though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not ; for what

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey.

man is there living, I pray you, although he had been innocent, that
would hope oflife in that case ; being in the field against the queen
in person as general, and after his taking so hated and evil-spoken of
by the commons ? and at his coming into prison so wondered at 1 as
the like was never heard by any man's time. Who was judge that
he should hope for pardon, whose life was odious to all men ? But
what will ye more 1 like as his life was wicked and full of dissimula-
tion, so was his end thereafter. I pray God, I, nor no friend of
mine did so. Should I, who [am] young and in the flower of my
years, forsake my faith for the love of life I Nay, God forbid ! much
more he should not, whose fatal course, although he had lived his
just number of years, could not have long continued. But life was
sweet it appeared ; so he might have lived, you will say, he did [not]
care how. Indeed the reason is good ; for he that would have lived
in chains to have had his life, by like would leave no other mean
attempted. But God be merciful to us, for he saith, ' Whoso denieth
him before men, he will not know him in his father's kingdom.'
With this and much like talk the dinner passed away ; which ended,
I thanked her ladyship that she would vouchsafe [to] accept me in
her company ; and she thanked me likewise, and said I was welcome.
She thanked Partridge also for bringing me to dinner. ' Madam,'
said he, ' we were somewhat bold, not knowing that your ladyship
dined below, until we found your ladyship there.' And so Partridge
and I departed." 2

' t. e., apparently gazed at without sympathy.

- Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 24-26. Here the editor has the
following note: "This highly interesting passage has been unknown to the modern
biographers of Lady Jane Grey, though it has been once extracted and printed, when
the MS. was in the possession of Sir Simorid D'Ewes, in his pamphlet entitled The
Primitive Practice of Preserving Truth. 1645. 4to. Sir Simonds has there appended
to it the following remarks: 'How justly may the masculine constancy of this excel-
lent lady, whose many virtues the pens of her very enemies have acknowledged, rise
up in judgment against all such poor spirits who, for fear of death or other outward
motives, shall deny God and his truth, and so crown the trophies of the antichristian
or mongrel adversaries by their lamentable apostasy. For what she here spake chris-
tianly, she within a few months afterwards performed constantly, her life being taken
from her on the 12th day of February, 1553.' "

294 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

After Mary's coronation, which took place in Westminster Abbey,
on the 3d of October, with unusual splendour, preparations were
made for the trial of Lady Jane and her husband, together with his
brothers, Lord Ambrose and Lord Henry Dudley. Their trial was
conducted at Guildhall, on the 13th of November, the prisoners
having, on the morning of that day, been brought thither from the
Tower, under a guard of 400 soldiers with their halberts. It was
vain to attempt a defence, and they all pleaded guilty to the charges
of the indictment. On this occasion Lady Jane displayed an un-
common degree of self-possession. Her cheeks did not blanch for
a moment, nor her voice falter. The awful sentence being pro-
nounced, the prisoners were escorted to the Tower under the same
guard. 1 On their way the popular sympathy was strongly mani-
fested for them all, and especially for Lady Jane, whose uncommon
attainments and amiable character commanded all but universal
respect and affection. She and her husband had not seen each other
from the time of their arrest till the day of their trial ; and after it
was concluded they were confined in separate apartments as before,
and never again met in this world. Her intrepidity she carried back
with her to prison, and always more ready to wipe the tears from
the eyes of others than from her own she even administered to the
friends who were permitted to visit her that comfort which, over-
powered by the scene, they were unable to impart to her. " O faith-
ful companions of my sorrows," she said, " why do you thus afflict me
with your plaints 1 Are we not born into life to suffer adversity, and
even disgrace, if it be necessary ? When has the time been that the
innocent were not exposed to violence and oppression ?" s

Soon after, she obtained some relaxation of the severity of her im-
prisonment. On the 18th of December, by the order of the queen,
she had the liberty of the Tower, so that she might walk in the
queen's garden and on the hill. Her husband, and his brother, Lord

1 Judge Morgan, who condemned them, became raving mad, and died in this state,
incessantly calling out that Lady Jane should be taken away from him. Foxe's Acts
ai d Monuments, vol. vi , p. 425.

a Howard's Lady Jane Grey and her Times, pp. 339-312.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 295

Ambrose, had also the liberty of the "ports," where they lodged,
and were permitted to walk on the leads of the Tower. ' From this
and other slight favours, it was fondly hoped by their friends that
the youth and innocence of the amiable pair had made such an
impression on even the hard and unfeeling heart of Mary, as to
incline her to extend to them the royal clemency.

Mary and her ghostly counsellors were now extremely anxious to
recover Lady Jane from heresy to the Popish faith. It has indeed
been affirmed by Foxe and others, that the most solemn promises of
life and fortune were held out to her, provided she would abjure the
reformed doctrines ; but if so, she rejected the tempting offer, refusing
for kingdoms, or even for life, to belie her honest convictions ; and,
therefore, though not formally condemned for heresy, she is as well
entitled as though she had been so, to be ranked among the martyrs
to the reformed faith.

While confined iii the Tower, Lady Jane, having heard that
Dr. Harding, formerly her father's chaplain and her tutor, had, after
the accession of Mary to the throne, relapsed into Popery, addressed
to him a long letter of severe reprehension and earnest expostula-
tion. 2 From the pungency of censure characteristic of certain parts
of this letter, some, as Howard, in his Life of Lady Jane, have denied
its authenticity, arguing that it could not have been the genuine effu-
sion of a mind so gentle and amiable as that of our heroine. " It
commences," says Howard, " with a variety of phrases, applied to
Harding as forsaking Christ, which surpass even the Billingsgate of
some modern sectaries. Then follow reproaches for apostasy, in a

1 Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 33 Stowe's Annals.

2 Nicolas, in his Life of Lady Jane, from her having signed this letter with her
maiden name, concludes that it was written previously to her marriage, and supposes
that though Harding did not openly profess the change in his sentiments till after
Mary's accession, yet Lady Jane was acquainted with the change some time before he
publicly avowed it. It may, however, be questioned whether the mere fact of her hav-
ing signed the letter with her maiden name is a sufficient ground for assigning it a
date prior to her imprisonment. Its whole tone certainly conveys the impression that
it was written to one who had renounced Protestantism, and professed Popery in the
most open manner.

296 Ladies qftJte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

style such as few pi'ofessed termagants would venture to use in con-
versation, much less set down in writing ; whilst the attack upon
the Roman Catholic Church, though it manifests great vehemence of
faith and abhorrence, does not at all resemble either the piety or
the Christian forbearance for which Lady Jane was so remarkable.
Can it for a moment be supposed," he adds, " that such epithets as
' deformed imp of the devil,' ' stinking and filthy kennel of Satan,'
' unshamefast paramour of Antichrist,' ' cowardly runaway,' ' golden
calf,' ' * * * of Babylon,' ' sink of sin,' ' child of perdition,' ' white-
livered milksop,' with a long &c., can have issued from the mind or
pen of an amiable young female ? We think not ; and therefore con-
sider it unnecessary to notice this epistle any further."'

There are, however, good grounds for believing this letter to be
the genuine production of Lady Jane. John Banks, an English
Reformer, writing concerning her, in a letter to Henry Bullinger,
dated London, March 15, 1554, says, "It may be seen how her truly
admirable mind was illuminated by the light of God's Word, by two
letters, one of which she herself wrote to the Lady Katharine, her
sister, a most noble virgin, to inspire her with a love of the sacred
writings, and the other to a certain apostate, to bring him back to
Christ the Lord. I have taken the pains to translate both these
letters from our vernacular language 2 into Latin, that your excel-
lence may perceive that the pains which you have taken to enlighten
that family, and incite them to the love of godliness, have not been
ill bestowed." Mr. James Haddon, another English Reformer, cor-
roborates Banks's statement on the point in question, in a letter to
Henry Bullinger, dated Strasburg, August 31, 1554. " As to what
regards the Lady Jane's exhortations to a certain apostate," says he,
" I believe and partly know that it is true, and did really proceed
from herself." 3 Nor is it to be forgotten that, as her letter was

1 Lady Jane Grey and her Times, pp. 345, 346.

2 It is therefore evident that Lady Jane wrote her letter to Harding in English, and
not in Latin, as has been supposed by some, who have mistaken Banks's Latin version
for the original.

3 Zurich Letters, first series, Nos. 134, 141.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 297

printed long before the death of Harding, who lived after this many
years, during which he was engaged in bitter controversies with the
Protestants, he would not, had it been a forgery, have allowed the
imposition to pass unexposed. And when Foxe inquired of Aylnier
for documents respecting Lady Jane, Aylmer informed him of this
letter, already in print, recommending him to insert it in his work,
adding, - " You will say it was piously and prudently written, and
perhaps learnedly too." l

In judging upon the pungent style of some parts of the letter, we
must take into account that in her time it was reckoned not incom-
patible with refinement of manners to use in religious disputation
language which would now be accounted extravagantly intemperate
and violent. In conducting controversies with the Papists, the Re-
formers, who saw Popery everywhere around them, presenting itself
in its most hateful forms, in its gross idolatries, its shameless
licentiousness, its deadly hatred of God's Word, its sanguinary per-
secutions, by proscriptions, inquisitions, racks, flames, massacres,
spoke, as they felt, strongly on the subject, and not in the soft accents
of milk and water Protestants of later times, who, having never felt
the fangs of Popery, think of it simply as an absurb superstition ;
or only in its enchanting music, its masterly paintings, its finely
chiseled sculpture, its magnificent architectural structures, and not in
its true character as displayed in the faithful page of history. It
was therefore natural for this young lady to use forms of phraseology
similar to what she had heard from the lips of the Reformers, whom
she admired, or similar to what she had read in their writings. Be-
sides, from her deep-rooted conviction of the truth of the reformed
principles, and of Popery being the Antichrist of Scripture, the great
enemy of God, of Christ, of the church, of man, she regarded apostasy
from Protestantism to Popery with horror, and in her benevolent
desire to reclaim her old tutor, described in strong language his
guilt and danger with the view of arousing his conscience, though, in
point of fact, her strong language might tend to defeat her object, by
1 Strype's Life of Aylmer, pp. 7, 8.

298 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

wounding his pride and creating irritation. But though some parts
of the letter are expressed in terms less respectful than would be
expected from a lady in our day, in addressing an individual in
similar circumstances, yet the high-toned Christian principle, the
deep abhorrence of the soul-ruining errors of Popery impressed on
the whole, is admirable, and worthy of all imitation. 1

Mary's accession to the throne, and her vigorous efforts in put-
ting down the Reformation, and in re-establishing Popery, put the
Romanists into ecstasy. "Then," to quote the words of Stephen
Perlin, a French ecclesiastic, who was at that time in London, " you
might have seen bishops, who had been displaced by the young
King Edward, and his late father, Henry, coming in great joy arid
magnificence about the town, mounted on mules and little pompous

Pompous parade of Popish Priests.

horses, dressed in great gowns of black camlet, over which were

beautiful surplices, their heads covered with satin hoods, like those

worn by the monks, being joyous on account of the queen's victory." ~

During Lady Jane's imprisonment, the new queen was not only

1 This letter is printed in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., p. 418; in the Harleian
Miscellany, vol. iii., pp. 114-116; and in various other collections.

2 Howard's Life of Lady Jane Grey and her Times, pp. 301, 302.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 299

vigorously carrying into effect the object nearest her heart, the re-
establishmeut of Popery, but she was giving manifest indications of
her persecuting spirit by her proclamations, by the imprisonment of
many, both clergy and laity among whom were Bishop Hooper,
Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Ridley and Latimer, simply be-
cause suspected of being well affected towards the Eeformation
and by the rescissory acts of her first Parliament. These proceedings
created no small dissatisfaction and alarm ; for though the great body
of the people were far from being well instructed in the reformed
principles, a large proportion of them regarded them with greater
favour than Popery. This dissatisfaction and alarm were increased
by the queen's contemplated marriage with Philip of Spain. No
sooner were the articles of the marriage published, than an insur--
rection, hasty and ill-concerted, broke out, headed by Sir Thomas
Wyatt, 1 who attempted to raise the county of Kent, and Sir Peter
Carew, who engaged to muster forces in Cornwall. Though the
insurgents had not the most distant intention of restoring Lady
Jane to regal power, the Duke of Suffolk, with an infatuation
truly astonishing, when it is considered that his daughter was still
in the queen's power, joined them, and undertook to raise the mid-
land counties. The insurrection 2 was speedily suppressed. Suffolk's
forces, which were few in number, were scattered, and he himself
was taken by the Earl of Huntingdon. Proclamation to that effect
was made on the 1st of Feburary, and on Saturday, the 10th of that
month, he was brought in prisoner to the Tower of London. Wyatt
made an assault on the metropolis, but was defeated on the 6th of
the same month, made prisoner, and ultimately beheaded. In com-
memoration of this victory, command was given by the queen and
the Bishop of London that a Te Deum should be sung in St. Paul's
church, and in every parish church in London, and that all the bells
should be rung. 3

1 Son of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, and friend ot Queen Anne Boleyu.

2 For a full account of it the reader is referred to Holiiished and other historians.

3 Strype's Mem. Ecd., vol. iii., part i., p. 140.

300 Ladies qftfte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

This rebellion was particularly unfortunate for Lady Jane. The
share her father had in it sealed the doom both of herself and of
her husband. The treason of Suffolk was imputed to his daughter
and his son-in-law, and it was resolved by the queen and her
government to carry into execution, without delay, the sentence of
death formerly pronounced upon them. "Then," as Baker quaintly
remarks, "was verified, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge ;' the innocent lady must suffer for
her father's fault ; for if her father, the Duke of Suffolk, had not this
second time made shipwreck of his loyalty, his daughter, perhaps,
had never tasted the salt water of the queen's displeasure, but now,
as a rock of offence, she is the first that must be removed." '

Accordingly, on the 8th of February, John of Feckenham, the
queen's confessor, 2 was sent to communicate to her the awful tidings,
that she was to die on the following day. The intelligence hardly
affected her tranquillity. So far from flattering herself with the
hope of life, she had been anticipating that if ever brought out
of prison it would be only to the block. Feckenham then turned
his discourse to the subject of religion, and exerted, but without
success, all his powers of argument to persuade her to become a
Papist. Not wishing to waste the remaining precious hours she
had to live in this world in useless controversy, she told him that
now she had no time to think of anything but of preparation for
eternity. Construing this into a prayer that her execution might
be delayed, and in the hope that by using additional means she
might be converted to Popery, he obtained for her from the queen
a reprieve of three days. Knowing that her death was now
determined upon, she longed for the inevitable stroke to be over,
and at the intimation of this poor favour, felt rather disappointed

' Baker's Chronicle, p. 319.

2 His proper name was Howman, but he was called Feckeuhaiu, because born neat
the forest of that name, in Worcestershire. He studied in Gloucester College, Oxford,
where he took his degree of bachelor of divinity. He was for some time chaplain to
Bonner, Bishop of London, and on Mary's accession was appointed her chaplain. In
May, 1556, he was honoured with the degree of doctor of divinity by the university of
Oxford, and in September following was promoted to be abbot of Westminster Abbey.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 301

than gratified. " You are much deceived," said she to Feckenham,
"if you think I had any desire of longer life; for I assure you since
the time you went from me, my life has been so tedious to me, that
I long for nothing so much as death, and since it is the queen's
pleasure, I am most willing to undergo it." '

That the sole motive in granting the reprieve was to endeavour,
if possible, to induce her to change her religion, and die professing
herself a Papist, as her father-in-law had done, appears from the fre-
quency with which the queen and council, under pretext of extreme
solicitude for the salvation of her soul, sent priests to instruct her, as
they pretended, in the right way, but who only distracted her mind
and disturbed her devotions, by constraining her to engage in inces-
sant disputations. Her ability and knowledge of the reformed prin-
ciples enabled her to maintain her ground with the ablest of these
controversialists, and such was the stability of her faith, that she
remained inflexible, never exhibiting, in a single instance, the slightest
wavering. "Divers learned Roman Catholics," says an old writer,
"and even those of the best fame and reputation, were sent unto her
to dissuade her from that true profession of the gospel, which from
her cradle she had ever held, each striving by art, by flattery, by
threatening^, by promise of life, or whatever else might move most in
the bosom of a weak woman, who should become master of so great
and worthy a prize ; but all their labours were bootless, for she had
art to confound their art, wisdom to withstand their flatteries,
resolution above their menaces, and such a true knowledge of life
that death was to her no other than a most familiar acquaintance." 2

One of these disputations, the substance of which she wrote out
with her own hand, and subscribed, has been preserved, forming an
interesting memorial of her ability in defending the reformed doc-
trines. 3 It was held between her and Feckenham, two days before

1 Baiter's Chronicle, p. 319.

2 The Life, Death, and Actions of the most Chaste, Learned, and Rellyimis Lady, the
Lady Jane Grey, &c., London, 1615. See also The Phoenix, vol. ii., p. 27.

3 It is printed in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., pp. 415-417 ; in The Phcenix,
vol. ii., pp. 39, 40; and in Nicolas's Memoirs and Literary Remains of Lady Jane Grey.

302 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

her death, and took place publicly in the Tower, in pi*esence of several
of the nobility and other persons of learning aud distinction, who
greatly admired her argumentative power, combined with modesty
in maintaining her principles. Towards the close of the disputation,
Feckenham, it would appear, finding himself scarcely a match in
polemics for his youthful opponent, and in danger of suffering some-
what in his reputation for learning, so far forgot himself as to speak
to her in terms unsuitable to the gravity becoming his character as
a priest, and cruel to one in her situation. It is also said that on
coming along with others to take his leave of her, mortified at the
unsuccessful issue of this exertion of his persuasive powers, he said,
"Madam, I am sorry for you and your obstinacy, and now I am
assured you and I shall never meet again ; " language such as might
be expected from a Popish priest, who believes, or professes to be-
lieve, that there is no salvation beyond the limits of the Popish
Church. She promptly retorted, " It is most true, sir, we shall never
meet again except God turn your heart, for I stand undoubtedly
assured, that unless you repent and turn to God you are in a sad
and desperate case, and I pray God, in the bowels of his mercy, to
send you his Holy Spirit, for he hath given you his great gift of
utterance, if it please him to open the eyes of your heart to his
truth." Offended at this retort, Feckenham went away without
paying her the usual parting compliment, whilst she withdrew into
her bed-chamber, to engage in devotional exercises. 1 Feckenham,
however, save in this instance, seems, upon the whole, to have acted
towards her, both in prison and on the scaffold, with respect and
sympathy, for which she was duly grateful.

On the evening of the 9th of February she wrote her memorable
letter to her father, conveying to him her last expressions of filial
affection, extenuating the guilt of her usurpation, from her having
acted by constraint, and breathing the spirit of pious resignation,
characteristic of everything she wrote during her imprisonment.
His bitter remorseful agony, on reading this letter, we can hardly

1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., p. 417. The Phoenix, vol. ii., pp. 39, 40.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 303

conceive. The opening sentence, which refers to his having short-
ened her days, though expressed iu the gentlest and most Christian
spirit, he must have felt as a sword piercing his heart. 1 When
writing this letter, she had probably heard neither of his having
been iu arms against the government, nor of his arrest. On the fol-
lowing day, just two days before her decapitation, he was brought in
prisoner to the Tower of London, guarded by a troop of 300 horse,
under the Earl of Huntingdon, and she did not long remain igno-
rant of his fate.

Every circumstance connected with the closing scene of this admir-
able young lady, sheds a bright halo around her character. Even
the random verses she wrote with a pin on the walls of the place of
her imprisonment, to beguile the tedious hours, attest her ardent
piety and tranquil submission to the will of God. One of these
verses is:

"Deo juvante nil nocefc livor malus,
Et non juvante, nil juvat labor gravis.
Post tenebras spero lucem."

Which has been thus translated :

" Endless all malice, if our God is nigli ,
Fruitless all pains, if he his help deny.
Patient I pass these gloomy hours away,
And wait the morning of eternal day."

Another conveys a moral for the instruction of others :

" Non aliena putes homini quse obtingere possunt :
Sors hodierna mini eras erat ilia tibi."

Which has been translated thus :

" Think not, O mortal ! vainly gay,

That thou from human woes art free :
The bitter cup I drink to-day
To-morrow may be drunk by thee."

One of the books she used while in prison, as a help to her devo-
tions, was a manual of prayers, a small square manuscript on vellum,
1 See this letter in Appendix, No. III.

304 Ladies of t/ie ^Reformation. [ENGLAND.

containing thirty-five prayers ; the first thirty being written by the
same hand, and the last five by some other person. 1 How she and
her husband came into the possession of this manual is not quite
certain. The most probable conjecture is that it was written for the
use of the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, upon his first imprison-
ment in the Tower the last five prayers having been added after
his second commitment, which ended in his execution ; and as Lady
Jane's husband's brother, John, Earl of Warwick, was married to
Anne Seymour, eldest daughter of the protector, it is supposed that
it was given to Lord Guildford by his sister-in-law, after his impri-
sonment, as a present appropriate to his trying situation. After the
Duke of Suffolk was made prisoner, permission being granted him,
his daughter, and son-in-law, occasionally to borrow this book from
each other, Lord Guildford and Lady Jane, availing themselves of
this license, wrote on the margin assurances of duty and affection
to their dear relative, all personal intercourse or communication by
letter being probably denied them. The first note which occurs is
written by Lord Guildford to the duke. A few pages further on
Lady Jane addresses to him the following note : " The Lord com-
fort your grace, and that in his Word, wherein all creatures only
are to be comforted ; and though it hath pleased God to take away
two of your children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech your
grace, that you have lost them ; but trust that we, by leaving this
mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I, for my part, as I
have honoured your grace in this life, will pray for you in another
life. 8 Your grace's humble daughter, " JANE DUDDELEY."

This book, it is supposed, she had promised to leave at her death

1 This MS., now in modern binding, is preserved in the British Museum, in the
Harleian Collection, No. 2342.

2 The doctrine that the saints in heaven pray for their friends on earth, Jane per-
haps derived from the Apocrypha (2 Mac., chap xv. 12-14), which, if not held at that
time to be strictly canonical, was treated with a high degree of veneration. It is a
plausible doctrine, but it has no foundation in the Scriptures, and is at best a mere
supposition. Yet Calvin, while arguing strongly against it, maintains that the angels
in heaven pray for the saints on earth. See his Tracts, Calvin Translation Soc., vol.
iii , p. 318

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 305

as a present to Sir John Bridges, the lieutenant of the Tower, who
was anxious to receive from her some last memorial ; and in com-
pliance with his request, she wrote in it a few sentences, of which
the following is a copy : " Forasmuch as you have desired so simple
a woman to write in so worthy a book, good master lieutenant,
therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you, and as a Christian require
you, to call upon God to incline your heart to his laws, to quicken
you in his way, and not to take the word of tmth utterly out of
your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase
eternal life ; and remember how Methuselah, though, as we read in
the Scriptures, he was the longest liver that was of a man, died at
last. For, as the preacher saith, ' There is a time to be born, and a
time to die ; and the day of death is better than the day of our
birth.' Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend,

" JANE DUDDELEY." '

The evening before her death she spent in the most becoming and
Christian manner, employing herself in reading the Scriptures, in
meditation, and prayer. On this evening she also wrote an affec-
tionate and pious letter to her sister Katharine, on some pages of
clean paper, bound up at the end of the Greek New Testament,
which had been her daily companion in prison. Having finished
the letter, she closed up the book, and delivered it to one of her at-
tendants, Mrs. Tylney, or Mrs. Ellen, with instructions to convey it
to her sister, as the last token of her affection. This interesting
letter attests how wonderfully her thoughts were composed in cir-
cumstances which, it might be imagined, would have destroyed all
power of reflection, and affords satisfactory evidence of the support
and comfort which, even in the prospect of a death of cruelty and
ignominy, she derived from the well-grounded hope of a better life,
through the finished work of Christ. 2 Faith in the divine Saviour
is indeed that Christian alchymy which, exerting its transmuting
power upon everything, converts the most trying events into minis-

1 Nicolas's Literary Remains of Lady Jane Grey, pp. 54-59.

2 See this letter in Appendix, No. IV.

306 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

ters of exalted good, educing, even from death itself, everlasting
life.

After Lady Jane had finished this letter, and had sent it off to
her sister by her servant, she was again assailed by two Popish
bishops and other learned Popish doctors, who held her in deep con-
ference for two hours, expending their utmost ingenuity and elo-
quence to persuade her to renounce the new opinions and die in the
Popish faith. If they expected to make her a convert to Popery
they egregiously mistook her character. Their arguments entirely
failed in shaking her belief in the reformed principles. At length,
hopeless of gaining their object, and chafed at her immovable con-
stancy, " they left her (as they said) a lost and forsaken member ;"
in other words, a child of perdition; who, forsaken by God, and
given over to Satan, would, the moment of her death, be consigned
to hell. But Jane was not to be frightened with the figment of hypo-
critical and interested popes, Popish councils, and Popish priests,
that there is no salvation beyond the pale of the Eomish Church.
She, on the contrary, believed that, so far from salvation being con-
fined to the Church of Home, the souls of such as remained within
its pale were exposed to the utmost peril. 1 She desired no ghostly
confessor, and no priestly absolution. To God alone she acknow-
ledged her sins; and from him alone, through Christ, she sought
forgiveness and salvation.

On the last evening of her life, probably after the Popish priests
had left her, she also finished and corrected a prayer she had pre-
viously composed in prison. 2 This affords additional evidence of
her mental composure, and of her fervid devotional spirit, as well as
of her diligence in improving the short time she had to live in this
world.

The fatal morning, 12th February, 1554, appointed for the execu-
tion of Lady Jane and her husband, at length arrived. Tt was
originally intended to execute them together on Tower Hill, but,

i The Phoenix, vol. ii., p. 42.

i See this prayer iu Nicolas's Literary Remains of Lady Jane Gray, pp. 49-51.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 307

afraid of too powerfully awakening the sympathies of the people
towards the youthful pair, who were generally regarded as more un-
fortunate than criminal, the council changed their orders, and gave
instructions that Lord Guildford should suffer on Tower Hill, and
Lady Jane within the walls of the fortress. Guildford, on the
morning of his execution, had requested permission to take farewell
of the beloved partner of his bosom. This small favour the queen
did not refuse. But Lady Jane, dreading it might destroy the for-
titude of both, declined a parting interview, sending him word that
the tenderness of their meeting and parting might be more than
either of them could bear ; but reminding him that their separation
would be but for a moment, and that soon they would rejoin each
other in a world where their affections would be for ever united ;
and into which afflictions, disappointments, and death, could not
enter to disturb their eternal felicity. 1 As on leaving the prison, to
go to the place of execution, he had to pass directly under the
window of her cell, she had an opportunity of taking a final look,
and of giving him from her window a token of her love. On the
scaffold Guildford behaved with dignity and resolution. No minis-
ter of religion attended him. " He had probably refused the attend-
ance of a Roman Catholic priest, and was not allowed one of his own
choice." Kneeling down, he spent some time in prayer, and repeat-
edly held up his eyes and hands to heaven. In his address to the
assembled crowd, he simply desired an interest in their prayers,
after which, stretching himself along, and laying his head upon the
block, he gave the fatal signal, and the executioner did his work at
a single stroke. 2

The scaffold for the execution of Lady Jane was erected upon the
green opposite the White Tower. Her husband having thus paid
the forfeit of his life, the officers shortly after announced to her that
the sheriffs were ready to attend her to the scaffold. They found
her engaged in the perusal of the book of prayers formerly referred

1 Baker's Chronicle, p. 319.

- Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 54, 55.

308 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

to, aiid she received the awful summons with composure and forti-
tude. " She was called down," says a writer quoted before, " to go
to the place of execution, to which she had prepared herself with
more diligence than either the malice of her adversaries could desire,
or the vigilance of any officer, for the discharge of his duty expect ;
and being come down and delivered into the hands of the sheriffs,
they might behold in her a countenance so gravely settled with all
modest and comely resolution, that not the least symptom, either of
fear or grief, could be perceived to proceed either out of her speech
or motions : but she was like one going to be united to her heart's
best and longest beloved." ' While " with this blessed and modest
boldness of spirit, undaunted and unaltered," she went towards the
scaffold, a circumstance occurred which, for a moment, shook her
fortitude. Through the indiscretion of the officers, for we can
hardly suppose that it was done from the malice of an enemy, she
met on her way the headless corpse of her husband passing to the
Tower for interment. This appalling spectacle " a little startled her,
and many tears were seen to descend upon her cheeks ;" but she
said nothing, and soon recovered from the shock, and dried up her
tears. 2

1 Life, Death, and Acthns of the most Chaste, &c., Lady Jane Grey.

2 Ibid., and The Phcenix, vol. ii., p. 42, which appears to have copied from that work.
The facts, as stated in the test, also agree with the narrative of Graf ton, nearly a con-
temporary writer. Lord Gnildford Dudley's '' dead carkas," says he, " Hying in a
carre in strawe was againe brought into the Tower, at the same instant that the Ladie
Jane, his wife, went to her death within the Tower, which miserable sight was to her
a double sorow and griefe." Chronicle, vol. ii., p. 541. According to other writers, it
was from the window of her prison, and not on her way to the scaffold, that she saw
the corpse of her husband. It is said that, when sitting in her prison awaiting the
awful summons, she heard the cart passing, and rising, notwithstanding the attempts
of her attendants to prevent her, walked steadily to the window under which it passed,
so as to obtain a view of the corpse au extremely natural expression of affectionate
grief. The author of the Chronicle of Queen Jane, &c., a contemporary, in mentioning
the fact of her seeing the dead body of her husband, is too indeterminate to assist us
in deciding as to the circumstances in which she saw it. Lord Guildford's "carcase,"
says he, " thrown into a car, and his head in a cloth, he was brought into the chapel
within the Tower, where the Lafly Jane, whose lodging was in Partridge's house, did
see his dead carcase taken out of the cart, as well as she did see him before in life going
to his death a sight to her not less than death Being nothing at all abashed,

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 309

She was conducted to the scaffold by Sir John Bridges, the lieu-
tenant of the Tower, dressed in the gown which she wore at her
trial, and attended by her two gentlewomen, Mrs. Elizabeth Tylney
and Mrs. Ellen, who wept bitterly, while not a tear moistened her
own cheeks. She brought with her the book of prayers she had
with her in prison, and all the way to the scaffold she was engaged
in reading it. 1 On reaching the place of execution, she saluted the
lords and others in commission with unaltered mien and counte-
nance. No Protestant minister was permitted to be present to
assist her devotions. Feckenham had accompanied her professedly
for that purpose ; but though he treated her with all humanity, not
having confidence in his religious sentiments, she was disturbed by
his presence, and was observed not to give much heed to his dis-
course, her attention during it being apparently absorbed in read-
ing the book of prayers she had brought with her from the prison.
But she was not ungrateful for any kindness he had shown her. On
taking him by the hand and bidding him farewell, she said to him,
" God will abundantly requite you, good sir, for your humanity to
me, though your discourses gave me more uneasiness than all the
terrors of my approaching death." Turning round to the spectators,
she addressed them in a short speech, declaring that in accepting
the crown she had been rather constrained by the solicitations of
others than governed by her own deliberate judgment and volun-
tary choice ; expressing her exclusive dependence upon the merits of
Christ for salvation ; vindicating the justice of God in the death she
was now to die, because of the many sins she had committed ; and
entreating the Christian people to pray for her so long as she was
in life. " Good people," said she, " I am come hither to die, and by

neither with fear of her own death, which then approached, neither with the sight of
the dead carcase of her husband, when he was brought into the chapel, she came forth,
the lieutenant leading her." P. 55. On beholding his remains, she is reported to
have said, "O Guildford! Guildford! the antepast is not so bitter that you have
tasted, and that I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble ; it is nothing com-
pared to the feast that you and I shall this day partake of in heaven."
1 Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 56.

310 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the
queen's highness was imlawful, and the consenting thareunto by
me : l but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me, on
my half, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and
the face of you, good Christian people, this day ;" and therewith she
wrung her hands, in which she had her book. Then she said, " I
pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I die
a true Christian woman, and that I look to be saved by none other
means but only by the mercy of God, in the merits of the blood of
his only Son, Jesus Christ: and I confess, when I did know the
Word of God I neglected the same, loved myself and the world, and
therefore this plague or punishment is happily and worthily hap-
pened unto me for my sins ; and yet I thank God of his goodness,
that he hath thus given me a time and respite to repent. And now,
good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your
prayers." 2

In this address, as the attentive reader will perceive, the Popish
doctrines as to human merit, the invocation, mediation and inter-
cession of saints, purgatory, and masses offered for the living and
the dead, though not expressly mentioned, are evidently alluded to,
and plainly though implicitly rejected; and seeing herself sur-
rounded by Popish priests, who frequently circulated false reports
that the martyrs at their death had abjured their errors and died in
the Eoman faith, she seems as if afraid lest her dying sentiments
should be misrepresented.

Having concluded her address, she kneeled down, to engage in
her devotions, and turning to Feckenham, said, "Shall I repeat this

1 "Holinshed has amplified this into the following more explicit statement: 'My
oTence against the queen's highness was only in consent to the device of others, which
now is deemed treason ; but it was never my seeking, but by counsel of those who
should seem to have further understanding of things than I, who knew little of the
1 iw, and much less of the titles to the crown.' " Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen
Mary, Note by editor, p. 52.

2 Ibid., p. 52. Another report of this speech, " somewhat more verbose, but not so
impressive," as the editor of The Chronicle, &c., observes, is to be found in The Pkcenix,
vol. ii. pp. 42, 43; and in Nicolas's Remains of Lady Jane.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey. 311

psalm,'' referring to the 51st, beginning in the Vulgate with these
words, "Misereri mei Deus." "Yes, madam," he replied; upon
which she repeated it from beginning to end. Having done this she
rose from her knees, and began to prepare for her fate by taking off
her dress. First pulling oif her gloves, she gave them and her
handkerchief to one of her maids, Mrs. Ellen. 1 At the same time
she gave the book of prayers she had brought with het to the
scaffold to Mr. Thomas Bridges, the lieutenant's brother. On her
proceeding to untie her gown, the executioner offered to assist her,
but she desired him to let her alone, and turned towards her two
gentlewomen, who assisted her in taking it off, and also in taking off
her "frose paste" 2 and neckerchief, giving her, when this service
was performed, a white handkerchief to tie about her eyes. At this

moment the executioner fell on his knees before her, and begged her
forgiveness. This request she most willingly granted. He next
desired her to stand upon the straw ; in doing which the block met
her view, but the sight did not shake her fortitude, and she only
requested that he would despatch her quickly. Again kneeling
down, she asked him, "Will you take it off before I lay me down."
"No, madam," he answered. She now bound the handkerchief
round her eyes, and feeling for the block, exclaimed, " What shall I
do ? where is it ? where is it T Upon which one of the by-standers
conducted her to the block ; and immediately lying down, she laid
her head upon it, and uttered, with an audible voice, the pious
ejaculation the last words she spoke, "Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit." The axe fell, and in an instant her head was
severed from her body. 3 All present, even the partizans of Mary,

1 So Foxe. In Archtzoloyia, it is "Tylney."

2 Sir Harris Nicolas, in his Life of Lady Jane (p. xci.), is greatly puzzled as to the
article of dress meant by this term, and is inclined to coincide with a literary friend,
who suggesteii "fronts-piece." As, however, Foxe has spelt it " frowes-past," the
editor of the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary (p. 58), is of opinion that pro-
bably "frow's paste," or matronly head-dress, is meant; the paste being a head attire
worn by brides, as explained in the glossanal index to Maehyn's Diary, p. 463

3 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., pp. 424, 425. Foxe's narrative of Lady Jane's
execution is the same, almost verbatim, with an account inArchce^loyia, vol. xxiii , p 407i

312 Ladies of ilie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

were deeply moved at the spectacle, arid melted into tears. The
news of her execution rapidly spread, and excited general com-
miseration among all parties. There was something exceedingly
touching, to every mind of ordinary sensibility, in contemplating
this unfortunate destiny of a young lady, illustrious by her high
birth, but still more illustrious by her high virtue, her godlike
sanctity ,^and her extraordinary attainments. Being in all respects
worthy of an earthly crown, it almost seems, as Southey has ob-
served with fine feeling, " as if she had been summoned in mercy to
a heavenly one, lest the world should stain a spirit which no cir-
cumstances could render more fit for heaven." 1 Much as history
has recorded of Lady Jane, it does not inform us where her corpse
was interred. The presumption is, that both she and her husband
were buried in the chapel of the Tower.

The day on which she suffered was long called Black Monday, as
being the commencement of a bloody week, during which many new
scaffolds were erected in London tor the execution of such as had
been concerned in Wyatt's rebellion, and on Wednesday, the 14th,
not less than forty-seven were hanged, of whom three were hung
in chains, and seven quartered, their bodies and heads being fixed
upon the different gates of the city. Bishop Gardiner, who was
now lord chancellor and chief adviser of the queen, in a sermon
preached before her the day previous, breathed forth nothing but
slaughter against the rebels, exhorting.her to punish them without
mercy; and his advice was acted upon with unmitigated ferocity.
Knox, the Scottish Eeformer, on hearing of these atrocities at Dieppe
in France, whether he had fled from England in the beginning of
1554, could not withold the expression of his righteous indignation
against their authors, and especially against Mary without whom

said by the editor to be " a copy of an exceedingly rare (if not unique) printed tract,"
without date, but containing internal evidence of having been printed at the time. It
is supposed to have been written by the author of the Chronicle of Queen Jane and
Queen Mary, from which we have repeatedly quoted. Note of Editor, in Chronicle,
&c., p. 52.

1 Southey 'a Book of the Church, vol. ii., p. 142.

ENGLAND.] Lady Jane Grey, 313

they could not have been perpetrated in whose breast the softer
feelings of her sex seemed to be extinguished. "I find," says he, in
his Admonition to England, written from that place, "that Jezebel,
that accursed idolatress, caused the blood of the prophets to be
shed, and Naboth to be martyred unjustly for his own vineyard,
but I think she never erected half so many gallows in all Israel as
Mary hath done within London alone. Under an English name,"
he adds, "she hath a Spaniard's heart." 1

Only eleven days after Lady Jane and Lord Dudley fell victims
to parental ambition, namely, on the 23d of February, her father
was beheaded on Tower Hill, acknowledging on the scaffold the
justice of his sentence, and calling the spectators to witness that he
" died a faithful and true Christian, believing to be saved by none
other but only by Almighty God, through the passion of his Son
Jesus Christ." Attempts had been made to convert him when in
prison to Popery, but he remained to the last as constant to the
Protestant faith as his heroic daughter. 2 Her mother afterwards
married Adrian Stokes, Esq., a gentleman of her domestic establish-
ment, by whom she had no children, and died in 1559, as appears
from the date of a warrant issued by Queen Elizabeth to the king
of arms, to cause the royal ensigns to be borne at her funeral,
and placed on her monument in honour of her relation to her
majesty. 3 Her sister Katharine, who had been married, or rather
betrothed to Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, at a very
tender age, was repudiated, simply because her family had sunk
into ruin. She was afterwards privately married to Edward Sey-
mour, Earl of Hertford, son of Protector Somerset, without the
knowledge of Queen Elizabeth, whose' displeasure on hearing of the
pregnancy of Lady Hertford was so excited, that she fined the earl
a large sum, and committed them both to prison, in which Lady

1 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ill, part i., pp. 140-143, &c. Calderwood's History,
vol. i., p. 302.

2 Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 64. Foxe's Acts and Monuments,
vol. vi.,pp.425, and Note of Editor, iti Appendix. Zurich Letters, first series, pp.303-305.

3 Howard aud other writers are therefore incorrect in asserting that she died in 1563-

314

Ladies of tlie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

Hertford continued to her death.' From that illustrious pair some
of the most noble families in England are descended. Lady Jane's
younger sister, Mary, who was somewhat deformed, " frightened,"
as Fuller remarks, " with the infelicity of her two sisters, forgot her
honour to remember her safety, and married one whom she could
love, and none need fear, Martin Keyes, Esq., of Kent, who was a
judge at court (but only of doubtful cast of dice, being sergeant-
porter), and died without issue in 1578."

1 See notice of this lady, in Appendix, No. V.

Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire.

KATHARINE WILLOUGHBY,

DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK.

ATHAKINE WILLOUGHBY was the daughter of
"William Lord "Willoughby of Eresby, by his wife, Mary
of Salines or Salucci, a Spanish lady of illustrious de-
scent, who had accompanied Katharine of Aragon
into England on her marriage with Arthur, Prince of
Wales, and was one of her maids of honour after her marriage with
Henry VIII. Lord Willoughby had been previously married to
Mary, daughter of Sir William Hussey, of Sleaford, in the county of
Lincoln, knight, by whom he had no issue. His marriage to Mary
of Salines, which probably took place about 1513, was one of those
matches which had been brought about by the good offices of Queen

316 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Katharine, who testified her friendship for her maids of honour by
her zealous endeavours to secure for them prosperous matrimonial
alliances. By the marriage contract his lordship settled upon her
an ample jointure. By her he had two sons, Henry and Francis, who
both died young during his lifetime, and a daughter, Katharine, the
subject of this sketch. He died on the 19th of October, 1526, and
was buried in the collegiate church of Nottingham. 1 Mary of Salines
was devotedly attached to Queen Katharine, to whom she clung with
unwavering fidelity and affection amidst all the fluctuations of the
fortunes of that ill-treated queen. To evince attachment to Katha-
rine after her disgrace was not without peril ; it was to condemn
Henry's conduct in disgracing her, and therefore to provoke his
wrath. But this lady's affection for her mistress was stronger than
her dread of the fury of the monarch. Hearing that Katharine was
drawing near her last hour in this world, in the agony of grief, she
made every effort to obtain permission to visit her, though Henry
had interdicted the free intercourse of his divorced queen with her
former friends. She wrote a letter to Cromwell, who was at that
time the great favourite of Henry, humbly supplicating this permis-
sion. "And now, Mr. Secretary," says she, "need driveth me to put
you to pain, for I heard say that my mistress is very sore sick again ;
wherefore, good Mr. Secretary, I pray you remember me of your
goodness, for you did promise me to labour the king's grace to get
me license to go to her grace afore God send for her ; for, as I am in-
formed, there is no other likelihood but it shall be shortly. And if
so be that the king's grace of his goodness be content that I shall go
thither, without I have a letter of his grace, or else of you, to show
the officers of my mistress's house that his grace is content with
my going, my license shall stand to none effect. And as touching
that, there is nobody can help me so well as you. Mr. Secretary,
under God and the king, all my trust is in you. I pray you remem-
ber me now at this time. And so Jesus have you in his keeping.

i Playfair's British Family Antiquity, vol. ii., p 626.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 317

From the Barbican, the 30th day of December. By your beadwomau,
MARY WILLOUGHBY." J In this letter she prudently styles Katharine
simply " my mistress," and " her grace," not giving her the title of
" queen," which would certainly have defeated her object, nor the
title of "princess-dowager," a title which Katharine, though earnestly
urged, had constantly refused to assume. The prayer of this petition,
it would appear, was not granted, for on her arrival at Kimbolton,
two days after the date of this letter, she could produce no official
license for her admission. She, however, by her address and perse-
verance, succeeded in gaining access to Katharine, and an interesting
interview took place between her and the queen, who expired in her
presence on the following day.' 2

Katharine Willoughby was born about the year 1514. Being the
only surviving child of her parents, she was her father's sole heiress.
Being under age at the time of her father's death, her wardship
was, in 1529, granted to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; a trust,
the duties of which the duke appears to have faithfully performed.
Much attention was then paid in England to the cultivation of the
minds of young ladies of rank, and Katharine was instructed in the
various branches of learning then considered essential to female ac-
complishment. Her education is said to have been conducted under
the superintendence of Mary Tudor, the beautiful and beloved sister
of Henry VIII., formerly second queen of Louis XII. of France,
and at that time third wife of the Duke of Suffolk, an amiable and
benevolent princess, who was ever " glad to exert her influence in
behalf of the oppressed and the sorrowful." 3 After the duke's mar-
riage with this princess, who had been the object of his tenderest
affection in his younger days, they lived for many years in compara-
tive seclusion at Weston Stow Hall, then a mansion of great extent, 4

1 Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Britain, vol. ii., pp. 207-209.

2 Strype's Mem.Ecd., vol. i., part i., p. 372. Miss Strickland's Queens of England,
vol. iv., p. 141.

a Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. i., p. 182, and ii., p. 310.

4 This assertion rests on tradition, and it is supported by armorial bearings, which

still exist, carved upon the stone over the porch. Of this once extensive pile, which,

318

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

within four miles north-west of the venerable town of Bury St. Ed-
munds, and here Katharine Willoughby passed some of her early
years.

Weston Stow Hall.

On the death of Mary Tudor, which took place at the manor of
"Westhorpe, Suffolk, in the summer of the year 1534, Katharine be-
came the fourth wife of her guardian, the Duke of Suffolk. The
marriage was probably consummated in 1535, the bride being then
only about twenty-one years of age, while her husband was advanced
in life ; but, notwithstanding their disparity of years, they lived to-
gether in the utmost harmony and affection.

The Duke of Suffolk, who had been the favourite companion of

in the palmy days of England, was classed among the stateliest of its " stately homes,"
only a small portion now remains.

ENGLAND.] Katiiarine Willougliby. 319

Henry VIII. from his earliest years, enjoyed to the last the affection
and friendship of that monarch. He was considered the handsomest
man of his time, and was surpassed by none, save Henry himself, in
the military exercises then considered indispensable to an accom-
plished courtier and a soldier. It was this duke who, on hearing the
speech of Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope's legate, in opposition to the
divorce of Henry from Katharine of Aragon, in the ecclesiastical
court assembled in London in 1529, started to his feet, and, striking
his hand violently on the table, exclaimed, as he cast an indignant
glance at Campeggio, " By the mass, no legate or cardinal has ever
brought good to England." This saying afterwards became pro-
verbial. 1

At what period of her life, or by what means the Duchess of Suf-
folk first became acquainted with the reformed principles is uncer-
tain. But it is worthy of notice, as affording evidence that both
she and the duke were friendly to the Reformation, that soon after
their marriage they selected as their chaplain Alexander Seaton, a
Scottish friar, and a man of learning and ingenuity, who had been
confessor to King James V. of Scotland, but who had been under the
necessity of fleeing from his native country about the year 1535 or
1536, to escape persecution, in consequence of his having imbibed and
preached the reformed doctrines. In Scotland Seaton, following in
the footsteps of Patrick Hamilton, who had been consigned to the
flames at St. Andrews a few years before, had publicly taught these
doctrines, had exposed with freedom the corruptions of the clergy,
and had bearded the priests at St. Andrews, their head-quarters in
that kingdom. 2 For the Duke and the Duchess of Suffolk to honour
such a man with the situation of chaplain in their household, evinced
a spirit of inquiry and a decided inclination to the new opinions.
In England he preached the gospel sincerely and purely, to the edifi-
cation of many who heard him ; the great topic on which he delighted
to expatiate being justification by faith in Christ in opposition to con-

1 Sandems T>e Schism., p. 49. Latimer's Sermons, Parker Soc. Pub., vol. i., p. 119.

2 Calderwood's History, vol. i., pp. 92. Knox's History, vol. i., pp. 46-.V2

320 Ladies of the Reformation. [EXGLAXD.

fidence in good works. 1 He continued chaplain in the family of the
duchess till his death, which took place in 1542. If Seaton did not
lay the foundation of her belief in the reformed principles, there can
be little doubt that he greatly strengthened it by his instructions and
conversation.

The duchess was distinguished for liveliness of disposition, and had
a natural turn for pleasantry, in which she often indulged. By her
playful sallies of wit she enlivened the social circle, and she could
employ irony and sarcasm with great effect. On one occasion the
duke, having invited Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to-
gether with a number of ladies and gentlemen to dinner, desired each
lady to choose the gentleman whom she loved best, and so take their
places. The duchess selected Gardiner, as her husband, the duke,
would not have her to take himself, and said, that seeing she could
not sit down with her lord, whom she loved best, she had chosen him
whom she loved worst. This, which was probably said half in jest
and half in earnest, so deeply offended Gardiner that he never forgot
it, the more especially as it exposed him to the laughter of the com-
pany. She had, in truth, little cordiality of feeling for Gardiner,
from his large share in the guilt of the persecution of the Reformers.
His close, subtle, deceitful character, too, which made his contem-
poraries say that he was to be traced like the fox, and read like
Hebrew, backwards ; that if you would know what he did, you must
observe what he did not ; that while intending one thing he professed
to aim at the very opposite ; that he never intended what he said,
and never said what he intended ;* this, so opposite to her own open,
straightforward character, excited her contempt, and made her in-
different about hurting the feelings of a man who, whatever was
his mental capacity, was so grievously deficient in truth, integrity,
honour, and other moral qualities.

In 1545 the duchess sustained a heavy domestic affliction in the

Calderwood's History, vol. i., p. 93. Knox's History, vol. i , p. 533. M'Crie's Life
ofKnox, vol. i., p. 370.
8 Harleian MS., quoted in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. i., p. 363.

ENGLAND.] Katharine WiUoughby. 321

death of her husband, who died, after a short illness, on the 22d of
August that year. 1 Hume represents him as " the most sincere and
powerful friend that Archbishop Cranmer possessed at court." " This
nobleman," adds the same historian, "is one instance that Henry was
not altogether incapable of a cordial and steady friendship ; and Suf-
folk seems to have been worthy of the favour which, from his earliest
youth, he had enjoyed with his master. The king was sitting in
council when informed of Suffolk's death, and he took the oppor-
tunity both to express his own sorrow for the loss, and to celebrate
the merits of the deceased. He declared, that during the whole
course of their friendship his brother-in-law had never made one
attempt to injure an adversary, and had never whispered a word to
the disadvantage of any person. ' Is there any of you, my lords, who
can say as much?' When the king subjoined these words he looked
round in all their faces, and saw that confusion which the conscious-
ness of secret guilt naturally threw upon them." 2 Among the mem-
bers of the council board who heard Henry thus give expression to
his feelings were the Duke of Norfolk, Wriothesley, lord chancellor,
and Stephen Gardiner, who had returned from Flanders in May that
year ; men who might well blush at the monarch's encomium on the
Duke of Suffolk, and at his pointed interrogation and significant
look, for at that very moment, as the king well knew, they were en-
gaged in a plot for the destruction of Archbishop Cranmer.

ID the reign of Henry VIII., when the persecuting statute of the
six articles was enforced with great severity, the duchess was sus-
pected of holding sentiments adverse to the six articles, and parti-
cularly to one of them, the doctrine of transubstantiation. It was
attempted, as we have seen before, 3 by the persecutors of that period,
among whom Bishop Gardiner was conspicuous, to extract from Anne
Askew information as to the heretical sentiments of the Duchess of
Suffolk and of other ladies, who had supplied that devoted martyr

1 State Papers, vol. v., p. 496.

2 Hist, of England, chap, xxxiii. He quotes from Coke's List., cap. 99.
a See p. 165.

322 Ladies oflJte Reformation. [ENGLAXD.

with money for her maintenance when in prison ; and the answers of
Anne not being judged satisfactory, she was subjected, but in vain,
to the torture, with the view of extorting from her the desired dis-
closures. In the following proclamation, which strongly savours of
the style and spirit of Gardiner, issued in the king's name, and dated
8th July, 1546, just eight days before the martyrdom of Anne Askew,
the duchess and other ladies and gentlemen of rank in the country
or about the court were specially aimed at : " From henceforth no
man, woman, or other person, of what estate, condition, or degree he
or they be, shall, after the last day of August next ensuing, receive,
have, take, or keep, in his or their possession, the text of the New
Testament of Tyndale's or Coverdale's, nor any other that is per-
mitted by the act of Parliament, made in the session of the Parlia-
ment holden at Westminster in the 34th and 35th year of his
majesty's most noble reign. Nor after the said day, shall receive,
have, take, or keep, in his or their possession, any manner of books
printed or written in the English tongue, which be, or shall be set
forth in the names of Fryth, Tyndale, Wickliffe, Joye, Roye, Basil
(/. e., Becon), Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Turner, Tracy, or by any of
them ; but shall, before the last day in August next coming, deliver
the same English book or books to his master, if he be a servant, or
dwell under any other ; and the master or ruler of the house, and
such others as dwell at large, shall deliver all such books to the
mayor, bailiff, or chief constable of the town where they dwell, to
be by them delivered over openly to the sheriff, bishop's chancellor,
or commissary, to the intent that they may cause them inconti-
nently to be openly burned ; which thing the king's majesty's plea-
sure is, that every of them shall see executed in most effectual sort,
and thereof make certificate to the king's majesty's most honour-
able council, before the first day of October next coming." 2
The duchess, happily, had a powerful intercessor and protectress

1 As this Parliament sat from January to May, 1542, it embraced both years
Henry's regal year commenced with April 22.

2 Anderson's Annals of Ihe English. Bible, vol. ii., p. 202.

ENGLAND.] Katharine WillougJiby. . 323

in Queen Katharine Parr. With that excellent queen, whom she
loved and honoured for her many Christian virtues, she was on
terms of intimate friendship ; and to the duchess was intrusted the
only child of Katharine, after the death of the father, the Lord
Admiral of England. She has been reproached for having grudged
a shelter arid food to the child of her friend and protectress, instead
of cherishing the orphan babe, as might have been expected, with
not less than maternal tenderness. But this reproach, as we have
seen before, is as gratuitous and unjust as it is uncharitable. 1

In the reign of Edward VI. the duchess eould avow her senti-
ments more freely than in the time of Henry VIII. ; and she
zealously encouraged the reforming measures which have rendered
that reign so illustrious in the annals of the English Keformation.
She is particularly commemorated for lending her aid to the efforts
made by the government, towards the close of the year 1547, in
Lincolnshire, to abolish superfluous holy days ; to remove from the
churches images and relics ; to destroy shrines, coverings of shrines,
and other monuments of idolatry and superstition ; to put an end
to pilgrimages ; to reform the clergy ; to see that every church had
provided, in some convenient place, a copy of the large English
Bible ; to stir up bishops, vicars, and curates to diligence in preach-
ing against the usurped authority and jurisdiction of the Pope, in
inculcating upon all the reading of the Scriptures, and in teaching
upon the Sabbath and at other times their parishioners, and espe-
cially the young, the Pater Noster, the Articles of Faith, and the
Ten Commandments in English. 2

To these reforming measures of the government her old acquaint-
ance, Gardiner, made all the opposition in his power. The stre-
nuous defender of image worship, he denounced the impiety of the
people in pulling down and defacing images, and branded all such
destructionists as " worse than hogs," and as, " having been ever so
taken in England, being called Lollards." He gravely maintained
'' that the destruction of images contained an enterprise to subvert
1 See p. 242. 2 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., p 83.

324 _ Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

religion and the state of the world with it ; and especially the nobi-
lity, who, by images, set forth and spread abroad, to be read of all
men, their lineage and parentage, with remembrance of their state
and actions ;" as if the Reformers waged war against statues, except
in so far as they were abused to idolatrous purposes. 1 He was
equally zealous in opposing the abolition of the mass, which called
forth from the gospellers, as the Reformers were called, provoking
lampoons, of which he complained to the lord protector. 2

The duchess was the special friend and patroness of Hugh Lati-
mer, Bishop of Worcester, who became the favourite preacher of
Edward VI., to whom he preached from a pulpit placed in the
privy-garden, the royal chapel being insufficient to contain the
crowds which nocked to hear him; and the king listened from a
window in the palace. A series of these sermons was published in
1549, 3 by Thomas Some, who had taken them down during the time
of their delivery ; and they were dedicated by him to the duchess.
" I have gathered," says he, " writ, and brought to light the famous
Friday Sermons of Mr. Hugh Latimer, which he preached in Lent
last past, before our most noble King Edward VI., at the New
Palace of Westminster, the third year of his reign ; which sermons,
most virtuous lady, I dedicate unto your honourable grace, nothing
doubting but that you will gladly embrace them, not only because
of their excellence, but chiefly for the profit which shall ensue
through them unto the ignorant. For in them are fruitful and
godly documents, directing ordinately not only the steps, conversa-
tion, and living of kings, but also of other ministers and subjects

under him Moses, Jeremiah, Elias, did never declare the true

message of God unto their rulers and people with a more sincere
spirit, faithful mind, and godly zeal, than godly Latimer doth now
in our days unto our most noble king and unto the whole realm.
Furthermore, also, Josiah received never the book of God's will at
the hands of Huldah, that prophetess, with a more perfect and

1 Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., pp. 53, 51. 2 Hid., vol. ii., part i., pp. 83, 86.
3 Another edition appeared iii 1562.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willougliby. 325

godly fear (2 Kings xxii.) than our most noble king doth most
faithfully give credit unto the words of good father Latimer. And
I have no doubt but all godly men will likewise receive gladly his
godly sermons, and give credit unto the same. Therefore, this my
rude labour of another man's sweat, most virtuous lady, I offer most
humbly unto your grace ; moved thereunto of godly zeal, through
the godly fame that is dispersed universally of your most godly
disposition, and unfeigned love towards the living, almighty, eternal
God and his Holy Word ; practised daily, both in your grace's most
virtuous behaviour, and also godly charity towards the edification of
every member grafted in Christ Jesus ; most humbly desiring your
grace to accept favourably this my timorous enterprise. And I,
your most humble and faithful orator, shall pray unto Jehovah, the
God which is of himself, by whom and in whom all things live,
move, and be, that that good work, which he hath begun in you, he
may perform unto your last ending, through our Lord Jesus Christ ;
who preserve and keep your grace now and for ever. So be it." x

At the invitation of the duchess, Latimer frequently preached in
her hall at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire. 2 None of the reformed
ministers was, indeed, more highly esteemed by her than Latimer ;
and her correspondence affords incidental notices of the kind atten-
tions she paid him. For example, in one of her letters to Cecil,
written in June, 1552, she refers to her earnest desire of providing
Latimer with a venison pasty at the feast of his wife's churching, by
sending him a buck ; but her keeper, even with her own assistance,
did not succeed in killing one in time for the occasion. " By the late
coming of this buck to you," says she, " you shall perceive that wild
things be not ready at commandment, for truly I have caused my
keeper, yea, and went forth with him myself on Saturday at night

1 Latimer's Sermons and Remains, edited for the Parker Society, vol. i., pp. 79-83.

s The castle of Grimsthorpe is situated in the parish of Edenham, four miles and
an half from Bourn, and is the seat of the present Lord Willou^hby de Eresby. It is
an irregular structure, and has been erected at different periods ; some parts as early
as the time of Henry III., others in the time of Henry VIII., and others at a later
period. The view of tbe castle, prefixed to this Life, exhibits it as now existing.

326

Ladies of t/te Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

after I came home (which was a marvel for me), but so desirous was
I to have had one for Mr. Latimer to have sent after him to his wife's
churching ; but there is no remedy but she must be churched with-
out it. For 1 have, ever since you wrote for yours, besides both my

keepers, had ' about it, and yet could not prevail afore

this morning ; and now I pray God it be anything worth." 2

Among the measures adopted in prosecuting the Eeformatiou in

Ghrdiuer in Confinement.

the reign of Edward VI., were the deprivation acd imprisonment of
those bishops who refused to abandon the old system. Bonner, who

1 Some words are here illegible in Original MS.

2 Ty tier's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. i. 118. The letter closes thus:
" From Grimsthorpe, this present Wednesday, at six o'clock in the morning'; and, like
a sluggard, iu my bed. Your assured to my power, K. SUFFOLK."

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Willoughby. 327

held the see of London, was deprived and imprisoned in the Mar-
shalsea during the whole of this reign. Gardiner, Bishop of Win-
chester, for censuring the Homily on Salvation and the Paraphrase
of Erasmus, was committed to the Fleet in 1547 ; and refusing to
sign twenty-two articles which embraced the leading reformed doc-
trines, he was deprived of his see, shut up in a cell in the Tower,
denied the use of pen, ink, and paper, and none was allowed to visit
him. 1 With respect to these two prelates they certainly merited
punishment, and far greater than what was inflicted upon them, for
their murderous cruelty in the former reign. They were, however,
punished upon a different ground, and one less susceptible of de-
fence their refusal to submit to the ecclesiastical changes now in-
troduced. It was wrong in principle to inflict upon them civil pains
and penalties, simply for refusing to conform, so long as they re-
mained peaceable and orderly subjects. At the same time it ought
to be observed, that an instinctive feeling of self-preservation, an
apprehension lest spirits so able and energetic might disturb the
public tranquillity, seems to have been the impelling, though not
the avowed motive of their punishment ; and in those days, when
so many of the nations of Europe were converted by the intolerance
of Popery into fields of blood, active Popish emissaries could not
but be regarded by Protestants as dangerous members of society.
That the punishment of these chieftains of the Papacy was impolitic,
experience certainly proved, as it exasperated their minds, exciting
revengeful feelings, and furnished them, when the day of their power
returned, with justifying precedents for fierce and vindictive reta-
liation.

The Duchess of Suffolk, it is evident, was not dissatisfied at the
imprisonment of these persecuting bishops. Both of them had been
instrumental in bringing to the stake her friend, Anne Askew, and
one of them, Gardiner, had conspired to bring her more intimate
friend, Katharine Parr, to the scaffold, as well as meditated mischief
against herself for her heresy. This had roused her spirit, and she
1 Turner's Modern History of England, vol. iii., pp. 238-240.

328 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

was not slow in letting them know, by her poignant invectives, that
they were not to expect sympathy from her. As she was one day
passing by the chamber of the Tower in which Gardiner was con-
fined, the imprisoned bishop, on seeing her, courteously lifted his
hat to her from his chamber window, looking sweet as summer, as
humbly and gently in his present condition as if he could not have
cherished a harsh thought, nor uttered a harsh word, nor done a harsh
action against any human being. The duchess well knew the insin-
cerity of this courtly deference ; that, in truth, he cordially hated her ;
and making no effort to conceal her satisfaction at the imprisonment
of a man whose hands were red with Protestant blood, she remarked,
on observing his salutation, that it was merry with the lambs now
when the wolf was shut up. Under this withering sarcasm Gardiner
secretly writhed and was mightily enraged. It was also said, though
the report was unfounded, that during some of her journeys through
the country, the duchess had caused a dog to be clothed in a rochet,
and that she carried it about with her, giving it the name of Bishop
Gardiner. This humorous device in ridicule of Gardiner had origi-
nated with others, not with her, and the pantomime had been enacted
by others, without their consulting or receiving any such orders from
her ; but the story had been told to Gardiner as one of her irreve-
rent contrivances to bring him into contempt, and it had the effect of
deepening his vindictive resentments against her, though, being shut
up in a prison, and powerless, he deemed it prudent in the meantime
to conceal his feelings.

The duchess had to the Duke of Suffolk two sons, Henry and
Charles, both of them youths of excellent promise. They studied at
King's College, Cambridge, and were placed under the tuition of that
accomplished scholar, Dr. Walter Haddon, professor of civil law and
university orator. The duchess accompanied them to Cambridge,
and was residing there about the time when Martin Bucer, who had
come from Strasburg to England upon the invitation of Edward VI.,
was made professor of divinity at Cambridge. To the inspection
and counsel of that eminent man she commended her sons. Duke

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willougkly. 329

Henry was much addicted to the study of letters, and such was his
capacity, that he mastered in a short time, and with the greatest ease,
what cost others long and laborious study. Yet his manners were
modest and unassuming. He delighted in the conversation of learned
men, by many of whom his mother had taken care to surround him,
and others of whom he himself, attracted by their talents and ac-
quirements, selected as his associates. On meeting with his learned
friends his custom was to propound some question for mutual dis-
cussion. He had a ready and fluent utterance, which Haddon ob-
serving, strongly advised him to cultivate, by diligently studying the
writings of Cicero, assuring him that by doing so for a year or two,
he would become a more accomplished master of the Ciceronian style
than himself, high as was his reputation as a successful imitator of
the great Eoman orator. This advice was punctually followed by
Duke Henry. Similar were the talents and character of his brother
Charles. 1

According to Strype, the duchess intended to match Duke Henry
with Lady Agnes Woodville, who was brought up in her house, and
the wardship and marriage of whom she had obtained from the king. 2

Whatever may be as to this, we know that her decided judgment
was that children should be allowed freedom of choice in matrimonial
engagements. On this point she displayed a soundness of judgment
and a generosity of feeling by no means common in that age, when
considerations of mere worldly interest were generally the deter-
miniug^elements in the formation of marriage alliances. The Duke
of Somerset, lord protector, with whom she was on a very friendly
footing, was desirous that one of his daughters should be united in

1 These particulars are drawn from a high character of the two brothers, in Latin,
contained in an eloquent oration delivered upon their funeral, by their tutor, Dr. Had-
don, before the university of Cambridge. It is prefixed to Sir Thomas Wilson's
Epistola de vita et obitu duorum fratrwn Suffolciensium, Henrici et Caroli Brandon,
printed at London in 1552; and is extracted in the Gentleman's Magazine for Septem-
ber, 1825, vol. xcv, part ii., p. 206. Strype, in his Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., pp. 492,
has given the substance in a translated form.

2 Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part, i., pp. 491, 492.

330 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

marriage to one of her sons, probably the eldest. Such a union, to
the duchess personally, would have been quite agreeable, but the
parties chiefly interested being too young for entering into that re-
lation, she wished both of them to be left to their own choice, with-
out any attempts being made to force their inclinations. She thus
writes on the subject to William Cecil, afterwards the celebrated
Lord Burghley, with whom, 1 as well as with his learned lady, Mil-
dred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, she was on most familiar terms :
" And where it pleased my lord of Warwick, 2 for the better show
of his friendship, to wish my lord of Somerset to go through with my
son for his daughter, I trust the friendship between my Lord Somer-
set and me hath been tried such, and hath so good assurance upon
the simple respects of our good-will only, that we shall not need to do
anything rashly or unorderly to make the world to believe the better
of our friendships ; and for the one of us to think well of the other,
no unadvised bond between a boy and girl can give such assurance
of good-will as hath been tried already ; and now, they marrying by
our orders, and without their consents, or as they be yet without
judgment to give such a consent as ought to be given in matrimony,
I cannot tell what more unkindness one of us might show another,
or wherein we might work more wickedly, than to bring our children
into so miserable estate not to choose, by their own likings, such as
they must profess so strait a bond and so great a love to for ever.

1 " The duchess," says Tytler, " seems to have consulted Cecil upon every matter of
importance concerning the management of her family and estates, and her correspond-
ence with this great man might of itself form a small volume. Her letters are lively,
and often humorous ; full of domestic details, for she appears to have been a notable
housewife; but occasionally throwing glimpses of light upon the history of the times."
Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. i., p. 280. In one of these letters to Cecil,
dated 27th April, 1550, she praises him as an arbiter or judge who could look solely
to the equity of the case, and scorn "to break justice's head for friendship." In
another to him, dated 18th May, 1550, she represents the privy council as a venal
tribunal, whose favourable judgment, in a worldly affair of her own, could only be
secured by bribery; or, in her own expressive language, when she "followed" the
' onset " of her friends in her behalf " with her letters in battle, and her money in the
rearward." Ibid.

John Dudley, afterwards Earl of Northumberland.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willougliby. 331

This, I promise you, I have said for my lord's daughter as well as for
my son, and this more I say for myself, and I say it not but truly,
I know none this day living that I rather wish my son than she,
but I am not, because I like her best, therefore desirous that she
should be constrained by her friends to have him, whom she might,
perad venture, not like so well as I like her ; neither can I yet assure
myself of my son's liking, neither do I greatly mistrust it, for if he
be ruled by right judgment, then shall he, I am sure, have no cause
to mis like, except he think himself misliked; but to have this matter
come best to pass were that we parents kept still our friendship, and
suffer our children to follow our examples, and to begin their loves
of themselves, without our forcing ; for, although both might happen
to be obedient to their parents, and marry at our pleasures, and so
find no other cause to mislike, but that by our power they lost their
free choice, whereby neither of them can think themselves so much
bounden to the other, th [at] fault is sufficient to break the greatest
love : wherefore I will make much of my lady : s daughter, without
the respect of my son's cause, and it may please my lord to love my
son for his mother's sake, and so I doubt not, but if God do not mis-
like it, my son and his daughter shall much better like it to make
up the matter themselves, and let them even alone with it, saying
there can no good agreement happen between them that we shall
mislike, and if it should not happen well, there is neither they nor
none of us shall blame another. And so, my good Cecil, being weary,
I leave you to the Lord. From Kingston, the 9th of May, [1550],
Your assured, "K. SUFFOLK.

"To my friend Master Cecil." 1

The duchess took much interest in the foreign Protestants who
had betaken themselves to England during the reign of Edward VI.
These refugees were numerous, and consisted of Germans, French,
Italians, Spaniards, Poles, some of whom had come to England for
commercial 'purposes, but the greater part of whom had fled hither
to escape the persecutions then raging in their respective countries,

1 Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Britain, vol. iii , p. 246.

332 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

and to enjoy the liberty of professing the Protestant religion. 1
They formed themselves into distinct congregations, obtained suit-
able churches in which to assemble for divine worship, and chose
pastors to instruct and preside over them. They were fostered by
the English Reformers and government, from motives both of Chris-
tian charity and Christian policy, presenting, as they did, the pros-
pect of becoming instrumental in diffusing among their own country-
men the reformed religion, in the event of their returning to their
respective homes. 2 Of all the foreign Protestants, Martin Bucer, to
whose care the duchess had recommended her sons when studying
at the university of Cambridge, was the man, the lustre of whose
talents and Christian graces had called forth her profoundest admi-
ration and esteem. This eminent man, during the time of her resi-
dence at Cambridge with her sons, was seized with his last illness,
and, during the whole period of its continuance, she watched by his
sick-bed with unwearied care, administering every comfort which
his situation required, performing every office and undergoing every
fatigue which might be expected from the tender and self-denied
affection of a mother ; hoping that, by the blessing of God, she might
be made the means of preserving a life so valuable to the church, or,
if death was determined, that by her unremitting attentions she
might contribute to mitigate his sufferings, till the fatal struggle
was over. 3 The freedom of the duchess in launching the barbed
shafts of her ridicule against Bishop Gardiner, may, to the super-
ficial thinker, invest her character with the appearance of severity,
though, in reality, this proceeded from an acute sensibility of heart,
from an intense abhorrence of persecution, prompting her to employ
a talent with which she was endued to brand with scorn the per-
secutor; but, when we enter the sick-chamber of the venerable

1 At the time of the issuing of the proclamation by Queen Mary's government, in
the beginning of her reign, commanding all foreigners to quit the kingdom, they num-
bered, according to the testimony of a Spanish Jesuit who was then in England, more
than 30,000. Turner's Modern Hist, of England, vol. iii., p. 403.

2 Strype's Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, p. 234.

3 Melchior Adam., p 221.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 333

Bucer, and see her personally attending him by day and by night,
relieving his wants by her assiduous ministry, reaching the healing
draught, propping his head, smoothing his pillow, wiping from his
pallid face the cold dews of death, whispering in his ears the conso-
lations of the gospel, and doing everything that a fellow-creature-
could do to soften the agonies of his dying bed, all must admit that
in these labours of love she displayed the deep tenderness of her
affections. Bucer was, indeed, a man of such amiable character, that
he gained upon the hearts of all the good. The beautiful letter
written by Peter Martyr to Conrad Hubert, of Strasburg, on the
occasion of Bucers death, which took place February 28, 1551,' may
be considered as expressing the sentiments and feelings of this lady,
as well as the sentiments and feelings of all who knew that illustri-
ous Reformer : Bucer " has now departed in peace to our God and
to Christ Jesus, to the universal regret of all good men, and to my
incredible sorrow. I am so broken and dismayed by his death, as
to seem mutilated of more than half of myself, and that the better
half. .... This most estimable doctor and father was lent to
us by God for a time, to be recalled at his good pleasure. It is our
duty not to find fault with his judgments, but to appeal to his com-
passion, and diligently entreat him, by earnest and persevering
prayer, that in the room of those soldiers who have finished their
warfare, and whom he is, from time to time, continuing to discharge
by death, he would again supply the now empty ranks with valiant
warriors. O wretched me ! as long as Bucer was in England, or
while we lived together in Germany, I never felt myself to be in
exile. But now I plainly seem to myself to be alone and desolate.
Hitherto I have had a faithful companion in that road in which we
were both of us so unitedly walking. I am now torn asunder from
a man of the same mind with myself, and who was truly after my
own heart, by this most bitter death which has taken him off. Truly
the hand of the Lord has touched me. He still lives and is in the
enjoyment of the most delightful fruits of his labours ; he is trans-
1 The letter is dated Oxford, March 8, 1551.

334 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

planted by God into a better state of existence ; he has left those
dear to him, but he is received by those still more dear into ever-
lasting habitations. He has cast away that which was corrupt and
perishable, and has put on the robe of an everlasting immortality." '
A. few months after the death of Bucer the duchess was plunged
into sorrow by the death of her two sons, who died of the sweating-
sickness, 2 on the 16th of July that year. This mournful event took
place at Bugden, the Bishop of Lincoln's palace, whither the two
youths had retired to escape the sickness, which had broken out
with great severity, and carried off multitudes, both rich and poor, in
many parts of England, and especially in London. Soon after their
arrival they were taken ill. It is remarkable that the eldest brother,
Duke Henry, when at supper, being then in perfect health, said to a
worthy lady sitting at the table, and who loved the two brothers
with a maternal affection, " Where shall we sup to-morrow night?"
" Either in this house, I hope, my lord," she answered, " or elsewhere

1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 490, 491.

2 This dreaded disease, so remarkable for the vast numbers it attacked, and for the
rapidity of its fatal issue, first appeared in the army of Henry VII., upon his landing
at Milford, out of France, on the 7th of August, 1485 ; next in 1506; agaiti in 1517;
a fourth time in 1528 ; and a fifth time in 1551. In some chronicles of the period it
is called " the posting sweat," because it posted from town to town through England;
"the hot sickness/' and "stop-gallant," as it spared none; and it became so speedily
mortal, that some who were dancing in the court at nine o'clock were dead at eleven.
Note of Editor of Henry Machyn's Diary, Carnden Society Publications, pp. 319, 320.
The manner of its attack was this : " It first affected some particular part, attended
with inward heat and burning, unquenchable thirst, restlessness, sickness at stomach
and heart (though seldom vomiting), headache, delirium, then faintness, and excessive
drowsiness. The pulse became quick and vehement, and the breath short and labour-
ing." Dr. Friend's History of Ptiysic, vol. ii., p. 335, quoted in Ballard's Memoirs of
Learned British Ladies, p. 50. " We have a little pain in the head and heart," says
the French ambassador, resident in London during the prevalence of this disease in
1528, " we suddenly begin to sweat, and need no physician, for whoever uncover them-
selves the least in the world, or cover themselves too much, are dead in four hours, and
sometimes in two or three." But, though suddenly fatal where it issued in death, the
greater proportion by far, according to him, recovered ; for on the 30th of June he
writes, that of 40,000 affected, only 2,000 died. Quoted in Turner's History of the
Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 234, 235. The cure was to promote the sweating,
which it was necessary to do for a long time ; and sleep was by all means to be
avoided.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 335

witli some friend of yours." " By no means," said he, as if he had
got some premonition of his approaching death, "for never after
this shall we sup here together." At these words the lady became
alarmed, on observing which he, smiling, bade her not be dismayed.
Late in the evening his mother, feeling upon her spirit a more than
usual anxiety about her children, came to Bugden, immediately
after which he fell ill of the sweating-sickness, and suffered greatly
from the burning heat of the disease. "With the assistance of a
physician, she used every means for his recovery, but all was in
vain ; the raging malady was not to be arrested, and in five hours
he was a corpse. Charles, the younger brother, had been similarly
attacked, and he was placed in a bed-chamber distant from that in
which his brother lay. 1 His brother's death was concealed from him,
but from the manner of those about him, he suspected what had
happened, and was observed to be more than usually thoughtful.
Being asked by the physician upon what he was meditating, he
replied, " I am thinking how hard it is to be deprived of one's dear-
est friend." Why do you say so T said the physician. He answered,
" How can you ask me 1 My brother is dead, but it matters not,
I shall soon follow him." And so he did, having survived his
brother only about half an hour.' 2

Under this severe bereavement, the loss of her only children, and
that so suddenly and unexpectedly, the afflicted mother bore up
with Christian fortitude, and displayed a becoming spirit of pious
submission to the will of God. From many friends she received
letters of kind condolence, and was very generally sympathized with.
The death of these noblemen excited at the time extraordinary
interest, partly in consequence of their youth and rank, their excel-
lent character, and promising talents, and partly from the circum-

1 Henry Machyn, in his Diary, p. 8, is mistaken in two particulars, when he says
that they died "both in one bed," in Cambridgeshire. The Bishop of Lincoln's
palace, at Bugden, at which they died, is in the county of Huntingdon ; and they
did not die " in one bed." Strype, in his Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., part i., p. 491, also in-
correctly says that they " died both in one bed."

2 Sir Thomas Wilson's Epistola de Vita, &c., formerly quoted.

33G Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

stance that their mother was a distinguished patroness of the
English Eeformers. Their tutor, Dr. Walter Haddon, as has been
formerly observed, pronounced upon them an eloquent and affecting
Latin eulogy, before the university of Cambridge, and dedicated
some elegant Latin verses to their memory. Other commemorative
tributes of respect, from the pens of accomplished scholars, were paid
to them, all breathing a spirit of affectionate regret, and indulging
in high encomiums. 1 Several weeks after the last mournful duties
had been performed to her children's remains, the duchess thus
expresses her resigned and pious feelings, in a letter which she
wrote to her friend, "William Cecil : " I give God thauks, good
Master Cecil, for all His benefits which it hath pleased Him to
heap upon me, and truly I take this, His last (and to the first
sight most sharp and bitter) punishment, not for the least of His
benefits, inasmuch as I have never been so well taught by any other
before to know His power, His love and mercy, my own wickedness,
and that wretched estate that without Him I should endure here.
And, to ascertain you that I have received great comfort in Him, I
would gladly do it by talk and sight of you ; but, as I must confess
myself no better than flesh, so I am not well able with quiet to
behold rny very friends without some part of those evil dregs of
Adam, to seem sorry for that whereof I know I rather ought to
rejoice ; yet, notwithstanding, I would not spare my sorrow so much,
but I would gladly endure it, were it not for far other causes that
moveth me so to do, which I leave unwritten at this time, meaning
to fulfil your last request to-morrow by seven o'clock in the morning.
Then, if it please you, you may use him that I send you as if I stood

1 Among these tributes, besides Sir Thomas Wilson's Epistola de Vita, &c, are
various epigrams in Latin and Greek, by learned men both of Cambridge and Oxford,
with which the Epistola is followed. " Sir Thomas Wilson, in his Arle Rhetorique,
has also an interesting passage describing the characters of these young noblemen ;
and some Latin verses 011 their death were written by Michael Reniger, and printed
in 1552, 4to. An engraving in Chamberlain's Holbein Heads is taken from two minia-
tures supposed to represent these brothers ; but if the dates given in the inscription
are compared, they will be found both to belong to the elder boy." Note by Editor,
in Henry Macliyn's Diary, p. 319.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 337

by. So, with many thanks for your lasting friendship, I betake you
to Him that both can, and, I trust, will govern you to His glory and
your best contentation.

"From Grimsthorpe, this present Monday, your poorest but as-
sured friend, " K. SUFFOLK.

" To Master Secretary Cecil." '

Endorsed " September, 1551."

" In perpetual remembrance of her two sons," who had studied at
St. John's College, Cambridge, the duchess appropriated 6, 13s. 4d.
per annum, towards the maintenance of four scholars in that college. 2

Towards the close of the reign of Edward VI., or in the begin-
ning of the reign of Queen Mary, she married secondly Kichard
Bertie, a gentleman in her service, and, like herself, a Pi'otestant.
Though her inferior in rank, he was of a good family, and a man of
excellent character, as well as of high accomplishments. His pro-
genitors originally came from Bertiland, in Prussia, into England
at the time of its first invasion by the Saxons, and in reward of their
services received from one of the Saxon monarchs the gift of a castle
and town, called, from the family name, Bertiestad, now Bersted,
near Maidstone, in Kent; Sted or Stad denoting, in the Saxon
tongue, a town. His father, Thomas Bertie, of Bersted, was captaiu
of Hurst Castle, in the Isle of Wight, during the latter part of the
reign of Henry VII., and was alive in the reign of Edward VI.
Richard was educated in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and after-
wards, under Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord High
Chancellor of England. In addition to his other acquirements, he
was learned in the French, Italian, and Latin tongues. 3

In the reign of Queen Mary, the duchess identified herself with
the suffering Reformers, and relieved their wants by bountiful con-
tributions. Bishop Ridley, who had been thrown into prison on the

1 Miss Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. iii , p. 253. In this col-
lection several other letters of the duchess are inserted.

2 Ackermann's History of the University of Cambridge, vol. ii., p. 87.

3 Collins' Peerage of England, vol. ii., pp 1, 2.

338 Ladles of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

accession of that princess, in a letter to Augustine Berneher, 1 grate-
fully acknowledges his having received a liberal sum of money sent
to him by her, and says, that as he did not require it, he had handed
it over to a " brother" in need, probably Bishop Latimer, who had
also been imprisoned. " Brother Augustine, I thank you for your
manifold kindness. I have received my lady's grace's alms, 2 six
royals, 3 six shillings and eight pence. I have written a letter here
unto her grace, but I have made no mention thereof ; wherefore, I
desire you to render her grace hearty thanks. Blessed be God, as
for myself I want nothing, but my lady's alms cometh happily to
relieve my poor brother's necessity, whom you know they have cast
and keep in prison ; as I suppose, you know the cause why. Fare-
well, brother Austin, and take good heed, I pray you, and let my
brother's case make you the more wary. Read my letter to my
lady's grace. I would Mrs. Wilkinson and Mrs. Warcup had a
copy of it; for although the letter is directed to my lady's grace
alone, yet the matter thereof pertaineth indifferently to her grace
and to all good women, which love God and his Word in deed and
truth. Yours iD Christ, N. E."

But not only did the duchess sympathize with the persecuted
Reformers during Queen Mary's reign, and relieve their necessities
by her pecuniary liberality ; she also, by her personal sufferings in the
same cause, became their " companion in tribulation and in the king-
dom and patience of Jesus Christ."

When Mary, upon her accession, re-established the mass, the
duchess, who for many years past had ceased to countenance with
her presence this idolatrous service, as well as other Popish rites, had

1 The letter is in Coverdale's Letters of the Martyrs. It is also printed among
Ridley's Letters, Parker Society Publications, p. 382.

2 " This alms was sent him by the Lady Katharine, Duchess of Suffolk, to whom he
wrote again a worthy letter, which is lost, and many others, written both to her and
others." Mr. Coverdale's note on margin.

3 Rial or royal, a gold coin worth, in 1 Henry VIII., 11s. 3d. ; in 2 Ed. VI., 13s. 6d.;
and 2 Elizabeth, 15s. Ed. At the period referred to in the text, the value of money
was fifteen times greater than at present. The sum communicated would therefore be
equal to about 65, 15*. of our present money.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 339

made up her mind not to attend the celebration of mass, at whatever
hazard. This was a- proof of no small heroism. Of the extent of the
danger she would thus incur she was not ignorant. She anticipated the
displeasure of the queen, who was universally known to be one of the
most fanatical devotees of Popery, though at the commencement of
her reign she was prevented, from various causes, from going the
length to which she afterwards went, when, quenching every feeling
of humanity in her breast, she relentlessly persecuted to the death
the reformed confessors. Should the queen, however, be so tolerant
as to permit her to act in conformity with her judgment and con-
science, she had another ground for apprehension, arising from the
hatred of Bishop Gardiner, her mortal enemy, whose sway at court
was supreme. By her bitter sarcasms she had exasperated the bishop,
who had often ruminated on them as on so many insults, chafed and
mortified ; and now, when he was exalted to power, she had every
reason to expect that he would make her nonconformity the pretext
for executing the long meditated vengeance. But these considera-
tions did not subdue her resolution. She had counted the cost, and
was prepared to make every sacrifice in the cause of truth. Hence
the interest attaching to her subsequent life, the real story of which
"out-romanced," to use the language of Fuller, "the fictions of many
errant adventurers."

It may, perhaps, be supposed that from her high rank she would
be secure from the malicious intentions of Gardiner. But a slight
attention to the policy as well as the character of that prelate will
show the groundlessness of such a supposition. Not only the spirit
of revenge, but policy impelled him to meditate her ruin ; for he con-
ceived that the most effectual means of arresting the progress of
heresy, or of extinguishing it altogether, was by striking down the
Reformers most distinguished for rank or talent, or u the head deer"
of the flock, as was the phrase at the time.

What increased the danger of the duchess from Gardiner's cruelty
was his craft and dissimulation. " His malice," says Fuller, " was
like what is commonly said of white powder, which surely discharged

340

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

the bullet, yet made no report, being secret in all his acts of cruelty.
This made him often chide Bonner, calling him ass, though not so
much for killing poor people as for not doing it more cunningly." '

Gardiner first resolved to be revenged upon the duchess in the per-
son of her husband, Mr. Kichard Bertie. In the time of Lent, 1554,
being then lord chancellor, he sent strict orders to the sheriff of Lin-
colnshire to arrest him immediately, and, without accepting bail, to
bring him up a prisoner to London. Mr. Bertie, unconscious of
having committed any offence against the queen or the government,
could conceive of no ground for this strange proceeding, except that

Remain! of Winchester House.

of religion. The sheriff, however, who was favourably disposed to-
wards him, notwithstanding the strict orders he had received, instead
of sending him up to London a prisoner, required of him only a bond
with two sureties, securing, under a penalty of a thousand pounds,
i Worthies of England, vol. ii., pp. 331, 332.

ENGLAND.] Katherine Willoughby. 341

that he would appear before the bishop on the Good Friday following.
Mr. Bertie proceeded on his journey to London, and, on the day ap-
pointed, made his appearance at Gardiner's residence. 1 The bishop,
in a towering passion, at once accosted him thus : " How could you,
who are a subject, dare be so arrogant as to set at nought two cita-
tions of the queen ?" Mr. Bertie denied that these citations had ever
come to his hands. " Yea, truly," said Gardiner, " I have sent you
two subpoenas to appear immediately, and I am sure you received
them, for I intrusted them to the solicitor. I shall make you an ex-
ample to all Lincolnshire, for your obstinacy."

" I have not received any of them," said Bertie, " and I humbly
pray your lordship to suspend your displeasure and the punishment
till you have good evidence thereof, and then, if you please, you may
double the penalty if any fault has been committed."

" Well," returned the bishop, " I have set apart this day, from its
sanctity, for devotion, and I will not farther trouble myself with you ;
but I charge you, under the pain of a thousand pounds, not to depart
without leave, and to be here again to-morrow morning at seven
o'clock."

On the morrow Bertie was in waiting exactly at the appointed
hour. Gardiner had with him at the time Sergeant Stampford, whom
lie interrogated concerning Bertie. The sergeant, who personally
knew Bertie, from having been in the service of the late Lord
Wriothesley, Chancellor of England, with whom Bertie was brought
up, gave a highly favourable testimony to the excellence of his cha-
racter, Gardiner then caused Bertie to be brought in, and though
the real ground upon which he meant to fasten a quarrel upon him
was the Protestant religion of the duchess, yet, as his manner was
to endeavour to gain his ends, not directly, but by secret and circuit-
ous methods as " his strength and skill lay in fetching a compass,
like the gyrations of a hawk before pouncing on his prey " he at first
professed to have an entirely different object in view. "The queen's
pleasure," said he, "is that you shall make present payment of four

1 Namely, Winchester House, in Southwark, where Gardiner lived in great style.

342 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

thousand pounds, due to her father by Duke Charles, late husband to
the duchess, your wife, whose executor she was."

" May it please your lordship," replied Bertie, " that debt is estal-
led, and, according to that estallmeut, truly answered."

" Tush," rejoined Gardiner, contemptuously, " the queen will not
be bound to estallments in the time of Kett's 1 government, for so I
esteem the late government to have been." In other words, he
reckoned the government of Edward VI. no better than rebellion.

" The estallment," returned Bertie, " was appointed by King Henry
VIII., and it was confirmed by special commissioners in King Ed-
ward's time ; the lord treasurer, who is executor also to the Duke
Charles, solely and wholly taking upon him before the said commis-
sioners to discharge the same."

Gardiner now artfully passes from the pretended object for which
he had summoned Bertie, to the real one. " If what you say be true,
I will show you favour. But of another thing, Mr. Bertie, I will
admonish you, as meaning you well. I hear evil of your religion,
yet I hardly can think evil of you whose mother I know to be as
godly and catholic as any within all England, and who were brought
up with a master staunch in the faith, and educated by myself. Be-
sides, I partly know you myself, and partly have learned from my
friends enough to make me your friend. I will not, therefore, doubt
of you. But I pray you, if I may ask the question, as to my lady
your wife, is she now as ready to set up the mass as she was lately
to pull it down, when, in her progress, she caused a dog in a rochet
to be carried and called by my name 1 Or does she think her lambs
now safe enough, she who said to me, when I veiled my bonnet to
her out of my chamber window in the Tower, that it was merry with

1 Kelt was a rich tanner, who headed a numerous body of insurgents in Norfolk on
the accession of Edward VI. to the throne. Taking possession of Norwich, he fixed
his station on a hill in the neighbourhood, and under an oak there, which he called
the Oak of Reformation, he assumed the titles of King of Norfolk and Suffolk. After
successfully repelling several attempts of the king's troops to force the city of Nor-
wich, he was at last totally defeated, and, being taken prisoner, was hung in chains on
the top of Norwich Castle.

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Willougliby, 343

the lambs now when the wolf was shut up 1 At another time, when
my lord, her husband, having invited me and divers ladies to dinner,
desired every lady to choose him whom she loved best, and so place
themselves ; my lady, your wife, taking me by the hand, as my lord
would not have her to take himself, said, that as she could not sit
down with my lord, whom she loved best, she had chosen him whom
she loved worst." Here Gardiner brings out the chief cause of his
bitter enmity against the duchess. His hatred of her for the keen-
ness of her irony was, perhaps, a more intense and deadly feeling
than his resentment against her on account of her Protestant prin-
ciples.

" With respect to the device of the dog," answered Bertie, " it
neither originated with her nor had her permission. And as to the
setting up of mass, which she learned inwardly to abhor, by the
strong arguments of divei's learned men of worth, as well as by uni-
versal consent and order, during the past six years, were she out-
wardly to allow it, she should both show herself a false Christian to
Christ and a dissembling subject to her prince. You know, my lord,
that one reformed by judgment is more worth than a thousand tem-
porizing conformists. To force a confession of religion from the
mouth, contrary to what is in the heart, worketh damnation where
salvation is pretended."

"Yea, truly," said Gardiner, "that reasoning would be cogent were
she required to renounce an old religion for a new. But now she is
to return from a new to an ancient religion, wherein, when she made
me her gossip, she was as earnest as any."

" As to that, my lord," replied Bertie, " not long since she answered
a friend of hers, using your lordship's words, that religion went not
by age but by truth. She was, therefore, to be turned by persuasion,
not by commandment."

" I pray you," asked Gardiner, insinuatingly, " do you think it
possible to persuade her?"

"Yea, verily," answered Bertie, " with the truth, for she is rea-
sonable enough."

344 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

"It will be exceedingly grieving to the Prince of Spain," said
Gardiner, deploringly, " and to all the nobility \vho shall come with
him to this country, when they shall find only two noble personages
of the Spanish race within this kingdom, the queen, and my lady, your
wife, and one of them departed from the faith."

" I trust," replied Bertie, " that they shall find no fruits of infi-
delity in her."

The bishop then strongly urged Bertie to labour earnestly to effect
a change in the religious sentiments of the duchess, and, with high
professions and promises of friendship, released him from his bond
for further appearance. 1

Bertie was too sincere a Protestant to attempt to make the duchess
believe to be truth what he himself believed to be a lie ; and she did
not hold her religious principles so cheap as to renounce them at the
dictation of a bishop, for whose character and integrity she had no
respect.

Convinced from this examination that Gardiner had been contriv-
ing evil against her, and warned by her friends of his purpose to call
her to account for her faith, whereby extremity might follow, she and
Mr. Bertie resolved on making their escape to the continent. Mr.
Bertie had a ready pretext for going abroad, namely, to recover large
sums of money due to the late Duke of Suffolk (one of whose execu-
tors the duchess was) on the continent, Charles V. being one of these
debtors. He communicated his intention to Gardiner, observing
that he considered the present a very favourable opportunity for
dealing with the emperor, who, to forward the projected marriage
between the queen and his son, would not refuse to satisfy so reason-
able a claim, in order to gain favour with the English. " I like your
device well/' said Gardiner, " but I think that it would be better for
you to remain in England till the prince's arrival, for then I would
procure you his letters also to his father." "Begging your lordship's
pardon for my freedom of speech," returned Bertie, respectfully, " I
think it will then be a less favourable time, for after the consumma-
i Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. viii., pp. 569, &C.

ENGLAJTD.] Katharine Willoughby. 345

tion of the marriage, the emperor's wishes being accomplished, he
will not have the same motive for pleasing the English." " By St.
Mary," said Gardiner, smiling, " you guess shrewdly ; well, proceed
in your suit to the queen, and I shall not fail to lend you my assist-
ance." Gardiner for once was outwitted. Never dreaming, it
would appear, that this was a plan by which the duchess was to
escape his fangs, he assisted Bertie in obtaining the queen's license,
warranting him to pass to and return from the continent as often as
he chose, till he had fully settled his business. This was obtained in
a few days, and he sailed from Dover about the beginning of June,
1554, leaving the duchess, in the meantime, behind him.

As had been agreed between them, the duchess, with her infant
daughter, who was a year old, attended by seven servants, namely, a
groom, who was a Greek by birth, a joiner, a brewer, a fool, a cook, a
gentlewoman, and a laundress, followed him in the beginning of
January next year. These servants were the humblest in her house ;
for she did not ask the higher class of her servants to accompany her.
doubtful whether they would be willing to share the perils of her
journey. To prevent discovery, they were not made privy to her
design till immediately before, and none was made privy to it with
the exception of a trustworthy old gentleman, Mr. Eobert Cranwell,
whom Bertie, previously to his departure, had specially engaged to
aid the duchess in her flight. Having got everything in readiness,
she left her house in London, called the Barbican, between four and
five o'clock in the morning, with her child and servants. At the
moment of her issuing from the gate, one of the male servants,
named Atkinson, whom some noise, caused by her preparation, had
raised, came out with a torch in his hand. Afraid of detection, she
left a portmanteau, containing food and clothes for her child, in the
gate-house, and commanded all her attendants, with the exception
of the gentlewoman and laundress, to proceed with haste before her
to Sion Quay, where all were to take boat. They did so, leaving her
and the two women, with the child, to follow.

Perceiving that Atkinson, though he saw nobody, was following

34:6 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

in the direction in which she was going, she hurried into Charter
House, near by, to conceal herself, until, all being again quiet, he
returned to the house, when she proceeded on her journey. She was
habited in the garb of a mean merchant's wife, and her servants wore
the dress of the lowest in their condition of life. Though none of
them knew the way to Sion Quay, and the servants, who had gone
before, having separated, were in great risk of losing one another,
yet all of them happily met together, about the same time, within a
short distance of Moorgate, whence they went directly to Sion Quay.
The morning was so misty that the boatman was only prevailed
upon to launch by urgent entreaties. On that very day the council
received intelligence of her flight, and some of them immediately
proceeded to her house to make inquiries, and took an inventory of
her goods. Measures were also adopted for apprehending her before
she should leave the country.

On her arrival at Leigh, a town at the Land's-end, that is, on the
Essex shore, whither the report of her flight had spread before her,
Cranwell brought her to the house of a London merchant, one of his
old acquaintances, Mr. Gosling, to whom the whole secret was re-
vealed. At this hospitable mansion, which was in the neighbour-
hood of the town, she remained for some time under a fictitious
name, waiting for the sailing of the vessel, and employed herself in
making new clothes for her daughter. The night before her embar-
kation she slept at an inn in Leigh, where she narrowly escaped dis-
covery. Wind and tide being favourable, the fugitives embarked,
but the weather afterwards becoming less propitious, they were twice
carried into the open sea, almost to the coast of Zealand, and at last
were driven back to the place whence they sailed. On this last occa-
sion, it being suspected that the duchess was in the vessel, it was
intended to search it ; but one of her man-servants, who went ashore
for fresh provisions, having been examined, he succeeded, by his ap-
parently simple, ingenuous account, in producing the impression that
the lady on board, who was suspected of being the duchess, was only
a mean merchant's wife, and no search was made. Again setting

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughbij. 347

sail for the Netherlands, the vessel landed safely with its cargo in
Brabant. 1

Gardiner, who thought none equalled him in well-contrived cir-
cuitous stratagem, now found that even in this accomplishment he
had been outmastered by Mr. Bertie and the duchess. By the suc-
cess with which they had carried into effect their preconcerted design,
they had fairly out-Gardinered Gardiner, leaving him mortified and
boiling with wrath at the escape of a lady by whom he had been
repeatedly snubbed for his persecuting cruelty.

Miss Strickland, in her Queens of England, expresses astonishment
that the flight of the, duchess to the continent should be attributed to
her Protestant principles. She maintains that the duchess did not
greatly deviate from the old religion, and that the real cause of her
flight was the disfavour into which she had fallen with Mary in con-
sequence of her marriage with Richard Bertie, a man much below
her in rank. "This lady," says she, "is placed as a victim in the
martyrologies ! but there is something suppressed in that statement,
since ladies who were farther from the ancient church than ever the
Duchess of Suffolk was such as Lady Bacon and her sisters, and the
daughters of the Protector Somerset were in offices about the
queen's person ; and it is plain, by the marginal notes in Katha-
rine Parr's work, which she published, that she approved of the celi-
bacy of the clergy ! And if these were her tenets in the reign of
Elizabeth, the inference is reasonable that love, not religion, was the
cause of her quarrel with Queen Mary. Speed uses these words
before the introduction of Foxe's narrative of this lady's exile : ' The
Duchess of Suffolk was in disgrace with the queen for marrying Mr.
Bertie, a man too inferior for her estate.' 2 The probable reason of
Queen Mary's displeasure was because the Duchess of Suffolk was of
royal descent, and was a relative of Katharine of Aragon by her
mother, Lady Mary de Salines, a descendant of the house of De
Foix." She therefore concludes, that " the flight of the Dowager of

i Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vm., pp. 659-570.
- Speed's History, 1125.

348 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Suffolk to the continent seems to have originated as much from her
stolen match with Richard Bertie as on a religious account." *

Thus would Miss Strickland rob the duchess of the honour of suf-
fering for the Protestant religion ; but her attempt is without success.
Her insinuation that the duchess had not receded far from the Popish
Church cannot be admitted. There is no good ground for asserting
that she was less removed from Popery than Lady Bacon and the other
ladies referred to. "We know that at least one of these ladies, namely,
Lady Burghley, 2 conformed to Popery on the accession of Mary to the
throne, which the Duchess of Suffolk never did. And, in regard to
'* the marginal notes," or rather note, as to clerical celibacy, inserted
by or with the sanction of the duchess, in Katharine Parr's work,
published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we have formerly seen
that this note affords no proof that she approved of clerical celibacy. 3
But were we even to grant that it did, this would only show that
the whole truth had not beamed upon her mind ; that, though she
had shaken off and abhorred the system of Popery, still she was en-
tangled by one of the Popish tenets, the falsehood of which, though
branded in Scripture as the " doctrine of devils," she had not dis-
covered, a case by no means uncommon.

Not less incorrect is Miss Strickland in affirming that this lady
has obtained a place in the martyrology of the Protestant Church by
the suppression of a part of the truth. So far is this from being the
case, that it is, on the contrary, only by a suppression of a part of the
truth that she can be excluded. In order to secure for her a place
in Protestant martyrology, it is not necessary to conceal or to deny
the fact that she had incurred the displeasure of the queen by her
marrying a person inferior to herself in point of rank ; but the royal
displeasure against her on that account was not the main cause of
her flight. This was her dread of her bitter enemy, Bishop Gardiner,
who was now in power, and who was conspiring her destruction ; a
fact which Miss Strickland keeps altogether out of view, thus commit-

i Queens of England, vol. v., p. 420. 2 See Life of Lady Burghley.

3 See Life of Katharine Parr, p. 302.

ENGLAND.] . Katharine WUlougJiby. 349

ting the very fault which she blames in others. The duchess was not
ignorant of the vindictive character of Gardiner ; she had learned
that he was plotting against her, and had determined to make her
Protestantism the pretext for wreaking his vengeance upon her head ;
and, knowing this, she judged it prudent to make her escape, the
more especially as the disgrace in which she was at the court of
Mary, on account of her marriage, would give Gardiner a greater
advantage against her, an advantage which a man like him, who
could turn all circumstances to a positive account in furtherance of
his own views, would not fail to take.

To return to our narrative : having landed in Brabant, the duchess
and her servant-women provided themselves with apparel similar to
that worn by the women of the country. She and Mr. Bertie then
proceeded towards the territory of the Duke of Cleves, in a town of
which, called Santon, they rented a house for a short time, until they
had leisure to look out for a secure and permanent residence. They
afterwards thought of settling at a town about five miles distant from
Santon, named "Wesel, situated on the Ehine, and also under the
jurisdiction of the Duke of Cleves. This was one of the Hanse towns,
which enjoyed the privileges of the Steel-yard Company in London.
Thither numbers of the Walloons, professing the reformed religion,
had fled to escape persecution ; and they had for their minister
Francis Perusell, who then went under the assumed name of Francis
de Rivers. Through this minister, who had been for some time in
England, where he had received kind attentions from the duchess,
Mr. Bertie, while yet at Santon, obtained letters of protection from
the magistrates of Wesel, in the prospect of his removing perma-
nently to that town. The duchess was known only to the chief
magistrate, who was her warm friend. Had she been known to the
other magistrates, who were not very favourably disposed towards
the reformed religion, the letters of protection would, on that account,
have been less easily obtained.

Circumstances drove the strangers sooner from Santon than they
contemplated, a report having got abroad in the town that the duchess

550

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

and her husband were greater personages than they gave them-
selves out to be. The magistrates and the Bishop of Arras, who was
also dean of the great monaster}', laying their heads together, it was
concluded that the duchess and her husband should be immediately
examined as to their condition and religion. Apprised of this resolu-
tion by a gentleman of that country, Mr. Bertie and the duchess,
afraid of being involved in trouble, purposed to leave the town with-
out delay for Wesel, but quietly, lest suspicion of their having fled
should be excited. About three o'clock in the afternoon, in February,
1555, they left the house on foot, with their child and two servants
leaving the rest of their domestics behind them as if going merely
to take an airing, having neither horse nor waggon. Their object
was to reach Wesel that night.

The Flight from Santon to Were).

The day was frosty, and the ground hard, from a long-continued
frost ; but they had not been more than an English mile out of San-
ton when there fell a heavy rain, by which the ground was thawed
'and the roads rendered almost impassable. Drenched with rain.

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Willougltby. 351

fatigued, and night overtaking them, Mr. Bertie and the duchess
sent their two servants to the villages, as they passed, to hire a car,
for their more speedy and comfortable conveyance, but none could be
got, and the travellers had to make their way, as they best could, on
foot. Mr. Bertie carried the child, while the duchess carried his
cloak and rapier. They arrived at Wesel between six and seven
o'clock in the evening, which was very dark. But their hardships
were not yet ended. Every place of shelter seemed to be shut against
them. They went from inn to inn, offering liberal payment for small
accommodations, but were refused by all the innkeepers, who sus-
pected Mr. Bertie of being a knight-errant, and the duchess of
being his mistress. From cold and want of food the child cried
piteously, and the mother wept bitterly, while the rain descended in
torrents.

Thus inhospitably driven from every door, Mr. Bertie resolved to
bring his wife, their child, and the servants, to the porch of the great
church in the town, and to purchase coals, victuals, and straw, that
there they might warm themselves and partake of some refreshment
till he might provide them with better accommodation ; or, if such
could not be procured, that they might there spend that miserable
night. He had then but a very imperfect knowledge of the German
language, and, from the badness of the weather and the lateness of
the night, he could not fall in with any individual able to speak
English, French, Italian, or Latin. At last, however, in going to-
wards the church-porch with his wife and their child, he heard two
boys conversing together in Latin. He made up to them, and speak-
ing in that language, offered them two stivers if they would conduct
him to the house of a Walloon.

The first house to which, by the assistance of the youths, he and
the duchess, with their daughter, were providentially brought, was
that of a "Walloon with whom Perusell, who had procured them let-
ters of protection from the magistrates of the town, was supping that
night. At the first knock the master of the house answered, and
opening the door, inquired at Mr. Bertie who he was. " An English-

352 Ladies oftlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

man," replied Bertie, " who am seeking for Mr. Perusell's house."
The Walloon, desiring him to stay for a moment at the door, went into
the house, and told Perusell that the very English gentleman of
whom they had been talking at supper had sent a person, very pro-
bably his servant, to speak with him. Perusell, coming to the door,
was surprised to see Mr. Bertie and the duchess in so wretched a
plight, weather-beaten, fatigued, and cold, their faces and dress
deformed with mud ; and all of them were so affected that they could
not for some time speak to one another for tears. At last recovering
themselves, they interchanged mutual salutations. The strangers
were set down at a good fire, food was placed before them, and every-
thing done to make them comfortable. Mr. Bertie exchanged his
apparel with the master of the house, the duchess with the mistress,
and the infant daughter with the child of the house. We can easily
conceive that the great theme of conversation, on this evening, would
be the disastrous change which had come over the church aud nation
of England.

A few days after, by the good services of Mr. Perusell, the
illustrious refugees hired a suitable house in the church-porch of
Willebrode, in Wesel. The news of their inhospitable treatment by
the innkeepers had by this time spread through the whole town, and
on the Sabbath following a preacher from the pulpit openly and
severely censured this instance of incivility towards strangers, quot-
ing various passages from Scripture to show that the hospitable have
sometimes been rewarded, not only by their entertaining princes
under the disguise of private persons, but even angels, who had
appeared in the form of men, and that God, as a punishment, might
one day cause them to know from experience the afflicted heart of
a stranger, by making them strangers in a foreign land. 1

While residing at Wesel the duchess was delivered of a son, on

the 12th of October, 1555. In token of their gratitude to God, for

thus giving them a son when exiles in a foreign country, she and

Mr. Bertie named him Peregrine a name which, being associated

1 Foxe's Acts and Monument. 1 !, vol. viii., pp. 569-576.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willougltby. 353

with the histoiic records of the family, with its fireside traditions,
with the heroic virtues of illustrious ancestors, was borne by various
of his descendants in after generations. His birth and baptism are
entered in the register of the city of Wesel. The entry, which is
in Latin, and dated 20th November, 1555, may be translated as
follows : " In the year 1555 from the birth of Christ our Saviour,
which is the 5523d from the beginning of the world, and the thirty-
eighth from the restoration of the doctrine of the gospel by Mr.
Martin Luther, on Saturday, the 12th of October, the most illustri-
ous Lady Katharine, Baroness of Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, in
the kingdom of England, wife of the most illustrious Mr. Eichard
Bertie, of Eresby, from England, was, by the Divine favour, in this
our city of Wesel, in the duchy of Cleves, safely delivered of a -son,
who, on the first Monday thereafter, namely, on the 14th of the same
month, was baptized in our church, in the suburbs called Upter
Mathena, by Henry Bomelius, minister of that church, under the
name of Peregine, because he was given by the Lord to his pious
parents in a foreign land, 1 for the comfort of their exile." 2

From Mary's ecclesiastical policy, upon her accession, in over-
throwing the Keformation, and in re-establishing the Popish reli-
gion, her Protestant subjects foreboded times of severe persecution,
and, to escape the threatened storm, many of them, both clergy and
laity, followed the example of the duchess, by fleeing into foreign
countries. Often with great difficulty did they eifect their flight.
Proclamations had been issued forbidding their removal, and officers
appointed to intercept fugitives. But, by watching for opportuni-

1 in terra Peregrina.

2 Collins' Peerage of England, vol. ii., p. 5. A stone, with an inscription commemo-
rative of the birth of this boy, who afterwards distinguished himself in the service of
his country, and whose posterity increased in honours, was placed at the east entrance
of the porch of the church of St. Willebrode, in Wesel. This stone having been de-
faced by the destroying hand of time, and by military violence, one of his descendants,
who visited Germany as royal ambassador, towards the close of the reigu of Charles II.,
in veneration of his memory, and proud of ancestors who had been honoured to suffer
exile for the Protestant religion, caused another stone to be substituted in its place,
bearing an appropriate Latin inscription. See the inscription in Collins' Peerage of
England, vol. ii., p. 6.

354 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

ties, and by the favour of several masters of small vessels upon the
coasts, they eluded the vigilance of the government, and made good
their escape. Many of them fled to Strasburg in France ; Frank-
fort in Germany ; Emden in Friesland ; Duisburg, a town of Guel-
derland in Holland; Basle, Zurich, Berne, Lausanne, Araw, and
Geneva in Switzerland, where they met with a generous reception,
and obtained the liberty of their religious worship. In these
asylums some prosecuted their studies, others became teachers in
schools, some composed books, others found scope for their industry
at the printing presses. 1 The settlement of the duchess and her
husband at "Wesel being known, this drew thither a considerable
number of English Protestant refugees, not less than a hundred, it is
believed. Myles Coverdale, celebrated for his translation of the
Scriptures into English, who had lately left England for Denmark,
appeared among them early in the spring of 1555, having come
from Denmark, and continued to officiate as preacher to them till
the beginning of September following. 2

The only Protestant places where the English exiles were inhospi-
tably treated were Denmark, Saxony, and other parts of Germany,
in which Lutheranism was professed. It might have been expected
that the Lutherans would have welcomed them as dearly beloved
brethren in the Lord as exiles " for the Word of God and for the
testimony of Jesus Christ." But it was not so. Like the great
Reformer, their founder, they maintained the untenable and unin-
telligible doctrine of consubstantiation, and clinging to it as perti-
naciously as if it involved the very essence of Christianity, they would
hold fellowship with none who hesitated to adopt this Shibboleth of
their party. Such they scarcely would acknowledge as Christians
at all, and, in expression of their hostility and contempt, branded
them with the nicknames of heretics, false prophets, Suermeros,
Sacrimentaries, Sacramentiperdas. The English exiles, denying the

1 Strype's Memorials of Arch. Cranmer, pp. 353-356.

2 Strype's Mem. Eccl, vol. ii., part i., p. 410. Anderson's Annals of the English
Bible, voL ii., pp. 287, 295.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willouglnhy. 355

doctrine of consubstantiation, and following the views of Zwingle as
to the sacrament of the Supper, were on this account refused shelter
by the Lutherans, who would not suffer them to land on their shores,
and who rudely expelled from their cities such of them as had found
their way thither. Such was the intolerance of the Lutherans
towards the English exiles, that they were not in a disposition to
listen to reason or remonstrance on this point. Should any of their
ministers, influenced by more liberal views and by a more compas-
sionate heart, inculcate lenity, forbearance, and sympathy, he became
the object of clamour, reproach, and censure. 1 It is exceedingly pain-
ful to observe this exclusive, sectarian, and rancorous spirit of the
Lutherans against their suffering fellow-Protestants, simply and
solely for a difference of sentiment as to the sacrament of the Sup-
per. Not only was this spirit utterly unamiable, and utterly alien
to the spirit of genuine Christianity, but it was making war upon
one of the essential principles of the Eeformation liberty of thought
the right of private judgment ; it was the assumption of the infal-
libility which they condemned in the Pope ; it was an attempt to
deprive their fellow-Protestants of what they themselves claimed as
a right, and to bring the reason and judgment of others into slavish
subjection to their dictation.

The Duchess of Suffolk and other English refugees resident in
Wesel, were in some danger of expulsion, because they could not
subscribe to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. The Senate,
from their Lutheran propensities and Lutheran intolerance, were
actually on the point of commanding them to depart, and were only
prevented from doing so by the interposition of Philip Melancthon.
" These poor exiles," said this amiable Beformer, in answer to the
fierce denunciations of some against them, " are to be retained, suc-
coured, and cherished, not afflicted and harassed by any harsh sen-
tence. In the main articles of the Christian faith they are sound, and
if they differ from us on certain points, as they certainly do, they

1 Strype's Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, pp. 353, 354. Ruchat, Histoire de la
Reformation de la Suisse, torn, vi., pp. 549-552.

356 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

are to be instructed and informed, not rudely and forcibly ex-
pelled." 1

Exactly a month after the birth of her son Peregrine, namely, on
the 12th of November, 1555, the duchess's enemy, Gardiner, was
removed by death. Under his last illness he clung fondly to life
and office, unwilling to believe that death was near ; but his days
were numbered, and, from an awakened conscience, his mind was
now ill at ease. At his request, the evangelical narrative of the suf-
ferings of the Saviour being read to him, he desired the reader, on
coming to the denial of Peter, to stop, and exclaimed, " Negavi cum
Petro, exivi cum Petro, sed nondum flevi cum Petro" "I have
denied with Peter, I have gone out with Peter, but I have not yet
wept like Peter." Gardiner's death, however, caused no abate-
ment in the persecution of the Protestants in England. Cardinal
Pole, who succeeded him as chief adviser of Queen Mary, served
himself heir to the persecuting policy of his predecessor. Gar-
diner died only nine months after persecution to the death began,
during which time he had succeeded in cutting off "the head
deer" of the flock, Rogers, Saunders, Bradford, Hooper, Ferrar, Rid-
ley, and Latimer. But after that prelate's death, the persecution
continued three years, under the administration of Cardinal Pole,
with a ferocity not less relentless continued even to the death of
the bigoted and infatuated queen, and of the inhuman cardinal, who
survived her not many hours. Pole has often been praised for the
mildness and suavity of his manners. Mild and engaging he may
have been in his intercourse with his friends, as many remorseless
persecutors have been ; but his sanguinary policy, while he was
Maiy's prime minister, will render his memory infamous to the
latest ages.

The Duchess of Suffolk, on hearing of Gardiner's death, did not
think of returning to England. Knowing that she had other ene-
mies there, believing that the persecution would go on with undi-
minished violence, and not choosing to expose herself to the risk
1 Strype's Mem. of Arch. Cranmer, pp. 353, 354.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willougliby. 357

of being committed to the flames at Smithfield, she still remained
on the continent, waiting till Providence should send more favour-
able times.

She soon discovered that in coming to this resolution she had
acted wisely. Though Gardiner had now been called to his account,
and his malice could no longer hurt her, yet other malignant spirits
in England were conspiring her destruction. While she and Mr.
Bertie were thinking themselves happily settled at Wesel, and while
the time of their exile was agreeably and insensibly gliding away,
they suddenly received a friendly communication from Sir John
Mason, then Queen Mary's ambassador in the Netherlands, to the
effect that a plot had been formed in England for arresting them ;
that Lord Paget, who had gone to the baths in the direction ot
Wesel, had done so with this intention, and not for the benefit of his
health, as was pretended ; that Henry, Duke of Brunswick, who was
Luther's mortal enemy, and would permit none of his subjects to
embrace Lutheranism, was shortly to pass by Wesel with his troops,
for the assistance of Austria against the French king ; and that the
design was to intercept the duchess and her husband by means of
this company. To escape the toils thus laid for them, they removed
from Wesel to Windsheirn Castle, in Upper Germany, in the Pal-
grave's dominions. In consequence of their departure from Wesel,
the English Protestant congregation in that place, many of the
members of which depended upon them, was broken up and dis-
persed, some following them, and others proceeding to Basle. 1 They
staid at Windsheim Castle, under the Palgrave's protection, till, their
provisions failing them, they had the prospect of suffering great pri-
vations.

In these distressing circumstances, when ready to sink into de-
spair, relief was offered them from an unexpected quarter. Their
situation becoming known to John A Lasco, a distinguished Protes-
tant Polish nobleman, who had, during the reign of Edward VI.,
found refuge in England from persecution, and who was personally
1 Strype's Mem. EccL, vol. ii., part i., p. 410.

358 Ladies of tfie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

acquainted with the duchess, this kind-hearted nobleman was, un-
known to them, generously devising means by which he might secure
their safety and comfort in their exile. He had represented their
case to the Palatine of "Wilna, a sincere friend of the Reformation,
and to his own nephew, Sigismund II., King of Poland, who, though
he had not embraced the reformed doctrines then spreading in Po-
land, was a liberal-minded monarch, and disposed to encourage the
reformation of the church ; and he had awakened the sympathy of
these exalted personages. 1 At his suggestion they sent letters to
Mr. Bertie and the duchess, affectionately inviting them to Poland,
and promising them all the kindness in their power. This unlooked-
for friendly invitation greatly revived their oppressed spirits ; and
though, by removing to Poland, a distant country, unfrequented by
the English, they would be separated from many of their country-
men and acquaintances, whom they met with at Wesel, and might,
perhaps, find a residence there less agreeable than they anticipated,
yet they were inclined to accept the invitation. Before, however,
accepting it, they wished to have letters under the king's official seal,
confirming the assurances so generously given them in his private
letters ; and they despatched William Barlow, formerly Bishop of
St. David's, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, and now an exile on
account of his Protestant principles, 2 to the court of Poland to
solicit this favour. He carried with him letters of thanks to the
king, and to the Palatine of Wilna, together with a few valuable
jewels, the only ones now remaining of many once in possession of
the duchess.

Barlow proceeded without delay to the Polish court, and, by the
promptitude of the Palatine of Wilna, the request was no sooner

1 Encouraged by the favourable disposition of his nephew, the King of Poland, to a
reformation in the church, A Lasco had returned to Poland in February, 1557, with
the view of advancing evangelical truth in his native country. Zurich Original Letters,
first series, pp. 596-602.

* Returning to England on the accession of Elizabeth, Barlow was appointed by
that queen to the bishopric of Chichester, which he retained till his death. He was
the author of various works against Popery. ,

ENGLAND.] Katfiarine WiUoughby. 359

made than it was granted. Upon this assurance the duchess and
Mr. Bertie, with their children and all their domestics, attended
only by four horsemen to protect them, left Windsheim for Poland,
in April, 1557, directing their steps towards Frankfort. In their
way they encountered many hardships, and were even in danger of
their lives from a party of the landgrave's soldiers. The captain,
who was a man of a turbulent temper, forcing them into a quarrel
about a spaniel belonging to Mr. Bertie, set upon our travellers on
the highway with his horsemen, who thrust their boar-spears into
the waggon in which the children and female servants were travel-
ling. A struggle ensued, in which the captain's horse was slain
under him. The rumour that the landgrave's captain was murdered
by certain Walloons, immediately spread through the neighbouring
towns and villages, and exasperated the people against Mr. Bertie,
who, in passing through one of the towns, would have been taken
and murdered by the townsmen and the captain's brother, had he
not, availing himself of a ladder which he saw leaning on the window
of a house, got up to the garret of the house, where he parried attack
for some time with his dagger and rapier. The burgomaster at
length making his appearance, Mr. Bertie offered to surrender him-
self for trial, on condition of his being defended by the magistrate
from the fury of the multitude. Having received aecurity to this
effect, he yielded, and was taken into custody, to wait the issue of a
judicial investigation.

Mr. Bertie then despatched letters to the landgrave and to the
Earl of Erpach, explaining the whole circumstances. On the follow-
ing day, early in the morning, the Earl of Erpach, who resided
within a distance of eight miles, repaired to the town where Mr.
Bertie was imprisoned, and whither the duchess had been brought
with her waggon. He had been previously informed who the stran-
gers were, and he showed the duchess all the courtesy due to her rank,
which, when the townsmen observed, and understanding, besiles, that
the captain was alive, they, as well as the authors of the fray, were
ashamed of their conduct, and wished the whole affair hushed up.

360 Ladies of ilie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Matters being accommodated, the duchess and Mr. Bertie pro-
ceeded on their journey towards Poland, where, on their arrival,
they were kindly welcomed and treated with a princely liberality by
the king, who honoured them with the earldom of Crozan, in Sano-
gelia. 1 In this place they continued to reside in tranquillity and
honour, exercising authority in name of the king, till the death of
Queen Mary, when they returned to England. 2 On their return,
how happy a change to the better had taken place ! These ruthless
persecutors, Gardiner, Mary, and Pole, were now in their graves.
In their cases the triumphing of the wicked was short, and the
accession of Elizabeth, a Protestant queen, put an end to the ascend-
ency of Romanism in England.

In the year 1562, a series of her friend Latimer's sermons, which
had been preached in her hall at Grimsthorpe Castle, in 1552, was
collected and published by Augustine Bernher, a Swiss, who had
been the faithful friend and attendant of Latimer. These sermons
were published "by the instant request of the godly learned," "al-
beit, not so fully and perfectly as they were uttered," and they were
dedicated by Bernher to the duchess. In the dedication, which is
dated Southam, 2d October [1562], he dwells particularly upon her
self-devotion to the Protestant faith, which had forced her to seek a
sanctuary on foreign shores. 3 After adverting to the labours and
sufferings of Latimer, and imploring God, by his Spirit, to excite
every faithful Christian to earnest prayer that Queen Elizabeth,
who then swayed the English sceptre, might be assisted, by Divine
grace, in building the church, and in overthrowing wickedness,

1 Such is the name in Foxe's Acts and Monuments; but "it may be supposed that
Samogitia, called in Polish Hiestivo Zraudskie, is intended." Note of Editor.

2 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. viii., pp. 569-576.

3 This, by the way, is an additional evidence that the duchess's exile, during the
reign of Mary, was caused by the danger to which her Protestant principles exposed
her, and not, as Miss Strickland affirms, solely in consequence of her stolen match with
Richard Bertie. It is the testimony of a contemporary who had ample means of
knowing the truth, and who, from his manner, is evidently stating nothing but what
was generally known at the time to be true.

ENGLAND.] KatJuirine Willoughby. 361

superstition, and idolatry in all their forms, he adds, " To the which
faithful prayers, that all they which fear God may be the better
encouraged, I have set forth these sermons, made by this holy man
of God, and dedicated them to your grace, partly because they were
pi-eached in your grace's house at Grimsthorpe by this reverend
father and faithful prophet of God, whom you did nourish, and whose
doctrine you did most faithfully embrace, to the praise of God, and
unspeakable comfort of all godly hearts : the which did with great
admiration marvel at the excellent gifts of God, bestowed upon your
grace, in giving unto you such a princely spirit, by whose power and
virtue you were able to overcome the world, to forsake your posses-
sions, lands, and goods, your worldly friends and native country,
your high estate and estimation, with the which you were adorned,
and to become an exile for Christ and his gospel's sake ; to choose
rather to suffer adversity with the people of God, than to enjoy the
pleasures of the world with a wicked conscience ; esteeming the
rebukes of Christ greater treasures than the riches of England.
Whereas the worldlings are far otherwise minded ; for they have
their pleasures amongst the pots of Egypt ; they eat, drink, and make
merry, not passing what become of Christ or his gospel ; they be so
drunken with the sweet delicates of this miserable world, that they
will not taste of the bitter morsels which the Lord hath appointed
and prepared for his chosen children, and especially friends. Of the
which he did make you most graciously to taste, giving unto your
grace his Spirit, that you were able in all the turmoils and griev-
ances the which you did receive, not only at the hands of those
which were your professed enemies, but also at the hands of them
which pretended friendship and good-will, but secretly wrought
sorrow and mischief, to be quiet and patient, and in the end brought
your grace home again into your native country ; no doubt to no
other end but that you should be a comfort unto the comfortless,
and an instrument by the which his holy name should be praised,
and his gospel propagated and spread abroad, to the glory of his
holy name, and your eternal comfort in Christ Jesus : unto

362 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

whose merciful hands I commit your grace, with all yours, eter-
nally. Amen." '

Nothing important in the subsequent history of the duchess has
been recorded. She died September 19, 1580, and was buried at
Spilsby, in Lincolnshire. Mr. Bertie died April 9, 1582, in the sixty-
fourth year of his age. 2 The only children of this marriage were the
daughter and the son already mentioned. The daughter, Susan, was
married to Reginald Grey, Earl of Kent, and surviving him, to Sir
John Wingfield. The son, Peregrine, was naturalized in the first
year of the reign of Elizabeth, the patent being dated August 2, 1559.
On the death of his mother he claimed the title and dignity of Lord
Willoughby of Eresby, wearing his mourning apparel at her funeral
in all respects as a baron ; and on Friday, llth November, 1580, he
was admitted to this dignity and title, his father being then alive, by
Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer of England, in name of the
queen. He was distinguished for his personal courage and military
talents. He is described by Sir Eichard Naunton as " one of the
queen's first swordsmen, and a great master of the military art." 3
In 1587, at the seige of Zutphen, in the Netherlands, he encountered
the forces of that garrison, and defeated them, taking the com-
mander-in-chief of the horse a prisoner. In the following year,
upon the resignation of the Earl of Leicester, he was appointed
general of the English auxiliary forces in the United Provinces,
where he gathered fresh military laurels. In 1591 he was sent to
France with an army of 4000 men, to assist Henry, King of Na-
varre, who, in a letter to Queen Elizabeth, pronounces a high eulo-
gium upon him, and upon the soldiers under his command. "You
may, madam, be entirely satisfied," says he, " that I have been so

1 Latimer's Sermons, printed for Parker Society, vol. i., pp. 311-325.

2 " Whole-length portraits of the duchess and Mr. Bertie are to be seen at Wytham,
near Oxford, the seat of the Earl of Abingdon, who possesses a curious old ballad,
written in Queen Elizabeth's reign, entitled, The most rare and excellent History of
the Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband, Richard Bertie's calamities, to the tune of
Queen Dido." Nares's Memoirs of Lord Burghley, vol. i., p. 648.

3 Fragmenta Regalia, p. 39.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Willoughby. 363

effectually served by your troops, and have had such convincing
proofs of the good conduct and courage of the Lord Willoughby, who
is worthily seconded by all the other gentlemen, your subjects here,
that they more and more do honour to your judgment in your choice
of them, and increase the obligation I lie under already to your ma-
jesty." His lordship being at Spa, in Germany, for the recovery of
his health, at the time of the threatened invasion of England by the
Spanish " invincible armada," the queen wrote him, with her own
hand, a friendly letter, urging him to return, that she and the country
might have the benefit of his military skill. He returned to England
in 1596, and was made governor of Berwick in 1598. From the
queen's high opinion of him, he might have enjoyed a large share of
her favour, had he cultivated it with the arts of a courtier. But
from his temper and profession as a soldier, he had an aversion to the
obsequiousness and assiduity necessary to a court life, and he used to
say of himself that he was none of the reptilia. 1

Peregrine steadfastly maintained the Protestant principles, for
which his parents had suffered, and of which his very name was cal-
culated to remind him. Trained up in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord, he exhibited the ornamental deportment of the Chris-
tian ; and when the sun of his life was about to set, he looked forward
with joyful and confident anticipation to an immediate admission,
after death, into the blessed presence of God, and to a glorious
resurrection at the great day. His last will and testament, made at
Berwick, of which he was governor, and dated August 7, 1599, is
remarkable, beginning thus : " In the name of the blessed Divine
Trinity in persons, and of omnipotent unity in godhead, who created,
redeemed, and sanctified me, whom I steadfastly believe will glorify
this sinful, corruptible, and fleshly body with eternal happiness, by
a joyful resurrection at the general judgment, when, by his incom-
prehensible justice and mercy, having satisfied for my sinful soul, and
stored it up in his heavenly treasure, his almighty voice shall call
all flesh to be joined together with the soul to everlasting comfort or
1 Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia, p. 24.

364

Ladies oftJie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

discomfort.''' He concludes with these words: "For I am sure my
Eedeemer liveth, and he shall stand the last upon the earth, and,
though after worms destroy this body, yet shall I see God in my
flesh, whom I myself shall see, and mine eyes shall behold, and uo
other for me, though my reins are consumed within me."

His lordship died in 1601, and, according to the desire expressed in
his will, was buried in the parish church of Spilsby, where a monu-
ment was erected to his memory. He was married to Mary, daughter
to John Vere, Earl of Oxford, sister and heir to Edward, seventeenth
Earl of Oxford. By this lady, who survived him thirteen years, he
left issue, five sons and a daughter, Katharine, married to Sir Lewis
Walson, of Eockingham Castle, in the county of Northampton, after-
wards Lord Eockingham. He was succeeded by his eldest son,
Eobert, who was created Earl of Lindsey in the reign of Charles I.'

1 Collins' Peerage, vol. ii., pp. 9-11.

ANNE DE TSERCLAS,

WIFE OF BISHOP HOOPER.

LEARNED friend, visiting Dr. Thomas Fuller, author
of British Church History and of the Worthies of Eng-
land, who was then residing at Cambridge, asked him
the subject of his studies. "I am collecting," said
Fuller, "the witnesses of the truth of the Protestant
religion through all ages, even in the depth of Popery, conceiving it
feasible, though difficult, to evidence them." " It is needless pains,"
said his friend; "for I know that I am descended from Adam,
though I cannot prove my pedigree from him." 1 The excellent lady
of whom we now write was a witness to the truth of the Protestant
religion, and under the reign of the bloody Mary suffered severely
for it in her dearest earthly relative. Her maiden name was Anne
de Tserclas ; but in regard to her parentage, we are in Fuller's pre-
dicament as to some of his Protestant witnesses this we find it
difficult to evidence. Our historians and biographers are conflicting
as to her native country, and they give us no information as to her
parents. Were the observation of Fuller's friend a sound one, we
might dismiss all such inquiries as superfluous, and simply remind
the reader once for all, that our heroines sprung from the same ori-
ginal stock with the rest of mankind. But the observation was made

1 Anecdotes and Traditions illustrative of Early Enylish History and Literature,
printed for Caraden Society, p. 6.

366 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

more in jest than in sober earnest ; for Fuller's friend was " an excel-
lent scholar, who could be humorous, and would be serious, as he
was himself disposed." No reflecting person would seriously main-
tain that the pains taken to ascertain the parentage of such as are
entitled to the remembrance of posterity is useless labour. The
knowledge of their parentage often throws light on the formation of
their minds, and helps to explain how their talents and characters
were developed and matured.

Foxe, the martyrologist, who knew that Mrs. Hooper was a lady
of worth, desired to trace her descent ; and, in a letter to Henry
Bullinger, dated Basle, June 17, 1559, he says, "I. wish to know
whether Hooper married a wife from among you yonder, or here at
Basle." 1 In his Acts and Monuments he makes her a native of Bur-
gundy, a province of France ; 2 but whether he derived this informa-
tion from Bullinger, who, no doubt, could inform him correctly, is
uncertain. Strype, in one part of his Ecclesiastical Memorials, states
that she was "a Helvetian woman," or a native of Switzerland. 3 In
another place he calls her "a discreet woman of the Low Coun-
tries."* From one of Hooper's letters to Bullinger, in 1549, after-
wards quoted, we learn that her parents lived about fifteen miles
from Antwerp, in the Netherlands ; but whether that was their ori-
ginal place of residence or not, we are unable to determine. Whoever
were her parents, and whatever was the country of their nativity,
they were evidently in respectable circumstances. This may be con-
cluded with certainty from her having received a liberal education,
of which her beautiful handwriting and her knowledge of the Latin
tongue, in which such of her letters as have been preserved are
written, afford undoubted proofs.

On the continent she had met with John Hooper, afterwards
Dr., Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, " a great scholar and lin-
guist," 5 who, upon the passing of the bloody act as to the six ar-

1 Zurich Letters, second series, p. 36. 2 Ibid., vol. vi., p. 637.

s Ibid., vol. ii., part i., p. 399. Ibid., vol. ii., part ii., p. 170.

* Fuller's Worthies of England, vol. ii., p. 280.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 367

tides, in the reign of Henry VIII., being exposed to peril for his
Protestant principles, had left England and travelled in France, Ire-
land, Holland, and Switzerland, in which latter country he lived
partly at Basle and partly at Zurich, where he formed a lasting
friendship with the excellent and learned Henry Bullinger. The
precise date of her marriage with Hooper is uncertain. It must have
taken place at least more than a year before they left Zurich for
England, which was in the spring of 1549 ; as at that time they had
a little daughter, named Eachel, who was " cutting her teeth." On
their parting with Bullinger and his family, all were deeply affected,
such was the endearing friendship that subsisted between them ; and,
what is remarkable, Hooper, on that occasion, though the throne of
England was now filled by Edward VI., a reforming prince of high
promise, and everything augured well for the Eeformation in that
country, anticipated and spoke in language prophetic of his future
martyrdom. "In all probability," said Bullinger, "King Edward
will raise you to a bishopric. If so, don't suffer your elevation to
make you forgetful of your old friend in Switzerland. Let us, from
time to time, have the satisfaction of hearing from you.'' Hooper
answered, " No change of place nor of station, no accession of new
friends, shall ever render me unmindful of yourself and my other
benefactors here. You may depend on my carefully corresponding
with you. But it will not be in my power to write you an account
of the last news of all ; for (taking Bullinger by the hand) others
will inform you of my being burned to ashes in that very place
where, in the meanwhile, I shall labour most for God and the

A narrative of Mrs. Hooper's journey from Zurich to London,
in company with Mr. Hooper, their infant daughter, and one or
two attendants, is given in Hooper's letters to Bullinger. 3 On the
29th of March, 1549, they arrived at Strasburg, where they re-
mained till the 2d of April, when they proceeded to Mayence, and

1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol iii., p. 119.

2 See Zurich Letters, first portion.

368 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [EN-GLAND.

entered that city on the 5th, after encountering no small danger on
sea, and finding from experience that the innkeepers between these
two cities were " barbarous Scythians and harsh uncivilized Getae."
Leaving Mayence, they landed at Cologne, on the llth of April; and
on the 14th, starting from that city, they directed their course
through the barren and sandy plains of Brabant to Antwerp, which
they reached on the 18th of the same month. At Antwerp they
rested for some days, in order to recruit Mrs. Hooper and the child,
who were greatly exhausted by the fatigue of the journey. During
their stay in that city, Mrs. Hooper wrote to her mother, who lived
at the distance of about fifteen miles from it, sending the letter by a
messenger. Her father had recently died ; but, communication being
much slower then than it is in our day, she knew nothing of that
event till the messenger brought her the afflicting tidings. The
manner in which her brother treated her letter affords an example
of the power of false religion in extinguishing the tender est feelings
of the human heart. "Her mother," says Mr. Hooper, "received
the letter, and gave it my wife's brother to read, who immediately
threw it into the fire without reading it. You see the words of
Christ are true, that the brother shall persecute the brother for the
sake of the word of God." 1 This brother, in the depth of his fana-
tical blindness, was enraged that his sister had become a heretic,
and the mistress of a heretical priest ; for, according to the doctrines
of his church, he would not allow that she could be the wife of a
priest. He would probably have been much better contented had
she retired to a convent, though a clerical seraglio, or, if it was better
regulated, in which she would have led a useless life, manufacturing
Agnus Deis, woollen palls for the shoulders of bishops, and other
Popish trumpery; or practising self-imposed austerities, counting
her beads, marking herself with numerous crossings, bowing to
images, and worshipping Popish relics ; while the proper duties of
woman her duties as a daughter, a wife, or a mother were all set
at nought. Mrs. Hooper and the child having tolerably recovered
i Zurich Letters, first series, p. 63.

ENGLAND.]

Anne de Tserdas.

369

their strength, the small company proceeded to London, whither
they arrived in health and safety before the close of May.

On his return to England, becoming chaplain to the Duke of
Somerset, Hooper laboured with indefatigable diligence as a Chris-
tian minister, expounding the Scriptures to crowded and attentive
auditories in and about London, once every day, often two or three
times, and frequently preaching at court before the king and council,
whom he exhorted with great freedom, in his Lent sermons on
Jonah, 1 to effect a more thorough reformation of the church. In
a letter to Bullinger, dated London, June 25 [1549], he says, " There
are some persons here who read and expound the Holy Scriptures

Old St Fiiul'6, London.

at a public lecture, two of whom read in St. Paul's cathedral four
times a-week. I myself, too, as my slender abilities will allow me,
having compassion upon the ignorance of my brethren, read a public

' These have been printed by the Parker Society.

A A

370 Ladies of the. Reformation. [ENGLAND.

lecture twice in the day, to so numerous an audience that the church
cannot contain them." ' On the 7th of April, 1550, the king, by
the chancellor, offered him the bishopric of Gloucester. Hooper
declined to accept it, among other reasons, first, because, according
to the form of the oath of supremacy, 2 exacted before consecration,
he would have to swear by God, the saints, and the holy gospels ;
whereas be believed that in an oath God alone ought to be appealed
to; 8 and, secondly, because of his scruples as to wearing the epis-
copal dress, the "Aaronical habits," as he termed it, enjoined by
Parliament to be worn by whoever should be inaugurated a bishop
at his consecration, and which were also to be worn, not only at the
administration of the sacraments, but at public prayers. He re-
garded the vestments not indeed as evil in themselves, but neither
as matters of indifference, as they appeared to him to obscure the
dignity of Christ's priesthood, and to foster vanity, hypocrisy, and
superstition. The king and the council would have yielded to his
scruples, and, in compliance with his request, would have conse-
crated him without any other rite of consecration than what the
apostles practised, namely, the imposition of hands. But the bishops,
and particularly Nicholas Eidley, Bishop of London, " a most learned
man, and in other respects a valiant defender of the gospel," as Peter
Martyr describes him, were so strong against the adoption of any
other form of consecration than what had been prescribed by Parlia-
ment, making light of the use of vestments and of other ceremonies
as being mere matters of indifference, that Hooper, persevering in
his objections, was, January 27, 1551, committed to prison by order
of the privy council, who, on finding the bishops so pertinacious,

1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 65.

2 Fuller, when he wrote his Ecclesiastical History, had conceived the oath to have
been that of canonical obedience, but he corrects the mistake in his Worthies of
England, vol. ii., p. 280.

3 This oath, in the Prayer Book of 1549, ended thus: "So help me God, all saints,
and the holy evangelists." In the Prayer Book of 1552, it was altered to " So help me
God, through Jesus Christ." See Liturgies of Edward VI., Parker Society edition,
pp. 169, 339.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 371

sided with them. 1 About a fortnight after, overcome by the ob-
stinacy of the bishops, he submitted himself and his cause to the
judgment of the privy council, the result of which was that, on the
8th of March following, he was consecrated at Lambeth in the usual
manner, habited in a long scarlet chimere (furnished with sleeves of
white lawn) down to the foot, having under it a white linen rochet,
and wearing upon his head a square cap. 2

The income of his bishopric was 2000 crowns per annum. In
1552 the diocese of Gloucester and that of Worcester were united
into one by the king's letters-patent ; and Hooper was constituted
the first bishop of the united diocese. 3 " His adversaries will say,"
remarks Fuller, "that the refusing of one is the way to get two
bishoprics. But be it known that as our Hooper had double dig-
nity, he had treble diligence, painfully preaching God's Word, piously

1 These bishops were all zealous against Popery, why, then, so keen sticklers for mere
vestments, which could do nothing in the battle against Antichrist, the more especially
as they called them matters of indifference? "We cannot fight the French," says
Carlyle, "by three hundred thousand red uniforms; there must be men in the inside of
them." Here was a brave-hearted, valiant, faithful, unconquerable man, prepared to
tight to the death the battles of the Lord against the Papacy, and if he did not choose
to fight in a chimere and rochet, which he thought would entangle his movements in
wielding his armour, why not allow him to fight in the homely, rough, rustic stuff,
which he deemed more seemly in a soldier of the cross ? Ridley, who had been ex-
tremely violent against Hooper before the council, on account of the vestments, after-
wards, when both were imprisoned in the reign of Queen Mary, took something like
this reasonable view of the matter ; for adversity tends powerfully to clear the mental
perception on many points. Writing to Hooper from prison, in answer to a letter re-
ceived from him, he thus speaks in a tone of Christian candour and affection, highly
honourable to his character : " But now, my dear brother, forasmuch as I understand
by your works, which I have yet but superficially seen, that we thoroughly agree and
wholly consent together in those things which are the grounds and substantial points
of our religion, against the which the world so furiously rageth in these our days ;
howsoever, in time past, in smaller matters and circumstances of religion, your wisdom
and my simplicity (I confess) have in some points varied ; now I say, be you assured,
that even with my whole heart, God is my witness, in the bowels of Christ I love you
in the truth, and for the truth's sake which abideth in us, and, I am persuaded, shall,
by the grace of God, abide in us for evermore." The letter was written in Latin.
Ridley's Works, Parker Soc. edit., pp. 355.

2 See numerous letters ou the subject of this paragraph among the Zurich Lellert,
first series.

3 Strype's Mem. Ecd, vol. ii , part ii., p. 170.

372 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

living as he preached, and patiently dying as he lived, being mar-
tyred at Gloucester, anno 1555." 1

In less than a month after his consecration, Mrs. Hooper wrote a
letter to her friend Bullinger. She says little about the troubles
the bishop had met with on account of his opposition to vestments,
but she expresses her deep obligations to the paternal interest Bul-
linger took in herself and in Mr. Hooper ; for such is the humble
designation she gives her husband, and always afterwards gave him,
not venturing to apply to him the proud name of "my lord the
bishop." Her letter evinces the pains she bestowed on the educa-
tion, and especially on the religious education of her daughter. Nor
does it less clearly show how delighted she was in the devoted
ministerial labours of Hooper and in their success ; but apprehen-
sive lest he might impair his health by undue exertion, she ear-
nestly requests Bullinger to urge him to beware of undertaking a
greater amount of labour than his strength could bear.

" I have received your letter, most Christian sir, in which, as in
a glass, I perceive how greatly you are interested for us. But
though I acknowledge myself quite incapable of returning you the
thanks I ought for your especial friendship towards us, I will not
cease from offering them ; and I heartily pray God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he may abundantly recompense you,
as I am unable to do so myself. I will not acquaint you with the
reason of Master Hooper's imprisonment, until I have communi-
cated to him your letter, which at present is quite out of my power ;
for he went down to his see as soon as he was discharged. I doubt
not but that he will satisfy your desire as soon as he is informed
of it ; and this seems to me far more convenient, than for me to
make the attempt without consulting him. But as you inquire
how my daughter Rachel is going on, I consider it my duty to give
you some information concerning her. First, then, you must know
that she is well acquainted with English, and that she has learned

1 Worthies of England, vol. ii. ( p. 280.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserdas. 373

by heart within these three months the form of giving thanks, the
ten commandments, the Lord's prayer, the apostles' creed, together
with the first and second psalms of David. And now, as she knows
almost all her letters, she is instructed in the catechism. 1 If I
could write in German I should more frequently take pen in hand.
But if your son should happen to come to England, I shall have a
better opportunity both of writing, and also, in some measure, of
repaying your paternal affection for us, and which I value more

than the richest treasures of gold or silver. .

" I send you a small gold coin, in which the effigy of the King of
England is very well expressed, as a return for the token you sent
to Rachel, for which she thanks you in her childish prattle, and
sends her best love. I entreat you to recommend Master Hooper
to be more moderate in his labour ; for he preaches four, or at least
three times every day ; and I arn afraid lest these over-abundant
exertions should occasion a premature decay, by which very many
souls now hungering after the Word of God, and whose hunger is
well known from the frequent anxiety to hear him, will be deprived
both of their teacher and his doctrine. ... I have forwarded
your letter to Master Hooper, and will take care to send you his
reply. Farewell. Salute Master Bibliander 2 and his wife, Master

1 Bishop Hooper, in a letter to Bullinger, dated Gloucester, August 1, 1551, bears
testimony to Mrs. Hooper's zeal in the religious education of their daughter. " She
[Rachel] very frequently hears from her mother the great commendation of the country
and place where she was born, and she is with great care and diligence instructed in
the promises which she formerly made to the church, by means of your kindness and
that of the wife of Master Bibliander. She sorely complains of ray not more frequently
saluting by letter so holy a church and such faithful ministers of Christ. She now
sends an entire piece of cloth as a token of her reverence and respect, one-half to your-
self, the other to the wife of Master Bibliander ; and she heartily thanks her heavenly
Father, that, by you as her sponsors, she has been received into the society of His holy
church." Zurich Letters, first series, p. 92.

i Theodore Bibliander or Buchman was born in 1504, at Bischoffzel, near St. Gall.
He was professor of theology at Zurich, where he died in 1564. In the correspondence
of the period he is termed "the most erudite Bibliander;" and four eminent English
Protestant refugees, in writing to Bullinger, describe him as " that chief ornament of
Switzerland, yea, rather, of the whole world, Theodore Bibliander." Zurich Letters,
first series, pp. 11, 615, 623.

374 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Gualter 1 and Pellican, 2 and their wives, Master Zuinglius, and his
wife, to whom also I send a golden coin stamped with the king's
effigy. London, April 3 [1551]. Your most dutiful,

" ANNE DE TSERCLAS, now HOOPER.

"My maid Joanna 3 salutes you, as does her husband, the minis-
ter of the French church. When you write to Master Hooper or
myself, take care that your letters are carefully sealed ; for there are
certain busy-bodies who are in the habit of opening and reading
them, if by any means they can do it." 4

In another letter written to Bullinger, and dated Gloucester,
October 27, 1551, she says, "Greeting. When the bearer of this
was with us, there were two reasons which prevented my answer-
ing your lettter ; the one, because I am unable to express my senti-
ments in German; the other, because I was overwhelmed by so
many and urgent engagements, that scarce any leisure was allowed
me. Yet the regard I bear you drew me aside a little while from
my employments, and compelled me altogether to put them off to

another time I justly lament your absence, who have

stood forth as my most excellent friend, nay rather, I may say, my
patron; and who have so obliged me by your favours, that were I
even to pledge my life, much less my property, I should be unable
to return your kindness. Wherefore, since my life and property
are not sufficient to repay my obligations, I must still remain in
debt. Oh ! I wish that the distance of place did not separate us at

1 Rodolph Gualter was an eminent Protestant minister of Zurich. He visited England
in 1537 ; and his diary of that journey is still preserved at Zurich. He was the author
of various theological works. See Indices to Zurich Letters.

2 Conrad Pellican held the chair of theology and Hebrew in the university of Zurich,
and was a man of great learning. He died September 14, 1556, and was succeeded by
Peter Martyr. M'Crie's Reformation in Italy, p. 383. Zurich Letters, first series,
pp. 138, 509. The celebrated Tigurine Latin translation of the Bible was completed
by Pellican and Bibliander ; Leo Juda, whose work it chiefly was, having died before it
was finished. The apocrypha was translated from the Greek by P. Cholin; and the
New Testament is Erasmus's translation, revised and corrected by Gualter and Cholin.

3 Joanna was married, 2d June, 1550, to Richard Vauville, pastor of the French Pro-
testants iii London, "a worthy and learned man." Zurich Letters, first series, p. 565.

4 Ibid., p. 107.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserdas. 375

so long an interval, that we might enjoy the same intimacy as here-
tofore. But I hope that you will shortly visit England, which if
you will accomplish, I shall then consider myself most fortunate in
being again permitted to enjoy your long-wished-for society. I pray
you, my father, to salute your wife, my mother, affectionately in my
name, as also all my other friends. Farewell.

' ; Eachel, thank God, is in excellent health, and salutes you and
your wife, and begs your blessing, and prays that in your blessing
God may deign to bless her also.

" Ever your entire and obliged friend,

" ANNE HOOPER." '

Mrs. Hooper's friends were now afraid that both she and the
bishop, from their prosperous worldly circumstances, might imagine
that they had obtained an earthly paradise, and become proud,
worldly, and perhaps forgetful of their old acquaintances. "I
pray you," says Martin Micronius, in a letter to Bullinger, "to
exert your influence in recommending to him [Hooper] meekness
and gentleness. Exhort Mrs. Anne, his wife, not to entangle her-
self with the cares of this life. Let her beware of the thorns by
which the "Word of God is choked. It is a most dangerous thing for
one who is in the service of Christ to hunt after riches and honours.
Your admonitions will have much weight with them both/' * Pro-
sperity has no doubt made many forget themselves. But there is
no evidence that either Mrs. Hooper or the bishop was spoiled by
their elevation. Both of them conducted themselves humbly and
meekly, cultivating piety towards God and beneficence towards men.
They remembered and maintained ancient friendships. Neither
worldly pomp nor idleness, much less rioting, was to be seen in their
palace, which, from the good behaviour of all the inmates, and from
the regular reading of the Scriptures, and the regular observance
of devotional exercises within it, resembled a church. In the com-
mon hall, at dinner-time, a table was spread, covered with whole-

1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 108. s Ibid, second portion, p. 576.

376 Ladies qftlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

some and substantial food, with which the poor of the place of
their residence were amply supplied. 1

But if there were moments in which they did feel disposed, in the
height of prosperity, to say, " My mountain standeth strong, and I
shall never be moved," or, " I shall die in my rest," the death of
King Edward, and the accession of his sister Mary to the throne, dis-
sipated all such flattering dreams, and darkened all their future
earthly prospects. Mary's fanatical Popish bigotry being univer-
sally known, Mrs. Hooper and the bishop now anticipated being
cast into the furnace of persecution, and tried to look the evil full in
the face. They frequently conversed together on what might be
awaiting them, and it is pleasing to find them, while experiencing
within a severe conflict between affection and duty, coming to the
resolution to be true to the Protestant cause whatever might happen,
to allow no considerations of private interest, no preferments or dis-
tinctions, and no sufferings, neither imprisonment, banishment, nor
death, to shake their fidelity to it. They encouraged each other to
an intrepid unwavering confession of Christ in the face of every
peril, from the precious promises in which He secures to all his faith-
ful servants a happy termination to all their trials, and a glorious
reward to their fidelity at death and at the last day. Often did they
derive comfort from repeating to one another and from studying these
words of the Saviour : " Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom
his Lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in
due season ? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he cometh
shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, that he shall make him
ruler over all his goods." " My good wife," says Hooper, in a letter
to Mrs. Hooper, dated October 3, 1553, to be afterwards more
largely quoted, after he had been for some time languishing in an
abominable prison, and suffering the ill-usage of a brutal jailer, " the
troubles are not yet generally, as they were in our good fathers'
time, soon after the death and resurrection of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, whereof he spake in St. Matthew (chap, xxiv.), of which
1 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., p. 614.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 377

place you and I have taken many times great consolation, and espe-
cially of the latter part of the chapter, wherein is contained the last
day and end of all troubles (I doubt not) both for you and me, and
for such as love the coming of our Saviour Christ to judgment.''
Often, too, at the throne of grace, did they make their own perilous
condition, and that of the Church of England, the matter of fervent
prayer, beseeching the Lord in his mercy to weaken the power of
the adversary, or should it be his will to give loose reins to the fury
of persecution, to grant them and all the godly grace to suffer with
patience and fortitude whatever their enemies might be left to
inflict upon them.

In this way did they mutually endeavour to prepare themselves
for dreaded impending evils. Their fears were but too speedily and
fully realized. An abrupt termination was put to the unceasing
Christian exertions which both of them, in their respective spheres,
had been making to instruct the ignorant in the truths of God's
Word, and to promote the temporal comfort of the poor and the
afflicted around them. Not more than six weeks after Mary was
proclaimed Queen of England, namely, September 1, 1553, J Mi's.
Hooper had the trial of having the bishop torn from her embraces.
On his being arrested and brought to London, Gardiner's first ques-
tion to him was whether he was married. "Yea, my lord," answered
Hooper, " and will not be unmarried till death unmarry me." Dur-
ing the reign of Mary the persecuting Popish bishops never failed
to upbraid and insult the married Protestant ministers, who ap-
peared before them, on this point. Tonstall, Bishop of Durham, a
scholar and a man naturally of a mild pacific temper, but an example
of the power of Popery in hardening the feelings of all who embrace
it, notwithstanding their good natural disposition, and in spite of the
humanizing influence of polite letters, treated Hooper with contumely
for being married, calling him. " beast," and telling him that this of
itself was enough to condemn him. Other questions having been put
to him and answered, he was committed close prisoner to the
1 Mary was proclaimed queen ou the 20th of July that year.

378 Ladies qftlte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Fleet. 1 "And is our marriage a matter of reproach, a scandal, a
crime," Mrs. Hooper might well say, on hearing of the bishop's exa-
mination ; " has not our Lord expressly said, ' A man shall leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ?' Has not an
inspired apostle said, ' Marriage is honourable in all,' and enjoined a
bishop to be 'the husband of one wife T Is not 'forbidding to marry'
given as a mark of Antichrist ? Verily these men make void the law
of God by their traditions and inventions." 2

It was a great aggravation of Mrs. Hooper's distress to think of
the wretched condition of the bishop in prison, how he had nothing
allotted him for his bed but a little pad of straw, a rotten covering,
with a tick containing only a few feathers, until some kind friends
sent him bedding ; while the foul air infected him with divers dis-
eases, the receptacle of the filth of the whole establishment being on
the one side of his cell, and the town ditch on the other. 3 Nor was
she ignorant of the great barbarity with which Babbington, the
warden of the Fleet, in particular treated him, 4 and how he reported
to Gardiner the names of those benevolent individuals who contri-
buted to her husband's necessities, that they might be afterwards
proceeded against as heretics.

Advised by the bishop and her friends, who all augured the worst
as to the future prospects of the Reformers in England, Mrs. Hooper
now prepared to remove to the continent. Having taken a sorrow-
ful farewell of her husband, not expecting to see him again in this
world, as she never did, she embarked for Holland, taking with her
Rachel, her eldest child, but leaving behind her in England her in-
fant and only other child, Daniel, who had been born since she came
to England. Arriving at A ntwerp, she accompanied a party of Pro-

1 Foxe, vol. vL, p. 646.

* In the reign of Edward VI. an act of Parliament was passed, permitting the mar-
riage of the clergy, aud legitimatizing their children. But in the reign of Mary, though
subsequently to the period referred to in the text, this law was repealed, and the mar-
riages contracted by priests were declared unlawful, and their children bastardized.

a Coverdale's Letters of the Martyrs, p. 97, edit. 1844.

* Foxe, vol. vi., p. 647. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. iii., part i., p. 284 Coverdale's
Letters of the Martyrs, p. 96.

ENGLAND.]

Anne de Tserclas.

379

testant friends from that city to Frankfort. At Frankfort she met
with many Protestants from England and other lands, who had fled
thither to escape persecution. From the love of their society, and
to share in their religious advantages, she rented a house in that

The Romeiberg and Church of St. Nicholas, Frankfort.

city, where she purposed to continue till she saw how Providence
might be pleased to dispose of her husband. She connected herself
with the foreign church there, under the pastoral superintendence
of Valerandus Pollanus, who was married to one of her relatives. 1

' During the reign of Edward VI., Valerandus Pollauus was minister of the French
and Walloon church at Glastonbury, Somersetshire, which had fled from Strasburg
by reason of the Interim. The Duke of Somerset, who, on the dissolution of the
monasteries, had been gifted with the abbey of Glastonbury, one of the finest of those
magnificent works of architecture, converted it into a woollen manufactory for the
members of Pollanus's congregation, who were mostly woollen weavers, promising to
purchase wool and other requisites to carry on their manufactures, and allotting them
rooms for their dwellings, and plots of land for feeding their cows. The fall of the duke

380 Ladies qft/te Reformation. [ENGLAND.

The English government having permitted her and the bishop to
. correspond by letter, she was not ignorant of his condition and feel-
ings when, in prison. Of this correspondence, by which, in the
circumstances, they perhaps comforted and encouraged each other
more effectually than they could have done by personal intercourse,
the only portion extant is one of Hooper's letters to her, formerly
referred to, written October 13, 1553, about six weeks after his im-
prisonment. A few extracts will afford an idea of the beautiful
apostolic spirit and sentiments of Hooper ; and from the tone of the
letter it is evident that he felt that he was writing to one whose spirit
and sentiments had been cast in the same mould. " As he that was
born after the flesh persecuted, in times past, him that was born
after the spirit, even so it is now (Gen. xxi.). Therefore, forsomuch
as we live in this life amongst so many great perils and dangers, we
must be well assured by God's "Word how to bear them, and how
patiently to take them as they are sent to us from God. We must
also assure ourselves that there is no other remedy for Christians in
the time of trouble than Christ himself hath appointed us. In St.
Luke he giveth us this commandment : ' Ye shall possess your
lives in patience' (chap. xxi.). . . , . When troubles happen, he
biddeth us be patient, and in no cause violently or seditiously to
resist our persecutors (Rom. viii.), because God hath such care and
charge of us that he will keep, in the midst of all troubles, the very
hairs of our head, so that one of them shall not fall to the ground
without the will and pleasure of our heavenly Father. And seeing
he hath such care for the hairs of our head, how much more doth he
care for our life itself? Wherefore, let God's adversaries do what
they list, whether they take life or take it not, they can do us no hurt ;

put a stop for a time to their industry ; but in November, 1551, receiving renewed en-
couragement from the privy council, they began again to prosper. Mary's accession to
the throne threatened disaster to these foreign Protestants, and Pollanus, accompanied
or followed by many of them, left England and settled at Frankfort. When in Eng-
land he translated into Latin the liturgy used by his church, and published it in Feb-
ruary, 1551. Zurich Letters, pp. 82, 377, 378. Strype's Mem. Eccl., vol. 1, pp.
378, 331.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserdas, 381

for their cruelty hath no further power than God permitteth them ;
and that which cometh unto us by the will of our heavenly Father
can be no harm, no loss, neither destruction unto us ; but rather
gain, wealth, and felicity."

After recommending to her, when she found herself pressed down
by affliction, to read the 6th, 22d, 30th, 31st, 38th, 69th, 77th, and
88th, psalms, as also Eccles. iv. and Col. iii., which were well fitted
to produce patience and to impart comfort, he says "Eemember
that although your life, as the life of all Christian men, is hid, and
appeareth not what it is, yet it is safe (as St. Paul saith) with God
in Christ ; and when Christ shall appear, then shall our lives be
made open [i.e., rendered conspicuous] with him in glory. But in
the meantime, while setting our affections upon the things above, we
must patiently suffer whatever God shall send unto us in this mortal
life." And in the close, after expressing his apprehension that his
imprisonment would issue in his shortly being put to death, he adds,
" God's will be done ! I wish, in Christ Jesus, our only Mediator and
Saviour, your constancy and consolation, that you may live for ever
and ever, whereof in Christ I doubt not ; to whom, for his most
blessed and painful passion, I commit you. Amen." 1

From such communications as these, so overflowing with affection,
so rich in Christian consolation, and so strong in Christian faith and
fortitude, Mrs. Hooper derived great support. It was comforting to
her to know that he had got so much above the fear of death. At
the same time, his frequent allusions to his probably speedy martyr-
dom must have excited in her breast deep emotions of anguish ; for
she could not regard his fears as exaggerated. Unwilling as she
might be to relinquish the hope of his liberation, she could hardly
fail, the longer he lay in prison, especially as he was now kept in
more close and severe confinement than when she left England, of
seeing the more reason to contemplate the result with gloomy appre-
hensions. She knew that Gardiner, Bishop of "Winchester, and Bon-
ner, Bishop of London, who now managed everything and had every-
1 Foxe, vol. vi., pp. 665-668.

382 Ladies oftJte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

thing their own way, were violent, sanguinary, ferocious, and that
they hated her husband for his important services in behalf of the
Reformation ; though in the reign of Edward VI. their rancour
against him, from their having fallen into disgrace, was venomless.
She knew that, since the accession of Mary, these men, who had so
fiercely and relentlessly persecuted the Protestants in the reign of
Henry VIII., were giving indications, now that they had again risen
to power, of an immensely increased ferocity, as if in revenge for the
temporary ascendency of the Eeformation in the reign of Edward
VI. Had the bishop, indeed, recanted, and had he shown himself
as ready to support restored Eomanism as he had been zealous in
advancing the Eeformation, he might have disarmed their fury, saved
his life and his bishopric, or have even, as the reward of apostasy,
risen to higher dignity and wealth in the church ; but she knew that
he was too conscientious and too magnanimous to betray this un-
principled pliancy of disposition for any worldly consideration. She
had learned, too, though none had yet been brought to the stake for
the Protestant faith, that the Eeformers in England, from the daily
augmenting fury of Gardiner and his party, were constantly expect-
ing to see the fires of Smithfield and other places lighted. Nor could
the reflection escape her, that to bring such a man as Mr. Hooper to
that horrible punishment would, by those miscreants, be accounted
a masterly stroke of policy, as it would be cutting off one of "the
head deer," a man eminently fitted for, and uncommonly zealous in,
disseminating the reformed principles, and would be calculated to
inspire more general terror than the execution of an obscure indi-
vidual. All these things considered seemed to annihilate hope, and
served to create a conviction, little short of certainty, that in pro-
secution of the measures now adopted for the extermination of heresy
and of heretics, he had been marked out and doomed for destruction.
Under the agitation and sorrow caused by such reflections, Mrs.
Hooper was sustained, not only by epistolary intercourse with the
bishop, but also by the sympathy she experienced from many Chris-
tian friends, and especially from her venerated and much-respected

ENGLAND.] * Anne de Tserdas. 383

friend, Bullinger, who was deeply concerned on hearing accounts of
the melancholy state of matters in England, and especially of the
trying situation of the bishop and herself, with whom he had enjoyed
such delightful intercourse during their stay at Zurich. Her present
circumstances, and the state of her mind on account of the afflicted
condition of herself and of the Keformers in England generally, may
be gathered from a letter which she wrote to that excellent man, in
answer to a very gratifying one she had received from him. The
letter is as follows :

" Much health. I recognized, my venerable friend, in the letter
you lately wrote me, your wonted kindness. You show yourself so
anxious about me that I could not expect more even if you were my
father. And, indeed, that letter was doubly acceptable, both because
I perceived that I was not neglected by you, and also because God
had at that time visited me with a calamity, in which I was forced
not only to lament the common condition of the church at large, but
also my own individual affliction. My woman's mind being battered
with these two engines, what wonder if it seemed immediately about
to give way ? But the Spirit of the Lord was with me, and raised
up his ministers to give me comfort, among whom you were one, by
whose letter I was especially refreshed. May the Lord Jesus repay
you with his blessing ! For after I had received and read it over,
I began, by God's assistance, to bear myself up against such a weight
of calamity ; and I am hitherto supporting myself, as far as I am
able, by the Word of God, often reading over again your letter to
add spurs to this dull flesh. You will perform an act, therefore,
worthy of your kindness, if you will continue in this manner, by more
frequent letters, to uphold me whom you have in some degree already
raised up.

" I thank you for expressing your wish that I were with you yon-
der ; nor is there any other place I should prefer. But since the
Lord, by my husband's bidding and the advice of my friends, has at
length driven me from England, and conducted me safe to Antwerp,
I availed myself of an opportunity of accompanying a party every

384 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

way suitable, and joined my female relative at Frankfort, where now,
by the mercy of God, the senate has granted liberty to the foreign
church for their whole ecclesiastical ministry, both of the Word and
sacraments. On this account I shall prefer remaining here in my own
hired house until I see how the Lord shall deal with my husband,
concerning whom, as I have not yet received any intelligence, I am
not a little anxious. But yet I know that he is under God's care,
and I therefore acquiesce in the providence of my God ; and although
this burden of widowhood is very painful, yet I comfort myself, as
far as I am able, by prayer and the Word of God. I entreat you, for
Christ's sake, to aid me, both with your prayers and correspondence.
Salute, I pray you, most dutifully, my very dear gossip, your wife,
with all your family. I salute Masters Bibliander, Pellican, Gualter,
Sebastian the schoolmaster, and all the brethren. I pray Almighty
God continually to afford you an increase of his Spirit. Farewell, my
much esteemed and revered friend in Christ. Frankfort, April 20,
the day after the opening of the church of the White Virgins to us,
when Master Valerandus Pollanus, the husband of my relative, and
the chief pastor of the church, preached a sermon, and baptized his
young son in the Khine. May God grant to this church a due
increase, and worthy of his name ! Do you pray for it. The pastor
himself, my kinsman, earnestly entreated me to salute you in his
name, and to commend his ministry to your prayers and those of
your colleagues. Again, farewell in Christ. 1554.

" Your god-daughter, Rachel, salutes you and your wife. Daniel
is still in England, and I shall send a certain most respectable
matron, who has hitherto been living with me, to bring him hither.
I commend my honoured husband to your prayers. Your very
loving friend, " ANNE HOOPER." '

In compliance with the desire expressed in this letter, Bullinger,
who was ever ready to minister to the reliet of the suffering Protest-
ants, whether by hospitality towards such as had fled from other coun-
tries to Switzerland to escape persecution, or by friendly epistolary
1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 110.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 385

correspondence with such as were at a distance from him, did not
neglect to continue to write, as he found opportunity, to a lady who
held a very high place in his esteem, and in whose welfare lie had,
from the time he first knew her, taken a paternal interest. Nor was
he unmindful of her and of her husband in his prayers. He testifies,
that since he had heard of the bishop's imprisonment, it was his
unceasing prayer at the throne of grace that their common heavenly
Father, through their common only Mediator, Jesus Christ, would
grant unto the bishop, and to his fellow-prisoners, faith and con-
stancy unto the end. He had indeed refrained from corresponding
with him, notwithstanding his having received from him two letters
written from prison. 1 This, however, did not proceed from forget-
fulness or diminished affection, but from his doubts of finding the
means of a safe conveyance for his letters, or from an apprehension
that their correspondence, if known to the government, might be
made a pretext for imposing upon Hooper additional hardships.
But having, in a subsequent communication to Mrs. Hooper, ex-
pressed his desire of writing to him, she earnestly urged him by all
means to write, assuring him it would greatly oblige Mr. Hooper,
who had often expressed to her how much he longed for an epistle
from his old and much beloved friend, as well as complained of hav-
ing never received from him the shortest answer in return to his
many letters, and she directed him as to the mode of a safe convey-
ance. " Your letter," says she, " my loving friend, was very grati-
fying to me, and I thank you for continuing to be so anxious about
me. I thank you, too, very much, for your anxiety about Master
Hooper. By the grace of God he bears everything, even his threat-
ened death, with constancy and fortitude. Your letter, I know, will
be very acceptable to him, as he has already told me more than once.

i Hooper had sent to Bullinger other letters, which, however, with the exception of
a third, do not appear to have reached him. It is worthy of notice, as a proof of
Hooper's generous sympathy with his Protestant brethren, that these letters were sent
with Protestant refugees, and with the special object of recommending the bearers to
the hospitality and kindness of Bullinger, and of the Christian Protestant brethren of
Zurich. Zurich Letters, pp. 102, 101. Foxe, vol. vi., p. 675.

386 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

I entreat you, for Christ's sake, deny him not this comfort. If I
receive your letter, I will early take care that it shall be delivered.
For hitherto, by the goodness of God, he has always been allowed to
write to me, and to receive my letters ; only take care that your let-
ters are delivered at Strasburg, either to Master Burcher l or to
Master John Garner, the minister of the French church." She adds,
" I have been hitherto tolerably well, and bear this calamity as firmly
as I can. The Lord will aid and succour my weakness. I have need
of the prayers and sweet consolations of my good friends, wherefore
I earnestly entreat you not to neglect me." 2

In a subsequent letter to Bullinger, dated Frankfort, November 12,
1554, she expresses the same earnest solicitude as here for an interest
in the continued sympathy and prayers of her Christian friends, and
acknowledges that she was wonderfully supported, though she often
felt her heart sinking under the pressure of grief, and almost ready
to die within her. " I return you everlasting thanks," says she, " very
dear and honoured friend, for your delightful letter, which has
afforded me much comfort. I acknowledge and experience in myselt,
and perceive also in many others., what the Lord Christ foretold ; 3
and I often soothe my mind, when wounded by anxiety, with the
sweet reflection that our God is faithful. I earnestly entreat you,
therefore, not to cease pleading for me with the Lord in your prayers,
and by a letter from time to time to arouse my spirit, which, to say
the truth, I very often feel to be all but dead through grief. And I
now require the aid of all godly persons, although I am never
entirely forsaken of the Lord, who sometimes refreshes me with the

1 John Burcher was an Englishman who, having embraced the gospel, liad been
driven by persecution, in the reign of Henry VIII., from his native land. He resided
at Strasburg, and was a partner with Richard Hilles, another English Protestant
refugee, as a cloth merchant. Zurich Letters, pp. 246, 259.

2 The letter is dated Frankfort, September 22, 1554. Zurich Letters, lirst series, p 111.

3 There seems here to be an allusion to what Bullinger had said in his letter to her.
He had probably reminded her, as a means of confirming her patience, that Christ had
forewarned his disciples: "The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have
persecuted me, they will also persecute you;" and, "In the world ye shall have tribula-
tion, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 387

anticipation of a better life. But you yourself know how suitable to
a diseased mind is the conversation of a sincere friend." 1

In the same letter she expresses how much satisfaction it gave her
to understand from his last that he was writing a letter to Mr.
Hooper. " I trust in the Lord that the letter which you are writing
to my dear husband will afford him no less consolation than the one
to myself, and in his name I thank you for that service. He is in-
deed worthy of the kind attention of all godly persons. I wish
indeed I may sometime have it in my power worthily to repay your
kindness ; my very readiness to do so would show that I am not
wanting in gratitude. But you know me well." 2

Bullinger's intended letter to Hooper, which was written in Latin,
and dated Zurich, October 10, 1554, reached him in safety. It is a
very affecting and a truly apostolic epistle. From its Christian pathos
Hooper could hardly read it with dry eyes, and yet its powerfully
persuasive spirit must have greatly confirmed his Christian resolution.
" Now is that thing happened unto you," says Bullinger, " my brother,
the which we did often times prophesy unto ourselves, at your being
with us, should come to pass, especially when we did talk of the
power of Antichrist, and of his success and victories. For you know
the saying of Daniel (chap, viii.), ' His power shall be mighty, but
not in his strength ; and he shall wonderfully destroy and make
havoc of all things, and shall prosper and practise, and he shall
destroy the mighty and the holy people after his own will.'" Having
adduced various powerful encouragements to suffer for the sake of
Christ, he thus concludes, " Therefore, seeing you have such a large
promise, be strong in the Lord, fight a good fight, be faithful unto
the end. Consider that Christ, the Son of God, is your captain, and
fighteth for you, and that all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs are

your fellow-soldiers Happy are we if we depart in the

Lord. May he grant unto you, and to all your fellow-prisoners,
faith and constancy." 3

i Zurich Letters, first aerie?, p. 112. * Ibid., p. 112.

3 Foxe, vol. vi., pp. 675, 676. Coverdale's Letters of the Martyrs, p. 126.

388 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Hooper's reply was written on the same day on which he received
the letter, namely, on the llth of December, same year, and it
breathes the spirit of a sublime and holy heroism, as will be seen
by quoting a few sentences. "Grace and peace from the Lord!
Your letter, my beloved brother, was very delightful to me, be-
cause it was full of comfort In this country the wound

which Antichrist received is entirely healed, and he is once more
regarded as the head of the church, who is not even a member
of the true church of Christ. You will learn from others both
my own situation, and the state of public affairs. We are still
involved in the greatest dangers, as we have been for almost the
last eighteen months. The enemies of the gospel are every day
giving us more and more annoyance ; we are imprisoned apart from
each other, and treated with every degree of ignominy. They are
daily threatening us with death, which we are quite indifferent
about ; in Christ Jesus we boldly despise the sword and the flames.
We know in whom we have believed, and we are sure that we shall
lay down our lives in a good cause. Meanwhile aid us with your
prayers, that He who hath begun a good work in us, will perform
it even unto the end. We are the Lord's, let Him do what seemeth
good in his eyes. I entreat you to comfort occasionally, by your
letters, that most exemplary and godly woman, my wife ; and exhort
her to bring up our children cai'efully, Rachel your little god-
daughter, an exceedingly well-disposed girl, and my sou Daniel, and
piously to educate them in the knowledge and fear of God." '

Here is no shrinking or recoiling no blanching or quailing at
the prospect of the stake. In looking forward to it, the earthly
objects nearest his heart were his wife and his children ; and yet the
conjugal and parental ties, which naturally tended to strengthen his
attachment to life, did not shake his courage, or cause him for a
moment hesitate in his heroic resolve to sacrifice life for God and
conscience. In one sense these ties may be said to have strength-
ened his courage and resolution; for had he recanted the only
1 Zurich Letters, first series, pp. 104-106.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 389

condition on which he could escape the stake the lawfulness of the
marriage of priests would have been one of the articles he would
have been required to abjure, and thus he would have acknowledged
his wife to have been only his mistress, his children bastards, and
himself to have been living in concubinage ; confessions from which
every sentiment of religion and of honour in his heart revolted.
"During the persecution," as has been justly said, "the married
clergy were observed to suffer with most alacrity. They were bear-
ing testimony to the validity and sanctity of their marriage, against
the foul and unchristian aspersions of the Romish persecutors ; the
honour of their wives and children was at stake ; the desire of leav-
ing them an unsullied name and a virtuous example, combined with
the sense of religious duty; and thus the heart derived strength from
the very ties which, in other circumstances, might have weakened it." '
Of the comfort which the bishop recommends Bullinger to ad-
minister to Mrs. Hooper, she had now more need than ever. The
fate she had long dreaded as awaiting him was about to be realized,
and this she was now anticipating. Things, as she learned from the
intelligence which had reached her, continued to wear a darker
aspect in England for the Protestants ; and from what she knew of
the men at the helm of public affairs, she was increasingly anxious
as to what might befall him. "There has not been," says she in her
letter to Bullinger, November, 12, 1554, quoted before, "of a long time
any certain intelligence from England, except that those persons who
arrived from thence on the 10th instant, assert that a meeting of Par-
liament had taken place respecting the coronation of the Spaniard; 2
and that the hand of an individual 3 had been burnt off, because he
refused to hear mass, and chose rather to be brought to the stake ;
also that some godly persons had lately been thrown into prison for
the sake of religion. If this be the case, I am more than commonly
auxious about my husband. May the Lord Jesus preserve us both ! "

1 Southey's Book of the Church, vol. ii., p. 151.

2 That is, Philip of Spain, Mary's consort.

3 This probably was Thomas Jenkins, a weaver of Shoreditch, for an account of
whose martyrdom, see Foxe, vol. vi., p. 71.

390 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

She was not long kept in suspense as to his fate; the bloody
tragedy hastened apace to its catastrophe. It was now determined to
close his long imprisonment by a violent death. The chief agents in
this work of blood were Gardiner and Bonner. 1 Their sanguinary
character, and their hatred of Hooper, would have inclined them to
perpetrate the deed at a much earlier period ; but it was not till the
Parliament which met in November, 1554, had revived the laws
against the Lollards and the law of the six articles, which had
been repealed in the reign of Edward VI., and which the preceding
Parliament had refused to revive, that they were armed with the
power. Sentence was pronounced against him by Gardiner, who
was then lord chancellor, condemning him to be burned alive at
Gloucester, on the morning of the 9th of February, 1555. 2 Gloucester
was fixed upon because it was the seat of his bishopric, and because
there he was best known. On the same principle was the place of
the execution of other martyrs selected. The persecutors meant to
strike universal terror by exhibiting these terrible examples all over
the country. But the policy was as short-sighted as it was cruel ;
for these spectacles, wherever exhibited, from the heroism displayed
by the martyrs, made new converts to the Protestant faith, and ren-
dered Popery an object of horror and detestation. For the awful
issue Hooper was not unprepared. Long before, his course of action
had been ripened into decision, and now, when the trying hour ar-
rived, he was enabled by the grace of God to witness a good con-
fession, undaunted by the terrors of a most appalling death.

1 This was exactly what Hooper had long before anticipated from these men when-
ever they got the power. In a letter to Henry Bullinger, dated London, November 7,
1549, he says, "The Bishop [Boniier] of London, the most bitter enemy of the gos-
pel, is now living in confinement, and deposed from his bishopric. This was done
when the affairs and fortunes of the Duke of Somerset were more prosperous than they
are at present. I had a sharp and dangerous contest with that bishop, both publicly
from the pulpit, in my turns at Paul's Cross, and also before the king's council.
Should he be again restored to his office and episcopal function, I shall, I doubt not,
be restored to my country and my Father who is in heaven." Zurich Letters, first
series, pp. 69, 70.

2 Foxe, vol. vi., p 652.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 391

A few days previously to his execution, namely, on the 4th of that
month, a preliminary step was taken, that of degrading him from
his clerical office. The ceremony of degradation was conducted in
the chapel in Newgate, by Bonner, at the request of Gardiner, in
presence of a notary and other witnesses. Hooper, and Mr. John
Eogers, prebendary and divinity lecturer of St. Paul's, and vicar of
St. Sepulchre's, London, who was degraded at the same time, being
brought into the chapel, Bonner, with great satisfaction, entered
upon his task. He invested the two confessors with the dress,
ornaments, and all the badges of distinction belonging to the order
of a priest, as if they had been about to execute their function. He
next proceeded to pull off the vestments, beginning with the outer
robe, till by degrees, and in regular order, he had stripped them of
their whole sacerdotal attire. This being done, he, with affected pious
solemnity, declared them, "In nomine -\- Patris, -f- Filii, + et Spiri-
tus Sancti," deprived of all clerical rank, and of all the privileges be-
longing thereto, and delivered them over to the secular power. 1
Rogers suffered at Smithfield on the same day, being the first who
was burned for Protestantism during the reign of the bloody Mary. 2
Gloucester being the place fixed upon for Hooper's execution, this
delayed his martyrdom for some days.

By the orders of the London sheriffs, the queen's guards carried
him to Gloucester, there to be handed over to the sheriffs of that
county, who, with Lord Chandos and other commissioners, were
appointed to see the sentence which had been pronounced against
him carried into effect. On being committed to the sheriffs of Glou-
cester, having expressed to them his thanks for the kindness shown
him by the guards who had conducted him from London, and having

1 This was the first time that the fires in Smithfield were lighted since the burning
of Anne Askew, in July, 1546, between eight and nine years before. Considering the
progress which the reformed principles had made during the reign of Edward VI., by
the free circulation of the Scriptures, and the means taken by the government to en-
lighten the people, the death of Rogers must have excited in the minds of multitudes
in London and in other parts of England, indescribable horror.

2 Foxe, vol. vi,, pp. 651, 652.

392

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

adverted to their being appointed to see him brought to-morrow to
the place of execution, he added, " My sole request to you is, that
there may be a quick fire, in order to put a speedy end to my life ;
and in the meantime I will be as obedient to you as you can desire.
I am not come hither as one compelled to die (for it is well known,
I might have had my life with worldly gain), but as one willing to
offer my life for the truth, rather than consent to the wicked Papis-
tical religion of the Bishop of Eome, received and set forth by the
magistrates in England, to God's high displeasure and dishonour ; and
I trust, by God's grace, to-morrow to die a faithful servant of God
and a true obedient subject to the queen." At the intercession of the
guards, who declared that such was his mildness that a child might
have held him in custody, he was not sent to the common jail of
Gloucester, but kept in the house of a person named Robert Ingram.

About nine o'clock in the morning of the 9th of February, he was
led forth from the house in which he had spent his last night, 1 to the

1 This house, which still exists, is exhibited in its present state in the above engraving.
"It is to the right of the picture, and the open window denotes the room supposed to
be the one Hooper occupied. The house is now divided into two tenements, but the
original doorway exists, in the centre, through which the procession issued. The door
is very thick, and studded with large iron nails." (Communicated by the artist )

ENGLAND.]

Anne da Tserclas.

393

place of martyrdom. 1 On his arrival, and before being bound to the
stake, a box, containing the queen's pardon, on condition of his re-
cantation, was laid before him on a stool But never for a moment
did the martyr waver. At
the sight of this pretended
boon he cried out, " If you
love my soul, away with
it ! " repeating the same
words a second time. His
death was lingering and his
torments dreadful, an ac-
count of which is enough to
make one's blood run cold.
After he was bound to the

stake and the fire lighted,

it kindled very slowly, the

morning being lowering and

cold, and there being a large

quantity of green fagots, not

less than two horses could

carry upon their backs. A

considerable time elapsed

before the fire caught the

reeds upon the fagots ; and, even when it began to burn, the wind,

being violent, blew the flame from him, so that he was in a great mea-

1 The site of the bishop's martyrdom, in its present state, is represented in the
above engraving. Tradition had handed down, from generation to generation, the
actual spot, and its accuracy was confirmed by the accidental discovery, not many years
ago, of the charred stake, with some part of the iron-work which had been used on the
sad occasion. An Irish gentleman, who happened to be passing through the city in
September, 1826, when the stake was discovered, erected on the spot, which is in the
church-yard of St. Mary de Lode, a neat monument in commemoration of the martyr,
with a suitable inscription. Counsel's Life of Bishop Hooper, pp. 47, 49. " This
monument is in the foreground of the engraving 1 . In the background is the western
gate of the abbey, from which the priests witnessed the martyr's sufferings. It is a
quaint specimen of early English architecture, and, though much dilapidated, has not
been altered or restored in any way ; and, together with many of the neighbouring

Fluoe of Hooper's Martyrdon
Glouceeter.

394 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

sure as yet unhurt. He was heard to pray with a collected, mild,
and calm voice, and apparently without pain " O Jesus, thou Son of
David, have mercy upon me, and save my soul ! " Shortly after, a few
dry fagots, there being no more reeds, were brought, and a new fire
was kindled ; but, kept down by the wind, it did little more to
the upper part of his body than scorch the skin and burn the hair
of his head. He again prayed as before, still apparently without
pain, " O Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me, and receive
my soul !" The second fire being spent, he wiped both his eyes with
his hands, and, his lower parts being now severely burned, though,
from the small quantity of fagots, the flame had burned but slightly
his upper parts, he looked upon the people, and cried out under the
torment he now felt, "For God's love, good people, let me have
more fire !" The fire, being kindled a third time, now burned with
greater violence, and the bladders of the gunpowder exploded ; but
from the manner in which they were placed, and from the strength
of the wind, this did not terminate his sufferings by putting an end
to his life. He again prayed, with a somewhat louder voice than
before, " Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me !" a prayer which he
repeated three times. These were the last words he was heard to
utter. But when his mouth had become black with the fire, and
his tongue swollen, so that he could not speak, his lips were observed
to move as if in prayer, till they were shrunk to the gums. From
the dreadful agony he beat upon his breast with his hands, until
one of his arms fell off, after which he continued beating upon his
breast with the other hand the fat, water, and blood meanwhile
dropping out at his fingers' ends until at last, by the renewal of the
fire, his strength being gone, his hand, which ceased to beat, clave
fast to the iron upon his breast, and, bowing forward, he yielded up
his spirit to God, having remained three quarters of an hour, or
upwards, alive in the devouring element. 1

houses, presents almost the same appearance it did in the time of Queen Maty."
(Communicated by the artist)
i Foxe, vol. vL, pp. 652-659.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 395

Such was the close of this dismal tragedy. Hundreds others of a
similar kind are unhappily to be found in the story of the terrible
oppression of this reign. Execution followed execution with appal-
ling repetition, bidding fair, had Mary's life been prolonged, to exter-
minate Protestantism from the English soil. Surely the blood of
these martyrs has not been shed in vain. Surely England's sympa-
thy for their memory is too strong, and her gratitude to Providence
for the merciful triumph of the principles of the Reformation too
deep, for her to permit Popery ever to regain its ascendency, and to
re-enact such horrible scenes in this land, so long the asylum of true
religion and of freedom.

Harrowing to the feelings as is the description of the martyrdom
of this holy man, there was something peculiarly engaging in the
gentle, meek, unrepining spirit with which he suffered a gentleness
and meekness of spirit which might have made his enemies relent,
had they not, by long repressing the sentiments of compassion in
their hearts, become incapable of feeling them. Like his Divine
Master, he was truly led as a lamb to the slaughter. Not one im-
bittered feeling did he harbour against the relentless sovereign and
her savage counsellors, the authors of his dreadful death. Nor do
we less admire that unconquerable constancy to the cause he had so
zealously espoused, which no prospect of escape on condition of recan-
tation could shake, and that ardent piety which streamed forth from
his heart, as from a fountain, in fervent supplications to God. The
object of his supreme solicitude was to honour Christ by his death ;
and he was sustained by the triumphant hope of reigning with him,
a blessed martyr above, in the joys of that kingdom prepared for the
faithful before the foundation of the world. Hooper, at his death,
was in the sixtieth year of his age, and was the first of the English
Protestant bishops who sealed the truth with their blood.

Mrs. Hooper, being now resident at Frankfort, was deprived of
the painful gratification of seeing the bishop before his martyrdom.
But, although she had been at that time in England, Gardiner and
Bonner, with their usual inhumanity, would probably, as in the case

396 Ladies of iJie Reformation. [ENGLAKD.

of Rogers' wife, have refused to allow her to speak with him ; and,
like the wives of other martyrs, she would have been able to see
him, and perhaps to obtain a brief interview with him, only by
watching, with her infant boy in her arms and her little daughter by
her side, on the road, as he passed to the place of execution. Nor
had she the melancholy satisfaction of making for him a garment in
which he might suffer, a service performed to some of the martyrs
by their wives, 1 and a service which, being all they could render
to those dearest to their hearts for the fiery trial, yielded at the
time, and afterwards, on reflection, a distressing satisfaction, similar,
though far more agonizing, to what is felt from having smoothed the
pillow of a dying friend, and administered to him the refreshing
cordial.

Her distress on hearing of the bishop's death, in all its circum-
stances, it is impossible to describe. Familiarized though she had
been with the event by long anticipation, the details of his barbarous
execution were such as to lacerate her feelings to the uttermost. That
tragedy, though she had not witnessed it, imagination vividly pic-
tured to her view, and it never passed from her memory. Every
night she lay down upon her widowed and lonely pillow every
morning she arose from her broken and disturbed slumbers every
time she sat down with her fatherless children to partake with them
of their homely frugal meal, or knelt with them, and lifted up her
voice and her heart to heaven in prayer by a thousand mementoes
she was reminded of her loneliness ; how he, who had made home to
them all a paradise of delight, had been torn from their embraces,
how he had expired in excruciating lingering torture, how his ashes

1 This the wife of Laurence Saunders did. Knowing that his death was determined
upon, he wrote to her, telling her that he was now ready to be offered up, aud desiring
her to send him a shirt. "You know," said he, "whereunto it is consecrated. Let
it be sewed down on both sides, and not open." On which Southey beautifully re-
marks, " The crimes of those miserable days called forth virtues equal to the occasion.
A wife who prepared the garment in which her husband was to suffer at the stake,
must, indeed, have been a true helpmate, and one who possessed a heart which could
feel and understand how much his fortitude would be confirmed and comforted by a
reliance upon hers." The Book of the Cfiurch, vol. ii., p. 154.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 397

were scattered she knew not whither. But she sorrowed uot as those
who had no hope. She had the deep certainty that the spirit of him
whom she mourned, released from its hard and mortal struggle in
in this scene of misery, was now spotlessly pure and perfectly blessed
in a better world ; and her own hopes of reaching that world were
blended with the memory of his virtues, and with the bright vision
of meeting him there, in all the raptures of a renewed, perfected, and
eternal friendship. Speaking of him as dead (April 11, 1555), two
months after his martyrdom, she adds, turning her thoughts to the
brighter side " Indeed, he is alive with all the holy martyrs, and
with his Christ, the head of the martyrs ; and I am dead here till
God shall again unite me to him." J She did not wish him to be
brought down from his exalted abode to this world of sin and suffer-
ing. She rather longed to follow him, and derived comfort from the
thought that the separation was only for a season. In regard to his
ashes, whatever in the meantime might become of them, she believed
that they were under the care of God, who at the last day would re-
produce them, fashioned into an incorruptible, immortal, and glorious
frame, the meet habitation of the glorified spirit.

Bullinger, her dear friend, no sooner heard of the bishop's violent
and lingering death, than he sent her a letter, breathing deep sym-
pathy and full of Christian consolation, which greatly supported her
desolate widowed heart, and for which she was exceedingly grateful.
" I thank you," says she, " for your most godly letter ; I certainly
stand much in need of such consolations, and of your prayers. I
pray you, therefore, by the holy friendship of the most holy martyr,
my husband, of whom being now deprived, I consider this life to be
death, do not forsake me. I am not one who is able to return your
kindness, but you will do an acceptable service to God, who espe-
cially commends widows to your protection. I and my Eachel re-
turn our thanks for the elegant new year's gift you sent us. Salute
your excellent wife, my very dear gossip, and all friends. Frankfort,
April 11, 1555." In a postscript she adds : "Your [god-daughter]
1 Zurich Letters, first series, p. 114.

398 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Rachel sends you an English coin, on which are the effigies of Ahab
and Jezebel." 1 The English money of this period bore the effigies of
Philip of Spain and Queen Mary ; and to these personages, whom
she had just cause to execrate, who had made herself a widow and
her children fatherless, she applies, under a deep sense of unmerited
and irreparable injury, these names, unhappily but too descriptive of
their character. These, indeed, were the epithets by which Philip
and Mary were familiarly known among the Protestant exiles of
Frankfort, where Mrs. Hooper was now residing. Knox, the illus-
trious Scottish Reformer, who, shortly before the date of this letter,
had been for some time minister of the English congregation in that
place, was wont to designate Mary of England " that wicked Jese-
bell," "that idolatress Jesabel, mischievous Marie, of the Spaynyardis
bloode ; a cruel persecutrix of Goddis people, as the actes of hir un-
happy regne can sufficiently witnesse." 2 And the English exiles
used still stronger language in speaking of her character, one of them
calling her " Athalia, malicious Mary, unnatural woman : no, no
woman, but a monster, and the devil of hell covered with the shape
of a woman." 3

Mrs. Hooper, now when the bishop had gone to his rest, was
anxious to have his wishes gratified in regard to the publication of
a certain work which, in consequence of the restraints imposed on
the liberty of the press in England, he had sent over to be printed
on the continent. In the letter last quoted she says, " When I re-
ceived, most loving gossip, the book of my dear husband, I desired,
as he bade me by his letter, that it should be published before this
fair. For which reason I sent it to Mr. Peter Martyr, that he might
get it done at Strasburg. He excused himself on account of the
doctrine of the eucharist, which is not received there. It might be
printed here by permission of the senate ; but it is better that you

' Zurich Letters, first series, p. 114.

2 Knox's History, Wod. Society edition, vol. i., p. 241; and vol. ii., p. 279.
a Works of the Rev. Samuel Johnston, p. 144, quoted in M'Crie's Life of Knox,
vol. i., p. 415.

ENGLAND.] Anne de Tserclas. 399

should first of all revise the book, and procure it to be printed yon-
der. As I am well aware that his memory is most precious to you,
you will, I doubt not, be equally ready to oblige him in this matter,
as if he were now alive." To what work of the bishop's she here
refers it is difficult to determine. He had sent along with his letter
to Bullinger, dated llth December, 1554, two small Latin treatises
for the "perusal, consideration, and correction" of that eminent man,
the one entitled, An Hyperaspismus touching the true doctrines and
use of the Lord's Supper, dedicated to the Parliament of England,
" that," says he, " we may publicly reply to our adversaries in the
court of Parliament ;" the other entitled, A Tractate upon discerning
and avoiding false religion, requesting Bullinger to cause them to be
printed as soon as possible. Mrs. Hooper probably has a reference
to one or other of these treatises. But neither of them appears to
have been printed ; nor, though search has been made for the manu-
script copies, has any trace of them been found. The epistle dedi-
catory to the latter is printed in Strype's Memorials. 1 Bale mentions
them both as among Hooper's works, written in Latin, from prison,
and he quotes the commencing sentence of each. 2

Our narrative of the life of Mrs. Hooper must here abruptly close.
Of her subsequent history we have been unable to discover any par-
ticulars, nor have we met with any information as to her children
posterior to the execution of their father. But the preceding me-
morials concerning her, imperfect though they be, reflect the highest
honour upon her memory, and claim for her a place among the
" great cloud of witnesses," who " obtained a good report through
faith." and who are entitled to the grateful remembrance and imita-
tion of posterity.

1 Vol. iii., part i., p. 283 ; and part ii., p. 267.

2 Bale's Script. Illustr., lib. i., Basil, 1559.

The Higli Street, Oxford (modern

KATHARINE VERMILIA.

WIFE OF PETER MARTYR.

JyAEBARITY towai'ds the dead bodies of heretics is
one of the countless forms in which Popish cruelty
has displayed itself. To deposit the human body,
when divested of life, with respect in the earth, is at
once an act of decency and humanity. This recom-
mends itself so strongly to the instinctive feelings of the mind of
man that, even in heathen countries, he has shrunk with horror at
the idea of depriving any of his fellow-creatures, even an enemy, of
the honour of interment. But the Popish Church has shrunk
neither from the idea nor from the practice of this atrocity. The
canon law, an infallible authority with Papists, denies the rites of
sepulture to the mortal remains of heretics, 1 and history tells us
1 Deer. Cap. Sacris de Sepultis.

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Vermilia. 401

how well this law has been obeyed. How often has the wail of
anguish proceeded from the Christian church, as from the Jews of
old, while she thought, under her persecutions, of her murdered
martyrs lying unburied, the prey of ravenous animals : " O God, the
heathen are come into thine inheritance; the dead bodies of thy
servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of heaven, the
flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth !" (Psalm Ixxix. 1, 2).
To this, as the fate of many of the "Waldenses, Milton refers in his
well-known and touching sonnet upon the persecutions they endured :

" Avenge, O Lord ! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."

In the reign of Queen Mary, "the bodies of those who died in prison,
either of natural disease or in consequence of hunger, were cast out
as carrion in the fields, all persons being forbidden to bury them." l

But Popish persecutors have carried their barbarity against the
dead bodies of heretics even further than by leaving them to lie
unburied, or not permitting their burial. They have treated them
with every conceivable mark of indignity. They have cast them
into ditches, or covered them with heaps of stones, dragged them
about, kicked them, and trampled them under foot, mangled them,
thrown them into pits, cast them forth to dogs and birds of prey,
roasted them upon spits, yea, what is almost incredible and horrible
to relate, some of these savage cannibals have fricasseed and actually
eaten them. The French Papists, as we learn from a Koman Catholic
historian, during the period of the league, made rosaries of the ears
of slaughtered Huguenots, on which they might repeat their Ave
Marias and Pater Nosters;" and in the time of the Irish massacre in
the reign of Charles I., when cruelties almost unequalled in the
history of depraved human nature were perpetrated, the Irish
Papists carried their barbarities, in this respect, to a still greater
extent. 3

* Sonthey's Book of the Church, vol. ii., p. 243. 8 Mathieu, Hist., liv. i., p. 119.

s Bruce's Free Thoughts on the Toleration of Popery, p. 123.

402 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

The frenzy of Popish persecutors has also driven them to open the
graves of heretics, or of persons suspected of heresy, who had been
fortunate enough during life to escape their fury, to take out their
bones and burn them ; an outrage which, though the dead body is
insensible, excites almost as strong a sensation of horror as the cast-
ing of the living into the burning pile, for it evinces, as we at once
feel, not less malignity and cruelty of heart. Councils and popes
have decreed that such persons should be tried, condemned, excom-
municated, and that their dust and bones should be committed to
the flames; and often have these decrees been carried into effect.
Many of the "Waldenses, after having been interred twenty-five or
thirty years, were dug up, and publicly burned, partly from malice,
and partly as a pretext for confiscating their property. Thus
also was the dead body of John Wickliffe treated, after it had lain
many years in the grave. No man before his time had done so
much to undermine the Papacy as Wickliffe, and we can easily
imagine the "leer malign" with which his resurrectionists would,
like the grave-digger in Hamlet, "jowl his skull to the gi'ound, as if
it had been Cain's jaw-bone that did the first murder," and when
all the fragments were collected, cast them into the devouring ele-
ment. Similar was the treatment of the dead bodies of Martin
Bucer and Paul Fagius (the former professor of divinity in the
university of Cambridge, the latter professor of Hebrew in the
same university), which, in the reign of Queen Mary, were dug
up and publicly burned in the market-place at Cambridge, on the
6th of February, 1556-7. This scene was enacted at a time when
the principal cities of England exhibited the horrible spectacle of the
burning of living holy martyrs, and it showed that, had these
learned Eeformers been then alive, they would have shared the same
fate as Eogers, Bradford, Eidley, Latimer, and Cranmer.

We have been led to make these remarks from their bearing upon
the following narrative, which relates not to the life of Mrs. Martyr,
but chiefly to the ignominious exhumation of her corpse by Cardinal
Pole and his coadjutors, during the reign of Queen Mary, and to the

ENGLAND.] Katharine Vermilia. 403

honourable re-interment of her remains in the beginning of the reign
of Queen Elizabeth. 1

KATHARINE VERMILIA, who was originally a nun, was married to
Peter Martyr, an Italian Reformer of honourable family, during his
residence at Strasburg, whither he had gone upon the invitation of
Bucer, and where he had obtained a situation as professor in the
academy, on his being obliged, in 1542, to leave his native country
to escape the dangers to which his heretical sentiments, and his use-
ful labours in opening the eyes of many to the knowledge of the
truth, particularly at Naples and Lucca, had exposed him. They
continued at Strasburg till the end of the year 1547, when Martyr
having received an invitation from Archbishop Cranmer to come to
England, they came to this country, where Martyr was appointed
professor of divinity in the university of Oxford. During her resi-
dence in England, Mrs. Martyr was distinguished for her good works,
especially for her liberality towards the poor. But her life was not
spared many years. She died on the 15th of February, 1553-4.
" She was dangerously attacked by quartan ague," says Martyr, in
a letter to a friend 2 after her death, " to which she had for a long
time been subject, and departed to be with Christ. God enabled
her to exercise such faith, piety, fortitude and constancy in the con-
fession of the truth, even to the last hour, that it was in a manner
a miracle to all who were present. Although I rejoice in her felicity,

1 The source from which we chiefly derive our materials is a rare contemporary Latin
volume, containing au account of the whole proceedings, written by James Calfhill,
suh-dean of Christ Church College, and addressed to Edmund Grindal, Bishop of
London. Calfhill was a learned man, and took a very active part in putting honour
upon the memory of Mrs. Martyr. Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, vol. viii., pp.
296, 297, and Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Parker, vol. i., pp. 198-201, have
briefly noticed the circumstances. In the volume referred to there are also various
documents illustrative of the life, death, burial, accusation, condemnation, exhumation,
burning, and honourable restoration of Martin Bucer and Paul Fagiu*, collected by
Conrad Hubert, a learned reformed minister of Strasburg. The whole work was
printed at Strasburg, in 12mo, in 1561, by John Oporinus, under the superintendence
of Hubert, whose dedication, which is addressed to Michael Dillerus, a learned divine,
is dated 15th February, 1562.

2 Conrad Hubert.

404 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

yet I cannot but feel great anguish of spirit in having been so unex-
pectedly left behind by her at this particular time. On account of
the great charity -which she always showed towards the poor, she
was deeply regretted by almost all the citizens, who regarded her
with no common affection ; but to me her death has caused a deso-
lation scarcely supportable." She was buried within the church
belonging to Christ Church College, Oxford, near the tomb of St.
Frideswide, to whom that church had been originally dedicated.

Cardinal Pole having appointed commissioners to visit the uni-
versities of Cambridge and Oxford, to restore to the colleges the
Popish constitutions which had been made void in the time of
Edward VI., to make diligent inquiry as to all in the colleges who
had not conformed to the Eomish religion, now the established faith
of the kingdom, and, without delay, to eject every individual on
whom the slightest suspicion of heresy rested ; this appointment led
to the exhumation and burning of the remains of Bucer and Fagius
at Cambridge, and to the exhumation and ignominious treatment of
Mrs. Martyr's at Oxford. In the work to which we have referred
as our principal authority, it is not said that the commissioners had
received instructions to perpetrate either of these barbarities. The
Cambridge commissioners, as is asserted in that work, having taken
up the case of Bucer and Fagius in consequence of a petition pre-
sented to them, praying that the dead bodies of these arch heretics,
who during life had corrupted many by their pernicious doctrine,
should be dug up, it may perhaps be inferred, though not with
perfect certainty, that their commission did not contain specific
instructions to that effect, but that they acted in the exercise of the
large discretionary powers with which their commission invested
them. The visitation of the university of Oxford being subsequently
to the visitation of the university of Cambridge, the intention formed
by the Oxford commissioners to exhumate the corpse of Mrs. Martyr
and burn it, was perhaps suggested by the proceedings of the com-
missioners at Cambridge in reference to the dead bodies of Bucer
and Fagius.

ENGLAND.] Katharine. Vermilia. 405

With the commissioners appointed to visit the university of
Oxford we have here specially to do. Though varied in their char-
acter and attainments, they were all men abundantly inclined to
enter with zeal upon the work of their mission. They are thus
described by Calfhill : " Brooks ! was a man of no common learn-
ing nor of contemptible eloquence ; he was of an acute understand-
ing and of easy amiable manners, if the iniquity of those times and
the company of bad men had not changed his nature. Ormaneto 2
was remarkable for nothing except intolerable arrogance, in which
he so wonderfully excelled, that it is impossible to imagine it carried
to greater excess. Cole 3 was unmatched for erudition in his own
opinion, but, in the judgment of others, of ordinary attainments.
His temper was so extremely severe, that though he had burnt the
sacred books and greatly harassed the Reformers, he was dissatisfied
with himself as unduly moderate. He could bear nothing with
greater difficulty than to understand that any person read Cicero or
Plato. The reason of this opposition to classical learning is not
very well known, unless, perhaps, it proceeded from his over-
weening fondness for his own ingenious paradox, ' that ignorance is
the mother of true piety.' Morven 4 was advanced in years, a
frugal old man, who managed his household establishment with a
parsimonious economy, and possessed little ability for maintaining
controversies on theological questions, yet he was a most bitter
defender of the ancient absurdities of his own religion. Wright 5
was and is adorned with a combination of natural talents and much
acquired learning, nor would one desire more in that man except
constancy, which it becomes all good men to preserve, and especially
Christian pastors, who should have stable and certain, not erratic
and vacillating sentiments on the subject of religion."

In coming to the resolution to dig up and burn the corpse of Mrs.
Martyr, these commissioners, like those of Cambridge, were guided
by the canon law, which enjoins that if any excommunicated or here-

1 Bishop of Gloucester. 2 Nicholas Ormaneto. 8 Henry Cole.

* Robert Morveu, president of Corpus Christ! College. 6 A doctor of Civil Law.

406 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tical person shall happen to be buried in a church or cemetery, the
body shall be dug up. 1 This law was founded on the principle that
the interment of heretics within Popish churches and church-yards
polluted these consecrated places; and, whenever any such inter-
ment had taken place, they were to be shut up, while the per-
formance of divine service in the churches, and the burial of the dead
in the churches or cemeteries, were- interdicted, till they were first
reconciled and consecrated anew by a bishop, by the sprinkling of
holy water, and other ceremonies usually observed on such occasions.
It was maintained, that to allow heretics to partake of Christian
sepulture was to put an open affront on the Divine honour; was
to expose to danger the souls of others, who, seeing no mark of
reprobation fixed upon heretics after their death, might think that
heresy was a harmless thing ; was an offence to the faithful, whose
consciences were wounded by seeing holy places thus desecrated.
But while guided in their purpose of exhumating and burning Mrs.
Martyr's corpse by the canon law, the actors were also, doubtless,
impelled by revenge for the important services her husband had
rendered to the Eeformation in England during the reign of Edward
VI. They conceived that they could not otherwise sufficiently tes-
tify their abhorrence of the doctrines he had taught at Oxford, nor
sufficiently hold them up to the detestation of the people. They
would have looked with more exquisite pleasure on the flames
enveloping Martyr himself, a fate to which he would, in all proba-
bility, have been subjected had he been in England, but, as he was
happily in a safe asylum on the continent, the next desirable thing
was to burn the remains of his wife, who, it was believed, was not
less heretical than himself.

The work in which these commissioners were engaged belonging
more to the brutal than to the intelligent part of their nature, they
revelled and rioted, in the course of their visitation, like men who
had brutal work to perform, or rather like men engaged in the work

1 Deer. Cap. Sacrls de SepuUis.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Vermilia. 407

of the wicked one. "With their blood inflamed by strong drink, and
driven by violent, exasperated, and headlong passion, they collected
as many Bibles and other books treating of scriptural evangelical
truth as they could discover, brought them together in the market-
place, and committed them to the flames. In the colleges they found
many nonconformists, whom they punished by summary ejection.
They next proceeded to carry into effect their purpose as to the
burning of the dead body of Mrs. Martyr. To give the face of
justice to their proceedings, they thought it necessary to go through
some form of trial, as had been done in reference to the burning of
the bodies of Bucer and Fagius. In the case of the latter, the Cam-
bridge commissioners cited the dead Reformers three different times
to appear to answer for themselves, or any others who might be will-
ing to appear to answer for them ; and after these three citations, the
accused not rising from their graves to defend themselves, nor any
person appearing in their defence, "for fear," as Burnet observes, "of
being sent after them," the commissioners entered upon the trial by
the examination of witnesses. Whether the Oxford commissioners
went through the farce of citing Mrs. Martyr to appear to answer
for herself, we are not informed ; but they summoned all who, so far
as they could learn, had any acquaintance or intimacy either with
her or with Martyr, to appear before them, to be examined as
to what they knew about her heretical principles. Many appeared
in obedience to the summons, and they were closely questioned and
cross-questioned upon oath as to her religious tenets, but no evidence
of her heresy was extracted, all of them, without exception, having
declared that, on account of the imperfect manner in which she spoke
the English language, they knew not what were her religious senti-
ments.

Had the commissioners succeeded in proving her heretical pravity,
they would have proceeded exactly as the Cambridge commissioners
had done on their establishing the charge of heresy against Bucer
and Fagius. They would have condemned her as an obstinate here-
tic, ordered her dead body to be dug up and delivered to the secular

408 Ladies of ilve, Reformation. [ENGLAND.

power, as were living heretics, not mentioning, though it was well
known, that it was for the purpose of being burned. Then they
would have sent a messenger with the sentence to the court at
London, in which Cardinal Pole was now the ruling spirit; and
in the course of a few days the messenger would have returned,
bringing with him orders to burn the dead body of the condemned
heretic.

But having failed in proving her heresy, the commissioners had no
authority from the canon law for passing sentence that her dead body
should be dug up and delivered to the secular power to be burned.
They therefore broke up their sittings without pronouncing upon
her any condemning sentence whatever, a circumstance somewhat
wonderful, for Popish persecutors have rarely hesitated to punish
persons who had excited the suspicion of heresy, however lame the
proofs to support the charge. On their return to London they in-
formed the cardinal of all that they had done in the execution of
their delegated powers ; how they had thrust out many from the
colleges for heresy, how they had burned the Bible, and how they
had made a searching inquiry into the supposed heretical opinions
of Mrs. Martyr, but that, eliciting no evidence against her, they had
dropped the case. The cardinal, however, if he was pleased to forego
the revenge of burning her body, was not inclined to allow her to
escape without some indignity. Shortly after, he wrote a letter to
Dr. Marshall, deacon of Christ Church, Oxford, instructing him
u that he should cause the body of Katharine, wife of Peter Martyr,
to be dug up, because it lay near the body of the most holy Frides-
wide." This surely was no proof of the gentleness of manners, and
humanity of disposition, for which Pole's friends have eulogized
him : it looks like cruelty of no ordinary kind thus to disgorge its
venom, not only upon the living, but upon the dead in their graves.
In giving these instructions to Marshall he would, had Mrs. Martyr
been proved to be a heretic, have been yielding obedience to the
canon law, but the proof of Mrs. Martyr's heresy had never been
made out by his commissioners. He had not, therefore, the sanction

ENGLAND.] Katliarine Vermilia. 409

even of the canons of his own church for ordering her dead body to
be thus contumeliously treated.

Pole could not have committed the business to a more fitting per-
son than Marshall, a violent and furious man, quite familiarized with
cruelty, and who entered with heart and soul into every persecuting
measure. Delighted with the commission he had received, he was
eager to carry it into execution, and he had many associates ready
to lend him assistance in so grateful a service. He communicated
the cardinal's command to his pot companions, with whom he had
mingled in many a scene of wild and roaring debauchery, and they
unitedly resolved to execute the task on an evening, for the sake
of secrecy. On the evening appointed they were assembled toge-
ther and carousing over their cups. The work in prospect was
the great theme of their talk. A company of drunken jockeys
could hardly have been more boisterous. The toasts went round ;
and while drinking each other's health, they did not forget to drink
the extermination of heretics, and damnation to the soul of the
old heretical dame whose rotten bones and mouldering dust they
were going to disturb. " By the Virgin Mary, by St. Frideswide,"
said they, u we shall give her a surprise to-night ; we shall awake
Fustiluggs from her dreams; that we will." They gave her the
name of Fustiluggs because she was somewhat corpulent. Late in
the evening, when it was dark, leaving off their- Bacchanalian orgies,
Marshall and his associates, accompanied by workmen previously
hired, who carried their spades and mattocks along with them,
proceeded to the church, to the grave of Mrs. Martyr. The work of
disinterment commenced ; her remains were dug up, and, by the orders
of Marshall, they were placed upon the shoulders of one of the work-
men, and earned away to a dunghill in the neighbourhood of his
stables. Here, as being unworthy of Christian sepulture, they were
buried as unceremoniously, and with more malignity, than if they
had been the carcass of a dog. " Such was the brutal scene," says
Calf hill, " enacted by wicked men in those infamous times, when im-
piety had so taken possession of England that the baser and the more

410 Ladles of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

cruel any one was, so much the better and the holier a man was he
accounted." Even among heathen nations this revolting transaction
would have excited general abhorrence, and those concerned in it
would have been shunned as polluted, and regarded as just objects
of the Divine vengeance.

-"What guilt

Can equal violations of the dead ?
The dead, how sacred ! sacred is the dust
Of this heav'n-labour'd form, erect, divine !
"When ev'ry passion sleeps that can offend ;
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt ;
Then, spleen to dust ! the dust of innocence,
An angel's dust ! this Lucifer transcends,
When he contended for the patriarch's bones.
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall." 1

The remains of Mrs. Martyr continued to lie in this vile receptacle
until the reign of Elizabeth, when they were restored to honourable
sepulture. Shortly after Elizabeth's elevation to the throne, she
appointed ecclesiastical commissioners, among whom were Matthew
Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, Bishop of Lon-
don, and Richard Goodrich, a layman, investing them with full power
and authority to adopt measures for more fully establishing the Pro-
testant faith, and delivering the nation from the tyranny and super-
stition of Popery. These commissioners were not ignorant of the
ignominious treatment of the corpse of Mrs. Martyr, by Cardinal
Pole and his parasites, and they came to the resolution of rendering
due honour to her memory by a public and honourable re-interment.
In coming to this resolution they were influenced partly by reverence
for her sex and her excellent character, partly by respect for her
husband, Mr. Martyr, who, at the request of Edward VI., had come
to England, and had laboured so assiduously and faithfully in in-
structing the youths of the university of Oxford in the Protestant
faith, as to entitle him to the gratitude of that university and of the
kingdom. They felt it to be a disgrace to their country that this
1 Young's Night Thoughts, Night iii.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Vermilia. 411

distinguished man should receive such "a recompense of ingratitude "
as to have the corpse of his wife, who was a godly woman and a
stranger, who was kind to many, especially to the poor, and injurious
to none, either by word or deed, spitefully dug out of her grave and
buried in a dunghill without any authority, even from the canon
law or from the laws of England, bad as many of them, were in the
reign of Mary. " To all good natures," says Foxe, " the fact seemed
odious, and of such as be imbued with humanity, utterly to be
abhorred."

These commissioners sent instructions to certain trustworthy Pro-
testants in the university of Oxford to make inquiry into the whole
circumstances connected with Mrs. Martyr's exhumation, and to wash
out this stain of infamy from Oxford by removing her body from the
dunghill into which it had been thrown, and publicly burying it in
some honourable place. The persons to whom this business was
intrusted, called before them all who had been concerned in the exe-
crable transaction, or who could communicate to them any particulars
respecting it. By this means they succeeded in gaining the neces-
sary information. They were shown, in the north part of Christ
Church, not far from the tomb of Frideswide, the spot where Mrs.
Martyr had been buried upon her death. They were next conducted
to the dunghill, in the neighbourhood of the stables of Dr. Marshall,
into which her body, when disinterred, had been cast. The corpse
was dug up ; and the disjoined members were carefully collected into a
chest, carried to the church, and committed to the care of the church
wardens, who were ordered to watch over them until an opportunity
should be afforded, on one of the most celebrated holy days, for a
large number of people to assemble, and re-inter them, with every
mark of honour, in Christ Church.

While James Calfhill, sub-dean of Christ Church College, was
sedulously making all the preparations requisite for an honourable
funeral, he accidentally discovered, in the most concealed part of the
church, two little silk bags, in which were carefully covered and
wrapped up a parcel of bones, said to be the bones of St. Frides-

412

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

wide. 1 As this Popish saint, according to the tradition, lived so far
back as the eighth century, it is very doubtful whether these were her
bones. But the priests affirmed that they were hers, and by means of
them practised the same impudent tricks and impositions which they

systematically practised by
means of the relics of other
saints, thereby levying
large contributions from
the people, who, from their
ignorance and superstition,
eagerly believed in the vir-
tues attributed to the bones
of the saint, and in the
miracles wrought by them.
The canons of that church
religiously preserved them,
and on holy days were
wont to take them out of
the bags and place them
upon the altar, in public
view, that they might be
worshipped by all with
great reverence. The su-
perstitious multitude
might then be seen throw-
ing themselves prostrate before the exhibited relics with their
hands clasped together, and remaining in that posture as if in earnest

1 St. Frideswide is said to have lived in the first half of the eighth century, and to
have been the daughter of Didane, a petty king in those part3, by his queen Saffride.
About the year 730, Didane, according to the tradition, founded a nunnery at Oxford,
to the honour of the Virgin Mary and All Saints, consisting of twelve nuns of noble
birth, under the government of his own daughter, Frideswide. Upon her death, Frides-
wide being buried within the building, and afterwards canonized, the nunnery in pro-
cess of time was dedicated to her memory, and generally called by her name. It
gradually became enriched by the liberality of different mouarchs, and continued to
flourish until it was suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey, who obtained from Pope Clement

The Sbilne of St. Frideswide.

ENGLAND.] Katharine Vermilia. 413

prayer. Among other delusions connected with this patron saint, the
priests attributed to her such power and sanctity, that they affirmed
that the church would fall into ruins were her bones removed from
within the walls, and the gulls of the priests as fully believed this
as they believed in their own existence. Calf hill, rightly judging that
it would be unchristian to imitate the barbarity of the Papists, did
not wish to offer any indignity to the bones of the Popish saint, not-
withstanding the impious and blasphemous uses to which they
were applied, for though they might not be her bones, yet they were
probably those of some human being. He therefore ordered them to
be mingled with the bones of Mrs. Martyr a revolting idea to the
Papists ; but this mixture served, and was intended for, a twofold
purpose. By rendering it impossible to distinguish between the bones
of the saint and those of the heretic, it would secure Mrs. Martyr's
from the subsequent indignity of disinterment, should Popery again
triumph in England, and it would prevent in future the idolatrous
worship of St. Frideswide's. The bones of the heretical lady could
not be dishonoured by being taken up and cast into some vile place,
without a similar degradation being done to the bones of the Popish
saint ; and should any attempt be afterwards made to dig up the
bones of the latter for Popish idolatrous purposes, they might be
mistaken for those of Mrs. Martyr, and thus the blunder committed

VII. two bulls, the one dated 1524, and the other 1525, for the dissolution of tweuty-
two religious houses, whose revenues, amounting to nearly 2000 per annum, might
be appropriated to the establishment of two colleges which he proposed to erect, the
one at Ipswich, the place of his birth, and the other at Oxford, the place of his educa-
tion. The college at Oxford was built on the spot where St. Frideswide's convent
stood, and it was dedicated to the praise, glory, and honour of the Holy Trinity, the
Virgin Mary, St Frideswide, and All Saints. Its name at first was " Cardinal Col-
lege," but it was afterwards changed into that of "Christ Church College." The
church of the college is the same which belonged to the monastery of St. Frideswide,
and in it both the saint and her parents lie entombed. " Prior Philip," says Acker-
maini, writing in 1814, "erected in the church the beautiful shrine of the patroness
St. Frideswide, still remaining, into which he transferred her remains in 1180. It is
a neat and elegant structure, erected over a tomb, which had on it the effigy of a man
and woman in brass, now torn off, and are said to have been those of Didane and Saf-
fride, the parents of the saint/' Ackermann's History of the University of Oxford,
vol. ii., pp. 55-57, 72, 74.

414 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

of worshipping the bones of a heretic. An oration having been
delivered to a numerous auditory, declaring the reasons of the pre-
sent proceedings, the remains of Mrs. Martyr, with the bones of St.
Frideswide enclosed in the same chest, were deposited in one common
grave in the upper part of the church, towards the east, with great
solemnity, amidst a large concourse of the principal inhabitants of
Oxford, on January 11, 1561.

On the day following, which was the Sabbath, one of the fellows
of the university, named Eogerson, delivered a pious, learned, and
appropriate discourse to a numerous auditory. He dwelt upon the
common destiny of mankind as subject to mortality, and upon the
atoning blood and sacrifice of Him who hath brought life and im-
mortality to light by the gospel. He took the opportunity, afforded
by the occasion, of animadverting upon the oppression, injustice, and
cruelty of the late reign, and of congratulating his hearers upon the
happy change which a merciful Providence had brought about by the
accession of the Princess Elizabeth to the throne. He made honour-
able mention of that noble army of martyrs who were committed
to the flames for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus
Christ, eulogized their integrity and purity of life, their patience,
fortitude, and faith in the prison and at the stake. He spoke in com-
mendation, though not with exaggerated praise, of Mrs. Martyr,
whose dead body, after being buried for the space of two full years,
had been dug from the grave, and treated by Popish persecutors with
greater ignominy than they would have done to the carcass of a brute
beast. He proposed her life as an excellent pattern for imitation,
and exposed Popish cruelty as a rock to be avoided. His object in
bringing forward these facts was not to wound the hearts of the
pious by reviving the memory of that tyrannical domination from
which England had suffered so much, but rather to animate them to
magnify God for having delivered them from it, and to stir them up
to combine their energies for the utter overthrow of the autichris-
tian interest.

To put farther honour upon Mrs. Martyr, Latin and Greek poems,

ENGLAND.] Katharine Vermilia. 415

commemorative of her worth and condemnatory of the inhumanity
exercised towards her dead body, composed by eminent scholars of
the university of Oxford, were posted upon the church doors. As
might be expected from men who had escaped, as from a shipwreck
or earthquake, the barbarous and shocking cruelties of the preceding
reign, these verses, which are printed in the work already referred
to as our chief authority in this sketch, are written with something
like sensations of shuddering horror at the persecuting and sangui-
nary spirit that had raged, and with strong feelings of gratitude to
Providence for the deliverance of the nation, when brought to the
brink of ruin by Popery and tyranny. The first of them, written by
James Calfhill, begins thus : " The Pope at that time ruling su-
preme, the violent herd of wolves entered and destroyed the pious
flock of the Lord. The mitred leaders entered, tyrants entered, fill-
ing houses with slaughter and blood. Nor could the bodies of living
saints, burned on the dreadful funeral pile, satisfy these savage be-
ings ; they cast out heretical corpses, not long buried, from their
resting-places, and exercised their ferocity on rotten bones. Neither
honourable feeling, nor reason, nor piety, could subdue their outra-
geous violence. A woman who, an exile from her native country,
brought great honour and succour to our city a woman on whose
life there was no stain, and who, when on her death-bed, had given
a clear testimony of her faith in God, being torn from her grave and
despoiled of, what is above all, her honourable reputation, suffered
the most shameful indignities, by being thrown into a filthy place."
The writer next compares these cruel persecutors to Achilles, who,
having slain Hector, dragged the dead body of the Trojan hero at his
chariot round the walls of Troy, and only restored it to Priam, Hec-
tor's father, for honourable interment, on receiving a large pecuniary
ransom. 1 Next passing to the altered auspicious state of affairs, he
adds, " Nor could that truculent treading down power continue long,
Christ being the avenger. Better fortune, exceeding their expecta-
tions, has now returned to the wretched, and fostering piety possesses
1 Homer's Iliad, book xxii.

416 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

its ancient abode. Therefore, now receive, O Katharine, the honour
of thy old sepulchre now possess that to which thy piety entitles
thee."

In another of these poems the author says, " The heathen dreaded
violating an old sepulchre, whilst yet reason was their sole teacher.
Romulus and Solon prohibited by law any even to speak ill of the
dead. Darius, having dared to violate the tomb of Semiramis, did
not find gold, but was met with this inscription, 'Ah miserable man !
ah ! you would be unwilling to disturb the hidden receptacles of the
dead, were you not wickedly persuaded by idleness, the belly, and
riches.' But ye Popish devotees, members of the tyrant Antichrist,
commit crimes more hideous than Darius. He, pitifully laughed at,
lost the gold ; ye heap up wealth by means of disinterred bones.
He was deceived ; ye practice deception upon all, in giving putrid
bones to be the objects of our worship. But, O ye shavelings, ye
gave not the bones of Katharine Martyr to be honoured, ye dug them
up to be dishonoured in a dunghill Say, what has she deserved ?
What crimes has she, being dead, committed ? If while in life she
did mischief, she has done nothing of the kind since her death. ' She
committed crimes,' you say, 'in not offering incense to Baal; when
alive she was guilty of heresy.' O happy Mrs. Martyr ! taken away
by a propitious death ; hadst thou, on whom, when dead, punish-
ment has been inflicted for the heretical noxiousness of thy life, been
forcibly taken, when living, out of the desolated flock, thou shouldst
have been burned a martyr, even as thou wert Martyr by name."
The author closes by exulting at the thought that the Papists had
been unable, by fire and sword, and all their persecuting appliances,
to prevail, God having interposed for the deliverance of the oppressed.

Thus did the Reformers, on the accession of Elizabeth, vindicate
the dead, whose sepulchres the persecutors in their frantic rage had
violated.

The Papists having been twitted by the Protestants for the base
treatment of Mrs. Martyr's remains, as an apology for their conduct
they laboured to bring discredit upon her reputation. This called

ENGLAND.]

Katharine Vermilia.

417

forth rejoinders, in which her honest name was amply vindicated.
Dr. George Abbot, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, in an ex-
cellent work against the Romanists, defends her memory from their
malignant defamatory attacks. He testifies both to her worth and
ingenuity, and his testimony is of greater value as resting on infor-
mation derived from persons to whom she was personally known.
" She was," says he, " reasonably corpulent, but of most matron-like
modesty ; for the which she was much reverenced by the most. She
was of singular patience, and of excellent arts and qualities. And,
among other things for her recreation, she delighted to cut plumb-
stones into curious faces, of which, exceedingly artificially done, I
once had one, with a woman's visage and head attire on the one side,
and a bishop with his mitre on the other, which was the elegant
work of her hands. By divers yet living in Oxford [1604] this good
woman is remembered and commended, as for her other virtues so
for her liberality to the poor, which by Mr. Foxe, writing how she
was treated after her death, is rightly mentioned. For the love of
true religion and the company of her husband, she left her own
country to come into England in King Edward's days." '

l Abbot against Hill, p 144.

Hatfleld House, Hertfordshire.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

)UEEN ELIZABETH'S history is inseparably con-
nected with the general history of the Eeformation
in her day. Whatever were the defects of her cha-
racter and government, she was certainly an extraor-
dinary woman, and the instrument, in the hand of
Providence, of preserving the reformed cause from extermination,
not only in England, but in all its European establishments. A full
narrative of her life we do not, however, here propose. This would
carry us far beyond the limits of the present undertaking. Only
some of the most prominent points in her history can be glanced at.
Elizabeth, second daughter of Hepry VIII., by his queen, Anne
Boleyn, was born at the royal palace of Greenwich, on the 7th of Sep-
tember, 1533. 1 At her birth her fortune seemed bright and auspi-
cious ; but the frenzied temper of her father soon overclouded even her
i State Papers, vol. i., p. 407.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 419

infancy with calamity ; and in early life, till she ascended the throne,
she was exposed to much mortification, suffering, and danger. She
had not completed the third year of her age, when the cruel fate of
her mother deprived her of the affection of her father, who became
alienated from the daughter of the queen whom he had murdered ;
and by the Parliament which met in June, the month after her
mother's execution, her father's divorce from her mother was ratified ;
and she, as well as Mary, daughter of Katharine of Aragon, was
declared illegitimate, and excluded from the succession to the crown,
which was settled on the king's issue by Jane Seymour, or by any
subsequent wife he should marry. Henry, however, soon after the
birth of Prince Edward, restored both her and Mary to the right of
succession by his obedient Parliament, and he specially recognized
their right in his will.

Upon her father's marriage with Katharine Parr, Elizabeth, as
we have already seen, prosecuted her studies under the superintend-
ence of that queen, 1 who was so eminently qualified to imbue her
mind with the principles of virtue, piety, and wisdom, to developeher
powers of understanding, and to give refinement to her manners.
Upon her father's death she was committed to the care of Katharine,
but within a short time, the conduct of the unprincipled Lord Admi-
ral Seymour, Katharine's fourth husband, who had presumed to take
unbecoming liberties with the young princess, rendered it necessary
to remove Elizabeth from the house of her mother-in-law. 2 After Ka-
tharine's death he contemplated marrying Elizabeth, whose heart he
had certainly succeeded in gaining ; but the lords of council interposed
their negative, and laid the princess under stricter surveillance?

Elizabeth was first taught the Greek and Latin languages by Wil-
liam Grindal, an accomplished scholar, and the beloved friend of
Roger Ascham, under whom he had prosecuted the study of classical
learning at Cambridge during a period of seven years ; and from an
excellent capacity and steady application, aided by the assiduous ex-

1 See Life of Katharine Parr, chap, ii., p. 203. 2 Ibid., chap, iii., p. 232.

3 Ibid., chap, iii., p. 237.

420 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

ertions of her tutor, she made great progress in learning. Upon the
death of Grindal, by -whom her studies had been superintended for
some years, Roger Ascham was appointed his successor, and the
work which Grindal had so happily begun, he diligently laboured to
complete. Under her new tutor she pursued the study of Greek
and Latin for two years. From one of Ascham's letters to his friend,
John Sturmius, rector of the Protestant academy of Strasburg,
written in 1550, we are furnished with some interesting particulars
as to the pains bestowed upon her early education, and as to her
distinguished proficiency, and her promising excellence of character.
" Numberless honourable ladies of the present time surpass the
daughters of Sir Thomas More in every kind of learning; but
amongst them all, my illustrious mistress, the Lady Elizabeth, shines
like a star, excelling them more by the splendour of her virtues, and

her learning, than by the glory of her royal birth She

has accomplished her sixteenth year ; and so much solidity of un-
derstanding, such courtesy, united with dignity, have never been
observed at so eai-ly an age. She has the most ardent love of true
religion, and of the best kind of literature. The constitution of her
mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endued with a
masculine power of application. No apprehension can be quicker
than hers, no memory more retentive. French and Italian she
speaks like English; Latin with fluency, propriety, and judgment;
she also spoke Greek with me frequently, willingly, and moderately
well. Nothing can be more elegant than her handwriting, whether
in the Greek or Roman character. In music she is very skilful, but

does not greatly delight She read with me almost the

whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy : from these two authors,
indeed, her knowledge of the Latin language has been almost exclu-
sively derived. The beginning of the day was always devoted by
her to the New Testament in Greek, after which she read select
orations of Isocrates, and the tragedies of Sophocles, which I judged
best adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind
with the most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a de-

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 421

fence against the utmost power of fortune. For her religious instruc-
tion, she drew first from the fountains of Scripture, and afterwards
from St. Cyprian, the Common Places of Melancthon, and similar
works, which convey pure doctrine in elegant language." ' Ascham's
commendations are corroborated by other unexceptionable contem-
porary testimonies, and by Elizabeth's whole history.

Elizabeth was the great favourite of her brother Edward, and she
tenderly loved him in return. Their similarity of talents and educa-
tion, their devotion to the same kind of studies, their attachment to
the reformed religion, conspired to endear them to each other. Be-
sides, Katharine Parr, under whose superintendence both of them
were placed, fostered in them the tender affections ; and after Eliza-
beth left Katharine's roof, they appear to have been much together ;
and are said to have assisted each other in the joint prosecution of
their studies. Edward was wont to call her, perhaps from her simple
unostentatious dress and manners, his sweet sister, Temperance ;
and, with her reciprocation of tender sisterly affection, she combined
that deferential respect due to his rank as the sovereign of England.
During their absence, from each other they frequently corresponded,
and interchanged tokens of mutual affection. 2 Yet Edward, from
his great facility of disposition, was prevailed upon, on his death-bed,
to dispose of the crown to Lady Jane Grey, to the exclusion of both
his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was not equally beloved by her sister Mary, who re-
garded her with a secret jealousy, and who, on ascending the throne,
subjected her to not a little persecution. She had no good-will
towards her as being the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was the
cause of her mother's divorce, and of the bitter mortification which

1 Ascham's Epistolae, quoted in Miss Aikiu's Memoirs of the Court of Queen Eliza-
beth, fifth edition, pp. 93-95.

2 A number of her letters to him, some in Latin and some in English, have been
transmitted to our times : the former distinguished, in a high degree, for purity and
elegance of diction ; the latter for the quaint metaphorical style for which she seems
to have had an early predeliction, and which she afterwards carried to a vicious excess.
Several of them are printed in Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii. ; and in Miss
Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, vol. iii.

4:22 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

she herself had been doomed to submit to during her father's life-
time. She, besides, became jealous of her as a rival in love ; for the
handsome and accomplished Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, to
whom Mary was ardently attached, and whom she desired to marry,
did not return her affection ; but, slighting her, was enamoured of
her more youthful and engaging sister, Elizabeth. The first act of
her first Parliament, by declaring the validity of the marriage of her
father and mother, and by annulling the sentence of their divorce,
having virtually reduced Elizabeth again to the condition of a bastard,
Mary treated her as such, assigning to the descendants of her father's
sisters a precedency to her in court ceremonial. Many other indig-
nities Elizabeth had to bear with from the queen ; and having ob-
tained the royal permission, to be free from such slights and affronts
she was glad to retire into the country, where, however, she con-
tinued under the vigilant inspection of two principal servants in her
household, in the confidence of the crown. Upon the breaking out of
Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, in 1554, the tranquillity of her retreat
was disturbed. She was accused of having been privy to this insur-
rection, and her life was now exposed to imminent peril. To defeat
the proposed marriage of Mary with Philip II. of Spain, to which
there was a general aversion in the nation, appears to have been the
sole object of Wyatt ; and he still professed inviolable fidelity to the
person of the reigning sovereign ; but some, at least, of the insurgents
had the farther object in view of dethroning Mary, and of bestowing
the sovereign power upon Elizabeth, whom they proposed to marry
to Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon. The reports in circulation,
that these were the objects of the conspiracy, strongly excited the
jealousy of Mary against her sister Elizabeth, whom she now hated
on two additional grounds : first, as being the great favourite of the
nation, and the chief hope of the Protestants ; and secondly, as a
conspirator against her throne ; though, upon the strictest investiga-
tion, no evidence was discovered of Elizabeth's being a party in the
insurrection, or giving it her approbation.
After the rising of Wyatt, Elizabeth, though, in a state of severe

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 423

illness, was brought prisoner fr.om Ashridge to London, whither she
arrived on the 23d of February. Mary declined seeing her, and
caused her to be accommodated in a part of the palace from which
neither she nor her servants could go out, without passing through
the guards. The only part of her suite permitted to wait on her were
two gentlemen, six ladies, and four servants, the rest of her train
being lodged in the city of London. She was conveyed prisoner to
the Tower on Sabbath, the 21st of March.

Among all the enemies of Elizabeth none was more persevering in
pushing on the prosecution against her and Courtenay, and none
more intent upon bringing both of them to capital punishment, than
Simon Renard, ambassador of Charles V. He was extremely dis-
satisfied at the slowness of the proceedings, and blamed Bishop
Gardiner as the main cause of the delay, representing the bishop
as intending thereby to save the lives of the two distinguished pri-
soners. 1 His letters to Charles evince throughout a spirit of intense
hatred to Elizabeth, and an unmitigated desire to get rid of her as
speedily as possible. This must have been in conformity with the
counsels of Charles ; for, had it not been so, Eenard would hardly
have dared, as he does, to dwell emphatically on the subject in his
letters to his master. Charles hated Elizabeth because she was the
daughter of Anne Boleyn, the cause of the divorce of his aunt from
Henry VIII. ; and if the death of this princess would tend to estab-
lish the authority of Mary, and remove the obstacles to the popu-
larity of the marriage of his son Philip with that queen, as he was
erroneously taught to believe, he was prepared to make the sacrifice.
It was well for Elizabeth that at this time Mary's councillors were
divided on the Spanish match, one party favouring it, and another,
headed by Gardiner, opposing it. Gardiner's hostility to the Spanish
faction, and not any attachment he felt towards Elizabeth, led him,
for a short time, to thwart their intentions of involving her and
Courtenay in destruction. 2

1 See his letter to the emperor, dated March 14, 1554, in Ty tier's Reigns of Edward
VI. and Mary, vol. ii, p. 337. * Ibid., vol. ii., p. 342.

424 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Gardiner, however, finding that Mary was bent upon marrying
Philip of Spain, soon yielded in his opposition to the match, and fell
in with the Spanish faction, which greatly increased Elizabeth's
danger. Not being disposed to sacrifice Mary's favour and the
advantages of place for the praise of justice and moderation towards
Elizabeth, he abandoned the protection of the princess, and concurred
with her enemies in the proposal to put her to death. Eenard was
strenuous in urging this sanguinary deed, as a preliminary step to
Philip's landing in England as the queen's consort. " I observed to
the queen," writes he to Charles, " that it was of the utmost conse-
quence that the trials and execution of the criminals, especially of
Courtenay and of the Lady Elizabeth, should be concluded before
the arrival of his highness." 1 To this the queen replied, " that she
had neither rest nor sleep on account of her anxiety for the security
of his highness at his coming." Gardiner, perceiving that Eenard's
proposition was not unacceptable to her majesty, recommended its
adoption as a measure necessary for the public good. " As long,"
said he, " as Elizabeth is alive, there is no hope of the tranquillity of
the kingdom. If every body went as roundly to work, in providing
the necessary remedies as I do, things would go on better." 2 Gar-
diner's expressed apprehension that, from Elizabeth's popularity, new
commotions might arise from renewed attempts to raise her to the
throne, to the exclusion of her sister, who had lost the popular favour,
was not unplausible, and Mary, who felt the force of his observation,
was extremely desirous to find evidence of Elizabeth's being a party
in Wyatt's rebellion, in order to bring her to the block. But, not-
withstanding the most persevering efforts, no proof of her guilt could
be discovered.

What, then, was to be done with a princess who had already
eclipsed the queen in popular favour, and to whom many had begun

1 " If they let her go," says Renard, in another letter to Charles, " it seems evident
that the heretics will proclaim her queen." And in another he says, "Your majesty
may well believe in what danger the queen is, so long as both [Elizabeth and Cour-
tenay] are alive." Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 375, 400.

3 Ibid., vil ii., p. 365.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 425

to look as the chief hope of the nation from the tyranny with which
it was now threatened? This was a perplexing question to Mary
and her councillors. Failing to find adequate ground for Elizabeth's
condemnation, Gardiner proposed to have her declared incapable of
inheriting the crown. " Behold he whom you wot of " [Gardiner],
says Eenard, in a letter to Charles, dated 28th April, 1554, " comes
to me since dinner with a sudden and strange proposal ; saying that,
since matters against Madame Elizabeth do not take the turn which
was wished, there should be an act brought into Parliament to dis-
inherit her." 1 So determined was Gardiner upon this point, that
he brought in a bill before the new Parliament for declaring her
illegitimate and incapable of succeeding to the throne. The bill was
rejected by a large majority. But still persisting in his object, and
having recourse to his usual circuitous policy, he soon after brought
in another bill for investing the queen with the power conferred
upon her father by his servile Parliament that of appointing a
successor. In this again he was defeated. It being confidently
believed that the queen, in default of children of her own body, would
bequeath the crown to her husband Philip, the House of Commons,
too just and patriotic to deprive Elizabeth of her rightful inheri-
tance, and in dread of being brought under the yoke of a foreign
despot, threw out the bill

Another mode of disposing of Elizabeth was to send her out of
the kingdom, and to marry her to some foreign prince. Taking their
lesson from the proverb, " Out of sight, out of mind," her enemies
judged that in that case she would soon be forgotten by the people,
and might, without difficulty or danger, be excluded from the succes-
sion. "After having communicated at great length with Paget,"
says Eenard, in a letter to Charles, dated 3d April, 1554, " on the
subject of the said Elizabeth, he told me that if they could not find
proof, enough to bring her to death, he saw no surer expedient to
secure her than to send her out of the kingdom, to be married to a
stranger," and he suggested " the Prince of Piedmont" for her con-

1 Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 382.

426 Ladies of tlte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

sort. 1 This suggestion being adopted, she was offered her liberty on
condition of her engaging to marry the Duke of Savoy. But she
had penetration enough to see that under the guise of providing for
her happiness by a suitable marriage, the design was to send her
into a kind of honourable banishment, and ultimately to deprive her
of the English crown. Oppressed and persecuted, therefore, though
she was, and hourly in dread of being brought to the scaffold, she
had the resolution to refuse which she did modestly but decidedly
the offered matrimonial alliance, which, probably, most women in
her circumstances would have gladly accepted. 2

In the Tower Elizabeth was kept under rigorous restraint ; and
when, a few weeks after her imprisonment, she obtained permission
to walk in the royal apartments, the windows were to be shut, and
she was not to be permitted to look out at them. When a further
indulgence was granted her of walking in the garden of the Tower,
strict orders were given that the gates should be barred, and that
the keepers should watch the prisoners whose windows looked into
the garden, in order to prevent them from interchanging any word
or sign with the princess. 3

After being imprisoned for two months in the Tower, Elizabeth
was removed to Richmond Palace, where she was kept a prisoner for
a short time, 4 and then to Woodstock, where she was committed to
the custody of Sir Henry Beddingfield. Here, as in the Tower, she
was closely shut up, guarded night and day by soldiers, and secluded
from seeing any but the few attendants who were allowed to remain
about her person. She was also so strictly interdicted all epistolary
correspondence, that Sir John Harrington, for simply carrying a

1 Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 367.

" There were afterwards some deliberations, though no resolution was come to about
sending her to the court of the Queen of Hungary, provided that queen would re-
ceive her. This Renaril states in a letter to Charles, dated 9th June, 1554. Tytler's
Reignt of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii.,p. 414.

3 Renard grudged her even this small favour. "Already," says he in a letter to
Charles, dated 22d April, 1554, " she has liberty to walk in the garden of the Tower."

4 Lodge's Shrewsbury Papers, vol. i., p. 1.

ENGLAND.]

Queen Elizabeth.

427

letter to her, was, by the orders of Gardiner, thrown into the Tower,
where he remained for twelve months. Nor was she particularly
fortunate in her keeper, Sir Henry Beddingfield, who is said to have

Wooditock, A.P. 1714.

treated her with great rudeness and severity, using his office more
like a jailer than a gentleman. 1 By this rigorous confinement her
health became much impaired, and on the 8th of June, two physi-
cians were sent from the court, who attended her for several days.

1 What she said to him, upon her accession to the throne, on dismissing him from
the court, has been adduced in proof of this : " God forgive you what is past, as we do;
and if we have any prisoner whom we would have straitly kept and hardly handled, we
will send for you." Some writers question the truth of Beddingfield's using her harshly,
and affirm that these words were spoken to him in jest, resting, as their authority, upon
the facts that he was afterwards frequently at her court, and that she honoured him
with a visit on one of her progresses. But this is scarcely a sufficient vindication of
Beddingfield; for Elizabeth, as is well known, is entitled to the praise 6f having
generously forgiven such as had acted towards her with cruelty in the time of her
sister ; and she even placed some of them in honourable situations in or under her
government.

428 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Never is liberty felt to be so sweet as under the irksome and galling
restraints of captivity. Hearing one day, out of her garden, a milk-
maid singing cheerfully in the fields, Elizabeth wished herself in the
same humble condition, saying that the life of that poor milkmaid
was happier than hers. Yet her firmess of mind was not subdued.
Neither the threatenings nor promises of Mary's council could extort
from her an admission of any act or intention of disloyalty towards
her sister. A friend having advised her to appease the queen's dis-
pleasure by submissive acknowledgments, she absolutely refused.
" If I have offended," said she, " and am guilty, then I crave no
mercy, but the law, which I am certain I should have had ere this,
if guilt could be proved against me. But I know myself to be out of
the danger of it, and wish I was as clean out of the peril of mine
enemies, and then I am assured I should not be so locked and bolted
up within walls and doors as I am." '

During the last years of her sister's reign, Elizabeth, under the
influence of fear, dissembled, by conforming to the Eoman Catholic
mode of worship. But she was, notwithstanding, suspected of being
still a Protestant in sentiment. While she was a prisoner at Wood-
stock, Gardiner made repeated attempts to betray her into a decla-
ration of her faith, examining her particularly upon the testing
question of the real presence in the eucharist. But, though deprived
of the counsel of friends, she proved herself in adroitness an over-
match for the wily prelate. When he interrogated her at one time
as to the meaning of these words of the Saviour, " This is my body,
which is broken for you," she gave the following ingenious equivocal
answer:

" Christ was the word that spake it,
He took the bread aud brake it,
And what that word did make it,
That I believe and take it;""

an answer from which it would puzzle Gardiner, by all his art in
1 Foxe. 2 Baker's Chronicle, p. 320.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 429

twisting, to extract an opinion either for or against transubstantia-
tion.

About the end of April, 1555, she was finally removed from Wood-
stock, and brought to Hampton Court, where she obtained an inter-
view with her sister Mary. After being successively carried, during
some time, to several of the royal seats in the neighbourhood of
London, she was permitted to establish herself at the palace of
Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, where she remained unmolested until the
death of Mary ; relieved from military guards, locked doors, and
jealous inspection, her only restraints being that she could not
change this residence for another, and that she was under the sur-
veillance of Sir Thomas Pope, a humane man, who was appointed
to reside with her.

Elizabeth was mainly indebted for her liberation from Woodstock
to the interference of Philip, her sister's husband, who, after he
came to this country, certainly acted towards her the part of a friend,
and was, perhaps, the means of saving her life. Various considera-
tions of state policy might inspire or strengthen his zeal for her
protection and liberty. In the event of her being cut off, as the
next heir to the throne was Mary Queen of Scots, who was be-
trothed to the Dauphin of France, it was easy for Philip to see that,
should his present queen die childless, the kingdom of England
would go to swell the greatness of France, which was already the
most formidable rival of Spain. The interest he took in Elizabeth's
cause may also have resulted from his anxiety to soften the pre-
judices of the English against him, and to acquire in the nation the
reputation of uprightness and clemency, as a means of paving the
way to his being crowned King of England, a consummation to
which all his efforts had been directed ever since his marriage. Nor
is it improbable that, calculating on the contingencies of the future,
he secretly entertained the hope that, in the event of the death of his
present queen, whose health was in a somewhat precarious state, he
might obtain the hand of Elizabeth. But whatever were his motives
in. employing his good offices in her behalf, she cherished towards

430 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

him through life the deepest gratitude, and always attributed to his in-
terposition the preservation of her life from the malice of her enemies.

Whilst resident at Hatfield, Elizabeth was permitted to make
occasional excursions, on which occasions, from her increasing popu-
larity, she was attended by a considerable retinue of nobility,
knights, ladies, and gentlemen, on horseback. She was also some-
times permitted to indulge in the chase. 1 She was honoured, too,
with a visit from the queen, who now somewhat relaxed her seve-
rity, and she occasionally appeared at court upon invitation, where
she was treated with the distinction due to her rank. But during
her residence at Hatfield her time was mostly spent in retirement
and in literary pursuits. Playing on the lute or virginals, embroi-
dering gold or silver, reading useful works in her native tongue,
studying the Latin, Greek, French, and Italian languages; 2 such
were the exercises in which she was chiefly occupied, and by which
her mind was trained and prepared for at length presiding, with
singular ability and success, over the affairs of a great empire.

She was residing at Hatfield when Queen Mary died, November 17,
1558, and here her first privy council was held, of which the chief
member was Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, whom she
appointed secretary of state. 3 The appointment of Cecil to this
office, which was in effect to that of prime minister, laid the founda-
tion for the succeeding character and greatness of her extended
reign. That illustrious and excellent man, than whom England has
never produced a greater statesman, had been her secret correspon-
dent and adviser during the period of her sister's reign, when she was
harassed and persecuted ; and on her elevation to the throne, her
appreciation of his talents, together with a sense of gratitude, influ-
enced her in her choice of him as her chief councillor. He directed
her in the formation of her ministry, of which he continued the pre-
siding genius to the close of his life, being a period of forty years,
greatly contributing to give her government that vigour by which

1 Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, p. 88. 2 Ascham, Epist., pp. 51-53, 94.
3 Strype's Annals, vol. i., part i, p. 8.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 431

it was distinguished, and to avert from her and from the kingdom
the dangers by which they were often threatened. In uo other
statesman did she repose with such entire confidence.

On the 23d of November, Elizabeth, attended by a numerous train
of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and ladies, went from Hatfield to
London, to take up her residence in the Tower, as had been the
custom of the new sovereign from time immemorial. On her way
through the capital she was greeted by the vast crowds of people
who assembled with joyful acclamations, which she returned with
that bland affability of manner of which she was so perfect a
mistress, and which was one of the main causes of her popularity
among her subjects during the whole of her reign. On entering the
Tower in this new character, she could not forbear reflecting on the
vicissitudes through which she had passed ; how the fortress which
was now her palace had a few years before been her dungeon,
where she lay, a helpless prisoner, exposed to the fury of powerful
enemies, who thirsted for her blood ; and as she contrasted her hard
lot in the past with the prosperous fortune of the present, her bosom
swelled with devout emotions, and immediately on reaching the
royal apartments, falling on her knees, she poured forth her grateful
feelings to that merciful God who had brought her in safety through
all dangers to her present exaltation, in these words: "O Lord,
almighty and everlasting God, I give thee most hearty thanks, that
thou hast been so merciful unto me as to spare me to behold this
joyful day ! And I acknowledge that thou hast dealt as wonderfully
and as mercifully with me as thou didst with thy true and faithful
servant Daniel, thy prophet, whom thou deliveredst out of the den,
from the cruelty of the greedy and raging lions. Even so was I
overwhelmed, and only by thee delivered. To thee, therefore, only,
be thanks, honour, and praise for ever. Amen ! "

Having spent a few days in the Tower, she passed by water to
Somerset Palace. About a fortnight after, the funeral solemnities of
her sister being performed, she proceeded to Westminster Palace,
situated on the banks of the Thames. Preparations having been

432 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

made for her coronation, she was conducted by a splendid water
procession from that palace to the Tower.

On the 14th of January she proceeded from the Tower in great
state to Westminster Abbey, to her coronation, attended by a nume-
rous retinue of lords and ladies on horseback, all arrayed in crimson
velvet, the trappings of their horses being of the same material, and
preceded by trumpeters clothed in scarlet, blowing their trumpets,
and by all the heralds in their coat-armour. All the streets were
covered with gravel. Gorgeous and sumptuous pageants were
erected, 1 the devices of which formed no inconsiderable part of the
attractions of that day. A particular description of the splendour
of these pageants, and of the demonstrations of the people's enthusi-
astic loyalty in connection with them, is given in Holinshed.

Elizabeth was impelled by self-interest, as well as led by judgment,
to take the side of the Eeformation. The validity of her title to
the English crown depended upon her following this course. Two
popes, Clement VII. and Paul III., having long before pronounced
the marriage between her parents to be null and void, and the
offspring of that marriage to be illegitimate, had she acknowledged
the Papal supremacy, she would, by the very act, have admitted the
nullity of her mother's marriage and her own illegitimacy, and con-
sequently that she had no title to the English crown ; that she was
a usurper, the sovereign of England de facto and by force, not de
jure and by inheritance. In this case, Mary Queen of Scots, the
grand-daughter of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., and sister of
Henry VIII., would have been the lawful heir to the English crown,
as was maintained by all the Papists in England and throughout
the world, who stigmatized Elizabeth as the bastard daughter of
Henry VIII. Of all this Elizabeth was fully aware ; and her con-
viction that her submission to the Pope was incompatible with her

" The pageants of those days were erections of wood, placed across the principal
streets in the manner of triumphal arches ; illustrative sentences in English and Latin
were inscribed upon them ; and a child was stationed in each, who explained to thequeen,
in English verse, the meaning of the whole." Miss Aikin's Memoirs of the Court of
Queen Elizabeth, vol. i, p. 246.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 433

maintaining her legitimate right to the throne, was confirmed by
the answer which Paul IV. returned to the written notification of
her accession, which she transmitted to him upon her sister's death,
through Sir Edward Carne, the English ambassador at Borne. His
holiness " told Carne that England was a fief of the holy see ; and
that it was great temerity in Elizabeth to have assumed, without
his participation, the title and authority of queen : that being ille-
gitimate, she could not possibly inherit that kingdom, nor could he
annul the sentence pronounced by Clement VII. and Paul III. with
regard to Henry's marriage : that were he to proceed with rigour,
he should punish this criminal invasion of his rights by rejecting all
her applications; but, being willing to treat her with paternal
indulgence, he would still keep the door of grace open to her : and
that, if she would renounce all pretensions to the crown, and submit
entirely to his will, she should experience the utmost lenity compa-
tible with the dignity of the apostolic see." J Upon receiving this
answer, Elizabeth recalled her ambassador, and became the more
fixed in her determination not to submit to the authority of the
Roman pontiff. Here, as in other instances in the history of
the English Eeformation, is conspicuously to be seen the hand of a
merciful Providence, in leading the sovereign, from policy or interest,
to support or further the reformed cause.

Elizabeth's first Parliament assembled on the 23d of January, 1559.
One of the most important objects which engaged its attention, was
the settlement of religion. The Popish bishops and prelates sat
and voted as in the time of Mary, the Protestant clergy not having
as yet been admitted to a seat in the House. The principal act in
reference to religion passed in the Parliament was that which re-
stored to the crown its former jurisdiction over the church, and
which abolished all foreign power repugnant thereto. This act,
therefore, put an end to the Pope's authority over the Church of
England, and conferred on Elizabeth the ecclesiastical supremacy, as
claimed by her father, Henry VIII. The passing of the act was

1 Hume.

434 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

opposed by several of the lords temporal, and by nine bishops and
one abbot, who appear to have been all the prelates who sat in the
House, a considerable number of that body having recently died,
and others being absent. 1

Yet Elizabeth, while restoring the Protestant religion, retained a
belief in some of the doctrines of the Popish Church, and a fondness
for much of the ceremonial of its gorgeous worship. She seems to
have leaned to the doctrine of transubstantiation. She held the
doctrine of clerical celibacy, and always spoke with strong feelings
against the marriage of the clergy. At the solicitation of Lord
Burghley she connived at such marriages, but could not be prevailed
upon to sanction their legality, and the children which sprung from
them were illegitimate till the accession of James I. She was dis-
satisfied with the ecSlesiastical commissioners for their destroying
images and other relics of Popery. An altar and a crucifix, with
consecrated wax -candles burning around it by day, stood in her
private chapel, greatly to the sorrow of the most distinguished ot
the English Reformers, as Jewel, Cox, Grindal and others. 3 Hence
it has been said that she was little more than h#lf a Protestant, and
affected as much of the Popish religion as could consist with the
maintenance of her own legitimacy and supreme headship over the
church.

Scarcely had Elizabeth been invested with sovereign power, when
a conspiracy was formed by the Cardinal of Lorrain, and his brother
the Duke of Guise, the maternal uncles of Mary Queen of Scots,
whose influence was almost omnipotent at the court of France, to
dethrone the new queen, and to place upon the English throne their
niece, Queen Mary. By their instigation Henry II. of France, soon
after the death of Elizabeth's sister, persuaded Mary Queen of Scots
and his son Francis, her husband, to assume the title of King and
Queen of England, and to quarter the arms of England with those
of Scotland ; and after the death of that sovereign, which took place

1 Strype's Annals, vol. i. part i., pp. 82-87.

2 Strype's Annals, and his Life of Archbiskop Parker.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 435

on the 10th of July, 1659, Francis, who had succeeded to the French
throne, and Mary, called themselves "King and Queen of France,
Scotland, England, and Ireland," and quartered the arms of England
with those of France on their coin, plate, chambers, chapels, ward-
robes, &c., and bore them on all occasions.i

The plan of the Guises for raising Mary to the English throne,
was to invade England ; and France being unable to cope with that
kingdom in naval power, they saw that they could only reach Eng-
land through Scotland. But before Scotland could be serviceable
to them, it was first necessary to suppress the Scottish Reformers,
who would never join in any such attempt against a queen univer-
sally regarded as the protectress of the reformed faith ; and to sup-
press them, an unrelenting persecution and the destruction of their
leaders was resolved upon. This being once accomplished, it was
concluded that England might be successfully invaded, and that as
Mary Queen of Scots was well known to be a devoted Komaii
Catholic, all the English Roman Catholics, who were at that time
numerous and zealous, would eagerly flock to her standard. But the
plot was easier devised than executed. The preliminary step of
subjugating the Scottish Reformers originated the civil war between
the Queen Regent of Scotland, aided by the troops of France, and
the Lords of the Congregation ; and, with the assistance of Elizabeth,
the Lords of the Congregation triumphed, after the war had lasted
for twelve months. The French were necessitated to enter into a
treaty with England, by which the Scottish Reformers obtained
their reasonable demands. The treaty was signed at Edinburgh, on
the 7th of July, 1560. Thus were the plans of the Guises for dethron-
ing Elizabeth, and investing their niece with the English crown,
defeated ; and thus was the French power finally overthrown in
Scotland, and the Reformation established in that kingdom. 2

In all the efforts of her uncles to promote her elevation to the

1 Mignet's History of Mary Queen of Scots, vol. i., pp. 50, 51.

2 See Robertson's History of Scotland, book ii., where this plot of the Guises and
its> discomfiture are ably and at length detailed.

436 Ladies oftlte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

English throne, Mary Queen of Scots was an approving instrument.
Unwilling to renounce so ambitious a prospect, she refused formally
to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh between France and England, by
one article of which it was stipulated that Francis and Mary should
henceforth cease to assume the title and bear the arms of the King
and Queen of England. But the death of her husband, Francis II.,
in December, 1560, having dissolved her connection with the king-
dom of France, by the aid of which she hoped to give effect to her
claims on the English crown, she, in the meantime, from prudential
considerations, dissembled her pretensions, and discontinued the use
of the royal arms of England.

Yet Elizabeth continued to regard her with jealousy and suspi-
cion, which Mary reciprocated ; and by degrees an implacable hatred
sprung up between them, resembling the fabulous quarrel, described
by the ancient classic poets, between Juno and Venus. Elizabeth's
jealousy of Mary has been often attributed mainly to envy of the
personal charms of the Scottish queen. It arose more, perhaps, from
the dread of her as a dangerous competitor for the crown of Eng-
land. She had reason for apprehension on this ground ; but it was
a blemish in her character to entertain an unreasonable jealousy of
all who were of the blood-royal, even where she had no cause for
alarm. A striking instance of this occurs in the harshness and
cruelty with which, in the exercise of the prerogative claimed by the
sovereigns of England, of controlling the marriages of the princes
and princesses of the royal blood, she treated the Earl of Hertford,
and the Lady Katharine Grey, 1 sister of Lady Jane Grey, on ac-
count of their marriage. As if she wished to occupy the throne for
ever, she seemed to dislike whoever might by possibility succeed her.

Pius IV., who succeeded to the Roman see upon the death of
Paul IV., who died in 1559, in his zeal to recover so important a
kingdom as England to the Roman Catholic Church, soon turned
his attention to Elizabeth. About four months after his consecra-

1 Lady Katharine Grey being a descendant of Henry VII., by his second daughter,
Mary, was a princess of the blood-royal. See Appendix, No. V.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 437

tion, he sent to her, by his nuncio, Vincent Parpalia, an insinuating
and nattering letter, earnestly entreating her to remove from her
presence all evil counsellors, and to follow his paternal admonitions,
engaging that it she did this he would confirm her regal authority.
The letter is dated St. Peter's Palace, May 5, 1560.'

What propositions were made to Elizabeth by the Pope, through
Parpalia, is not recorded. The common report was that, upon con-
dition of her joining the Eomish Church, he promised to annul, as
unjust, the sentence formerly pronounced by the Vatican against
the marriage of her mother, to confirm by his authority the English
Liturgy, and to allow in England the celebration of the Eucharist in
both kinds. 2 It may be doubted whether he promised so large con-
cessions, or, if he did so, whether he had any intention of granting
them.

Holding the position of the protectress of Protestantism through-
out Europe, Elizabeth, though with some reluctance, arising from her
aversion to war, vigorously supported the oppressed Protestants in
France, who were struggling for freedom of conscience, and who had
taken up arms in self-defence. The Princes of Guise, with Philip
of Spain, having entered into an alliance for the suppression of
heresy in France, the Prince of Conde, the leader of the French
Huguenots, solicited Tier aid. She sent a strong force, as well as
large supplies of money, for the assistance of the prince, from whom
she received, in return, the possession of Havre de Grace, which com-
manded the mouth of the Seine, and was reckoned of greater impor-
tance than even Calais, which the English had lost in the reign of
Queen Mary. At a subsequent period, namely, in 1568 or 1569, in
answer to an appeal from Jane, Queen of Navarre, she sent to the
French Huguenots money to the value of ,50,000, several pieces of
cannon, and a large supply of ammunition, cordially welcomed the
French Protestant refugees into her kingdom, and encouraged her
subjects to extend to them their assistance. 3

1 See it in Camdeii's Elisabeth, book i., pp. 61-63. a Ibid.

3 Histoire, de Thou, torn, iv., liv., xliv., pp. 159, 160.

438 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Partly to strengthen her title to the English crown, Mary Queen
of Scots married Lord Darnley, her cousin-german, who, after her-
self and his mother, was next heir to the English throne. 1 Having
obtained a dispensation from Rome, the marriage of cousins-german
being within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, according to
the regulations of the Romish Church, she and Lord Darnley were
married on Sabbath, the 29th of July, 1565, in the chapel royal of
Holyroodhouse. Had Mary acted with prudence, she might have
proved an extremely formidable competitor for the English crown ;
but, from the violence and caprice of her passions, she soon after the
marriage lost all affection for Darnley, and that fatal tragedy his
murder (on the 9th of February, 1567) succeeded, which has entailed
everlasting infamy on her memory. Her participation in this horrible
deed, of which the evidence is too strong to be set aside, lost her the
kingdom of Scotland, and rendered her much less powerful in main-
taining her claims to the English throne against Elizabeth than she
otherwise would have been. Still Elizabeth regarded her as a danger-
ous rival, low as her fortunes had now sunk ; and therefore, after the
defeat of Mary's forces at Langside, by Regent Moray, and her flight
into England to Carlisle Castle, she made and kept her a prisoner in
England, to deprive her of the means of soliciting the aid of other
princes for her re-establishment on the Scottish throne, and for the
prosecution of her claims upon the English crown. The wisdom of
this policy, not to speak of its justice, may be doubted. It certainly
had the effect of exciting the sympathy of all the Roman Catholics
in England and throughout Europe for the sufferings of Mary ; and
it gave her and her partizans a plausible excuse for the numerous
conspiracies, by which they were constantly exciting commotions in
England, and involving even the personal safety of Elizabeth in
imminent danger.

' He was the eldest surviving son of Matthew Stuart, fourth Earl of Lennox, and
afterwards Regent of Scotland, by hi3 wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, only daughter
and heiress of Archibald Douglas, seventh Earl of Angus, by his wife Margaret, widow
of James IV., eldest daughter of Henry VII., and sister of Henry VIII.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 439

In Pius V., who succeeded to the pontificate in January, 1566,
Elizabeth found a much more active and dangerous enemy than in
his predecessor. To destroy her and to restore the Papal jurisdic-
tion in England, to exterminate the Huguenots in France, and in
every nation in Europe these were the great objects of his ambition;
and being energetic, enterprising, sanguinary, implacable, and per-
severing, he left unemployed no means which his plotting head
could devise, to accomplish the objects on which his heart was set.
Hence, short as was his pontifical reign, not extending in duration
to quite six years, it was pre-eminently active and bloody; and
during the whole of it Elizabeth was surrounded with perils, from
which her destruction seemed almost inevitable.

About the year 1568, he formed a deep-laid and wide-spread con-
spiracy against her, the objects of which were, to cut her off, to
restore Popery in England, and to liberate Mary Queen of Scots,
and raise her to the English throne. In prosecution of this scheme,
he suddenly despatched Mondovi as his nuncio to Scotland, with a
large sum of money to be expended for the assistance of Queen
Mary; but Mondovi was prevented, by the vigilant activity of
Elizabeth, from getting farther than Paris. Eoberto Eidolfo, a rich
Florentine banker, a relative of the Medici family, and a bigoted
Popish devotee, who was residing in England, under pretence of
being engaged in mercantile pursuits, acted there as the agent of his
holiness, secretly treating with the most influential of the Roman
Catholics, whose full confidence he possessed, as well as with many
professed Protestants, who, from different causes, were easily incited
to join in an insurrection against their sovereign ; and so successful
were his machinations, that the greater part of the nobility entered
into the Pope's conspiracy, and chose the Duke of Norfolk as their
head, to whom they promised Maiy Queen of Scots as his wife,
should the plot succeed. The Pope had also, in 1569, despatched a
secret envoy, in the person of a priest, called Nicolas Morton, to Eng-
land, in furtherance of the same design. While Eidolfo was thus
successfully stirring up the spirit of rebellion in England, some mis-

440 Ladies of tfte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

understanding having arisen between Elizabeth and Philip II. of
Spain, the Pope had the address to engage that monarch to favour
the cause of the English conspirators, by representing to him that
the overthrow of Elizabeth would be the most effectual way of his
obtaining secure possession of Flanders, and by reminding him of
the paramount claims of religion. He also managed to draw the
court of France to support, to a certain extent, his enterprise.
Fenelon, the French ambassador at the English court, relates, in his
despatches to the French court, that he had aided the plot by all
means in his power. 1

The plot being now matured, and preparations for its execution
far advanced, his holiness urged the Duke of Alva, who was then
governor of the Netherlands, and one of the most atrocious of per-
secutors, in a letter dated February 4, 1569-70, to aid the English in-
surgents, which the propinquity of Holland to England afforded
him great facilities for doing. His holiness also poured oil upon the
burning zeal of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland,
two of the most powerful, ardent, and impetuous of the conspirators,
whom he styles "our beloved sons," "men dear to us and eminent,
as well by the study of Catholic piety as by nobleness of birth.' 1 *
And to excite the insurrectionary spirit of the Eoman Catholics in
England, he issued, on the 25th of the same month, his famous bull
against Elizabeth, without having previously cited her to appear at
Rome, or given her warning, declaring her to be cut off from the
unity of the body of Christ to be deprived of her pretended title to
the kingdom of England, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege
whatsoever and her subjects to be freed from their oaths sworn unto
her, and from all duty, fidelity, and obedience, interdicting them
from obeying her laws, and warning them that whoever should act

1 The authorities for this conspiracy are Correspondance Diplomatique de Bertrand
de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, edited by Cooper, in Recueil des Depeches, &c. ; and
three contemporary biographers of Pius V., Catena and Gabutius, both Italians ; Don
Antonia Fuenraayor, a Spaniard ; and Pollini, a Florentine and Dominican, also a con-
temporary, in his Istoria Ecclesiastica, published at Rome, in June, 1594.

2 This letter to them is dated Feb. 20, 1569-70.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth, 441

contrary to this injunction should fall under the same sentence. 1
Many copies of the bull were secretly dispersed in England.

Had the eiforts made to elevate the Queen of Scots to the English
throne succeeded, the Eeformation, both in England and throughout
Europe, would have been in the utmost danger of extermination ; for
then the courts of England, France, and Spain, would have been con-
federated in the resolute determination to crush it ; and we know
that no means, however dark and bloody, would have been shrunk
from to achieve a consummation so devoutly wished for. But all
these efforts failed of success.

The Duke of Norfolk, after being tried and convicted of high
treason by his peers, was executed on the 2d of June, 1572, four
and a half months after the pronouncing of his sentence ; and his
death inflicted a fatal blow on Mary Stuart's party in England.

Mary herself was deeply implicated in the conspiracy of Eidolfo
and Norfolk, with whom, as well as with Pope Pius V., Philip II. of
Spain, and the Duke of Alva, she maintained a secret correspon-
dence on the subject. 2 This greatly irritated Elizabeth, who said, in
one of those terse sentences in which she often expressed herself- -
for, though she frequently wrote confusedly, yet in speaking her
sentences were singularly forcible "I have tried to be a mother to
the Queen of Scots, and, in return, she has formed conspiracies against
me even in my own kingdom ; she who ill-uses a mother deserves a
stepdame." 3 But when the House of Commons came to the resolu-
tion that the execution of Mary was also necessary to Elizabeth's
safety, saying that the axe must be laid at the root of the evil, she
waived their requisition, by replying that she could not put to death

1 It is dated 5 Kal. Martii, 1569 (i.e., 25th February, 1570), and of our pontificate
the 5th. It is printed in the original in Cheribini's Bullamm, and in Sanders' De Schism.,
p. 423. A translation of it is given in Camden's Elizabeth, book ii., p. 245 ; and in
M'Gavin's Protestant, vol. i., p. 158.

2 Prince Lebanoff s Collection, quoted in Mignet's History of Mary Queen of Scots,
Tol. ii., pp. 94, 131, 133, 136, 137.

3 Fenelon's Dtpeches, in Cooper's Rented des Depeches, torn, ii., p, 169.

442 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

the bird which., to escape the pursuit of the hawk, had fled to her
for protection. 1

A new source of danger to Elizabeth arose from the Popish se-
minaries, instituted for the education of English Popish students
abroad. In the year 1568, the Popish priests, who had fled from
England into Flanders, formed themselves into a collegiate body
at Douay, under Dr. "William Allen, afterwards cardinal, 8 with the
sanction of the Pope, from whom they received a monthly pension.
Their professed object was the education of English youths, who
were exiles in the Netherlands, as well as of others whom the fame
of their college might attract from England, that thus England
might be provided with a perpetual supply of Popish clergy. But,
in point of fact, the seminary was intended to be, what it actually
became, a nursery of sedition and treason against the person and
government of Queen Elizabeth ; and the young priests who issued
from it employed themselves in seditious and treasonable practices
against her. Elizabeth having complained of this to Bequesens, then
the Spanish governor of the Netherlands, this collegiate body were
ordered to quit the Low Countries. By the patronage of the Guises
they found an asylum in France, and the Pope sanctioned their esta-
blishment at Bheims, as well as gave them another foundation at
Borne, which he liberally supported, and placed under the direction
of the Jesuits. A third institution of the same kind was formed in
Spain. Within the course of a few years, and particularly in f 580,
and several of the following years, swarms of priests issued from
these seminaries, from which they were called "seminary priests,"
penetrated into England, traversed the kingdom under various ficti-
tious names, acted as spies, stimulated the people to disaffection, sedi-
tion, and treason, made lists of such as would support the meditated
Spanish invasion, distributed money in prosecution of such practices,
and maintained those treasonable agitations, which were fraught

1 Mignet, vol. ii., p. 162.

2 He was created a cardinal on the 28th of July, 1587, and in 1589 consecrate 1
Bishop of Mechlin.

ENGLAND. | Queen Elizabeth. 443

with such danger to Elizabeth's person and government, and which
resulted in the banishment or judicial execution of many of these
incendiaries and traitors. 1 Elizabeth has been blamed, even by
Protestant writers, for her severity iu putting so many of them to
death, and Popish writers, concealing or denying the treasonable
practices pursued by these seminary priests and Jesuits, have stigma-
tized her as a per-secutor, equalling or surpassing in cruelty the bloody
Nero. But from a due consideration of her circumstances, it is
manifest that, in the severe measures resorted to, and resorted to
reluctantly, she was acting in self-defence. Her own safety laid her
under the dire necessity of adopting vigorous measures against
emissaries of such unceasing activity and desperate purpose, and
who were the more active and desperate, knowing, as they did, that
they were backed by formidable supporters on the continent, and
by the faction of the Scottish queen in Elizabeth's own kingdom.

In the records of history there is perhaps no sovereign against
whose life so numerous plots were formed, and so numerous attempts
made, as against the life of Elizabeth. And yet none of these plots
and attempts succeeded. The unseen protection of heaven never
forsook her ; for to what else but to this can we attribute the pre-
servation of a life surrounded on every side by conspiracies, during
a reign of more than forty years 1 and such was the state of Europe
during that period, that the safety of the reformed cause seemed to
depend upon her life. In the midst of these perils Elizabeth ever
manifested calm, unshaken fortitude, partly arising from constitu-
tional temperament, and partly from confidence in the protection of
Providence. Even when her personal danger was greatest, her spirits
never seem to have been agitated; she never concealed herself from
the view of her subjects, nor ceased to perform her usual progresses
through the country; a magnanimity which greatly increased the
attachment of her subjects.' 2 A particular account of these nume-
rous conspiracies we must pass over. One of them, namely, that of

1 Turner's Modern History of England, vol. iv., pp. 345-351.
8 Bacon's Memoirs of Elizabeth, p. 183.

444 Ladles of tlie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Babington and his associates, in 1586, has acquired greater historical
importance than the others, because Mary Queen of Scots was in-
volved in it, and because it led to her trial and execution. Babing-
ton's plot originated with Ballard, one of the seminary priests of
Rheims, who having, in co-operation with the Spanish ambassador,
and Charles Paget, a devoted adherent of Mary's, formed a plan for
the invasion of England, proceeded to England, where he passed
himself off as a military officer, and concerted with Babington, a
man of good family, the assassination of Elizabeth, as an essential
prerequisite to the success of the contemplated invasion. Babing-
ton's fanaticism was inflamed by Ballard's representations of the
meritoriousness of killing an. excommunicated heretical queen. The
conspiracy was discovered, and the conspirators were seized and
executed.

The co-operation of Mary Queen of Scots in the secret plots of
the governments of Spain and France, and of a formidable Popish
party in England, against Elizabeth, and her concurrence in Babing-
ton's conspiracy, which was established by incontestable evidence,
at last determined the government of Elizabeth to bring Mary to
trial for high treason. On the 28th of October, 1586, the judges
commissioned by the crown to try her unanimously pronounced her
guilty of compassing and imagining the death of the English queen.
After repeated delays, and with much reluctance, Elizabeth at last
signed the warrant for the execution of the unfortunate Mary Stuart,
which took place at Fotheringay, on the morning of the 8th ! of
February, 1587. " There is perhaps in all history," says Wright,
"no greater moral lesson than that furnished by the history of these
two queens the one ascending the throne with the good-will of her
own subjects, and supported by the Pope and the most powerful
nations in Europe, lost her crown by her own crimes and vices,
threw disgrace on the cause which she was expected to have made

1 That is according to the old calendar, which was still in use in England, but the
18th, according to the reformed calendar of Gregory XIII. which was adopted by the
Catholic states on the continent.

ENGLAND.] Que&n Elizabeth. 445

victorious, dragged on a large portion of her life in a prison, and
ended it on a r v caffold ; while the other, surrounded on every side by
the bitterest enemies, with none but God and her own comparatively
weak resources to depend upon, by her virtues and prudence raised
her kingdom to a high state of glory, made her subjects rich and
happy, and lived to see all the schemes of her enemies broken." '

Henry III. of France, Mary's brother-in-law, and James VI. of
Scotland, her son, had sent ambassadors to Elizabeth's court to
remonstrate against the extreme measures resolved upon against the
Queen of Scots. But Elizabeth's danger from the revengeful resent-
ment of these sovereigns was not so formidable as at first sight might
be supposed. The former was prevented, from, various political
reasons, from avenging Mary's death, dreading, as Mignet observes,
" that the downfall of Elizabeth would pave the way for the aggran-
dizement of Philip II., the elevation of the house of Guise, and his
own ruin." a Similar considerations restrained the latter, who was
afraid of endangering his succession to the crown of England by
going to war with Elizabeth. She was exposed to more serious
danger from Philip II. of Spain, who, after Mary's death, laid claim
to the English crown, which she had bequeathed to him her SOD
James VI. of Scotland, having, as she affirmed, forfeited his right
by his heresy and resolved, without delay, to invade England, which
he did in 1588, the year after Mary's death, by his celebrated ar
mada. He had been long conspii'ing to invade and conquer Eng-
land, to which he had been urgently pressed by successive popes, by
influential fanatical Spaniards, by English Popish fugitives, and by
Mary's faction in England. The idea dazzled his imagination. By
an achievement so glorious he would not only gratify his exorbitant
ambition, but would revenge himself upon England, which he hated
because the English peojple had opposed his marriage with their
queen, Mary, and because they had never treated him very respect-
fully.

He was prevented for ten years, in consequence of his protracted
1 Wright's Queen Elizabeth and her Times; Introduction. 2 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 378.

446 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

wars with Portugal, from taking active measures to carry the design
into effect. Now, however, a more favourable conjuncture presented
itself, Portugal having been subdued ; and his exasperation, against
England being mightily increased, on account of the depredations
committed by her privateers and fleets on the coast of his American
possessions, and on account of her assisting the Dutch in their war
against him, so effectually as to offer him little prospect of being
able to subdue them, he was intently thirsting for vengeance. In
these circumstances he determined to execute the long-meditated
design, and the old counsels, presented in the most plausible form,
were reiterated in his ears by the Pope, Sixtus V., the determined
enemy of Elizabeth, but the admirer of her abilities, 1 and his con
federate councillors. Among various plans suggested, that ulti-
mately agreed upon was to provide a powerful navy for the transport
of a numerous army to the mouth of the Thames, to surprise and
seize upon the city of London, the key to the whole kingdom.

A fleet was accordingly fitted out in the ports of Spain, the best
furnished with men and all sorts of military preparations which had
ever ploughed the ocean before, and the prond Spaniards, not doubt-
ing of success, presumptuously termed it " The Invincible Armada."

To promote the success of the enterprise, Sixtus V. excommuni-
cated anew Elizabeth, in a form of greater severity than even Pius V.
had done, deposed her from her government, absolved her subjects
from their allegiance, committed the invasion and conquest of her
kingdom to his Catholic majesty, Philip of Spain, "to execute the
same with his arms, and to take the crown to himself, or to limit
it to such a potentate as the Pope and he should name ;" and, as in
the crusades against the Turks, bestowed, out of the treasury of the
church, plenary indulgence upon all engaged in this holy war. 2 To
excite the Eoman Catholics of England to rebellion against their

1 He was wont to say that he and she ought to have been married, and that a new
Alexander the Great would have been the fruit of their union.

S Caniden' Elizabeth, book iii.. p. 255. Turner's Modern History of England,
vol. iv., p. 504.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 447

queen, as the Armada was advancing, Cardinal Allen published his
seditious and treasonable Admonition to the Nobility and People of
England and Ireland, which, for the audacity of its falsehood and
vituperation, has hardly ever been surpassed. " So monstrous and
pernicious an heretic, rebel, usurper, firebrand of all mischief;" "that
wicked woman, the bane of Christendom and all their kingdoms ;
the scourge of God, and rebuke of woman kind ;" " her heresy, sacri-
lege, and abominable life ;" " the pretended queen ; the present cause
of perdition of millions of souls ; the very bane of all Christian king-
doms and states ;" " this tyrant ;" " the infinite quantity and enor-
mous quality of her most execrable wickedness ;" " her horrible
sacrileges, murthering of saints, and rebellion against God's church ;"
" incestuous bastard ! born in sin, of an infamous courtesan, Anne
Bullen ;'' such are the flowers of rhetoric by which this cardinal
endeavoured, but happily without effect, to instigate the Eomau
Catholic nobility of England to insurrection and treason against
their sovereign.

A hostile invasion from the monarch of the greatest empire then
in the world, who possessed extensive dominions, a vast revenue, nu-
merous well-disciplined armies, experienced and renowned gene-
rals, and who, besides, derived immense power from being the acknow-
ledged head of the Popish faction throughout Europe, was sufficiently
alarming. But the news of these terrible preparations only roused
the resolution and patriotism of the English queen, her ministers,
and all England. Elizabeth was a woman of no common courage.
Dangers which would have unnerved most men, she encountered
with tranquil magnanimity. The magnitude of the danger only
served to give additional strength to her heroic spirit ; and the intre-
pidity of the whole nation corresponded to the greatness of the crisis.

On this occasion Elizabeth received the support even of her Roman
Catholic subjects. Had Mary Queen of Scots been alive, and had
the invasion been undertaken professedly to place her upon the
English throne, they would, not improbably, have zealously risen up
in favour of the invader. But they felt very differently when Philip,

448 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

instead of contemplating an invasion to elevate a prince or princess
of the blood-royal of England to the throne, now purposed to con-
quer England for himself, and to reduce it to a province of Spain.
Great as was their irritation at the execution of Mary Queen of
Scots, various considerations of personal interest, as weU as natural
love for the independence of their country, prevailed over the attach-
ment of the Eoman Catholic nobility and gentry to the Eomish faith,
and led them to take the side of their native sovereign, and to call
forth their numerous dependents for her defence against a foreign
despot. Had he succeeded in laying England prostrate at his feet,
they justly dreaded that they would be treated as the Anglo-Saxon
nobility and gentry who supported William I. had been treated,
whose honours and estates were seized upon by the Norman barons,
while such as, animated by a more independent spirit, made resist-
ance, being accounted rebels, were exposed to the penalties awarded
to rebellion ; and alarmed for the loss of their honours and estates,
they were glad to combine for the protection of Elizabeth, as being a
lesser evil, rather than assist a tyrant, who, if successful, would have
deprived them of whatever they possessed, and made them his
drudges what the Gibeonites were to the Israelites, hewers of wood
and drawers of water. An additional motive inducing them to join
her standard, was an apprehension that the Pope, if the sword of
Philip triumphed, would demand the restitution of all the monastery
lands and property, a considerable portion of which was in possession
of the leading Roman Catholic nobility and gentry. Only an insig-
nificant portion of the Papists, consisting of the most bigoted, in
whom patriotism was quenched by dominant fanaticism, and of such
as, having little to lose, were impatient to become soldiers of fortune,
were willing to see their country conquered and enslaved by the
ruthless invader.

James, King of Scotland, deeply as his own interests were in-
volved, displayed little energy in aiding Elizabeth in this great
emergency. 1 He was, however, sensible of his danger, and when
i M'Crie's Life of Melville, first edition, vol. i., p. 373.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 449

reminded that Philip's success would cut him off from the succession
to the English crown, he facetiously answered, characteristically
quoting, in learned fashion, from the prince of the Greek poets, " I
expect no other courtesy of the Spaniard than such as Poliphemus
promised to Ulysses, namely, that he would devour him the last
of all Ms fellows." '

While Elizabeth and her people adopted the most vigorous means
of defence, encouraged by the justice of their cause, they did not for-
get, amidst the excitement and tumult of military preparations, to
betake themselves by prayer to Him who holds in his hand the des-
tinies of armies and of nations. For guiding the devotions of the
people, she composed a prayer, which was to be read in all the
churches every Wednesday and Friday. 2 The homilies for fasting
and alms-giving were also to be read, and the clergy were required
to be active in promoting the devotional feelings of the people.

Had the Spaniards made good their lauding, such was the chival-
rous courage of the queen, that she resolved to be present in the
battle fought between the invaders and her troops. Leicester, in a
letter to her, dated 27th July, while he applauded "so princely and
so rare a magnanimity," earnestly besought her not to expose her
person to danger, which might involve the whole kingdom in confu-
sion and ruin, but to betake herself to her palace at Havering, where
she would be effectually defended by the principal army, to which
her person and safety were committed. He, however, suggested
that she might visit the encampment at Tilbury, which was not
above fourteen miles distant from her palace of Havering, and "spend
two or three days there, to see both the camps and forts," by which
she would not be endangered ; for should the Spaniards be even able
to effect a landing, she could speedily retire to Havering, a place of
greater security.

Conformably to this judicious advice, she visited the army at Til-
bury on the 9th of August. The Armada had then been defeated by
the English fleet, and though, from its distance and its torn and shat-

i Camden's Elizabeth, boo* iii., p. 287. s Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., p. 15.

450 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

tered state, little apprehension was entertained of its returning, yet
it was dreaded that the Duke of Parma might come up with the
fleet and army under his command in Flanders, and renew the con-
flict. 1 On this occasion the assembled troops were drawn up to
receive her on the hill near Tilbury Church. She presented herself
to them mounted on a noble white charger, holding in her hand a
marshal's truncheon, bareheaded, and wearing on her breast a polished
steel corslet, below which descended a fardmgale of large dimensions.
She was attended only by the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Or-
mond, who carried the sword of state before her, and was followed
by a page bearing her white plumed helmet. Riding along the
ranks, she was greeted with bursts of thundering acclamations, and
she animated both officers and soldiers to do their duty, by her in-
trepidity of spirit, her smiling countenance, and her heart-stirring
oratory. "My loving people," said she, in a spirit and tone of mar-
tial valour which would have done honour to the bravest com-
mander, " we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our
safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes
for fear of treachery ; but I do assure you I do not desire to live to
distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear ; 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 sub-
jects ; and, therefore, I am come amongst you, as you see at this time,
not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst
and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all to lay down
for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour
and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak,
feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a
king of England, too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or

i On the 10th of August Sir Francis Drake, in a letter to Walsingham, says, "The
Prince of Parma I take to be as a bear robbed of her whelps ; and, no doubt, being so
great a soldier as he is, he will presently, if he may, undertake some great matter, for
his rest now standeth thereupon." Hardwicke's State Papers, pp. 586, 587. The
Duke of Parma was therefore watched by Lord Howard, who had returned to the
channel from pursuing the Armada. He, however, never left Flanders.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 451

any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm ;
to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself
will take up arms I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder
of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for
your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns, and we
do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you.
In the meantime, my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than
whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject ; not
doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in'
the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a fa-
mous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdoms, and of
my people."

This popular oration of her majesty, who was now in the fifty-
fifth year of her age, was received with bursts of enthusiastic loyalty,
and raised to the utmost pitch the valour of the troops and of her
people. Is our noble-hearted queen, said they, resolved to peril her
life rather than submit to the loss of her kingdoms, and the enslave-
ment of her people ; and shall not we be ready to march under her
banners, to death or victory, in defence of all that is dear to us, of
our homes, our altars, the independence of our country, the honour
of our sovereign ?

But the danger was now past. The Spaniards, having lost all
hopes of succeeding in their enterprise, were now attempting to
make their way homeward, amidst great dangers and disasters, by
doubling Scotland and the Orkney Isles. Out of 134 ships of all
sorts only fifty-three succeeded in reaching Spain, and that in a very
wretched condition. Not above fifteen of the English vessels bore
the burden of the conflict, and were required to repel the invaders.
Only one of them, and that a vessel of small size, fell into the hands
of the enemy, and not above a hundred of their men were killed,
the most of the shot of the Spanish fleet, from the height of their
vessels, flying over the small English ships.

To commemorate the defeat of the Armada, two medals were struck,
the one bearing the device of a fleet flying under full sail, with the

452 Ladies of tlte Reformation.

inscription, " Venit, vidit, fugit" "It came, it saw, it fled," borrowed
from the legend in reference to Caesar, " Venit,vidit,vicit" "He came,
he saw, he conquered ;" and the other, intended more especially in
honour of the queen, representing fire-ships scattering and throwing
into confusion the Spanish fleet, with the motto, "Dux foamina facti"
" A woman conducted this action." l It is a fact worthy of being
noted, that in the year of the Spanish Armada Elizabeth caused to
be printed the first gazette that appeared in England.

After the death of Mary Stuart and the overthrow of the proud
Armada, no attempts were made to deprive Elizabeth of her throne,
though still some plots were formed against her life. In her closing-
years she rendered important services to the cause of Protestantism
on the continent Henry III. of France having been assassinated
by a monk at St. Cloud, in the summer of 1589, she assisted Henry
IV., son of Jane, Queen of Navarre, and the next heir to the crown
of France, in vanquishing the leaguers, who endeavoured to exclude
him from the throne because he was a Huguenot. And she assisted
the republic of the United Provinces in achieving their independence
against the might of Spain. She thus became greatly instrumental
in preventing the extirpation of Protestantism in France, and in
securing its triumph in Holland.

Elizabeth testified her Protestant zeal by the reproachful letter
she wrote to Henry IV. of France, upon her hearing that he had ab-
jured the Protestant faith, and professed himself a convert to the
Church of Rome. " Ah, what grief ! ah, what regret ! ah, what pangs
have seized my heart at the news which Mordant [Henry's ambassa-
dor] has communicated ! My God ! is it possible that any worldly
considerations could render you regardless of the Divine displeasure ?
Can we reasonably expect any good result can follow such an ini-
quity ? How could you imagine that He, whose hand has supported
and upheld your cause so long, would fail you at your need ? It is
a perilous thing to do ill that good may come of it." 2

l Camden's Elizabeth, book iii. 2 The letter is dated Nov. 12, 1593. Miss

Strickland's Queens of England, vol. vii., p. 165.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 453

It is, however, to be regretted that, acting on the intolerant prin-
ciples of Romanism, and doing violence to one of the first principles
of Protestantism, the right of private judgment, she should have ex-
posed herself to the charge of persecuting her nonconforming fellow-
Protestants, though it is extravagant to say, as has sometimes been
done, that she was hardly less intolerant of religious innovations
than her sister Mary. Her treatment of the Anabaptists and of the
Puritans casts a shade on the glories of her reign. All the Anabap-
tists of that period, even such of them as were peaceably disposed,
and held no principles which the order and peace of society made, it
necessary for civil government to put down, being confounded with
the furious enthusiasts of Munster, were regarded with abhorrence
by other Protestants ; and this sect, not a few of whom having been
driven from Holland and Germany by persecution, had betaken them-
selves to England, unhappily did not always find there the security
they had sought. On the 23d of July, 1575, nine German Anabap-
tists were banished from England, and two burnt at Smithfield for
maintaining " that Christ had not taken flesh of the Virgin Mary,
that infants ought not to be baptized, that a Christian ought neither
to be a magistrate, nor to bear the sword, nor to take an oath." " This
was the first blood spilt by Elizabeth for religion, after a reign of
seventeen years," says Sir James Mackintosh, and it " forms in the
eye of posterity a dark spot upon a government hitherto distinguished,
beyond that of any other European community, by a religious ad-
ministration which, if not unstained, was at least bloodless." ' Then
as to the Puritans, who had appeared even during the reign of Ed-
ward VI., and whose numbers were increased by the returned Marian
exiles from the continent, notwithstanding the persuasions of Lord
Burghley, who strongly urged the impolicy of adopting severe mea-
sures against them, 2 she continued to persecute them in various forms.
Fines and imprisonment were inflicted on such as refused to attend

1 History of England, vol. iii., p. 170.

2 See his reasonings addressed to her on this subject, in Harleiun Miscellany, vol. vii.,
pp. 56-58.

454 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

their own parish churches. Such of the established clergy as dis-
covered a tendency to Puritan principles, were deprived of their
benefices, fined, and imprisoned. And in 1593, five of the Puritan
leaders, chiefly for writing against Prelatic church government, were
sentenced to death, and the sentence executed on all of them, except
one, who died in prison.

In the microscopic examination to which the character of Elizabeth
has been subjected, her personal foibles have furnished an ample
topic for criticism. Among these was the evident pleasure she took
in being addressed in the language of affected passion and admiring
love. Yet she would never marry, numerous as were the candidates
who aspired to the honour of becoming her husband ; and many
years before her death, while conversing freely on what should be
the inscription on her tomb, she wished only one or two lines ex-
pressing her virginity, the period of her reign, her restoration of re-
ligion, and her preservation of peace. '

Another of her foibles was the more than female weakness which,
after becoming queen, she evinced in the adornment of her person,
strikingly contrasting with her former simplicity in this respect, which
had drawn forth the commendations of Aylmer ; 2 and in the sumptu-
ousness of her apparel she became more vain and capricious as she
advanced in years, dressing in her old age like a young girl. At her
death her immense wardrobe contained three thousand dresses, in
the fashions of every country ; and she had delighted in appearing
in these various costumes, giving them effect by the jewels, diamonds,
and other precious stones which she wore. 3

Her temper, too, was imperious and violent, as well as wilful, like
that of her father, and though she often showed her power of com-
manding it, yet, in " the whirlwind of her passion," her maids of hon-
our sometimes felt the weight of her hand. 4

Yet Elizabeth was a queen of great ability and wisdom. Indepen-

1 Lord Bacon's Elizabeth, p. 187. 2 See Life of Lady Jane Grey, p. 261.

' Beaumont's D4p., quoted in Carte's History of England, vol. iii., pp. 699, 702.
* Ibid., vol. iii., p. 701.

ENGLAKD.] Queen Elizabeth. 455

dently of the testimony of her ablest minister, Lord Burghley, who
always spoke of her as the wisest woman he had ever known, there
is abundant evidence that in the councils of her renowned cabinet
her capacity for government shone conspicuous. In her interviews
with the ambassadors of foreign courts upon public business, she
displayed an ability not inferior to that of the most experienced
diplomatists in discussing questions of policy, questions often spring-
ing up in the course of conversation, as to which she could derive
but little advantage from previous consultation with her ministers.
These ambassadors were often struck at the fire and vigour of her
language, a fire and vigour which entered essentially into her cha-
racter, and which strikingly distinguished her administi-ation. "I
am of the race of the lions," said she to Bertraud de Salignac de la
Mothe Fenelon, in his first interview with her, in 1568, "soon tamed
if kindly used, and as easily roused if provoked." When informed
that some of her subjects, who had been taken fighting in the ranks
of the French Huguenots, had been instantly sent to the gallows,
she exclaimed, in a tone of scorn and defiance, " That is the act not
of soldiers but of butchers, and I shall be revenged." ' This inter-
view she conducted in French.

About the middle of November, 1602, Elizabeth began to feel her
strength decay, though she endeavoured to conceal it. In the two
following months she was confined a few days from cold, but other-
wise her health seemed to be good. On the 31st 2 of January, 1603,
which was a stormy day, she removed from Westminster to Rich-
mond, 3 where she ended her days. Her last illness came on in the

1 Fenelon's Depeches, iu Cooper's Recueil des DepSches, torn, ii., p. 169.

2 Carte's History of England, vol. iii., p. 696. Other accounts give 14th January.
Somers's Tracts, vol. i., p. 246. Carte may have employed the new style, but still
there is a week's difference.

3 The name of this royal residence was originally Sheue Palace. It was inhabited
by the Edwards I., II., and III. The latter died in it, and likewise Anne, queen of
Richard II. After her death, Richard, having demolished the apartments in which his
beloved queen died, deserted the place. It was afterwards repaired by Henry V. In
1497 it was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt by Henry VII., who named it Richmond,
from his earldom of Richmond, and died in it. Queen Elizabeth, as before observed,

456

Ladles of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

beginning of March following. Rheumatic gout in her arms and
fingers, great heat in her stomach, and a constant thirst and clammi-
ness in her mouth, which made it necessary for her to be always
drinking something, a settled nervous melancholy, want of appetite

blieue Palace, u LOW existing.

and of sleep, were the first symptoms of the approach of the last
messenger ; but for a fortnight there was no decided fever. The
melancholy which accompanied her illness is said to have preceded
it, greatly contributing to bring it on ; and it is conjectured to have
been caused by her having consented to the execution of her favourite,
the Earl of Essex. Other causes may have combined to produce it,
as the operation of disease, and concealed sorrow and resentment
preying upon her mind at the conduct of her courtiers and ministers,
who, she knew, were impatient for a new reign, and whose intrigues
with the court of Scotland she shrewdly suspected. She sat upon

was for some time a prisoner here ; and it was her favourite residence after her acces-
sion to the throne. The chamber in which she died was over the gate of the palace.

ENGLAND.] Queen Elizabeth. 457

cushions at least four days and nights together, and could not he
prevailed upon to go to bed, though, during more than the last fort-
night of her life, she kept her bed. She wished to be alone, and sat
silent, as if brooding on the thoughts which troubled her. She refused
to take the remedies prescribed to her by her physicians, and when
her physicians and councillors importuned her to take them, she be-
came angry, and said that she knew her own strength and constitu-
tion better than they, and that she was not in so much danger as
they imagined. She would sometimes say, " I am not sick ; I feel
no pain ; and yet I pine away."

Four days before her death Elizabeth was somewhat better, took
a little refreshment, and ordered some religious books to be read to
her, one of which was Philip Mornay du Plessis's Meditations. 1 On
Tuesday, 22d March, she was questioned by three of her most confi-
dential ministers as to her successor, when, being feeble and ex-
hausted, she briefly replied, "No base person, but a king;" evidently
meaning James VI. of Scotland, the only king who had any preten-
sions to the English throne. 2 On the following day, Wednesday, 23d,
the last change for the worse took place. She grew speechless, and
in the afternoon of that day she made signs for her council to be
called. They were immediately in attendance, and speaking to her
about her successor, they desired her, if it was her will that the King
of Scotland should succeed her, to hold up her hand in token of her
assent, if she could not speak. She put her hand to her head, and
turned it round in the form of a circle, plainly intimating her wish
that he should succeed her in wearing the regal crown. 3

The scene in her death-bed chamber on this the last evening of
her life, is thus graphically described by an eye-witness, her relative,
Sir Eobert Carey, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, who had fought
bravely against the Spanish Armada : " About six at night she made

1 Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 507.

3 Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 508. D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, second series,
vol. iii., p. 107. Hitherto, even when old, she would not appoint her successor, but
stormed when she was advised to do so, saying that this was " to pin up her winding-
sheet before her face." 3 Ellis's MS., p. 195,

458 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

signs for the Archbishop of Canterbury [Whitgift] and her chaplains
to come to her. At which time I went in with them, and sat upon
my knees, full of tears, to see that heavy sight. Her majesty lay
upon her back, with one hand in the bed and the other without.
The bishop kneeled down by her, and examined her first of her faith,
and she so punctually answered all his several questions, by lifting
up her eyes and holding up her hand, that it was a comfort to all be-
holders. Then the good man told her plainly what she was, and
what she was come to, and though she had been long a great queen
here upon earth, yet shortly she was to yield an account of her
stewardship to the King of kings. After this he began to pray, and
all that were by did answer him. After he had continued long
in prayer, till the old man's knees were weary, he blessed her, and
meant to rise and leave her. The queen made a sign with her hand.
My sister, Scroop, knowing her meaning, told the bishop that the
queen desired he would pray still. He did so for a long half-hour,
and then sought to leave her. The second time she made signs to
have him continue in prayer. He did so for half-an-hour more, with
earnest cries to God for her soul's health ; which he uttered with
that fervency of spirit, that the queen, to all our sight, much rejoiced
thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her Christian and comfortable
end. By this time it grew late, and every one departed^ all but the
women that attended her. This, that I heard with my ears and did
see with my eyes, I thought it my duty to set down, and to affirm it
for a truth, upon the faith of a Christian, because I know there have
been many false lies reported of the end and death of that good lady."
Elizabeth expired about three o'clock on the morning of Thursday,
the 24th of March, 1603, so gently that her attendants knew not the
exact moment when she ceased to breathe. She died in the 70th
year of her age, and in the 45th of her reign.

On the. 28th of March her corpse was removed from Eichmond to
Whitehall, a royal seat of no common splendour at that period. 1

1 Whitehall Palace was bounded on one side by the park which reaches to Sr.
James's Palace, and on the other side by the Thames. It was originally called York

ENGLAND.]

Queen Elizabeth.

459

Thence it was conveyed, with great magnificence, for interment to
the chapel of Henry VII., Westminster Abbey, on Thursday, April
28. It was interred in the same grave with her sister and predeces-

The Holbein Gate, Old Whitehall.

sor, Mary ; and a munificent monument was erected to her memory,
by her successor, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England.

Palace, from its being the palace of the Archbishop of York. Cardinal Wolsey was the
last archbishop who resided in it, and when he lost the royal favour it was taken pos-
session of by Henry VIII. After Henry had appropriated to himself this Episcopal
residence, he built in front of it, opposite the entrance into the Tilt-yard, a magnificent
Gate-house, of which an engraving is given in the text. He received the design of
this Gate-house from Holbein, the celebrated painter, and a universal genius, who had
been introduced to him by Sir Thomas More, and whom he immediately took into his
sen ice. It was "constructed of small square stones and flint boulders, presenting two
different colours, glazed and disposed in a tesselated manner." Having been almost
reduced to ruins by fire during the reign of James I., the palace was rebuilt by that
monarch, and was the residence of Charles I , Cromwell, Charles II., and James II.
From the carelessness of some of William the Third's Dutch soldiers, it was again
burnt down in 1697, with the exception of the banqueting-house, which had been built
by James VI. This room, through one of the windows of which Charles 1. walked

460

Ladies of tJie Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor dynasty who occupied the
English throne, a dynasty which, commencing with Henry VII.,
her grandfather, and extending through five reigns, had lasted 118
years ; and during her reign England made immensely more pro-
gress in civilization, wealth, literature, and in all that constitutes the
greatness of a nation, than during the reign of any preceding sove-
reign. This is doubtless to be attributed, in no small degree, to the
able and wise councillors who formed her ministry ; but she displayed
singular penetration in selecting them, and possessing herself, in an
uncommon degree, the qualities requisite for the government of a
nation qualities which she brought vigorously into operation this
gave her administration the impress of her own mind, made the
glories of her reign her own, and has transmitted her name to pos-
terity as one of the greatest sovereigns that ever filled the English
throne.

to the scaffold on which he was executed, has been used, under the name of Whitehall
Chapel, as a place of public worship since the time of George I. It is considered one
of the most striking of the public buildings of the metropolis. For a full account of
Whitehall, see Knight's London, vol. i., pp. 333-304.

MILDRED COOKE,

LADY BURGHLEY.

^ILDRED COOKE was the daughter of Sir Anthony
Cooke, by his wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William
Fitz-Williams, of Milton, knight. She was born in
the year 1526, probably at Giddy Hall, in the county
of Essex, her father's seat. Her father, Sir Anthony,
who was great-grandson of Sir Thomas Cooke, Lord Mayor of Lon-
don in 1462, was a man of superior talents, acquirements, and cha-
racter ; a perfect master of the Latin and Greek languages, an ex-
cellent critic and philologist, equally skilled in poetry, history, and
mathematics, and not less distinguished for his piety, prudence, and
cordial attachment to Protestant principles. These qualities recom-
mended him to the guardians of Edward VI., by whom he was
appointed preceptor to that prince, whose manners it was also his
business to form ; and the royal pupil always regarded him with much
affection and respect. Besides Mildred he had four other daughters,
all of them highly accomplished women. Upon their education he
had bestowed great pains, providing them with able masters, and
employing much of his own time in their instruction. Possessing a
more than ordinary natural capacity, and applying themselves with
diligence to the prosecution of literature and science, they became
the most learned ladies of their day, particularly in the Latin and
Greek languages. " Indeed," says Fuller, in his usual quaint manner,

462 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

" they were all most eminent scholars (the honour of their own and
the shame of our sex), both in prose and poetry." J Nor was the
pious discipline of their minds neglected. To train them up virtuous
and religious, as well as intelligent and learned, was to both their
parents an object of anxious solicitude. " There are three objects,"
said their father, " before which I am studious not to do wrong ; my
prince, my conscience, and my children ;" and he was wont to say to
his daughters, " My example is your inheritance, and my life is your
portion." As to their excellent mother, she was far more concerned
to see them imbued with the fear of God, and useful in the world,
than that they should attain the highest distinction in mere literary
acquirements. 2 Sir Anthony had no Erasmus to celebrate the wise
and strict discipline under which these ladies were brought up ; but
the spectacle of this " man of antique gravity," as Camden describes
him, 3 surrounded by his five daughters, and engaged in instilling
into their minds by night the same lessons he had taught the prince
by day, presented as delightful a family picture as that presented in
the household of Sir Thomas More, which Erasmus so pleasingly
portrays. In the extraordinary care he bestowed upon the education
of his daughters, his object was not to make them mere literary cha-
racters, but to cultivate their reason and to form their hearts, that
they might rightly perform their duties as wives and mothers. His
sentiments on this subject were similar to those so beautifully
expressed by Sir Thomas More in an elegant Latin poem, in which,
addressing a friend as to the choice of a wife, he recommends him, if
he desired a happy life, to overlook wealth and beauty, and to unite
himself with a woman of virtue and knowledge. " May you meet
with a wife," says he, " who is not always stupidly silent, not always
prattling nonsense ! May she be learned, if possible, or at least ca-

1 Worthies of England, vol i., p. 347.

2 See, in the subsequent Life, the testimony to this effect borne to her by her daughter,
Lady Bacon.

3 Bishop Jewel, who, in his correspondence, usually styles him *A{x"*yi';f (master
of the cooks), represents him as a man of " melancholy temperament." Zurich Ori-
ginal Letters, second series, vol. i., p. 53.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 463

pable of being made so ! A woman thus accomplished will be always
drawing sentences and maxims of virtue out of the best authors of
antiquity. She will be herself, in all changes of fortune, neither
blown up in prosperity nor broken with adversity. You will find in
her an even, cheerful, good-humoured friend, and an agreeable com-
panion for life. She will infuse knowledge into your children with
their milk, and from their infancy train them up to wisdom. What-
ever company you are engaged in you will long to be at home, and
retire with delight from the society of men into the bosom of one
who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute,
or sings to it any of her own compositions, her voice will soothe you
in your solitudes, and sound more sweetly in your ear than that of
the nightingale. You will spend with pleasure whole days and
nights in her conversation, and be ever finding out new beauties in
her discourse. She will keep your mind in perpetual serenity, re-
strain its mirth from being dissolute, and prevent its melancholy
from being painful." ! On Sir Anthony's daughters reaching woman-
hood, some of the greatest men of that time sighed to wed them,
attracted more by their mental accomplishments, their virtuous
character, and their personal charms, than by their portions. 2

Mildred, the eldest, the subject of the present sketch, early evinced
a predilection for learning, and her proficiency in the various branches
then reckoned necessary to the accomplishment of ladies of the first
rank, in embroidery, in music, and other liberal arts, in French and
Italian, in Latin, and particularly in Greek, fully corresponded with
the care bestowed upon her education by her father. 3

1 Ballard's Learned Ladies, pp. 38, 39.

2 Of Mildred's marriage we shall afterwards speak. Anne, the second daughter,
was married to Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth ; Elizabeth was
married, first to Sir Thomas Hobby, and secondly to Lord John Russel ; Katharine
to Sir Henry Killigrew ; and Margaret to Sir Ralph Rowlet.

a In the inscription on her monument, it is said that her " uncommon acquaintance
with the Latin and Greek languages was acquired solely from the instructions of her
father." A contemporary authority, quoted by Strype, affirms, on the other hand,
that she had Mr. Laurence, " a man in those times of great fame for his knowledge in
the Greek language, for her preceptor in that tongue." Life of Archbishop Parker.
vol. ii., p 223.

464 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

During the later period of the reigu of Henry VIII., and during
the reign of Edward VI., the situation held by her father, as one of
Prince Edward's preceptors, procured Mildred frequent access to the
court. This afforded her an opportunity of meeting with a number
of excellent ladies of a kindred spirit, with whom she came to be on
intimate terms. She early contracted a friendship with Queen
Katharine Parr, Katharine Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Jane Grey, the
daughters of Protector Somerset, 1 and other ladies eminent for learn-
ing, intelligence, virtue, and attachment to the Reformation. She
was also the companion of Princess Elizabeth's youth, as she was the
companion of her maturer years, wheii she became the wife of that
minister of state, on whose judgment Elizabeth continued to repose
through life, more than on the judgment of all her other statesmen.
All these ladies were enthusiastic cultivators of literature. They
especially paid uncommon attention to the Greek and Roman lan-
guages, and to the study of theology.

Mildred being educated in Protestant principles, made an open
profession of the Protestant faith, if not during the closing period of
the reign of Henry VIII., yet during the reign of Edward VI., when
Popery was abolished and the Protestant religion established.

In 1546, shortly after the accession of Edward VI., being in the
twentieth year of her age, she was married to William Cecil, after-
wards the celebrated Lord Burghley, privy councillor to Queen
Elizabeth, and Lord High Treasurer of England. 2 She was his second
wife. 3 This matrimonial alliance, like his first, greatly contributed
to promote Cecil's political advancement, yet it was the result of
ardent attachment, rather than of calculated worldly advantage.

1 See some account of Somerset's daughters in Appendix, No. VI.

3 He was created Lord Burghley in 1571, and in the subsequent year was appointed
lord high treasurer, in which office he continued till his death.

3 Cecil's first wife was Mary Cheke, sister of Sir John Cheke, professor of Greek in
the university of Cambridge, and one of the tutors of Edward VI. He was married
to this lady on the 8th of August, 1541, in the 21st year of his age. She gave birth to
a son on the 5th of May, 1542, and died on the 22d of February, 1543, at Cambridge.
Taking her youth into account, she is said to have been a lady of extraordinary ac-
quirements in literature. Clutterbuck's History and Antiquities of Hertford, p. 88.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 465

The testimony borne, a few years after her marriage, to Lady
Cecil's high literary acquirements, as well as to the distinguished
talents and upright character of her husband, by Roger Ascham, the
most competent of all men then living to judge upon such points, is
entitled to special attention. Writing in 1550 to his friend, John
Sturmius, the learned rector of the Protestant academy of Strasburg,
after speaking of the proficiency of the Princess Elizabeth in learning,
he says, " There are two English ladies whom I cannot omit to men-
tion, nor would I have you, my Sturmius, omit them, if you meditate
any celebration of your English friends, than which nothing could be
more agreeable to me. One is Jane Grey, the other is Mildred Cecil,
who understands and speaks Greek like English, 1 so that it may be
doubted whether she is most happy in the possession of this surpass-
ing degree of knowledge, or in having had for her preceptor and
father Sir Anthony Cooke, whose singular erudition caused him to
be joined with John Cheke in the office of tutor to the king, or finally,
in having become the wife of William Cecil, lately appointed secre-
tary of state ; a young man, indeed, but mature in wisdom, and so
deeply skilled both in letters and in affairs, and endued with such
moderation in the exercise of public offices, that to him would be
awarded, by the consenting voice of Englishmen, the fourfold praise
attributed to Pericles by his rival Thucydides. ' To know all that is
fitting, to be able to apply what he knows, to be a lover of his
country, and superior to money.'" 2

Lady Cecil early occupied a situation in the court of Queen Mary.
On occasion of that queen's passing in splendid procession through
the city of London, on the 30th of September, 1553, the day before
her coronation, Lady Cecil and her sisters, dressed in crimson satiu,
and mounted on horses similarly attired, formed part of the brilliant

1 This testimony of Aschara is corroborated by that of Mr. Laurence, her Greek
tutor, who declared that she equalled, if not overmatched, any Greek professor in the
universities in the knowledge of that language. Preface to Hist, of France, trans-
lated into English, and printed in 1595, quoted by Strype in Life of Archbishop Parker,
vol. ii., p. 222.

2 Quoted in Miss Aiken's Memoirs of Ike Court of Queen Elisabeth, vol. i., p. 96.

466 Ladies of tJie Reformation.

train of ladies who followed the royal carriage. She was present at
the coronation, and during this reign continued to hold office in the
palace. 1

In attending upon the person of Queen Mary, Lady Cecil was ex-
posed to great temptations to conform to the Popish religion, to
please the queen, or to escape the dangers to which non-conformity
might expose her from the queen's remorseless bigotry. In similar
situations, some, resisting all the temptations which surrounded them,
have persevered in maintaining their integrity, like Milton's Abdiel,

"faithful found

Among the faithless, faithful only he."

Daniel, while holding office in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, King
of Babylon, a persecutor of the church, continued steadfast in the
Jewish faith, and in the worship of the true God. Some of the
early Christian converts, while occupying places in the household of
the bloody and persecuting Nero, held fast the Christian faith. But
Lady Cecil did not possess the decision of character, the moral cou-
rage of these early confessors, and of many, both male and female,
in the reign of Queen Mary. Under that reign there were among
the reformed in England three classes, each of which followed a dif-
ferent course. One class, soon after Mary's accession, fled to the
continent to escape the storm, preferring exile to the renunciation
of their faith. Another class, who could not, from various circum-
stances, make good their flight, or whose consciences, as in the case
of Archbishop Cranmer, would not permit them to fly from the post
of danger, remained at home, openly professing the reformed faith,
and rather than abjure it, courageously submitting to the violence
of persecution. The third class likewise remained at home, but for
the time conformed to Romanism. To this last class Lady Cecil and
her husband unhappily belonged ; they swerved, at least towards the
close of Queen Mary's reign, after the persecution began, from the
Protestant faith, and attended both the confessional and mass ; not

1 Miss Strickland's Life of Queen Mary, in Queens of England.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 407

that they had renounced in their hearts the Protestant doctrines,
but they wanted sufficient fortitude to act upon their principles in
these trying times. 1

This was no doubt a great defection in two persons of such emi-
nence, who had been noted in the reign of Edward VI. for their zeal
in the cause of the Reformation ; and to Romanists, who regarded
the observance of the mass in particular as a symbol of the abjura-
tion of the reformed religion, it gave much occasion for triumph, as
well as grieved the hearts of many of their friends both at home and
in exile. Sir John Cheke, who had fled to Strasburg, in writing to
Cecil from that place, on the 18th of February, 1556, expresses the
sorrow which reports of this nature had caused him, and exhorts
him and his wife, in a strain of the most affectionate earnestness,
to hold fast their faith, "to take heed how they did in the least
warp or strain their consciences by any compliance for their worldly
security." He concludes thus: "I commend [myself] to you and
to my lady, and you both to God ; wishing you that steadfastness
in the truth, and that choice of doing well that I do desire of God
for myself. Fare-ye-well, and bring up your son in the true fear
of God." 2 Neither Lady Cecil nor her husband were ignorant of
the errors, idolatry, and superstition of Popery. They were, indeed,
better instructed on these points than many who, in the reign of

' This, which was before involved in doubt, has been placed beyond all dispute by
the industrious historian, Tytler, from a paper which, after a careful search, he found in
the State Paper Office, among a loose collection of notes and memoranda, which had
been put up by themselves, as illustrating the private life of Lord Burghley. This paper,
which contains a list of persons in the parish of Wymhleton who confessed and at-
tended mass, amounting to 226, together with the amount of the offerings of each,
was probably written by the priest of the parish, but it is endorsed in Sir William
Cecil's hand, and the sum total of the offerings is calculated in his hand. It is, there-
fore, unquestionably authentic. It begins thus :

"Easter Book, 1556.

" The names of them that dwelleth in the parish of Vembletoun that was confessed,
and received the sacrament of the altar.

" My master, Sir William Cecil, and my Lady Mildred, his wife." Tytler's Reigns
of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., pp. 435-443, 445.

2 Strype's Life of Sir John Cheke.

468 Ladies oftJte Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Mary, went boldly to the flames. But they were inferior to these
confessors in faith, in self-denial, in submission to the authority of
Him who has interdicted, in His Word, all fellowship with Anti-
christ, and required his disciples to be faithful in confessing him,
though at the peril of death. It would be unbecoming in us, who
sit in the lap of ease, severely to censure those whose courage has
failed them at the sight of prisons, of racks, of flames ; but still we
must condemn them, though, were we placed in similar circum-
stances, we might incur the same condemnation ; and from such in-
stances of fainting in the day of trial, exhibited in the history of
persecuting times, in striking contrast with examples of unwavering
resolution in the face of torture and death, we should learn the
weakness of human nature, when left to itself, even in those who, in
other respects, from the virtues with which they may be adorned,
are worthy of our esteem and imitation. 1

" 5Ty thoughts are with the dead ; with them

I live in long pass'd years ;
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,

Partake their hopes and fears ;
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind."

On the death of Queen Mary, who, happily for the country, did
not reign long, and the accession of Elizabeth, Popery being again
abolished and the Protestant religion restored, Lady Cecil was re-
leased from the temptation to continue to conform to a system which
in heart she abhorred. Her father, who had been an exile for the
Protestant religion, also now returned to England, and fixing his

1 Even Sir John Cheke, notwithstanding his earnest admonitions to Sir WilJia.n
Cecil and Lady Cecil to remain steadfast to the Protestant cause, shrunk himself from
the fiery trial of persecution. Soon after the date of the above letter, having privately
repaired to Brussels, he was, by the orders of King Philip, arrested, bound hand and
foot, thrown into a cart, and so conveyed on board a vessel sailing for England. The
humiliating recantation exacted from him, to which he submitted, but which so preyed
upon his mind that he died within a few months after, is aflfectingly told by Miss
Aiken, in her Court of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., pp. 222-224.

a Southey.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 469

residence at Giddy Hall, where he was born, he there spent the re-
mainder of his days in peace and honour. 1

Lady Cecil is even believed to have had a leaning towards the
Puritans during the reign of Elizabeth, though she did not connect
herself with that party. Her education had favoured this Purita-
nical tendency. Her father belonged to the strictest class of the Eng-
lish Eeformers, who, in the reign of Edward VI., had done much
in removing the grosser absurdities of the Romish Church, which
Henry VIII. had tenaciously retained, and who, in a preface to one
of the service books published by royal authority, observed, " that
they had gone as far as they could in reforming the church, con-
sidering the times they lived in, and hoped that they who came after
them would, as they might, do more." 2 After his return from exile,
at the close of the Marian persecution, he became still more tinc-
tured with Puritanism. Lady Cecil's early training and respect for
her venerated father's sentiments, thus led her to look with a friendly
eye on the Puritans. Her views as to the impolicy of persecuting
them were the same as those of her husband ; and applications were
frequently made to her, as well as to her other sisters, Lady Bacon,
and Lady Eussel, by the persecuted Puritans, to exert her influence
in their behalf, though both she and Lord Burghley, had but imper-
fect success in their endeavours to restrain Queen Elizabeth from
proceeding to extremes against such as refused to conform to the
obnoxious prescribed forms.

Yet from her admirable understanding, exemplary virtue, engaging
manners, and refined taste, Lady Burghley was much respected by
Elizabeth, and gained no inconsiderable influence over the mind of
that sovereign. It is, indeed, believed that she greatly contributed
to baffle the attempts and intrigues of her husband's enemies, and
particularly of his rival, Leicester, so that all the arts of that noble-

1 He departed this life llth June, 1576, at the age of seventy, and, according to his
last will and testament, was interred in the chapel of Rumford, in Essex, where a monu-
ment was erected to his memory. Strype's Annals, vol. ii., part ii., p. 86.

2 Neal's History of the Puritans, edit. 1793, vol. i., p. 73.

470

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

man, though the queen's favourite, could never lessen the confidence
which her majesty reposed in Burghley. or prevail upon her to adopt
any measures in the affairs of the state in his absence, or during his
illness, without first receiving his advice. This, no doubt, was also
greatly owing to the high opinion she had formed of his great
abilities and fidelity. But she seems to have formed a no less
favourable opinion of the mental endowments and good qualities of
Lady Burghley, whose masculine vigour of mind was indeed such,
that it has been said, "if a judgment may be formed from her letters,
she was as good a politician as Burghley himself." 1

Lord and Lady Burghley, during Elizabeth's reign, had four places

Burghlfjr House, Noit

of residence ; their lodgings at court, their house in the Strand, their
favourite seat at Theobalds, and their family residence, called Burgh -

l Carte's History of England, vol. iii., p. 670. Ballard, in his Memoirs of Learned
Ladies, in giving her the credit of being a good politician, refers to a letter from her to
Sir William Fitz- Williams, Deputy of Ireland, containing excellent advice. It is certain
that Maitland of Lethington corresponded with her in the early part of Elizabeth's
reign. Nare's Memoirs of Lord Buryhley, vol. iii., p. 366.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 471

ley House, in Northamptonshire. This last was one of the most
magnificent mansions of that period; 1 and here they were often
visited by Queen Elizabeth and her court.

Few ladies in the court possessed a deeper sense of piety than
Lady Burghley, and as she advanced in years, the more deeply was
the importance of divine and eternal things impressed upon her mind.
Not only was she regular in her attendance upon the public ordi-
nances of religion, but, what afforded a still more unequivocal testi-
mony to the sincerity of her piety, she was much employed in private
in reading the Scriptures, and in prayer. 2 She used, for her assist-
ance in her prayers and meditations, a small pocket volume in Latin,
entitled, Psalmi sew Precationes Johannis Episcopi Roffensis. On
this book of devotions she wrote her name thus : " Mildreda Cicillia,
15G5." 3 In watching over the education of her children, it was
her anxious care to imbue their young minds with the principles
of true religion. Lord Burghley, in his Advices to his Son, Robert,
commends her exemplary pains in this respect. "The virtuous
inclinations of thy matchless mother," says he, "by whose tender
and godly care thy infancy was governed, together with thy edu-
cation under so zealous and excellent a tutor, puts me in rather
assurance than hope that thou art not ignorant of that summum
bonum which is only able to make thee happy, as well in thy death
as in thy life; I mean the true knowledge and worship of thy

1 This mansion, the princely seat of the Marquis of Exeter, a lineal descendant of
Burghley's eldest son, Thomas, who was created Earl of Exeter in 1605, " has come
down to us intact, and is perhaps more interesting from its associations with ' the
glorious days' than any other edifice now remaining in the kingdom. The halls are
still standing where the famous lord treasurer entertained his sovereign and her
dazzling court. . . It is one of the noblest monuments of British architecture in the
time of Queen Elizabeth ; . . . and at the present time few seats, either in England
or on the continent, can vie with Burghley House." Baronial Halls of England, Lon-
don, Chapman, 1848, vol. ii.

2 This is stated in the inscription on her monument.

3 Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., p. 129. "A beautiful copy of the Mirificam
Greek Testament of R. Stephens is said also to be still extant, with the name ' Mil-
dreda Cecilia,' in her own handwriting, in Greek characters." Nare's Memoirs of
Lord Burghley.

472 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Creator and Redeemer, without which all other things are vain and
miserable." '

During the whole of her life, Lady Burghley retained her devotion
to elegant and useful studies ; she continued to cultivate the learned
languages, to read the most celebrated Greek and Roman orators,
historians, and poets, in the original. But she did not confine her-
self to the ancient classic models, as in early life, when her ardent
thirst for learning may have been more prominent than the fervour
of her piety. In the latter period of her life, her piety predominat-
ing over her taste for intellectual and learned pursuits, she aimed at
making her skill in the Greek language subservient to her improve-
ment in religious knowledge. With this view she read most of the
Greek fathers, as Basil the Great, Cyril, Chrysostome, Gregory Nazi-
anzen, and others. 2 In perusing these works, which were more
admired then than they are now, and from which Luther, Calvin,
and other learned Reformers derived lessons of wisdom, she took
great delight, and doubtless derived from them no small instruction,
though it must be owned that much dross is mingled with the gold ;
that in respect of solidity of judgment, apostolic soundness of doc-
trine, and even of learning, they are greatly inferior to the writings
of the master-spirits of the Reformation. She is said to have trans-
lated a piece of St. Chrysostome from Greek into English, and when
she presented the University Library of Cambridge with the Great
Bible in Hebrew and four other tongues, she accompanied it with a
Greek epistle of her own composition, and in her own handwriting. 3

1 Strype's Annals, vol. iv., p. 475.

2 These facts are stated in the inscription on her monument.

3 Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., p. 129. Such was her reputation as a scholar,
that Christopher Ockland, a learned schoolmaster, sometime of the free school in
Southwark, afterwards of Cheltenham school, dedicated to her a work he published
in 1582, in elegant Latin heroic verse, consisting of two parts, the first entitled
Anglorum Pralia, beginning at the year 1327, and ending at the year 1558, the year
of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne, where begins the second part, entitled
Elizabetha, describing her life and happy reign unto the year 1582. This book was so
highly approved, that it was by the queen's privy council ordered to be taught in all
grammar and free schools within the realm. Ibid., vol. iii., part i., pp. 223-225.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 473

Experience having taught her the advantages of mental cultiva-
tion, she was one of the greatest patronesses of learning in her day.
Promising youths in poor circumstances were the objects of her spe-
cial sympathy, and by her interest or generous contributions, many
such were furnished with the means of obtaining a liberal education.
During her lifetime she regularly maintained, for several years, two
scholars at St. John's College, Cambridge, ' and that this blessing
might be extended to future generations, she afterwards purchased
lands in name of the dean of Westminster, and conveyed them in
perpetuity for the support of two students at that college. "All
which was done without any signification of her act or charge to any
manner of person, but only of the dean, and of William Walter of
Wymbleton, whose advice was used for the writing of the purchase
and insurance." Her husband, Lord Burghley, in a tribute to her
memory, written after her death, which beautifully illustrates her
Christian excellence of character, has recorded these acts of bene-
ficence, 2 to which he has added other proofs of her zeal in behalf of
the interests of education. She "likewise provided four merks yearly
for four sermons, to be preached quarterly, by one of the preachers
of St. John's College." " She also gave a sum of money to the mas-
ter of St. John's College, to provide fires in the hall of that college,
upon all Sundays and holy-days, betwixt the feasts of All-Saints and
Candlemas, when there were no ordinary fires of the charge of the
college. She gave also a sum of money secretly towards a .building,
for a new way at Cambridge to the common schools. She also pro-
vided a great number of books, whereof she gave some to the uni-
versity of Cambridge, namely, the Great Bible in Hebrew and four
other tongues. And to the college of St. John very many books in
Greek, of divinity and physic, and of other sciences. The like she
did to Christ's Church, and St. John's College in Oxford. The like
she did to the college of Westminster."

1 The college of St. John, in the university of Cambridge, was founded by Mar-
garet, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. It was at this college that Lord
Bnrghley had been educated.

J Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., pp. 125-128.

474 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Nor was she less distinguished for her benevolence and charity in
relieving the wants of the poor than for her love and patronage of
learning. In her eagerness to find opportunities of doing good, she
sought out for herself cases of distress, not waiting till they were
forced upon her attention by others. In the tribute to her memory
already referred to, Lord Burghley has recorded some of the nume-
rous instances in which she endeavoured to alleviate the sufferings
of poverty, by giving loans of money to industrious mechanics, by
providing employment for the poor, or by a gratuitous distribution
of clothing, food, and fire, especially to destitute widows and orphans.
At that period the failure of the crop was of frequent occurrence ;
and in such cases, the price of corn becoming so exorbitant as to
place it beyond the pecuniary means of the poor, all the calamities
of famine were widely felt. In such times of scarcity Lady Burghley's
liberality was especially exercised. " Not long before her death she
caused secretly to be bought a large quantity of wheat and rye, to
be disposed amongst the poor in time of dearth; which remained
unspent at her death ; but the same confessed by such as provided it
secretly; and, therefore, in conscience so to be distributed according to
,her mind." And as to criminals in the London prisons, though the
noble idea of Mrs. Fry, of personally visiting the cells of the prisoners,
to teach them the way to eternal life, to instruct them in the arts of
reading and writing, to inculcate upon them morality, cleanliness,
and self-respect, and to employ them in useful avocations, had not
dawned upon her mind, as it had not dawned upon the mind of any
philanthropist of her day, yet she did not forget these wretched out-
casts of society. Four times in the year she sent to all the prisons
of London money to purchase bread, cheese, and drink, commonly for
400 prisoners, and often for a larger number, concealing from those
for whom this beneficence was intended, as well as from the public,
the benevolent hand by which it had been bestowed.

It is impossible not to admire the humble, unostentatious Christian
spirit with which she performed all these acts of beneficence. So
secretly did she distribute her charity, that she concealed it even

EXGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 475

from Lord Burghley himself, who did not know its extent till after
her death. "She did of late years," says he, "sundry chai-itable
deeds; whereof she determined to have no outward knowledge
whilst she lived ; insomuch as, when I had some little understanding
thereof, and asked her wherein she had disposed any charitable gifts
(according to her often wishing that she were able to do some spe-
cial act for maintenance of learning, and relief of the poor), she
would always only show herself rather desirous so to do, than ever
confess any such act ; as since her death is manifestly known now
to me, and confessed by sundry good men (whose names and minis-
tries she secretly used), that she did charge them most strictly, that
while she lived they should never declare the same to me nor to any
other. And so now have I seen her earnest writings to that purpose
of her own hand." Her concealing so many of her benefactions from
Lord Burghley could hardly arise from an apprehension that, had
they been known to him, he would have been dissatisfied ; for he
was himself remarkably charitable, appropriating ,500 annually to
charitable purposes, besides other large sums which he distributed
on extraordinary occasions.

In a character given of her not long after her death, she is de-
scribed as " another Dorcas, full of piety and good works," among
which, besides those already specified, is mentioned " her readiness
in soliciting for poor and distressed suitors unto her dear lord," and
" her bountifulness to exiled strangers." '

Lady Burghley met with many trials in the deaths of her off-
spring. She had been blessed with numerous children, but all of
them died young, with the exception of three, Anne, born 5th De-
cember, 1556, who was married, in the 15th year of her age, to
Edward Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford of that name, and Lord High
Chamberlain of England, a nobleman of bad character, who treated
her cruelly; 2 Elizabeth, who was married to William, eldest son of

1 Epistle dedicatory, by the translator of the History of France into English, pub-
lished in 1595, to Lady Anne, Countess of Warwick, and Lady Katharine, Baroness
Howard of Effingham ; quoted in Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., p. 130.

2 Strype's Annals, vol. ii., part ii., p. 70; and vol. iii. part i., pp. 81, 82.

476 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Thomas Lord Wentworth; and Eobert, born 1st June, 1563, who
did not marry till after his mother's death. In the year 1588 she
lost her daughter Anne, who died on the 5th of June that year, in
the palace of Queen Elizabeth, at Greenwich, in the thirty-second
year of her age, leaving, of the numerous children she had to the
Earl of Oxford, only three daughters, Elizabeth, Briget, and Susanna,
all young. With bitterness of spirit, and with many tears, Lady
Burghley resigned to death this beloved daughter, whose accom-
plishments and Christian worth much endeared her to both her
parents, as we learn from the testimony of her father, who, in the
inscription, of his own composition, which he caused to be engraven
on her tombstone, thus records her worth : " This, my daughter
Anne, lived from her tenderest years, highly spoken of by all, both
in the court and at home. As a virgin, she was uniformly modest
and chaste ; as a wife, steadfast in her aiFections, and entirely faithful
to her husband ; as a daughter, obedient in all things to her parents,
and eminently diligent and devout in worshipping God. Seized with
a burning fever, she yielded up her last breath and her spirit with
most fervent prayers to God, her Creator and Eedeemer, in the
assured hope of the heavenly kingdom."

Lady Burghley did not long survive her daughter. The tragic
scene of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, to which Lord Burgh-
ley had, from political considerations, urged Queen Elizabeth 1 the
defeat of the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish Armada,
more by the wonderful hand of Providence than by the means of
defence, devised and carried into execution by Lord Burghley these
were the last great public events in the nation which she lived to
witness. She died in her own house at Westminster, on the 4th of
April, 1589, at the age of sixty-three, after living with her husband
forty-three years, during which she enjoyed a more than common
degree of domestic happiness. The death of this amiable and ex-

1 His earnestness in urging the trial and condemnation of Mary Queen of Scots,
as necessary to the safety of Elizabeth's person and government, has never been for-
given by the chivalrous partizans of that unfortunate queen.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Gooke. 477

cellent lady, whose Christian virtues were as solid as her talents
were shining, was deeply regretted by all who knew her. Many of
the poor thereby lost a benefactor. To Lord Burghley, in particu-
lar, this was a severe affliction. As a means of inspiring resigna-
tion, and soothing his sorrow under the desolating stroke, he wrote
a paper consisting of meditations on her death and of a delineation
of her character. This paper is the more to be depended on, as it is
written, not in a style of exaggerated panegyric, but in the form of a
plain, unadorned statement of her beneficent actions. 1 He gives no
particular account of the circumstances of her last illness and closing
hour, but we learn from his narrative that she looked to the atoning
blood of Jesus, and to his everlasting love, as what alone could give
a sinner hope, could make her tranquil in her departing moments,
and secure for her a sure entrance into heavenly glory. He comforted
himself by such a train of thought as the following : " There is no
cogitation to be used with an intent to recover that which never can
be had again, that is, to have my dear wife to live again in her mor-
tal body, which is separated from the soul, and resteth in the earth,
dead, and the soul taken up to heaven, and there to remain in the
fruition of blessedness unspeakable, until the general resurrection of
all flesh, when, by the almighty power of God (who made all things
of nothing), her body shall be raised up and joined with her soul in
an everlasting, unspeakable joy, such as no tongue can express nor
heart conceive.

" Therefore my cogitations ought to be occupied in these things
following :

" I ought to thank Almighty God for his favour in permitting her
to have lived so many years together with me, and to have given her
grace to have had the true knowledge of her salvation, by the death
of his Son Jesus, opened to her by the knowledge of the gospel,
whereof she was a professor from her youth.

" I ought to comfort myself with the remembrance of her many

l It was written only fiye days afcer her death, being dated and concluding thus :
" April 9th, 1589 Written at Colling's Lodge, by me in sorrow, W. B."

478 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

virtuous and godly actions, wherein she continued all her life

The particulars of many of these hereafter do follow, which I do with
mine own handwriting recite for my comfort in the memory thereof,
with assurance that God hath accepted the same in such favourable
sort as she findeth now the fruits thereof in heaven." He then
proceeds to enumerate some of her various benefactions, already
noticed, for the maintenance of scholars at the university, and for
the relief of the poor, as proofs of the patronage she extended to
learning, and of her remarkable charitable disposition.

On the 25th of April she was interred in the abbey church of
Westminster, towards the south-east angle of St. Nicholas Chapel.
The pomp of her funeral was suitable to her high station, as the
wife of the first statesman of England, and a sermon was preached
on the occasion by the dean of St. Paul's. In a letter to the dean,
Lord Burghley, while explaining that he did not desire the per-
formance of that religious service from motives of superstition, nor
was governed by vanity, but by respect, in the splendour of her ob-
sequies, dwells with the tenderest affection upon the sanctity of her
life and the piety of her death. " April 21, 1589. I am desirous to
have it declared, for the satisfaction of the godly, that I do not
celebrate this funeral in this sort with any intention thereby, as
the corrupt abuse hath been in the church, to procure of God the
relief or the amendment of the state of her soul, who is dead in
body only. For I am fully persuaded, by many certain arguments
of God's grace bestowed upon her in this life, and of her con-
tinual virtuous life and godly death, that God, of his infinite
goodness, hath received her soul into a place of blessedness, where it
shall remain with the souls of the faithful until the general day of
judgment, when it shall be joined with her body. And with that
persuasion I do humbly thank Almighty God, by his Son Christ, for
his unspeakable goodness towards the salvation of her soul, so as I
know no action on earth can amend the same. But yet I do other-
wise most willingly celebrate this funeral, as a testimony of my hearty
love which I did bear her. .... Further, this that is here done for

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 479

the assembly of our friends, is to testify to the world what estimation,
love, and reverence, God bears to the stock whereof she did come,
both by her father and mother, as manifestly may be seen about
her hearse, by the sundry coats of noble houses joined by blood
with her. Which is not done for any vain pomp of the world,
but for civil duty towards her body, that is to be with honour
regarded for the assured hope of the resurrection thereof at the last
day." 1

How deeply Lord Burghley was affected with this bereavement may
be seen from his letters to his friends, as well as from the documents
now quoted. In a letter to Lord Shrewsbury, written about a month
after Lady Burghley's funeral, he intimates that it was impossible
for him to shake off the remembrance of his great loss, which still
disturbed him night and day. He had then, it would appear, left
his mansion for a time, as this letter is dated " From a poore lodge
neare my howss at Theobald's, 27 Maij, 1589 ;" and in the P.S. he
says, " The queen is at Barn Elms (the seat of Sir Francis Walsing-
ham), but this night I will attend on hir at "Westminster, for I am
no man mete for feastings." 2

A sumptuous monument was erected to Lady Burghley's memory,
and to the memory of their daughter, Lady Anne, Countess of Ox-
ford, by Lord Burghley. The monument is twenty-four feet high,
with divers arches and canopies, supported by pillars of the Corin-
thian order, and adorned with pyramids of porphyry, Touch, Lydian,
and various coloured marble, most curiously carved, and gilt with
gold. On the upper part of this monument, under a neat arch, is a
small image of an old man kneeling, in his robes of state, with a
collar and jewel of the order of St. George about his neck, being the
statue of Lord Burghley. The statues of Lady Burghley and the
daughter, of the finest alabaster, are of full length, in a cumbent
posture, in their robes, the furthermost representing Lady Burghley,
and the one on this side the daughter. At the head of the pedestal
is a canopy, supported by small columns of the Corinthian order,

i Strype's Annals, vol. iii., part ii., pp. 128, 129. 2 Lodge's Portraits.

480

Ladies of the Reformation.

[ENGLAND.

and painted with azure, and another of the same construction and
materials at the feet, underneath each of which is a death's head,
enclosed in crystal, with these words, MORS JANUA VIT.E,' and MOBS

Lady Burghley'e Monument.

Mini LucRUM. 2 At the head of Lady Burghley, and her daughter,
the Countess of Oxford, are three small female figures kneeling,
representing Ladies Elizabeth, Briget, and Susanna, daughters of the
countess, who, however, were alive when the monument was erected :
and at the feet of Lady Burghley and her daughter is a statue of
a youth kneeling, representing Eobert Cecil, her only son, who
was also then alive. The lengthened inscription, which is in Lathi,
1 i. c , death, the gate of life. 2 1. e., death to me is gain.

ENGLAND.] Mildred Cooke. 481

was no doubt composed by Lord Burghley himself. It commences
thus :

" If it is asked who is this old man in a kneeling posture, vener-
able from his gray hairs, arrayed in robes of state, knight of the order
of the garter ; who also are these two noble ladies, splendidly attired
in their robes, and who are those at the heads and feet of these ladies
kneeling 1 you will learn all these particulars from the following dis-
course of the old man :

" ' She whose image is farthest off was alas ! was my Mildred, a
wife exceedingly endeared to me, the other was my most beloved
daughter, Anne. Mildred, my wife, lived with me most affection-
ately for a period of forty-three years, and was a sharer of all my
fortunes, both in prosperity and in adversity, during the reigns of
Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, who
now most happily sways the sceptre.' "

In a similar strain, which partakes somewhat of the garrulity of
old age, he goes on, at great length for a monumental inscription,
describing his wife ; his daughter Anne, with her children ; his son
Thomas, 1 afterwards Earl of Exeter, with his children ; his son .Ro-
bert, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Salisbury, who had been
recently married , 2 and his daughter Elizabeth, who, as stated in the
inscription, died immediately on the death of her husband, William
Wentworth ; the whole pervaded by a tone of deep, solemn feeling,
and of ardent, conjugal and paternal affection of affection particu-
larly towards his deceased wife and his daughter Anne. 3 Having de-
scribed the virtues of Anne, he adds, " At length, to the great grief
of myself and of her mother, being snatched away from us, she
yielded up the spirit to God who gave it, upon which I and my wife,

1 Thomas was Burghley's son by his first wife, Mary Cheke. He was born 5th May,
1542.

2 Robert was married in August, 1589, about four months after his mother's death,
with his father's consent, to Lady Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, aud
one of the ladies of the queen's privy chamber.

3 The eutire inscription is printed in Crull's Antiquities of Alley Church of West-
minster, vol. i., pp. 71-78.

482 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

with many tears, caused her body to be placed under this monumen-
tal stone. Not long after, the mother followed the daughter, and
although I never seriously think of her without tears, yet some
things present themselves which seem somewhat to mitigate my
grief." He then proceeds to specify her devotion to the study of the
Scriptures and of the Greek fathers, her liberalitj r in encouraging
learning, her charity to the poor, and her worth as a wife and mother.
Having next described the three small female figures at the heads
of Lady Burghley and her daughter, and the statue of the youth at
their feet in the attitude of kneeling, he says, " But to what purpose
is it for me to go on 1 I will make an end of speaking and lament-
ing, and will affirm this only, that this spectacle is to me so full of
grief, that although the sweet children of fairest promise that are
left me, offer some mixed consolation, yet neither these four, exceed-
ingly dear as they are to me, nor my beloved eldest son Thomas, nor
all who have sprung from him, and who are now alive, grandsons
and grand-daughters to the number of eleven, to whom also I add the
sweet little boy, William Paulet, son of my grand-daughter, Lucy
Cecil, by William Paulet, son and heir of the Marquis of Winton,
will ever efface the sadness which cleaves to me from these distress-
ing events." As a striking proof of the intensity of his affection for
his deceased wife, and daughter Anne, he again and again, in the
remaining part of the inscription, returns to speak of their virtues,
as if, in his sorrow, he could find no greater luxury than in linger-
ing, in melancholy thought, upon these objects of his attachment, and
in constantly speaking about them.

The virtues and talents of his wife in particular were never erased
from his memory. About two years after her death, still feeling the
vacancy she had left in his heart and house, and that, from his
advanced age, he must soon be called to follow her, he expressed a
wish as, after such a lengthened period of laborious and anxious
service he was well entitled to do to resign his office, and to spend
the remainder of his days in retirement. The queen, who had
afforded him such decisive and long-continued proofs of confidence

ENGLAND.]

Mildred Cooke.

483

and attachment, could not think, without the deepest regret, of the
final loss of his invaluable services, the more especially as she could
discern in him no traces of impaired mental vigour, and, at her ear-
nest solicitation, he was diverted from his purpose, and continued to
his death to direct, with the same ability and success as ever, the
affairs of government, maintaining the authority of the sovereign and
the public tranquillity, notwithstanding the opposition of a powerful
Roman Catholic faction.

ANNE COOKE,

LADY BACON.

COOKE was the second daughter of Sir Au-

'( thony Cooke, by his wife, Anne Fitz-Williams. She

\r was born about the year 1528, probably at Giddy

9 Hall, in Essex. Under the eye of her parents she
IlL received the same learned and religious education
as her sister, Lady Burghley ; nor was she inferior to her sister
in natural talents, in acquired accomplishments, and in Christian
worth. She was, in particular, exquisitely skilled in the Latin,
Greek, and Italian tongues. These qualifications procured her,
at an early age, the honourable appointment of governess to Ed-
ward VI., whose education, in co-operation with her father and
Sir John Cheke, she superintended ; and to her instructions may
not unreasonably be attributed, in part at least, the early piety and
uncommon attainments of that young prince. The care taken by
his preceptors to imbue his mind with the principles of the Protes-
tant religion, has, indeed, been made a ground of reproach by writers
of a certain class, 1 who have congratulated themselves on his early
death, from the apprehension that, judging from the papers on reli-
gious questions which he left behind him, had his reign been pro-
longed, England would have been cursed with the calamity of a
polemical monarch.

' D'laraeli, in his Amenities of Literature, vol. ii., p. 145.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 485

Passing the early part of her life amidst the conflict between
Popery and Protestantism, which was agitating England, the new
system seeking to overthrow the old, and the old seeking to exter-
minate the new, and having been instructed by her parents in the
reformed faith, she had her attention early turned to theological
inquiries ; and entering, with all the ardour of a strong and active
mind, into the study of the great points in dispute between Protes-
tants and Romanists, she mastered that controversy. In these in-
quiries she had ample assistance from numerous publications then
in circulation, from the sermons preached in defence of the truth,
from the New Testament in the oiiginal Greek, which she was able
to read, from the whole Scriptures in the vernacular tongue, and
from intercourse with learned men.

Her father's house being the resort of the most eminent Reformers
of that period, both English and foreign, she had thus an opportunity
of meeting with many personages celebrated for learning, eloquence,
and piety. Among the foreign Reformers who frequented her father's
house was Bernardino Ochino, an Italian divine, 1 whom persecution
had driven from his native country, and who, after various wander-
ings in Switzerland, Germany, and France, had repaired to England in
the end of the year 1547, being then in the sixtieth year of his age, on
the invitation of Archbishop Cranmer, and exercised his talents as a
preacher among the Italian Protestant refugees in London. This
divine, who possessed highly popular gifts as a preacher, having pub-
lished a volume, consisting of twenty-five short sermons, in Italian,
about the half of which relate to the abstruse doctrine of election,
treated, however, in a popular form, and the rest to miscellaneous
subjects, Anne displayed her industry and skill in the Italian
language by translating the sermons into English. In undertaking
this task, she was partly influenced by the reputation which Ochino
had acquired as a pulpit orator in his own country, where persons of
all ranks and sexes, monarchs, bishops, and cardinals, some of them
frenzied persecutors of the Protestants, had listened with almost un-
i His birthplace was Siena, a city of Tuscany.

486 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

bounded admiration to his powerful eloquence ; partly by her venera-
tion for his character, from his sufferings in the Protestant cause,
from the sanctity of his life, and from the winning suavity of his
manners ; and partly by the desire of promoting her own improve-
ment in the Italian language, and in the knowledge of divine truth.
At first she does not appear to have had the least thought of giving
her translation to the public ; but after she had finished it, some of
her friends who perused it were so much pleased with its elegance,
as well as with the excellence of the matter, that they strongly re-
commended its publication. She yielded to their entreaties, though
with a degree of modest diffidence, encouraged by the hope that her
translation might be useful to her countrymen and countrywomen,
by enabling them to read in their own tongue these excellent ad-
dresses. It was published with a preface "To the Christian Reader, 1 '
written by G. B. ; and with becoming filial piety, though living in
the circle of the court, overlooking great men and great ladies, the
translator sought no other patroness than her beloved mother, to
whom she dedicated her performance. 1
In the preface " To the Christian Reader," some of the circum-

1 There were at least two editions ; but the volume is now rarely to be met with.
The copy which we have consulted, probably the first edition, is, like many works in
the age of Queen Elizabeth, printed in black letter. It is small 12mo, consisting 1 of
244 pages, though the pages are not numbered ; and the title-page is as follows :

"SERMONS

" Of Barnardine Ochyne (to the number of 25), concerning the predestination and
election of God ; very expedient to the setting forth of his glory among his creatures.
Translated out of Italian into our native tongue, by A. C.

[Then there is a quotation from Tobit xii. 7, and another from Isaiah xliii. 6, 7.]
" Printed by John Day, dwelling over Aldersgate, beneath S. Martins."
The date of publication is not given. Strype conjectures that it was about the year
1550. Mem. Eccl., vol. ii., p. 265. Another edition, also without date of publication,
was afterwards printed in 12mo, accompanied with twenty-five additional sermons by
the same author, translated from Italian into English. The title-page, which is differ-
ent from that of the former edition, is as follows :

"Certain Sermons of the right famous and excellent clerk, Master Bernardino
Ochino, born within the famous university of Sienna, in Italy, now also an example in
this life for the faithful testimony of Jesus Christ. Twenty-five Sermons, translated
into English from the Italian, by a gentleman, and the last twenty-five translated by
a young lady." Typographical Antiquities, p. 244.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke 487

stances connected with the translation are explained. " When these
translated sermons of the famous Bernardine," says the writer, "were
come to mine hand, gentle reader, I thought it meet to publish them,
to the end so godly apostolic doctrine should not be private to those
only who understand the Italian tongue, since they speak in Eng-
lish, through the honest labour of a well occupied gentlewoman and
virtuous maiden, whose shamefastness would rather have suppressed
them, had not I, to whose hands they were committed, half against
her will, put them forth, bidding them blush that deserve blame ;
for this of her part, I dare safely affirm, craveth perpetual praise.
.... If ought be erred in the translation, remember it is a woman's,
yea, a gentlewoman's, who are wont to live idly, a maiden's that never
gadded farther than her father's house to learn the language. Fare-
well, and use her labour to the amendment of thy life."

Anne's dedication, from the testimony it bears to the excellent
Christian character of her mother, as well as from its explaining the
laudable motives the desire of reaping personal advantage and of
benefiting others which induced her to engage in this undertaking,
is worthy of being given entire.

" To the right worshipful and worthily beloved Mother, the Lady
F., l her humble Daughter wisheth increase of spiritual knowledge,
with full fruition of the fruits thereof.

" Since the original of whatsoever is, or may be converted to any
good use in me, hath freely proceeded (though as the minister of God)
of your ladyship's mere careful and motherly goodness, as well in
procuring all things thereunto belonging, as in your many and most
godly exhortations, wherein, among the rest, it hath pleased you
often to reprove my vain study in the Italian tongue, accounting the
seed thereof to have been sown in barren, unfruitful ground (since
God thereby is no whit magnified), I have at the last perceived it
my duty to prove how much the understanding of your will could
work in me towards the accomplishing of the same. And for that

i Fitz-Williams. Anne, as was not uncommon at that period, gives her mother her
maiden name.

488 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

I have well known your chief delight to rest in the destroying of
man's glory, and exalting wholly the glory of God ; which may not
be unless we acknowledge that He doth foresee and determine from
without beginning all things, and cannot alter or reward after our
deserved works, but remains steadfast, according to his immutable
will, I have taken in hand to dedicate unto your ladyship this small
number of sermons (for the excellent fruit's sake in them contained,
proceeding from the happy spirit of the sanctified Barnardine), which
treat of the election and predestination of God, with the rest (al-
though not of the self title) appertaining to the same effect, to the
end it might appear, that your so many worthy sentences touching
the same have not utterly been without some note in my weak me-
mory ; and albeit they be not done in such perfection as the dignity
of the matter doth require, yet I trust and know ye will accept the
humble will of the presenter, not weighing so much the excellency
of the translation, although of right it ought to be such as should
not, by the grossness thereof, deprive the author of his worthiness.
But not meaning to take upon me the reach to his high style of theo-
logy, and fearing also lest, in enterprising to set forth the brightness
of his eloquence, I should manifest myself unapt to attain unto the
lowest degree thereof, I descend, therefore, to the understanding of
mine own debility; only requiring, that it may please your lady-
ship to vouchsafe that this my small labour may be allowed at your
hands, under whose protection only it is committed, with humble
reverence, as yielding some part of the fruit of your motherly admo-
nitions, in this my willing service.

" Your Ladyship's Daughter, most boundenly obedient, A. C."
The religious sentiments embodied in these sermons were pre-
cisely those taught Anne by her parents in her childhood, and em-
braced by her, in the full maturity of her understanding, as the
truth revealed by God in his Word. One extract may suffice as a
specimen of the English style of the translation, which will not suffer
by a comparison with English writers of the period of higher pre-
tensions, and of the vein of evangelical doctrine pervading these

ENGLAND.] Anne Gooke. 489

discourses. It relates to the cardinal article of justification through
faith in the blood of Christ, strongly set forth in the monologue put
into the mouth of the Christian, in the prospect of his entering the
eternal world : " Considering that the treasures and merits of Christ
are infinite, and able to enrich a thousand worlds, I intend not to
carry with me any other merits or spiritual riches, save those that
Christ hatlt provided for me ; for they be not only sufficient for me,
but also over-abundant and unmeasurable. Then should I do no
small injury to Christ, if I should search to store myself by any
other mean or shift, although I might do it never so easily. Nay,
rather with Paul will I reckon all other things as mire and dirt, so
that I have Christ, with whom alone I will appear before God, and
of and by him will I glory and make boast ; yea, God forbid that I
should make my avaunt of anything save of the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, on whom only hangeth all our salvation. And albeit
all the saints be rich by means of Christ ; nevertheless, if they had
means of their own most plenteous, and would give them to me, yet
would I none : my Christ is enough for me : with him had I rather

suffer than take pleasure and joy without him I am well

assured that in purgatory I shall not come ; both because there is
found no other purgatory but Christ, in whom at the full God purged
and punished all the sins of the elected, and also because in case
there were one, yet Christ, not by my merits, but by his mere good-
ness, doth satisfy for all my sins, trespasses, and pains." l

Anne was subsequently married to Sir Nicholas Bacon, knight, 2 af-
terwards lord keeper of the great seal, an office to which he was
appointed in 1558, the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
who is said to have relied on him as her oracle of law. He is de-
scribed by Fuller as having a subtile genius ; and such was his cor-
pulency, especially in his old age, that the exertion of going from
Westminster Hall to the Star Chamber, rendered him so breathless,

1 Sermon xxi. 2 The date of the marriage has not been exactly

ascertained. Her eldest son, Anthony, was born in 1558. Birch's Memoir* of the
Reiyn of Queen Elisabeth, vol. i., p. 11.

490 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

that on taking his seat some time elapsed before he could recover
from his exhaustion. Having sufficiently recovered, as a signal to
the lawyer of the day to begin, he held up his staff, before which the
pleadings never commenced. His motto was mediocria firma ; and,
acting on the former part of it, he neither sought vast wealth nor
erected splendid mansions. "When Queen Elizabeth, in her progresses,
visited him at his house at Gorhambury, in Hertfordshire, she said
to him, " My lord, your house is too little for you." " Not so, madam,"
he replied, "it is your highness that hath made me too great for my
house."

After her marriage Lady Bacon did not relinquish the prosecution
of her literary pursuits ; and, mindful of the lesson her mother had
carefully taught her, that learning is only valuable when turned to
some useful purpose, she endeavoured to exercise her talents in be-
half of the reformed religion, by translating into English a much
abler and more useful work than Ochino's Sermons, namely, Bishop
John Jewel's celebrated Apologia Ecclesice Anglicance, 1 which he
published in 1562. Jewel 2 wrote this work at the recommendation
of Archbishop Parker and his colleagues, to vindicate the Church of
England in renouncing the Papal authority and embracing the re-
formed religion, chiefly from the attacks of English Eomish fugi-
tives, who were industriously plying all the arts of learned ingenuity
and malignity to defame the English Eeformers and the Church of
England. The Apologia, which may still be read with advantage,
was, from its learning and eloquence, as well as from the spirit and
point of its argumentation, so highly estimated at home that it was
published under her majesty's sanction, with the approbation of the

1 i.e., apology for the Church of England.

2 This excellent man, who had studied in Christ Church College, Oxford, was a
zealous promoter of the Reformation in the reign of Edward VI. In the reign of
Mary he escaped to Frankfort. On the happy accession of Elizabeth, returning to
England, he was preferred to the bishopric of Salisbury in 1560. He was one of the
most learned among the Reformers, and was the author of numerous worts, of which
his Apologia was the most popular. He died at Monkton Farley, September 23, 1571,
in the fiftieth year of his age, and was interred in the choir of his cathedral at
Salisbury.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 491

bishops and others; and by the reformed abroad it was received
with the highest encomiums. It was, therefore, speedily translated
into various languages, and thus made accessible to the most of
Europe. An English translation was printed the very year in which
the original work was published. But this translation, though exe-
cuted with^he assistance of Archbishop Parker, being in many
respects defective, Lady Bacon, impressed with a conviction of the
value of Jewel's work, and of the powerful impression it was calcu-
lated to make on the public mind in favour of the reformed faith,
engaged in the task of executing a new version. This she did with
much success, her version being more perfect than the other, and for
the period remarkably elegant, a proof that she had cultivated her
maternal tongue, and could write it with a vigour and purity scarcely
inferior to any in her day. Having completed the translation, she
sent the copy to Archbishop Parker 1 for examination. She sent it
also to Bishop Jewel, to see whether in any part she had mistaken
his meaning, accompanied with a letter to him in Greek, which the
bishop, it is said, answered in the same language. The translation
was examined by the two prelates, who found it so accurate that
they did not make even a single correction. Parker, without delay,
sent the work to the press, without asking her consent, and returned
to her in print what he had received from her in manuscript. It was
published in 1564, with a prefatory letter by Parker, addressed to Lady
Bacon, and with an appendix, probably written by the archbishop,
consisting of a brief sketch of the constitution of the Church of Eng-
land, with a table of the bishoprics and an account of the universities.
In his letter to her, in which he addresses her as " the right honour-

i Matthew Parker, who, though a reformed minister, escaped persecution during the
reign of Queen Mary by living in seclusion, was, upon the accession of Elizabeth, ap-
pointed, in 1559, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a learned man, and Calvinistic
in doctrine. The great blot in his life is the severity with which he treated the Puri-
tan clergy, suspending them from their ministry, and sequestrating their livings. Her
majesty having determined to enforce the use of clerical vestments, and the observance
of the peculiar forms of religious worship which she chose to prescribe, Parker became
a ready instrument in carrying her views into effect, though her chief adviser, Lord
Burgh'ey, was decidedly averse to this course.

492 Ladies of tlw Reformation. [ENGLAND.

able, learned, aud virtuous lady, Anne Bacon." he says, " Whereas
the chief author of the Latin work and I, severally perusing and com-
paring your whole translation, have without alteration allowed of it,
1 must both desire your ladyship, and advertise the readers, to think
that we have not therein given anything to any dissembling affection
towards you, as being contented to wink at faults to please you, or
to make you without cause to please yourself; for there be sundry
respects to draw us from so doing, although we were so evil-minded,
as there is no cause why we should be so thought of. Your own
judgment in discerning flattery, your modesty in misliking it, the
laying open of our opinion to the world, the truth of our friendship
towards you, the unwillingness of us both (in respect of our voca-
tions) to have this public work not truly and well translated, are
good causes to persuade that our allowance is of sincere truth and
understanding. By which your travail, madam, you have expressed
an acceptable duty to the glory of God, deserved well of this church
of Christ, honourably defended the good fame and estimation of your
own native tongue, showing it so able to contend with a work origi-
nally written in the most praised speech ; and beside the honour ye
have done to your own sex, and to the degree of ladies, ye have done
pleasure to the author of the Latin book, in delivering him by your
clear translation from the perils of ambiguous and doubtful con-
structions, and in making his good work more publicly beneficial ;
whereby ye have raised up great comfort to your friends, and have
furnished your own conscience joyfully with the fruit of your labour
in so occupying your time ; which must needs redound to the en-
couragement of noble youth in their good education, and to spend
their time and knowledge in godly exercise, having delivered them

by you so singular a precedent And now to the end both

to acknowledge my good approbation, and to spread the benefit more
largely, where your ladyship hath sent me your book written, I have,
with most hearty thanks, returned it to you (as you see) printed;
knowing that I have therein done the best, and in this point used a
reasonable policy, that is, to prevent such excuses as your modesty

ENGLAND.]

Anne Cooke.

493

would have made in stay of publishing it. And thus at this time I
leave further to trouble your good ladyship.

" M [ATTHEW] C [ANTTJARIENSIS]." '

The pains she had bestowed upon this undertaking was not thrown
away. The translation met with a highly favourable reception,
which doubtless gratified her much ; and it was still more pleasing
to her to reflect on the benefit which the thousands who eagerly read
it, or heard it read, would derive from its telling pages. This was
certainly one of the most effectual means she could have employed
for undermining in the popular mind a belief in the Popish doc-
trines and worship ; and it procured her the honour of being abused
by the vile tongues of malignant Jesuits. 2

Lady Bacon had issue by Sir Nicholas, two sons, Anthony and
Francis. Francis, the youngest, afterwards the celebrated Lord Vei u-

York House, from the River, time of Charles I.

lam, Viscount of St. Albans, the father of experimental philosophy,
was born at York House, in the Strand, London, on the 22d of

1 Jewel's Works, printed for Parker Society, third portion, p. 51.

- Father Parsons' Relation of a Conference between Henry IV. of France, &c.. p. 197.

494 Ladies oftJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

January, 1560-61. From her literary acquirements, and from her
efficiency in presiding over the education of Edward VI., Lady Bacon,
it is evident, was admirably qualified to superintend the education
of her own children ; a duty which she assiduously performed, and
with much success, at least in regard to the cultivation of their
understandings, particularly as to Francis ; though her endeavours
were not equally successful in forming their minds to the principles
of piety and virtue.

"Like several other extraordinary men," says Lord Campbell,
" Francis is supposed to have inherited his genius from his mother, 1
and he certainly was indebted to her for the early culture of his mind,
and the love of books, for which during life he was distinguished.
Young Francis was sickly, and unable to join in the rough sports
suited for boys of robust constitution. The lord keeper was too much
occupied with his official duties to be able to do more than kiss him,
hear him occasionally recite a little piece he had learned by heart,
and give him his blessing. But Lady Bacon, who was not only a
tender mother, but a woman of a highly cultivated mind, after the
manner of her age, devoted herself assiduously to her youngest child,
who, along with bodily weakness, exhibited from early infancy the
dawnings of extraordinary intellect. . . . Under her care, assisted
by a domestic tutor, Francis continued till he reached his thirteenth
year. He took most kindly to his book, and made extraordinary pro-
ficiency in the studies prescribed to him." 2 She particularly directed
his attention to the languages and philosophy, the pursuits most
congenial to her own taste. Francis studied at Trinity College,
Cambridge. "It has often been said, that while still at college he
planned that great intellectual revolution with which his name is

1 Lord Campbell here adds, in a foot-note, " Anthony, the elder brother, not being
by any means distinguished, the case of the Bacon family might be cited to illustrate
the retort upon the late Earl of Buchan, who was eldest brother to Lord Erskine, and
the famous Henry Erskine, dean of faculty, but very unequal to them in abilities, and
who observing, boastfully, ' We inherit all our genius from our mother,' was answered,
' Yes (and as the mother's fortune generally is), it seems to have been all settled on the
younger children.' "

2 Lives of the Chancellors. voL iL, pp. 268, 269.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 495

inseparably connected. The evidence on this subject, however, is
hardly sufficient to prove, what is in itself so improbable, as that
any definite system of that kind should have been so early formed,
even by so powerful and active a mind. But it is certain that, after
a residence of three years at Cambridge, Bacon departed, carrying
with him a profound contempt for the course of studies pursued
there, a fixed conviction that the system of academic education in
England was radically vicious, a just scorn for the trifles on which
the followers of Aristotle had wasted their powers, and no great
reverence for Aristotle himself." '

There is reason to think that Francis's veneration for Aristotle
had been weakened by the teaching of his mother, who, from the
sermons of Ochino which she translated, and from private inter-
course with that Reformer and others, had been led to direct her at-
tention to the uselessness of the subtle sophistry and miserable
wrangling about trifling and often unintelligible questions, engen-
dered by the Aristotelian philosophy. One of Ochino's sermons is
specially devoted to combating the opinion of such as asserted the
impossibility of attaining the perfection of theology without having
first learned dialectics, metaphysics, and all the subtleties, sophisms,
and quibbles of the Stagirite's contentious logic without having first
become conversant with Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and others
of the same school. In this sermon it is said, " I confess myself to
have been in that error, and therefore am now moved to compas-
sionate those who rest blinded therewith. If it were as they say, we
should be most bounden unto the inventors of those sciences, since
that by them we may be good divines, and without them not. And
then, I pray you, if they happened to perish, or those authors to be
lost, should it not follow that also the world should lack divinity?"
It is next argued that if the learned men in these sciences be only
good divines, then the Apostles were not so, notwithstanding their
being the first divinely inspired teachers of Christianity, nor even
Christ himself, who never learned these sciences, and yet was the
1 Macaulay's Essays, vol. ii., p. 297.

496 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [ENGLAND.

moat excellent of all divines ; that by the reading of the Scriptures,
and the teaching of the Spirit, it is possible for a simple old woman
to have more of the true theology than the greatest proficients in
these sciences ; that those are blind who would build the true theo-
logy upon philosophy and human sciences, since Christ alone is the
true foundation, upon which it behoves us to build, not wood, straw,
or hay, but silver, gold, and precious stones, that is, not the inven-
tions of men, but the true revelations of God ; that John the Baptist,
and not Aristotle, was the forerunner of Christ ; and that, as it is
impossible to augment the light of the sun by the light of a small
candle, so Christ, who is the light of the world, has no need of the
light of Aristotle. ' Such were the sentiments as to scholastic theo-
logy, with which the mother of Francis was familiarized, and with
which, it can hardly be doubted, from her great care in instructing
her son in religion and philosophy, as well as in languages, she
endeavoured to imbue his mind. It is not easy to say to what ex-
tent his copious erudition, the elegance and spirit of his diction, his
zealous cultivation of philosophy, and particularly his success in
striking out a new path for the investigation of truth, which has
rendered him the ornament of his age and country, are to be attri-
buted to the judicious attention bestowed upon his education by his
erudite and accomplished mother. And if his serious lapses as a
courtier from the path of integrity, caused by his yielding himself
up to a selfish ambition and a grovelling avarice, are dark spots on
the splendour of his fame as a philosopher, so that he has been

called

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,"

this teaches us the important lesson, that great abilities, that genius
and intellectual faculties of the highest order, will never compen-
sate for the want of strict uncompromising virtue. But his mother,
though she had witnessed enough to fill her heart with sorrow, was
spared, by the friendly hand of death, the agony of witnessing the
final infamy of her son.

1 Sermon xx.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 497

About three years after Archbishop Parker had addressed Lady
Bacon in reference to her translation of Bishop Jewel's Apologia,
we find him writing to her a long and earnest letter on a less agree-
able subject, namely, concerning some differences which had arisen
between him and her husband, his old acquaintance and friend.
Parker, having learned that many irregularities existed in the dio-
cese of Norwich disgraceful simony and flagrant misapplication of
ecclesiastical property had made a visitation of that diocese. With
the view of correcting these irregularities he also wrote to the lord
keeper, strongly complaining on the subject, counselling him as to
the proper course to be pursued, and, as Strype supposes, " very
likely laying some of the blame upon the lord keeper himself."
Proud and passionate, Bacon became deeply irritated at this freedom,
and in his answer to the archbishop's letter used violent language,
sending, at the same time, an offensive verbal message by the arch-
bishop's man-servant. To these unpleasing communications the
archbishop made no reply ; but, unwilling that any variance should
continue to exist between him and the lord keeper, he endeavoured
to engage Lady Bacon to act as umpire between them, though, at the
same time, he did not mean to apologize for the steps he had taken
to impose a check on the misapplication of ecclesiastical property.
He therefore soon after expressed to her at length, in writing, his
sentiments and feelings in the matter, and solicited her friendly me-
diation, which he did the more especially as he knew that she had
deeply at heart the welfare of the Protestant Church of England.

" I understand," says he, " that ye use otherwhiles to be a good
solicitor to my lord your husband in the causes of the poor for jus-
tice, and I doubt not ye remember the Christian duty ye bear to
him, as well in respect of conscience to Almighty God, as for his
honourable estimation and fame to the world. Upon which ground
I thought fit now, in the end of the term, to write a few words to
you. To my lord I perceive I may not write, except they be placen-
tissima; and therefore I shall stay my hand." After expressing the

grief it would cause him should others, from anything the lord

498 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

keeper bad doiie, take encouragement in the spoliation of ecclesias-
tical property, which ought to be sacredly devoted to the support of
"the ministry, that office of men's salvation, that office of Christ's
crucified mysteries, howsoever the carnal princes of the world do
deride God and all things sacred," he exhorts her, for " God's love,"
to do what she could to induce her husband to help to remove out of
the church this offence, that he might not bring a stain upon the
glory of his old age. He then proceeds : " What shall be hoped for
in friendship, if the advertising of one another in true faithful friend-
ship, and to Godwards, shall stir up enmity and disliking. Let the
blind world say, ' Sweeter are the deceitful kisses of an enemy than
the wounds of a friend.' Let the wise man say, on the contrary,
' Better are the wounds of a friend than the deceitful kisses of an
enemy.' .... I would be loth to break friendship with any
mean body, much less with my lord ; and yet either king or Caesar,
contrary to my duty to God, I will not, and intend not [to obey],

God being my good lord I am now grown into a better

consideration by mine age, than to be afraid or dismayed with such
vain terrors of the world. I am not now to learn how to fawn upon
man, 'whose breath is in his nostrils,' nor have I to learn how to
repose myself quietly, under God's protection, against all displea-
sure of friends, and against all malignity of the enemy. I have oft
said and expounded, 'A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten
thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.' " He
concludes with these words : " And thus reposing myself in a good
and steadfast conscience in this brittle time, I commit your ladyship
to God, as myself. Because ye be another self to him, one spirit, one
flesh, I make you judge. And therefore I transmit the very copy of
my letter sent to him, to expound the matter of my writing, whereby
ye may take occasion to work, as God shall move you. And thus I
leave you. From my house at Lambeth, the 6th of February, 1567.
Your friend, unfeigned in Christ, "MATTHEW CANT." 1

1 Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker, voL i., pp. 514-517; and vol. ii., pp. 163-
1G8.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Cooke.

499

How Lady Bacon acted in this affair is not recorded. In the dis-
pute between the archbishop and Sir Nicholas Bacon, the former
was certainly in the right. There is no reason to deny him what

Archbishop's Palace, tambeth, time of George IL

he claims, the credit of acting according to his conscience in his op-
position to the spoliation of ecclesiastical property. But while
claiming this credit to himself, why did he not give the Puritans
credit for acting according to their consciences in their opposition to
the imposed clerical habits and ceremonies in divine worship 1 In
this the archbishop, like many others, forgot the golden rule of the

* Lambeth, which is situated ou the Thames, was in earlier times a manor, possibly
a royal one. In 1197 it became the property of the see of Canterbury. Its buildings
afterwards were neglected, and became ruinous; but Boniface, a wrathful and turbu-
lent primate, elected in 1244, rebuilt it with great magnificence. In the civil wars be-
tween the houses of York and Lancaster, it suffered greatly. It was restored by
Archbishop Morton. Its architecture is the work of different periods. Among the
many objects of interest connected with this palace, the part of it called " The Lollard's
Tower," containing the prison in which the followers of Wickliffe were confined during
the Papal ascendency, especially invites the attention of the student of the history of
the Reformation. This portion was built by Chicheley, who enjoyed the primacy from
1414 to 1443.

500 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

Saviour, " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them."

Twelve years after this Lady Bacon became a widow, her husband,
Sir Nicholas, having died on February 20, 1578-9. He was buried
in St. Paul's Church, London, where an elegant monument was
erected to his memory. 1 During her widowhood Lady Bacon lived
in seclusion at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, in Hertfordshire.

In the same year her eldest son, Anthony, who had a strong pro-
pensity to traveT, having taken possession of his paternal inheritance,
began his travels, being at the age of twenty-one. He resided for
some time at Paris, from whence he went to Bourges, and thence to
Geneva, where he lodged in the house of Theodore Beza, professor of
theology in the university of that city, with whom he contracted an
intimate friendship, and who, at his persuasion, presented to the
library of Cambridge a very ancient copy of the Pentateuch, in six
languages. From Geneva he successively removed to Montpellier,
Marseilles, Bordeaux, Montauban ; and again to Bordeaux, where
he resided the longest. 2

Anthony's long continuance on the continent was not a little dis-
pleasing to his mother ; and in her letters to him she often urged him
to return home, partly from her anxiety to see him, and partly from
the expense attending his residence abroad. Her anxiety about him
was latterly increased, from some representations, probably exag-
gerated, which she had received from English merchants, of an inti-
macy formed at Bordeaux between him and Mr. Anthony Standen,
a zealous Papist, and a man of no principle, as is evident from his
readiness to act as a spy to any government which would liberally
pay him for doing so. 3 From this she began even to suspect that

1 Strype's Annals, vol. ii., part ii., p. 210.

2 These facts are gathered from Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.

3 Standen's zeal for the Roman Catholic religion led him to leave England about
the year 1563, and to retire into Scotland, where he entered into the service of Queen
Mary. Upon her misfortunes he quitted that country, and became a pensioned emis-
sary of the King of Spain. He was at last secretly engaged in the service of Queen
Elizabeth, by Sir Francis Walsingham, who procured him, from her majesty, a pension
of 100 per annum. Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., pp. 66, 67.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 501

his faith in the Protestant religion had been shaken, and that he
had some design of attaching himself to the Roman Catholic Church,
and this increased her dissatisfaction at him for remaining abroad.
To remove her feelings of distress and displeasure arising from this
source, he sent to her a letter strongly setting forth the groundless-
ness of such suspicions, and complaining of her for indulging them.
Before sending it off he showed it to Standen, who highly approved
of it, commending him for his being plain, " especially," says he,
" with a woman, which is a vessel so frail and variable as every
wind wavereth, as you know. And although I well know my lady,
your mother, to be one of the sufficientest without comparison of
that sex, yet, at the end of the career, il y a tousjours de la femme, 1
with the perfectest of them all, according to a sentence of the late
Queen of Scotland, once alleged to me, when, in a talking of the
queen's majesty, our present mistress, and I extolling to the said
queen our sovereign's rare parts, she said, in these words, ' Sir, when
you set out in praise of our sex, by praising any of us, never say that
this is a discreet and wise woman, but say that she is less foolish
than the rest ; for all think us possessed with folly.' " 2

Anthony having returned to England in the beginning of the year
1591-92, his mother's resentment against him immediately subsided,
and she wrote a long letter to him on the 3d of February that year,
full of maternal anxiety, in reference especially to his best interests.
She expresses great concern that he had sent before for his servant,
Mr. Lawson, against whom she had long entertained an insuper-
able prejudice; but she speaks in terms of high approbation of Mr.
Nicholas Faunt, the bearer of the letter, whom she had requested
to take a journey to meet Anthony, and to conduct him to London,
where his brother Francis was preparing his lodgings at Gray's Inn
for his reception. She describes Faunt as " not only an honest gen-
tleman in civil behaviour, but one that feareth God, and indeed is
wise withal, having experience of the state, and is able to advise you

1 i.e., there is always the woman.

2 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i , pp. 55, 56, 67, 68.

502 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

both very wisely and friendly ; for he loveth yourself, and needeth
not yours, as others, who yet despise you." She then proceeds to
give him advice with regard to his religious conduct. " This one
chiefest counsel," says she, " your Christian and natural mother doth
give you even before the Lord, that above all worldly respects you
carry yourself, even at your first coming, as one that doth unfeign-
edly profess the true religion of Christ, and hath the love of truth
now by long continuance fast settled in your heart, and that with
judgment, wisdom, and discretion ; and are not afraid or ashamed to
testify the same by hearing and delighting in those religious exer-
cises of the sincere sort, be they French or English. In hoc noli ad-
hibere fratrem tuum ad consilium aut exemplum" 1 Lady Bacon was
no bigoted worshipper of the doctrine of apostolical succession. A
minister of earnest piety, whether he belonged to the Church of Eng-
land, or to the Puritans, or to a foreign church, was in her estimation
a minister of Christ. Though a member of the Church of England,
she was inclined to the principles of the Puritans, to which her hus-
band, while alive, was also thought to have been not unfavourable.
In a subsequent letter she assures Anthony that it would be his
" best credit to serve the Lord duly and reverently ;" and she adds,
that his brother Francis " was too negligent therein." *

Eeference has previously been made to the friendship formed at
Geneva between her son Anthony and Theodore Beza. In expres-
sion of his esteem for Anthony, and of respect for the learning and
piety of Lady Bacon, whose literary reputation extended beyond her
own country, this eminent divine dedicated to her his Meditations,
of which he transmitted to her a copy. In acknowledgment of this
mark of honour, and " to revive his ancient acquaintance with the
good old father," as he expresses it, Anthony sent Beza, in his mo-
ther's name and in his own, a present to the value of twenty marks,

1 i.e , " In this I would not refer you to your brother for counsel or example." In
her letters she frequently introduces Latin and also Greek words and sentences, some-
times with a view to secrecy, but more commonly after the fashion of the age. This
had therefore less the air of pedantry then than it would have at the present day.

3 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i., pp. 71, 72.

ENGLAND.]

Anne Cooke.

503

for which he received from Beza a letter of thanks, dated Geneva,
20th August, 1593. 1

About the end of April, or in the beginning of May, 1594, An-
thony removed from Redburne, in Hertfordshire, which was too re-
mote from the capital for carrying on his numerous correspondences ;
and he settled in London, in a house in Bishopgate Street. The
situation oi his new residence his mother highly disliked; in the
first place, on account of its neighbourhood to the Bull Inn, where
plays and interludes were continually acted, which she imagined
would corrupt his servants ; and, in the second place, from zeal for
his religious improvement, as to which he would labour under dis-
advantage in a parish, the minister of which was both ignorant and
negligent of his duty. These circumstances she represented to him
very strongly in one of her letters. 2

In others of her letters she expresses her solicitude, and is earnest

Gorhambury, Hertfordshire.

in her inculcations that both Anthony and Francis should avoid
intimacy and openness of communication with disreputable charac-
ters in high places, and especially with Papists, by whom they might

1 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i., pp. 16, 106, 118.

2 Jbid., vol. i., p. 173.

504 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

be betrayed, or seduced from the true religion, or corrupted in their
moral integrity. In a letter to Anthony, from Gorhambury, of the
26th June, 1593, she gives him some cautions with respect to Stan-
den, who was then in England, not being at all pleased with the
intimacy between them, and wishing it to be broken off. " Be not
too frank," says she, "with that Papist; such having seducing
spirits to snare the godly. Be not too open." 1 In another letter
to Anthony she expresses in strong terms her dissatisfaction at
the familiarity between Francis and Antonio Perez, the ex-secre-
tary of war to Philip II. of Spain, who, having lost the favour of
his sovereign, which he had enjoyed in the highest degree for
many years, had come to England about the close of the year
1592. " Though I pity your brother," says she, " yet, so long as he
pities not himself, but keepeth that bloody Perez, yea, as a coach
companion and bed companion, a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose
being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike, and doth
less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his health, surely
I am utterly discouraged, and make conscience farther to undo my-
self to maintain such wretches as he is, that never loved your bro-
ther, but for his own credit, living upon him." 2 Again, writing to
Anthony, 1st April, 1595, she warns him to beware of Lord Henry
Howard, afterwards Earl of Northampton and Loi-d Privy Seal, a
nobleman whom she regarded as dangerous, both from his suspected
secret leaning to the Popish Spanish faction, and from his character
as a deep political intriguer. "He is," says she, " a dangerous intel-
ligencing man ; no doubt a subtle Papist inwardly, and lieth in wait.
Peradventure he hath some close working with Standen, and the
Spaniard, 3 and TO/STO/J.* He will betray you to divers, and to your
aunt Eussel among others. The duke 6 had been alive, but by his
practising and still soliciting him, to the duke's ruin and the Earl of

1 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i., p. 107. 8 Ibid., vol. i., p. 143.

3 Antonio Perez. 4 i.e., persons of that stamp..

5 Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, elder brother to Lord Henry, beheaded on account of
his intrigues with the Queen of Scots, June 2, 1572.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 505

Arundel. 1 Avoid his familiarity, as you love the truth and your-
self. A very instrument of the Spanish Papists. For he pretending
courtesy, worketh mischief perilously. I have long known him and
observed him. His workings have been stark naught. Procitl esto." 2
On the 14th of April she renews her advice to him to be " wary of
Lord Howard as of a subtle serpent." 3 And in another letter to
him, 20th August, 1595, when he was offered by the Earl of Essex
apartments in his house, near the Temple, in representing to him
the inconveniences of parting with his own house and removing to
the earl's, grounded upon her own long experience of courts, she
says, " Standen being there and Lawson, and such, you verily will be
counted for a practiser, and more misliked and suspected. God keep
you from Spanish subtleties and Popery." 4

Her tendering these prudential advices to Anthony mainly pro-
ceeded from an idea that, whatever were his abilities, yet in conse-
quence of his long residence abroad, and of his being confined mostly
to his chamber from his lameness and indifferent health, he had less
opportunity of acquiring experience of mankind, by mingling and
conversing with them, than he otherwise would have had. " You
are said to be wise," says she to him, " and to my comfort I think
so. But surely, son, on the other side, for want of home experience
by action, and your tedious unacquaintance with your own country
by continual chamber and bed-keeping, you must needs miss of
considerate judgment in your verbal only travelling." 5 She even
cautioned him against the insinuating arts of female intriguing tale-
bearers. In a letter to him of the 5th of August, 1595, after declar-
ing her satisfaction that the two countesses, sisters, who she found
were coming to reside in his neighbourhood, were both ladies " who
feared God, and loved His Word zealously, especially the younger
sister," she adds, "Yet upon advice and home-experience I would
earnestly counsel you to be wary and circumspect, and not be too

i The Earl of Arundel was condemned by Philip, in 1589, for treason, but his life
was spared, and he died in the Tower in 1595.

8 i.e., keep at a distance. 3 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i., p. 227.

* Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. i., p. 278. * Ibid., vol. ii., p. 61.

506 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

open in wishing to prolong speech with the Countess of Warwick. 1
She, after her father's fashion, will search and sound, and lay up
with diligent marking, quce nee sentias aulica perferre ad reginam, et
patrissat in ilia re nimis." "

From these quotations from her letters, it appears that Lady
Bacon was a woman of strong feelings, and that she was accustomed
to express herself strongly. Her advices and remonstrances were,
indeed, not unfrequently delivered to her sons, especially towards
the close of her life, with an undue asperity of language, which, by
creating irritation, rendered them less effectual than if they had
been delivered in a more gentle tone. Her temper, it is probable,
was naturally severe ; and ill health, in her advanced years, had in-
creased this infirmity. But the sincerity and ardour of her affec-
tion for her sons is manifest even when she censures them most
roughly ; it is ever their good, both temporal and spiritual, particu-
larly the latter, she is aiming to promote, her main object being that
they might be virtuous, upright, God-fearing men ; and the wisdom
of her counsels, the profound knowledge they display of courts and
of human nature, the deep sense of Christian duty always pervad-
ing them, do equal honour to the penetration of her judgment, the
acuteness of her observation, and her high-toned Christian cha-
racter. Her intense hatred of Popery is a marked feature in her
correspondence, as will appear to the reader from the few specimens
we have given. Her knowledge of the character of the system, and
the whole history of her time the Popish persecution under Queen
Mary, and the incessant plots of the Papists against Elizabeth and
her Protestant government, all contributed to foster this sentiment
in her mind.

The Earl of Essex was to Lady Bacon an object of deep interest.
The many noble qualities which distinguished him, "generosity,

1 Anne, eldest daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford, and widow of Ambrose
Dudley, Earl of Warwick. She died 9th February, 160J. She had two younger
sisters, Elizabeth, wife of William Bourchier, Earl of Bath, and Margaret, married to
George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.

2 Birch's Memoirs, &c. t vol. i., p. 270.

ENGLAND.] Anne Coo/ce. 507

sincerity, friendship, valour, eloquence, and industry," as Hume de-
scribes him ; the intimacy existing between him and her two sons ;
the great liberality with which he treated them, giving Anthony a
handsome yearly salary, and bestowing upon Francis, when he failed
to procure for him the office of solicitor-general, a present of land to
the value of ,1800 though Francis was afterwards so base as to
plead at the bar against his benefactor when on trial for his life
all these united in exciting in the breast of Lady Bacon an affection-
ate concern about whatever related to the welfare of that nobleman,
and especially about what related to his best interests, his spiritual
and eternal well-being. Since his return from the expedition to
Cadiz, which he had taken by assault, Essex had assumed an ap-
pearance of greater strictness in his manner of life, as well as in his
observance of the public offices of religion, than before ; but he did
not escape the suspicions and report of relapsing into conjugal infi-
delity. This having reached the ears of Lady Bacon, she wrote to
him a letter, dated 1st December, 1596, remarkable for its freedom
of remonstrance. She expresses her gratification at the fame he had
acquired by his military achievements, and at his recently improved
decorum of deportment. " But," adds she, " proh dolor ! my good
lord," and after informing him of her having heard that of late he
had been chargeable with " a backsliding to the foul impudent,"
she proceeds, " You, my good lord, have not so learned Christ, and
heard His Holy Word in the 3d, 4th, and 5th verses of the fourth
chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. It is written,
; This is the will of God, that ye should be holy and abstain from
fornication, and every one know how to keep his own vessel in holi-
ness and honour ; and not in the lust of concupiscence, as do the
Gentiles, which know not God.' And more, if it please you to read
and mark well, it is a heavy threat, ' that fornicators and adulterers
God will judge,' and that they shall be shut out : for such things,
saith the apostle, commonly cometh the wrath of God upon us.
Good lord, remember and consider your great danger hereby, both
of soul and body. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, but honour

508 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

God, that honoured you, and reward him not with such evil for his
great kindness towards you. My good lord, sin not against your
own soul.

" My Lady Stafford said, upon one occasion, in her talk, the good
virtuous countess, 1 your wife, was with child. O honourable and
valiant noble, make great account of this God's blessing to you both,
and make not her heart sorrowful, to the hinderance of her young
fruit within her ; for it is thought she took before to heart, and that
her last did not comfortably prosper.

" If you be with the Lord indeed, he will be with you, and make
your very enemies to reverence you. Be strong in the Lord, your
and our good patient God. Fear him and walk privately in truth :
and for his promise in Christ he will assist you, and look favour-
ably upon you and yours, prosper and increase his blessing upon
you and yours ; which mercy and grace I humbly do, as I am most
bound, call upon him to grant you ever, my dear and worthy lord,
in Christ Jesus. "With my very inward affection have I thus pre-
sumed, ill favouredly to scribble, I confess, being sickly and weak
many ways. Boni consulas, te vehementer oro, et quam optime vivas
et valeas, vir insignissime, et quantum decet, miki charissime. In
Christo ex animo. 2

" Primo, Decemb. " A. BACON, \?ipa [widow]." 8

This letter she sent to her son Anthony, to be conveyed to the
earl. Having received and read it, the earl immediately wrote an
answer, which Anthony transmitted to his mother, along with a
letter of his own, in which he expressed his hope " that God had
blessed her Christian and yet most respectful endeavours with due
kind acceptance and effectual impressions." The earl's answer,

1 Frances, daughter and only child of Sir Francis Walsingham. When married by
the Earl of Essex she was the widow of Sir Philip Sidney. After the earl's execution
she married, thirdly, the Earl of Clan-Richard, an Irish noblemen. Camden's Hist, of
Elizabeth, London, 1688, pp. 444, 624. .

2 i.e., " Take this in good part, I earnestly beseech you, and may you live in the en-
joyment of good health and of all felicity, most illustrious nobleman, and, as is becom-
ing, most dear to me. In Christ from the heart."

3 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. ii., p. 218.

ENGLAND.] Anne Cooke. 509

which is highly courteous, certainly does credit to the generosity of
his spirit, in receiving, without irritation, the well-meant reproofs
and admonitions of this venerable lady.

"Madam," says he, "that it pleased you to deal thus freely with
me, in letting me know the worst you hear of me, I take it as an
argument of God's favour, in sending so good an angel to admonish
me ; and of no small care in your ladyship of my welldoing. I know
how needful these summonses are to all men, especially to those that
live in this place ; and I had rather, with the poor publican, knock
my breast, and be prostrate, or with the [servant in the gospel], con-
fess, when I have done all I can, I am an unprofitable servant, than
Pharisaically to justify myself; but what I write now is for the
truth's sake, and not for mine own. I protest before the majesty of
God, and my protestation is voluntary and advised, that this charge
which is newly laid upon me, is false and unjust. . . . But I
live in a place where I am hourly conspired against and practised
upon. . . . Worthy lady, think me a weak man, full of imper-
fections ; but be assured I do endeavour to be good, and had rather
mend my faults than cover them. I wish your ladyship all true hap-
piness and rest, at your ladyship's commandment. Burn, I pray you.

" 1st of December, 96. a ESSEX."

To this letter from his lordship, Lady Bacon replied as follows :
" My honourable good Lord, In your incessant and careful affairs
to vouchsafe me, as one almost forgotten in the world, a letter even
with your own hand, is far more than my poor estate or ill parts
can reach unto. God doth divers ways make manifest his love
towards you, whereof his church here and our state do reap sweet
benefit, to the praise of his name and your own honourable fame,
and the rejoicing in a good conscience. Yet such excellent persons
never want oemulatores malignos cum fastu? But yet, for all that,
true godly virtue in the people of God doth, with the palm, rise and
increase still, though men strive to suppress and oppress it ; and
they still shall flourish in the court of the God of glorious majesty,

1 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. ii., p. 219. 2 i.e., rivals malignant with pride.

510 Ladies of the Reformation. [ENGLAND.

and their seed shall be blessed. Ab imis prcecordiisj as I am most
bound, I beseech the living Lord to direct continually with his Holy
Spirit your lordship's heart, to the love of him and of his eternal
truth, and fortify you through the love of both to live in his reverent
fear, and to approve that which is pleasant in his sight. And, my
good lord, walk circumspectly, for the days [are evil]. God grant
you safety from all crafty subtle snares whatsoever ; and in battle,
by sea or by land, His mighty arm be your invincible puissance, and
make you victorious, and send His holy angels to pitch round about
you and your army, and watch over you for your safeguard ; and
with fulness of good days and years in this life, preserve you to his
heavenly kingdom for ever and ever. The God of peace give you
peace always by all means, my very good lord, "A. B." 8

These are the principal memorials transmitted to us with respect
to the life of this lady. The exact time of her death is uncertain ;
but she is supposed to have died about the year 1604, at Gorham-
bury ("where," says Ballard, "her picture still remains"), having
reached the venerable age of seventy-six. She was buried in
St. Michael's Church, St. Albans, but has no monument with an
inscription to record her memory. This is the more remarkable, as
Francis, her celebrated son, who lies near her, is commemorated by a
very fine statue, with an inscription beneath. His lordship is repre-
sented seated in a contemplative posture, in an arm-chair, placed in
a niche. Some others of the family were buried in the same place. 3

1 i.e., from the bottom of my heart.

2 Birch's Memoirs, &c., vol. ii., p. 220.

3 Granger's Biograph. Hist, of England, vol. ii , p. 179. Ballard's Learned Ladies,
p. 193.

of fte Reformation

IN SCOTLAND.

"At midnight rairke thay [the persecutors] will us take,
And into prison will us fling,
There mon we ly quhile [i.e., till] we forsake
The name of God, quhilk is our king.

"Then faggots man we burne or beir,
Or to the deid they will us bring:
It does them gude to do us dcir,
And to confusion ns down thring."

Wedderburne's Gude and Godly Uallata.

" But hald you at my Testment fast,
And be not quliite of them aghast,
For I sail bring downe at the last
Their pride and crueltie." Itid.

INTRODUCTION.

ERTILE as is the field of the Eeformation of the six-
teenth century in Scotland in materials of great and
enduring interest, it presents only a few scattered
gleanings in regard to the reformed ladies. This
poverty of materials arises mainly from two causes
from the defective state of female education in Scotland at that
period, and from the fact that the ladies attached to the Eeformation
in Scotland were not called, to any great extent, to suffer persecution
and martyrdom.

At the time of the Reformation, and even before it, the ladies of
Italy, Spain, France, and England, enjoyed distinguished advantages
of mental culture. The dispersion of the Greeks, consequent upon
the occupation of Constantinople by the Turks, about the year 1443,
had the happiest effects upon the revival of letters in these countries.
Italy, which, during the darkest periods of Papal domination, had
preserved a degree of refinement and knowledge to which the other
nations of Europe were strangers, was the first to experience this in-
tellectual resuscitation. In that country the learned Greek refugees,
upon the overthrow of their empire, found an asylum ; and bringing
with them the works of their ancient orators, poets, and historians,
they taught these models of eloquence and taste to the Italian

514 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

scholars, who studied them with enthusiastic ardour; and these
studies, by refining their taste, increased their relish for the classic
writings of their own scarcely less illustrious authors of antiquity.
Similar were the advantages derived by Spain, France, and Eng-
land, from the destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire. Their
students or learned men, resorting to Italy, were instructed in the
Greek language by some of the most illustrious Greek refugees;
they besides acquired a pure Latin style under the first Italian mas-
ters ; and returning home, they industriously laboured to introduce
among their countrymen a taste for the Greek and Roman classics,
in opposition to the scholastic and barbarous systems of education
then prevalent. So strong was the passion for the cultivation of
classical literature in these countries, that the daughters of the nobi-
lity and gentry were carefully taught the Greek and Eoman lan-
guages under skilful masters, and in these languages many of them
attained to great proficiency. But Scotland was somewhat later in
deriving these advantages ; and when Scotsmen who had travelled
in Italy, Germany, and England, to acquire the learning not to be
obtained in their own country, on returning home, introduced the
cultivation of elegant and humanizing literature, the extension of a
high education to the daughters of Scotland, even to those of rank,
was little thought of. Hence in the history of the Scottish Reforma-
tion we have no ladies who can vie in learning and accomplishments
with Renee of Ferrara, Olympia Morata, Margaret of Valois, Katha-
rine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, the Ladies Seymour, and the daughters
of Sir Anthony Cooke. Had the Scottish ladies enjoyed opportunities
of cultivating their minds similar to those enjoyed by these illus-
trious ladies, numbers of them would, doubtless, have left behind
them lasting traces of their genius and talents ; and there would not
have been wanting, among the Scottish Reformers, enough of learned
gallantry to do justice to their merits. Henry VIII., depraved as
he became when advanced in life, patronized learning in his early
days, and was ambitious to bestow upon his daughters a finished
education; an example which the nobility and gentry emulously

SCOTLAND.] Introduction. 515

followed. Had the Scottish throne been filled by a sovereign with
a rising family of daughters, of whose mental culture he was equally
solicitous, his example would, no doubt, have had a similar effect
upon the Scottish nobility, gentry, and people.

The other cause of the scantiness of our information respecting the
ladies attached to the Eeforraation in Scotland, is the circumstance
that Popish persecutors were not permitted, in the providence of
God, to visit them, in very many instances, with the penalties of
heresy. The most powerful of the Scottish nobility, and ultimately
the Scottish government itself, having early become favourable to
the Eeformation, the Scottish Popish priesthood was soon deprived
of the power of wielding the sword of the state for the extermina-
tion of heretics. It was different in most of the other countries of
Europe where the Eeformation took footing. In England, for ex-
ample, though Henry cast off the Papal supremacy, yet still con-
tinuing in all other respects a dogmatic Papist, he ceased not to
persecute the Eeformers ; and his bigoted, fanatical daughter, Mary,
offered them up in whole hecatombs to the Eoman Moloch. Thus
England" furnishes a much more numerous list of martyrs, of both
sexes, for the reformed sentiments than Scotland, the number of
whose martyrs under Popery is compai-atively small.

In the 17th century, the intrepidity of the ladies of Scotland
prompting them to become fearless confessors and devoted martyrs,
was conspicuous. Sir "Walter Scott, in his Old Mortality, describing
the resolute firmness of the Scottish character during the persecu-
tion of Charles II. and James VII., observes and the observation
applies to the tender as well as to the hardier sex, as is evident
from numerous examples in the history of that period " It seems
akin to the native sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biased
in its mode of growth, even by the influence of the prevailing wind,
but shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction,
shows no weather-side to the storm, and may be broken, but can
never be bended." And if the examples of the heroism of the Scot-
tish ladies who had embraced the reformed sentiments, are less

516 Ladies oftlw Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

numerous in the 16th century than in the 17th, this did not arise
from their want of a self-denying, self-immolating spirit, disposing
them to hold fast the truth even in death, but from their not being
subjected to the same extent to the fiery ordeal of persecution.

The courageous resolution of the Scottish female character may,
indeed, be traced back to a much earlier period than the Reforma-
tion. It was called forth by the struggles in which Scotland, for
ages before, had been engaged, in maintaining its independence
against the more powerful kingdom of England ; and it was nursed
by historic and heroic ballads, which have so powerful an influence
on the character of a rude and semi-barbarous people. These songs,
sung not only by travelling minstrels, accompanied with musical
instruments, but by the maidens of Scotland, at their convivial
meetings, after the labours of the day were over, gave a touch of the
heroic to the Scottish female character, as well as contributed to
inspire the young men with an adventurous, intrepid spirit, in
which chivalry and patriotism were combined. One of these rhymes,
composed on the occasion of the defeat of the English at Bannock-
burn, was the following:

' Maydens of Englande, sore may ye morne,
For your lemmans ' ye have lost at Bannockysborue,

With, heue a lowe.
What ! weneth the King of England
So soone to have wone Scotlande ?

With rumhylowe." *

" This song," says Fabyan, "was, after many days, sung in dances
in the carols of the maidens and minstrels of Scotland, to the
reproof and disdain of Englishmen, with divers others, which I
overpass." In the same century Sir John de Soulis, the Scottish
governor of Eskdale, having, with fifty men, defeated a body of 300,
commanded by Sir Andrew Hercla, who was taken prisoner, this

5 Lovers or sweethearts.

2 With heue a lowe with rumbylowe, appears to have been formerly the ordinary
burden of a ballad, as " Derrydown " is at present.

SCOTLAND.] Introduction. 517

formed a new theme for the lyric poet ; and the rhyming historian,
Barbour, forbears to "rehearse the manner" of the victory; as,

quhasa likes thai may hear

Young wemen, quhea thai will play,
Syng it amaug thaim ilk day." l

Ladies of rank appear to have imbibed the prevailing martial
spirit in this age. In the 14th century, when, during the war which
Edward III. of England maintained in Scotland, the town of Dun-
bar was besieged by part of the English army, led on by Montague,
the Countess of March, commonly designated " Black Agnes," de-
fended that place with uncommon courage and perseverance. In
scornful contempt of the besiegers, she ordered her waiting-maids to
brush from the walls the dust produced by their battering engines,
and this in sight of the English ; and when a tremendous warlike
engine, called a sow, approached the walls, she called out, " Montague,
beware ! your sow shall soon cast her pigs ;" which she verified, for
an immense mass of rock, thrown from a lofty tower, accompanied
her threat, and crushed the ponderous machine and the besiegers
which it contained. 2

When, by the Reformation, the light of uncorrupted Christianity
dawned upon Scotland, a nobler, a more thrilling heroism was super-
added to this heroic love of country ; for, sublime as is the spectacle
presented by the hero or the heroine who suffers for the sake of
country, it is outrivalled in sublimity by the spectacle of the hero or
the heroine who suffers in the cause of God.

Previously to the Eeformation, whilst the Popish religion still
.flourished in Scotland, many of the Lollards, or followers of John
Wickliffe, were to be found in the west, and among them we meet
with the names of some distinguished females. In 1494, in the
reign of James IV., when thirty of " the Lollards of Kyle," so called
because resident in Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham, Ayrshire, were
summoned before the king and his privy council for heresy, by

1 Ritson's Historical Essay on Scottish Sony, pp. xxvi-xxviii.

2 Pyne's Hist, of Royal Residences, vol. ii., Kensington Palace, p. 50.

518 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

Robert Blackader, Archbishop of Glasgow, several females were
included in the list ; as Helen Chalmers, daughter of John Chalmers,
son and heir of Sir John Chalmers of Galdgirth, and wife of Robert
Mure of Polkellie; and Marion Chalmers, her sister, and wife of
William Dalrymple of Stair. The leading articles of which they
were accused were, that neither images nor the relics of saints are
to be worshipped ; that after consecration the bread of the eucharist
remains bread, and is not transubstantiated into the body of Christ ;
that to worship it is idolatry ; that the mass profits not souls in
purgatory ; that the Pope is not the successor of Peter ; that he de-
ceives the people by his bulls and indulgences; that he cannot
remit the pains of purgatory, nor forgive sins, which is the preroga-
tive of God alone ; that he is the head of the Kirk of Antichrist, and
that he exalts himself against and above God ; that it is lawful for
priests to marry ; and that we should not pray to the Virgin Mary,
but to God only. Such were the free opinions embraced by these
bold proselytes of the new school, who had acquired them partly
from disciples of "Wickliffe visiting Scotland, and partly from read-
ing his translation of the Scriptures in their private concealed meet-
ings ; and, like all ardent proselytes, they had been zealous in dis-
seminating their deep hatred of the doctrines and practices of the
Romish Church. " Yet God," says Knox, " so assisted his servants,
partly by inclining the king's heart to gentleness (for divers of
them were his great familiars), and partly by giving bold and godly
answers to their accusers, that the enemies in the end were frustrate
of their purpose." '

It appears to have been at or about this time that the wife of
John Campbell of Cesnock, Janet Montgomery, the seventh daughter
of Hugh, first Earl of Eglinton, and Campbell himself, 2 were in
peril of their lives on account of their having embraced the doc-
trines of Wicklifie. Both of them were persons of exalted piety, and

1 Knox's History, Wodrow Society edition, vol. i., pp. 7-11.

2 He was the first of the Campbells of Cesuock, and was the sou of Sir George
Campbell of Loudoun, Sheriff of Ayr, the seventh in the genealogical table of that
family. Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. ii., p. 207.

SCOTLAND.] Introduction. 519

their house was a school of Christian instruction ; for they kept a
priest, who read to them and their family the New Testament in
their vernacular tongue ; and the deportment of the whole house-
hold corresponded with the spirit of that sacred book. They also
assisted the poor by all kind offices ; and although convinced from
the gospel that superstition and hypocrisy are displeasing to God,
yet such was their benevolent disposition, that they still continued
to receive the monks into their house, and to treat them hospitably.
At times they would familiarly converse with their guests upon
Christian doctrine, and condemn the almost universally prevailing
superstitions. Taking advantage of this, and violating the laws of
hospitality, the monks brought before the bishop an accusation of
heresy against the lady, her husband, and the priest. The accused
being in danger of their lives, Campbell appealed to the king, James
IV., who graciously heard the cause on both sides, notwithstanding
the displeasure of the ecclesiastics, who claimed the exclusive power
of trying cases of this nature. Campbell, not a little agitated by
fear of the monks, and unwilling to commit himself, answered with
caution. Upon this the king, having commanded the wife to adduce
what she had to say in self-defence, she pled the cause of them all
with such ability and boldness, readily and appropriately quoting
from the Scriptures in support of her statements, as to astonish the
sovereign, who not only acquitted all the defendants Campbell, his
wife, and the priest but also, rising up, heartily shook Mrs. Camp-
bell by the hand, and highly commended her acquaintance with
Christian doctrine. Having severely reproved the monks, he
threatened that if ever after they should, in this manner, harass
such honourable and innocent persons, he would inflict upon them
exemplary punishment ; and he presented to Campbell certain vil-
lages as a memorial of this honourable acquittal, and of the high
place which Campbell held in the royal favour. These facts are re-
corded by a nearly contemporary author, Alexander Ales. ' They

1 In the dedication of his work, entitled Responsio ad Cochlei calumias, 1534, to
King James V., quoted in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii., p. 400.

520 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

are also celebrated by Mr. John Davidson, afterwards minister of
Prestonpans, in his poem commemorative of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell
of Kinyeancleuch. After informing us, as he had been told by
honest aged men of Kyle, that the laird of Cesnock, " eightie yeares
sensyne and mare," 1 had been doomed to public execution at Edin-
burgh, by the ecclesiastics, " for Christ's evangell, which he read,"
but rescued by James IV., he adds :

" Some sayes death was alswel prepard,
For priest and lady as the lard :
This story I could not passe by,
Being so well worth memory :
"Whereby most clearlie we may seo,
How that the Papists loudly lie,
Who our religion so oft cald,
A faith but of fiftie yeare aid."

It was then little dreamed of that these Lollards were laying the
train for that explosion of opinion which was afterwards to shake
the Papacy to its foundations in Scotland, and to establish the
Eeformation.

None of the Scottish queens or princesses, at the period of the
Eeformation, had the honour of supporting that great cause. Hopes
were entertained that the first queen of James V., the beautiful,
amiable, and accomplished Princess Magdalene, eldest surviving
daughter of Francis I. of France, by his excellent queen, Claude,
sister of Eenee, Duchess of Ferrara, would patronize the new opi-
nions, or at least throw the weight of her influence on the side of
toleration. Having, when only four years of age, lost her mother,
who died on the 20th of July, 1524, she was brought up under the
care of her aunt, Margaret of Valois, Duchess of Alenpon, after-
wards Queen of Navarre, a well known patroness of the French
Reformers, many of whose doctrines she had embraced ; and it was
believed that the mind of Magdalene had been imbued, by the
instructions of her relative, with the same enlightened and liberal
principles. But she did not long survive her union with James,
1 i.e., from the date of the composition of the poem, which was in 1574.

SCOTLAND.] Introduction. 52 1

which was solemnized on the 1st of January, 1537, in the church of
Notre Dame, Paris. The fatal disease of consumption, derived
from her mother, had begun to undermine her health before her
marriage, and she died on the 10th of July, forty days after her
arrival in Scotland, 1 having nearly completed her seventeenth
year, to the sincere regret of all classes of subjects, with the excep-
tion of the priests and prelates, who dreaded the overthrow of their
pomp and power, from the influence of a queen who had been
educated under the inspection of a person of such suspicious ortho-
doxy as Margaret of Valois. 3 It was on this occasion, observes
Buchauan, that " mourning dresses were first worn by the Scots,
which," adds he, "now after forty years, are not very common,
although public fashions have greatly increased for the worse."

The second queen of James V., namely, Mary of Guise, who upon
the death of James became queen regent, was hostile to the Refor-
mation. And her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, who was educated
at the French court, was trained up in a blind devotion to the
Popish Church, and taught by her uncles, the Guises, to believe that
it would be the glory of her reign to restore her kingdom to the
jurisdiction of the Pope. This, which could not have been accom-
plished without rekindling the flames of persecution, it was her
purpose to achieve, whenever a fit opportunity offered itself. But
happily she had never the means of doing serious injury to the
reformed cause in Scotland. On her arrival at Edinburgh, on the
20th of August, 1561, to assume the reins of government, finding
the Protestants in possession of the power of the state, she had
meanwhile to yield to circumstances ; and a few years after, her
conduct, particularly her participation in the murder of her husband.
Lord Darnley, entirely and for ever stripped her of the sovereign
power, which fell into the hands of the Reformers.

1 Drummond. Holinshed's Chronicles, &c., London, 1808, vol. v., p. 513.

2 Buchanan's History of Scotland, book xiv.

KATHARINE HAMILTON.

SISTER OF PATRICK. HAMILTON, THE MARTYR.

ATHARINE HAMILTON, the first of the
Scottish female representatives of the Reforma-
tion to which we introduce the reader, was the
daughter of Sir Patrick Hamilton, of Kincavil,
Linlithgowshire, by his wife, who was a daughter
of John, Duke of Albany, brother to James III.
Her father was a natural son of James, first
Lord Hamilton, 1 the father of James, second
Lord Hamilton, and first Earl of Arran, whose
son James, second Earl of Arran, and Regent of Scotland, was, next
to Mary Queen of Scots, nearest heir to the Scottish crown. Thus,
on the father's side, she was nobly though not royally descended ;
and on the mother's side she was related to the royal family of Scot-
land. She was sister to the famous Patrick Hamilton, the first
native who suffered martyrdom in Scotland for the Protestant faith ;

1 Pinkerton affirms his legitimacy, supposing that he was a son of Lord Hamilton,
by his second wife, Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of King James II., and relict of
Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran. History of Scotland under the house of Stuart, vol. ii.,
pp. 45, 46. But Douglas has proved, from charters, that he was au illegitimate sou of
that nobleman. Peerage of Scotland, vol, i., p. 697.

524 Ladies oftlie Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

and she had another brother, Sir James, who also embraced the
reformed sentiments. On the 2d of May, 1520, she lost her father,
who fell on the High Street of Edinburgh, in a feud between the
Earls of Arran and Angus, when about seventy men were slain, and
James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, narrowly escaped with his
life. Beaton was at that time one of the Hamilton party, though
he afterwards, when Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1 made her brothers
and herself feel the power of his wrath. 2

The chief means by which Katharine was brought to the know-
ledge and belief of the reformed doctrines, were the instructions of
her brother Patrick and the reading of the New Testament in
English ; for copies of Tyndale's New Testament had by this time
been brought into Scotland. Her brother Patrick, after he had
returned to Scotland from Germany, in 1527, inflamed with an
unquenchable desire to communicate to his blinded countrymen the
knowledge of the true way of salvation which had dawned upon his
own mind, taught her the same divine and saving truths.

The burning of her brother, on the last day of February, 1528,
shortly after his arrival in Scotland, made a deep impression on her
mind, and confirmed her convictions of the truth of the principles
which he had taught her, and for which he had suffered.

About six years after his martyrdom she was exposed to no small
danger of sharing the same fate. Her relation to him had made her
an object of suspicion to James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews,
who had brought her brother to the stake, and to other ecclesias-
tics, who were waiting for an opportunity of proceeding against her
for heresy.

At length she, with several others, were cited to appear before
an ecclesiastical court, to be held in the abbey of Holyroodhouse, in
August, 1534, to answer to the charge of maintaining heresies re-
pugnant to the faith of the Holy Catholic Church, and condemned
by general councils and by the most famous universities. On the

i He succeeded to the metropolitan see in 1522.

3 Pinkerton's Hist, of Scot, under the house of Stuart, vol. ii., pp. 180-183.

SCOTLAND.] Katharine Hamilton. 525

day appointed, several of those summoned appeared before the
court, in which James Hay, Bishop of Boss, presided as commis-
sioner for Beaton, the metropolitan archbishop; and refusing to
abjure, were sentenced to the flames as David Straiten, a gentleman
of the house of Laurieston, and Norman Gourlay. Others who ap-
peared having abjured and publicly burned their bills, were par-
doned. Others sought safety in flight, as Katharine's brother, Sir
James, of Kincavil, Sheriff of Linlithgowshire, who was condemned
in his absence as a heretic, and his goods and lands confiscated.
Katharine made her appearance, and the special charge brought
against her was her maintaining that none could be saved by their
own works, and that justification is to be obtained exclusively
through faith in the righteousness of Christ. She admitted that
these were her sentiments. Upon this, Mr. John Spence, lawyer,
and afterwards king's advocate, one of those who had sat in judg-
ment on her brother Patrick in 1528, began to argue the question
with her. To enlighten her mind on the doctrine of the merit of
good works, he proceeded to a lengthened discussion of the subject,
telling her that there were divers sorts of good works " works of
congruity and works of condignity" each of which had attached
to them a peculiar kind of merit. " Works of congruity." said he,
'' are those done antecedently to justification, which prepare for the
reception of grace, and which it is congruous for God, in his good-
ness, to reward, by infusing his grace. Works of condignity are
those performed after justification, from freewill, assisted by the
grace infused at justification, which are meritorious, not only be-
cause God has promised a reward to them, but likewise on account
of the intrinsic value of the works themselves." To Katharine, who
had not studied dialectics, the abstruse distinctions, with which
Spence seemed so familiar, were probably new, and served only
to perplex her mind. At last, her patience being exhausted with
the tediousness and subtilty of his argumentation, which entirely
failed to convince her, she cried out, " Work here, work there, what
kind of working is all this? I know perfectly that no kind of

526 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

works can save me but only the works of Christ, my Lord and
Saviour." King James V., who was present in the court during
that day, clothed in red apparel, on hearing the very summary
manner in which she had disposed of the lawyer's learned casuistry,
was much amused, and turning about, he laughed heartily. By
the entreaties and blandishments of the monarch, who was, doubt-
less, actuated by a humane solicitude to save her life, she was pre-
vailed upon to retract her sentiments. " He called her unto him,"
says Calderwood, " and caused her to recant, because she was his
aunt ; and so she escaped." l Had she remained inflexible, she would
probably have been doomed, like Straiten and Gourlay, to perish at
the stake

But if she had not the resolution of her brother Patrick, who pre-
ferred an honourable death to an abandonment of the truth, she was
not long in repenting of the concessions which she had been induced
to make, and dreading the wrath of Beaton, the Archbishop of St.
Andrews, she left Scotland in the close of the year 1535 ; and, like
her brother, Sir James, 2 proceeded to England, where she was in-
troduced to Jane Seymour, queen of Henry VIII. In the spring of
the year 1539, she was residing at Berwick-upon-Tweed, and had
been there a considerable time before, being still afraid to return to

1 History, vol. i., p. 109.

2 Various allusions to Sir James, while in England, occur in the state correspondence
of the period. On the 3d of March, 1535, Sir Adam Otterburn had written to Crom-
well respecting him. In August, Cranmer introduced him to Cromwell as a gentleman
who had left his country for no other cause but " that he favoured the truth of God's
Word." On the 26th of February, 1536, Cranmer again wrote to Cromwell, request-
ing him " to move the king for somewhat to be given him to live on here in England."
On the 24th of April, Sir James sent to Cromwell a copy of the sentence pronounced
against him by the court held in Holyrood Abbey, praying that Henry VIII. would
interpose with the Scottish monarch in his behalf. Cromwell, in the name of his royal
master, did so by letter, and the reply from Stewart, the lord treasurer, dated 19th
May, was, " that while the lady of Sir James and his children wanted nothing neces-
sary for their maintenance, his highness (though his relation) could not help him,
neither direct nor indirect, without danger to his conscience, except the gentleman be
first reconciled to and by the pontiff." State Papers, vol. v., pp. 21, 41, 49. Sir James,
however, was permitted by his sovereign to return to Scotland in 1540. Calderwood'a
History, vol. i., p. 139.

SCOTLAND.] Katharine Hamilton. 527

Scotland, from the danger to which the adherents of the reformed
sentiments were exposed. These facts, which close the scanty
notices of her life which time has preserved, are recorded by the
Duke of Norfolk, in a letter to Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, dated
29th March, 1539. " Daily cometh unto me," says Norfolk, " some
gentlemen and some clerks, which do flee out of Scotland, as they
say, for reading of Scripture in English ; saying that if they were
taken they should be put to execution. I give them gentle words,
and to some money. Here is now, in this town, and hath been a
good season, she that was wife to the late Captain of Dunbar, and
dare not return for holding our ways, as she saith. She was in Eng-
land, and saw Queen Jane. She is Sir Patrick Hamilton's daughter,
and her brother was burnt in Scotland three or four years ago." *

Katharine had, indeed, at present much reason for apprehension
in the event of her returning to Scotland. Between the years 1534
and 1537, many persons were prosecuted for heresy ; but towards
the close of the year 1538, when David Beaton was raised to the
dignity of a cardinal, and made assistant and successor to his uncle,
James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, the persecution was car-
ried on with aggravated fury. On the 1st of the month in which
the Duke of Norfolk wrote that letter containing the allusion to her,
just quoted, five Reformers Friar Kyllor, Friar Beveridge, Sir Dun-
can Simson, a regular clergyman, Robert Forrester, a gentleman,
and Thomas Forrest, Vicar of Dollar were committed to the flames,
upon the Castle Hill of Edinburgh.a If, therefore, before, she was
afraid to return to Scotland, lest she might be involved in the pun-
ishment, as she was involved in the guilt of heresy, this alarming
intelligence increased her fears, the more especially as Cardinal
Beaton, who was now high in power, was a man of more remorse-
less cruelty than even his uncle.

1 State Papers, vol. v., p. 155. Norfolk, who did not interest himself much in
matters of this kind, is incorrect as to the date of her brother's martyrdom, which took
place eleven years before this.

2 Knox's History, vol. i., pp. 61-63.

HELEN STARK,

WIFE OF JAMES RANOLDSON.

TL PON the death of James V., a few days after the birth
of his daughter and successor, Mary, who was born
December 8, 1542, a regency was necessary during the
minority of the infant queen. Cardinal David Beaton,
who for many years had been, to all intents and pur-
poses, prime minister to James V., claimed and assumed the dignity of
regent, solely upon the authority of a testament which he himself
had forged in the name of the deceased king. But, by the unanimous
choice of the nobility, James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran, who,
after Mary, was next heir to the throne, was appointed regent, greatly
to the public satisfaction. Arran, however, who was feeble and
vacillating, was ill qualified to preside at the helm of government in
such stormy times ; and having, in the beginning of September, 1543,
from the terror of Cardinal Beaton and his faction, publicly recanted
the reformed faith, which he had previously professed and patronized,
and returned to the bosom of the Romish Church, he was now so
entirely governed by Beaton that he had only the title of regent,
Beaton possessing all the power of that office, without the envy of the
name. The apostasy of Arran was the origin of that unrelenting
persecution of the Protestants which, after the lapse of a few months,
was unexpectedly renewed, and in which Helen Stark, the subject
of the present notice, fell a victim. At the solicitation of the cardi-

SCOTLAND.] Helen Stark. 529

nal, he carried through Parliament, on the 15th of December, 1543,
a resolution in which, after adverting to the great complaints made
of the increase of heretics within the realm, he exhorts all prelates
and ordinaries, within their respective dioceses and jurisdictions, to
inquire after all such persons, and to proceed against them accord-
ing to the laws of the church, assuring the bishops that he should be
ready at all times to do therein as became his office, 1 in other words,
that he would sanction by his authority the punishment of heretics,
even by death.

The cardinal immediately proceeded to give effect to this persecut-
ing act. With this for his object, in the beginning of the year 1543-4,
he first made an ecclesiastical progress to Perth, where the reformed
opinions were openly professed by some of the citizens, accompanied
by the regent and other persons of distinction. 2 On his arrival,
which was on St. Paul's day, the 25th of January, he commenced his
bloody work. Many were accused of heresy, but only Helen Stark,
with five others, were, on the information of a friar, named Spence,
apprehended. These other five were Kobert Lamb, merchant; William
Anderson, maltman ; James Finlayson ; James Hunter, flesher ; and
James Ranoldson, skinner, Helen's husband. They were all arrested
on the very day of the cardinal's arrival in Perth, and imprisoned
in the Spey Tower, that on the morrow they might be arraigned as
heretics.

Upon the morrow Helen and the rest were brought before their
judges, and something like the form of a trial was gone through. All

' Ada Parl. Scot., vol. ii., p. 443.

2 We follow Knox, Foxe, and Calderwood in the chronology of the progress. Knox
says it was on " St. Paul's day before the first burning of Edinburgh," by the English
troops under the Earl of Hertford. Now the first burning was in May, 1544. History,
Wodrow Soc. edition, vol. i., p. 117. Foxe gives the same date, upon the authority
of extracts from the registers of the court sent from Scotland. Acts and Monuments,
vol. v., p. 623. Calderwoo* confirms the accuracy of this chronology'(History, vol. i.,
p. 137), and it is farther corroborated, from various documents, by the editor of Knox's
History. Buchanan is therefore incorrect in referring this progress to the end of the
year 1545. Keith, in a very unsatisfactory note, disputes the commonly assigned date,
and adopts that of Buchanan. History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland,

pp. 40, 41.

2 L

530 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

of them, in general, were charged with holding meetings for conversing
upon and explaining the Sacred Scriptures, contrary to the act of Par-
liament 1542-3, whereby the lieges were forbidden to argue or dispute
concerning the sense of the Holy Scriptures. Other offences were
imputed to one or more of them in particular. Robert Lamb and
James Ranoldson were charged with having interrupted Friar Spence
while teaching, in a sermon at Perth, upon All-Hallow Day last,
1st November, that a man could not be saved without praying to the
saints, and with having declared in the face of the audience that his
doctrine was false, aud contrary to the Holy Scriptures. "William
Anderson, James Finlayson, aud James Ranoldson were charged
with having treated disrespectfully the image of St. Francis, by
hanging it up on a cord, nailing two ram's horns on its head, and
putting a cow's rump to its tail; and with having eaten a goose
upon All-Hallow-e'en. James Hunter was a man of weak under-
standing, and had little religious knowledge, but, having kept com-
pany with these persons, he was accused of heresy. The specific
charges brought against Helen Stark were, that in childbed she
had refused to call upon the Virgin Mary, the special patroness
of lying-in women, according to the legends of the Popish Church,
though exhorted to do so by her neighbours, declaring that she
would pray to God alone, in the name of Christ ; and that she had said
" that had she lived in the time of the Virgin Mary, God might have
shown respect to her low estate, as he had done to the Virgin's, by
making her the mother of Christ ;" by which she simply meant that
it was not from any merit of her own that the Virgin Mary obtained,
in preference to other women, the honour of being made the mother
of Christ, but that this was solely owing to the free undeserved good-
ness of God. These words, which the clergy and the whole Popish
multitude accounted most execrable, and her refusal to place herself
under the special protection of the blessed Virgin, the mother of the
Redeemer, as was the fashion throughout Christendom for women
under their confinement, were considered undoubted proofs of heresy.
The six prisoners were pronounced guilty of violating the act of

SCOTLAND.] Helen Stark. 531

Parliament formerly referred to, by the verdict of a jury, and were
condemned to die, the men to be hanged at the common place of
execution, and Helen Stark to be drowned in a pool in the neigh-
bourhood. After the sentence was pronounced, the male prisoners
had their hands bound, which, when Helen witnessed, she requested
to be bound also by the officers with her husband. The town of
Perth, strongly sympathizing with Helen and the other condemned
prisoners, interceded with the governor in their behalf, and he would
willingly have saved their lives, had he not been overawed by the
cardinal and the cruel priests, to whose persecuting policy he was now
committed, and who, he dreaded, might assist his enemies in depos-
ing him from the regency, provided he failed to sanction their san-
guinary measures for putting down heresy. Certain priests in the
town, who had been accustomed to visit Helen's house, and the houses
of her fellow-sufferers in the days of their ignorance, and who had
partaken of their hospitality, were earnestly entreated to interpose
with the cardinal to prevent the execution of the sentence, but
they absolutely refused. Thereafter the male prisoners, attended
by a numerous body of soldiers to prevent a tumult, which the per-
secutors, from the unpopularity of their proceedings, dreaded, were
conducted to the place of execution, which was under the windows of
the Spey Tower. All of them comforted one another, expressing
their assurance that they would sup together in the kingdom of
heaven that night, and, commending their spirits to God, they sur-
rendered their lives with fortitude and constancy.

Helen aud her husband had lived together in the tenderest union,
and in the ardour of her affection she implored, as a last request, that
she might be permitted to die with him ; but she had been sentenced
to undergo a different kind of death, and the affecting request was
denied. Being allowed to accompany him to the place of execution,
she ministered to him consolation by the way, exhorting him to
patience and constancy in the cause of Christ, and parting from him
with a kiss, she expressed her feelings in these singularly touching
words, the sincere effusion of the heart, for the occasion was too

532 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

serious for mere theatrical display of sentiment : " Husband, be glad ;
we have lived together many joyful days, but this day, on which we
must die, ought to be the most joyful of all to us both, because now
we shall have joy for ever. Therefore I will not bid you good night,
for we shall suddenly meet with joy in the kingdom of heaven."

Immediately after his execution, and the execution of his fellow-
martyrs, she was led forth to a pool of water in the neighbourhood,
to undergo the death to which she had been condemned. On her
way, passing by the monastery of the Franciscans or Gray Friars,
which was situated on the south-east corner of the town, near the
river, she said, " They sit in that place quietly who are the cause of
our death this day, but they who witness this execution upon us shall,
by the grace of God, shortly see their nest shaken;" 1 words which were
fully verified in 1559, when that monastery, together with the Do-
minican or Black Friars' monastery, and the Charter House or Car-
thusian monastery, were completely demolished in a tumult of the
excited populace. 2 Upon reaching the pool she prepared for her
fate. Having several children, one of whom was an infant hanging
upon her breast, a scene of the most affecting nature was exhibited,
which strongly moved the spectators, many of whom could not refrain
from shedding tears. Her affections being now strongly excited
towards her orphan children, the thought of separation from them
seemed for a moment to disturb the serenity of her mind, and she
commended them to the compassion of her neighbours. But the most
powerfully exciting cause of agitation and agony, was her parting
with her sucking child. This beloved object, at whose couch she
had often sung, in the joyousness of her heart, her favourite airs, she
took from her bosom, and after fixing upon it a last look, full of the
tender yearnings of a mother's heart, gave it to the friend who had
undertaken to become its nurse. This struggle with parental affec-
tion made the sacrifice of her life the more trying, but it made it

1 C alder wood's History, vol. i., p. 175.

2 Besides these three monasteries, there was another in Perth, that of the Carmelites
or White Friars.

SCOTLAND.]

Helen Stark.

533

also the more magnanimous, the more sacred, the more acceptable
to God. Recovering from the shock, she yielded herself to death
with unwavering faith, calm tranquillity, and heroic fortitude. With-

Helen rituik parting with her Child.

out any change of countenance, she saw her hands and her feet bound
by the executioner. Thus secured, and being tied in a sack, she was
plunged into the water. 1 After a momentary struggle her redeemed
spirit, emancipated from all its sorrows, was rejoicing before the
throne of God ; and may we not affirm that, next to the Saviour,
among the first to welcome her into that happier state of being were
her own husband and his fellow-sufferers, who had reached it, per-
haps, hardly an hour before ?

Whether Helen Stark and the other martyrs were offered their
lives upon condition of recantation, we are not informed. The pro-
bability is that they were not; that the inexorable cardinal was
determined, under whatever circumstances, to make a terrible ex-
ample of these heretics, thereby to arrest the progress of heresy by
inspiring universal terror, and to set a pattern for the other prelates

1 Spottiswood's History of the Church of Scotland, London, 1655, book ii., p. 75.

534

Ladies of tJie Reformation.

[SCOTLAND.

to copy in their respective dioceses. The cardinal's cruelty was as
short-sighted as it was atrocious. It produced effects the very oppo-
site of those intended. These and other deeds of Popish barbarity
perpetrated in the neighbourhood, as the burning alive of Mr. George
Wishart, at St. Andrews, in 1546, strengthened the convictions which
they were intended to extinguish, increased the hatred of the people
against priests and Popery, and diffused throughout the country a
favourable disposition towards the reformed religion.

ISABEL SCRIMGER,

WIFE OF RICHARD MELVILLE.

>SABEL SCRIMGEE, was a daughter of Walter
Scrimger, of Glaswell, " a branch of the honourable
family of Diddup, in which the office of royal stan-
dard-bearer, and of constable of Dundee, had been
long hereditary." She was sister to Henry Scrim-
ger, professor of Civil Law in the Protestant university of Geneva,
a man " whose exertions for the revival of letters reflected great
honour on Scotland, although his name is now known to few of his
countrymen." Her husband, Eichard Melville, was proprietor of
Baldovy, a small estate situated on the banks of the South Esk,
about a mile to the south-west of the town of Montrose ; and, after
the Eeformation, minister of the kirk of Maritoun, which was adja-
cent to his own house. 1 Like him she was " godly, faithful, and
honest, lightened with the light of the gospel, at the first dawning
of the day thereof within Scotland." The reformed sentiments had
early made considerable progress in Angus and Mearns, and she was
among their first converts in these counties. She had profited from
the instructions of John Erskine, of Dun, and of the reformed
preachers who were brought to her neighbourhood by that excellent
man, in whose castle, where they were hospitably received and pro-
tected, meetings were held for hearing the Scriptures read and ex-
' M'Crie's Life of Andrew Melville, vol. i., pp. 5, 39, 41, 421.

536 Ladies of tfte Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

pounded. She was also indebted for confirmation in the truth to
George Wishart, who had returned in 1544 to Scotland, from the pro-
secution of his studies at Cambridge, full of zeal for the pure gospel,
and had opened a school at Montrose.

Mrs. Melville was a very amiable, kind-hearted woman, as well as
of a contemplative turn of mind, and much given to the exercises of
devotion ; on which account she was " exceedingly beloved by her
husband, friends, and neighbours." Her husband had eight bro-
thers, and their father having fallen in the battle of Pinkie, near
Musselburgh, fought between the Scots and the English under the
command of the Duke of Somerset, in the year 1547, and their
mother having died in the same year, the younger of them, being
unprovided for, became dependent upon him. His Christian prin-
ciple and his warm fraternal affection did not permit him to neglect
his duty, and he acted towards them in all respects the part of a
father ; nor was she less attentive in promoting their comfort and
welfare than if they had been her own children. Towards Andrew,
the youngest afterwards so celebrated in the ecclesiastical and lite-
rary annals of his country who, when little more than two years
of age, was brought home to her house, she was especially kind,
nursing him with all the tenderness of a mother. These brothers,
and Andrew in particular, who, from his tender age, had enjoyed
a larger share of her maternal sympathy than the others, ever after
remembered her with heart-felt gratitude, and delighted to speak
of the overflowing goodness of her benevolent heart, and of the
endearing acts of kindness she had conferred upon them in their
early years. " I have divers times heard," says her youngest son,
James, " when my father's brothers, Eoger, John, Mr. James, and
Kobert, could not satisfy themselves in commending her godliness,
honesty, virtue, and affection towards them. And I have often
heard Mr. Andrew say, that he being a bairn very sickly, was most
lovingly and tenderly treated and cared for by her, embracing him
and kissing him oftentimes, with these words, ' God give me another
lad like thee, and syne tak me to his rest !' Now she had had two

SCOTLAND.] Isabel Scrimg&r. 537

laddies before me, whereof the eldest was dead ; and betwixt him
and the second she bore three lasses ; so, in end, G-od granted her
desire, and gave her ane, who would to God he were as like to Mr.
Andrew in gifts of mind as he is thought to be in proportion of body
and lineaments of face ; for there is none that is not otherwise parti-
cularly informed, but takes me for Andrew's brother.'' 1

" There is something peculiarly interesting," says Dr. M'Crie,
'' though it does not always meet with the attention which it merits,
in the reciprocations of duty and affection between persons placed in
the relation and circumstances now described. By means of instinct,
and by identifying the interests of parent and child, Providence has
wisely secured the performance of duties which are equally neces-
sary to the happiness of the individual and of the species. But
without wishing to detract from the amiable virtue of parental at-
tachment, we may say, that its kind offices, when performed by
those who stand in a remoter degree of relationship, may be pre-
sumed to partake less of the character of selfishness. And they are
calculated to excite, in the generous breast of the cherished orphan,
a feeling which may be viewed as purer and more enthusiastic than
that which is merely filial a feeling of a mixed kind, in which the
affection borne to a parent is finely combined with the admiration
and the gratitude due to a disinterested benefactor. ' 3

Mrs. Melville died in the year 1557, within a year after the birth
of her son James, who became only second in celebrity to his uncle
Andrew, in the ecclesiastical transactions of his country in his day.
Thus this lady was honoured to stand in very close relationship to
two men, to whose exertions, in the close of the 16th century, and
in the beginning of the 17th, in defending her ecclesiastical liberties,
Scotland must ever lie under a deep debt of gratitude. She was
the foster-mother of the one, and the natural mother of the other.

Her eldest daughter, Isabel, who had been trained up under her
own eye, possessed much of her own excellence of character ; but

1 James Melville's Diary, Wodrow Soc. edition, p 15.

2 Life of Andrew Melville, vol. i., p. 5.

538 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

her earthly course was even shorter, for she died of her first-born
child, in 1574, the year after her marriage. Of this young lady her
brother James has left some interesting notices, which we subjoin
in his own graphic language : " My eldest sister, Isabel," says he,
writing under the year 1567, when he was about eleven years of age,
" would read and sing David Lindsay's book, namely, concerning the
latter judgment, the pains of hell, and the joys of heaven ; whereby
she would cause me both greet and be glad. I loved her, therefore,
exceeding dearly, and she me more than the rest. She showed me
one day, amongst others, a ballad set out in print against ministers
that, for want of stipend, left their charge, beginning :

' Whoso do put hand to the pleuche,

And therefra bakward goes ;
The Scripture maks it plean aneuche,
My kingdom is nocht for those,' &c.

" With this she burst forth in tears, and says, ' Alas ! what will
come of these at that latter day ? God keep my father, and Mr.
James Melville, and Mr. James Balfour from this!' 1 And after
cries out the verses of David Lindsay :

' Alas ! I trimble for to tell
The terrible torments of the hell ;
That peanf ul pit who can deplore ?
Quhilk sail endure for evermore.'

" With her speeches and tears she made me to quake and chout
bitterly, which left the deepest stamp of God's fear in my heart of
any thing that ever I had heard before. I was given to a bairnly,
evil and dangerous use of pyking;* the which she perceiving, of
purpose gave me the credit of the key of her chest, and having some
small silver in a little schottle, I took some of it, thinking she should
not have missed it. But by that occasion she entered so upon me
with so sore threatenings, and therewithal so sweet and loving admo-

1 Mr. James Melville was her uncle, and Mr. James Balfour her cousin-germ an,
" both ministers and stipendless."
* Committing petty thefts, pilfering.

SCOTLAND.]

Isabel Scrimger.

539

nition and exhortations, that I thank thee, my God, I abstained from
it all my days thereafter; and wherever I was, if I could have
gotten any thing to buy. worthy of her, I was accustomed to send it
her in token of our affection, so long as she lived. This benefit I
had of God, by her means, that winter, for increase of his fear, and
honesty of life." ' He thus affectionately records her death : " The
beginning of this year [1574] was most dulfull to me, by the depar-
ture of my dearest sister Isabel, who died of her first-born ; in whom
I lost my natural mother the second time." 2

i James Melville's Diary, p. 1& 2 Ibid., p. 28.

John Knoi'i HOUM, Edinburgh, where Marjory BotrM died.

ELIZABETH ASKE,

ANl)

MARJORY BOWES,

MOTHER-IN-LAW, AND WIFE OF JOHN KNOX.
I

) Y birth these two ladies were English ; but we include
them among our notices of the reformed ladies of
Scotland, from their relation to the illustrious Scot-
tish Reformer, John Knox, the one having been his
mother-in-law, and the other his wife. We shall
combine into one narrative such memorials of their lives as have
come down to our time.

Elizabeth Aske was a daughter and co-heiress of Sir Roger Aske,
of Aske, in Yorkshire ; and her husband, Richard Bowes, was the

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth A sice and Marjory Bowes. 541

youngest son of Sir Ealph Bowes, of Streatlam. She had to Bowes
a family of two sons and ten daughters, of which Marjory was the
fifth daughter. 1

These two ladies became acquainted with Knox during the period
of his officiating as a preacher in the town of Berwick, in 1549 and
1550, by appointment of the Privy Council of England. The mother,
a woman of deep piety, highly appreciated his talents and character ;
she had derived from his sermons much instruction and pleasure ;
and she contracted with him an intimate friendship, which remained
unbroken till her death. At the same time, a mutual attachment
sprung up between him and her daughter Marjory, which ulti-
mately issued in their union. 2

Mrs. Bowes had been educated in the Popish religion, and con-
tinued in the profession of it during the first part of her life ; but,
having been brought to the knowledge of the reformed principles,
she embraced them with ardent zeal, and, though constitutionally
timid, adhered to them with unshaken firmness of purpose, in the
face of much temptation and opposition. These facts we learn
from a letter written to her by Knox in 1554. " God," says he,
" has given unto you many probations of his fatherly love and care
which he bears towards you ; for what love was that which God
did show unto you when he called you from the bondage of idolatry,
after that so long ye had been plunged in the same, to the bright-
ness of his mercy, and to the liberty of his chosen children to serve
him in spirit and verity. How mercifully did God look upon you,
when he gave you boldness rather to forsake friends, country, pos-
session, children, and husband, than to forsake God, Christ Jesus
his Son, and his religion known and professed! "Was it not an
assured sign of God's favour towards you, that in the time of blas-
phemous idolatry, he brought you into the bosom of his kirk, and
there fed you with the sweet promises of his mercy ? and now, in
the end, hath he brought you home again to your native country, in
which, I trust, ye shall be compelled to do nothing against your

' M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 407. 3 Ibid., vol. i., p. 88.

542 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

conscience, which, ought and must be ruled by God's Word only." 1
In another communication to her he says, "I write this to the
praise of God. I have wondered at that bold constancy which I
have found in you, at such time as mine own heart was faint." 2

Mrs. Bowes was much afflicted with melancholy, the result, in a
great measure, of ill health and physical temperament; and this
exerted a powerful influence over her religious exercise and feelings.
It led her to occupy her thoughts more with her own unworthiness
and defilement in the eyes of infinite purity, than with the unbounded
love and mercy of God towards the chief of sinners. Hence the pre-
dominance of self-abasement, sorrow of spirit for sin, and apprehen-
sions of the wrath of God, in the frame of her mind, depriving her
of the joy to be derived from the consoling truths of religion. Into
her emotions of sorrow no one could enter with a truer and deeper
sympathy than Knox, as his correspondence with her abundantly
shows. His Fort for the Afflicted, in an Exposition of the Sixth
Psalm, was undertaken to alleviate her inward troubles. 3 Yet by
all his efforts he could never altogether remove from her mind the
painful dejection to which it was subject.

Before Knox left Berwick, he and Marjory Bowes interchanged
mutual pledges of fidelity. In a note to a letter to Mrs. Bowes,
which he added to the answer he published to the Jesuit Tyrie, he
says, " I had made faithful promise, before witnesses, to Marjory
Bowes, her daughter." The mother was friendly to the intended
union; and hence, after this, Knox always addresses her, in his
letters, by the name of mother. The father, and some relatives on
his side were, on the other hand, opposed to the match, partly from
family pride, not thinking the Scottish ecclesiastic of sufficiently
honourable condition to form an alliance with a member of their
family ; and partly, it would appear, from want of sympathy with
the Kefonnation, if not from direct and open hostility to it. This

1 Knox's Works, vol. iii., p. 392.

2 Knox's Select Practical Writings, Free Church publications, p. 132.

3 Ibid., p. 106, &c.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Aske and Marjory Bowes. 543

opposition deeply wounded the feelings of the young lady, and of
her mother, as well as of Knox. In a letter to Mrs. Bowes, Knox
gives expression to his bitterness of spirit on this account in these
words : " Dear mother, so may and will I call yon, not only for the
tender affection I bear unto you in Christ, but also for the motherly
kindness ye have shown unto me, at all times, since our first
acquaintance ; albeit, such things as I have desired (if it had pleased
God), and ye and others have long desired, are never like to come
to pass, yet shall ye be sure that my love and care towards you
shall never abate, so long as I can care for any earthly creature.
Ye shall understand that, this 6th of November, I spake with Sir
Robert Bowes ' on the matter ye know, according to your request ;
whose disdainful, yea, despiteful words, have so pierced my heart,
that my life is bitter unto me. I bear a good countenance with a
sore troubled heart ; while he that ought to consider matters with a
deep judgment is become not only a despiser, but also a taunter of
God's messengers. God be merciful unto him ! Among other his
most unpleasing words, while that I was about to have declared my
heart in the whole matter, he said, 'Away with your rhetorical
reasons ! for I will not be persuaded with them.' God knows I did
use no rhetoric or coloured speech, but would have spoken the
truth, and that in most simple manner. I am not a good orator in
my own cause, but what he would not be content to hear of me, God
shall declare to him one day, to his displeasure, unless he repent.
It is supposed that all the matter comes by you and me." 2

The marriage was therefore, in the meantime, postponed, in the
hope that the father and other obstinate relatives might relent. At
last, when the prospect of this appeared hopeless, the union was
solemnized about the summer of the year 1553, soon after the acces-
sion of Queen Mary to the English throne. 3

Mrs. Knox and her mother were anxious that Knox should
settle in Berwick, or in its neighbourhood, though it was extremely

i Mrs. Bowes's brother-in-law. 2 Knox's Works, vol. iii., p. 378.

3 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., pp. 112, 114.

544 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

doubtful now, when Mary was swaying the English sceptre, whether
a man who had been so zealous a preacher in England in the reign
of Edwai-d VI., would be allowed to remain there in peace, even
though he should live in privacy. Her father was abundantly able
to give her and her husband a sufficient establishment ; and Mrs.
Bowes, who cherished towards Knox a deep unchanging affection,
as if he had been her own son, did what she could to remove the
unkind feelings which her husband had conceived against him ; and
to obtain some arrangement by which her daughter and son-in-law
might take up their residence in Berwick, but without success. To
these, her friendly endeavours to realize what she herself and her
own daughter so earnestly desired, and to which Knox appears not
to have been disinclined, he gratefully refers in a letter to her,
written from London, on the 20th of September, 1553. " My great
labours," says he, " wherein I desire your daily prayers, will not
suffer me to satisfy my mind touching all the process between your
husband and you, touching my matter concerning his daughter. I
praise God heartily both for your boldness and constancy. But I
beseech you, mother, trouble not yourself too much therewith. It
becomes me now to jeopard my life for the comfort and deliverance
of my own flesh [his wife], as that I will do by God's grace ; both
fear and friendship of all earthly creature laid aside. I have written
to your husband, the contents whereof I trust our brother Henry
will declare to you and to my wife. If I escape sickness and impri-
sonment [you may] be sure to see me soon." '

Besides the painful feelings she experienced from her father's dis-
pleasure at her marriage, Mrs. Knox was, immediately after it, kept
in a state of distressing anxiety from the persecution to which Knox
was exposed, from his indefatigable diligence in preaching the truth
in various parts of England. He was obliged to conceal himself;
and his enemies continuing the search for him with unrelaxing dili-
gence, he set sail for France, and landed safely at Dieppe, a part of
Normandy, in that kingdom, on the 20th January, 1554, his wife
1 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., pp. 114, 115. Knox's Works, vol. iii., p. 376.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Aske and Marjory Bowes. 545

having had no opportunity of seeing him previously to his leaving
the country. '

During his absence at this time, which was nearly two years, 2
she did not follow him to the continent, but remained at Berwick
with her parents. She and her mother were now assailed by the
importunities of her father to conform to the Popish religion, which
Mary had re-established in England. Whatever were his own sen-
timents, he had no hesitation in accommodating himself to the times,
and he seems to have thought that it was foolish scrupulosity for
them to refuse to conform and to expose themselves to the penalties
of heresy. But neither of them would yield to his solicitations. Cast-
ing aside worldly hopes and fears, and listening only to the dictates
of conscience, they evinced, in the most decided manner, their deter-
mination not to forsake, upon any consideration, the faich which
they had embraced from full conviction of its truth. 3 Kuox, in his
correspondence with them, confirmed them in their good resolutions.
Writing to Mrs. Bowes, he thus exhorts her in reference to this
subject, and the advices which he tenders to her were equally
intended for his wife : " If man or angel shall labour to bring you
back from the confession that once ye have given, let them in that
behalf be accursed, and in no part (concerning your faith and reli-
gion) obeyed of you. If any trouble you above measure, whether
they be magistrates or carnal friends, they shall bear their just con-
demnation unless they speedily repent. But whosoever it be that
shall solicit or provoke you to that abominable idol, resist you all
such boldly unto the end ; learning of the Holy Ghost not to defile
the temple of God with idols; neither yet to give your bodily
presence unto them; but obeying God more than man, avoid all
appearance of iniquity. . . . Continue stoutly to the end, and bow
you never before that idol, and so will the rest of worldly troubles

1 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., pp. 118-120. Knox's Works, vol. iii., pp. 370, 371.

2 He spent some time in Switzerland, where he contracted an intimate friendship
with Calvin, officiated for some time as minister to the English exiles at Frankfort, till
he was driven from them by the dissensions about the Liturgy.

a M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., p. 133. Knox's Works, vol. iii., p. 345.

2 M

546 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

be unto me more tolerable. With my own heart I oft commune,
yea, and as it were comforting myself, I appear to triumph, that
God shall never suffer you to fall in that rebuke." '

In this period of trial and persecution, Mrs. Knox and her
mother, while deprived of the preaching of the Word, were in the
habit of meeting together for religious exercises, with several indi-
viduals in the city of Berwick, who, like themselves, refused, at what-
ever peril, to countenance with their presence the Popish worship.
When Knox, after his return from the continent, about the close
of harvest, 1555, had the pleasure of seeing them again, it was a
mutual congratulation that none of them had polluted themselves by
bowing the knee to the established idolatry, or entering within the
precincts of a Popish temple. 2

Mrs. Knox enjoyed his society only for a short time, in conse-
quence of a secret journey which he undertook, to visit the Protes-
tants of the Scottish capital ; and the ardent thirst for the Word
excited among his countrymen having induced him to remain longer
than he expected, she, with her mother, who was now a widow, 3 at
last joined him at Edinburgh. In the following year they left Edin-
burgh for Geneva, upon his accepting an invitation given him by
the English congregation of that city to become their pastor. Hav-
ing bidden adieu to their friends, "with no small dolor to their
hearts and unto many of us," says Knox, they set sail before him in
a vessel proceeding to Dieppe ; while, after having again visited and
taken farewell of the brethren in different places, he followed them
in the month of July that same year. 4

On the 13th of September, Mrs. Knox and her mother were, along
with Knox, formally admitted members of the English congregation

1 Knox's Works, vol. iii., p. 345. This letter is dated, " At Dieppe, the 20th of July
1554 ; after I had visited Geneva and other parts, and returned to Dieppe to learn the
estate of England and Scotland."

2 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., p. 172.

3 " The particular time of Mr. Bowes's death I have riot ascertained, but it seems to
have been between 1554 and 1556." M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol i., p. 282.

4 Ibid., vol. i., pp. 173, 187. Knox's History, vol. i., p. 253.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Aske and Marjory Bowes. 547

at Geneva. While she was resident in that city her two sons were
born. Nathaniel was born in May, 1557, and was baptized on the
23d ; Whittingham, afterwards Dean of Durham, being godfather.
Eleazar was born in November, 1558, and was baptized on the 29th,
Myles Coverdale, formerly Bishop of Exeter, being godfather. 1

When Knox, on the 7th of January, 1559, left Geneva for his
native country, upon an invitation which he had received from the
Scottish Protestant nobles, Mrs. Knox, with her two children and
mother, in the meantime remained behind him, it being uncertain
whether they could live with safety in Scotland. But in the summer
of the same year, in compliance with the wishes expressed by him
in letters to them, they left that city for Scotland. In June they
were at Paris, and they made application to Sir Nicholas Throck-
mortou, the English ambassador at the French court, through some
of their Scottish friends, who were at that time in Paris, for a pass-
port, permitting them to proceed through England. Throckmorton,
besides granting this request, wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth,
dated 13th June, 1559, in which he endeavoured to allay her majesty's
resentment against Knox, on account of his treatise against female
government, and besought her, by the exercise of generosity towards
his wife, to conciliate the good-will of a man who was the master-
spirit of the ecclesiastical revolution then going on in Scotland, and
who, from his great influence, had the power to do important service
to her majesty. 2

Having left France, Mrs. Knox, with her children and her mother,

O 7 '

reached England in safety ; and, after a short stay with her relatives,
she proceeded on her journey to Scotland with her children, leaving
her mother behind her. She was accompanied by Christopher Good-
man, who had been Knox's colleague at Geneva, and who was after-
wards successively minister of Ayr and St. Andrews; and she
reached her husband on the 20th of September. 3 It being her

1 Knox's Works, notes by editor, vol. i., pp. xvii, xviii.

2 See his letter in Forbes's Public Transactions in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,
vol. i., pp. 129, 130. :i M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., p. 282.

548 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

mother's intention soon to follow her, Knox, at her request, on the
day after her arrival wrote a letter to Sir James Croft, asking
permission for Mrs. Bowes to repair to Scotland, and explaining the
motives which induced her to purpose residing in that country, if
no^ permanently, at least for some time. "One thing," says he,
'-must I suit of you, to wit, that either by yourself, or else by Sir
Kalph Sadler, to whom I could not write, because no acquaintance
hath been betwixt us, you would procure a license for my mother,
Elizabeth Bowes, to visit me, and to remain with me for a season ;
the comfort of her conscience, which cannot be quiet without God's
Word truly preached, and his sacraments rightly ministered, is the

cause of her request, and of my care From St. Andrews,

the 21st of September, 1559." 1 Having obtained letters of license
about the month of October, 2 Mrs. Bowes left her friends in Eng-
land, and joined her daughter in Scotland, where she remained until
her death.

Mrs. Knox did not live long subsequently to her return to Scot-
land, having died in the close of the year 1560, shortly after Knox
was settled as minister of Edinburgh, and had obtained a comfortable
establishment for her and her children. On her death-bed, sensible
of her approaching dissolution, she was resigned and peaceful, sup-
ported by the hope of a better world ; and to her two sons, Nathaniel
and Eleazar, she left this benediction, " that God, for his Son Christ
Jesus' sake, would of his mercy make them his true fearers, and as
upright worshippers of him as any that ever sprang out of Abraham's
loins;" to which her husband responded in the affirmative with all
his heart. 3

She was probably buried in St. Giles's church-yard, in the grave
afterwards occupied by Knox himself, which, according to tradition,
is the spot in the Parliament Square where the statue of Charles II.
now stands.

The loss of this excellent woman was a severe affliction to Knox,

i Sadler's State Papers, vol. i., p. 456. a Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 17, 47.

3 M'Crie's Life of Knox, voL ii., p. 415.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Aske and Marjory Bowes. 549

and he endeavoured to mitigate his anguish by an assiduous atten-
tion to his duties. In his history only an incidental allusion to this
bereavement, and to the wound which it inflicted on his heart, occurs,
when he says that " he was in no small grief by reason of the late
death of his dear bedfellow, Marjory Bowes." 1 She was much
respected and beloved by all who knew her abroad ; and Calvin, on
hearing of her death, wrote to Knox a letter, dated Geneva, April
23, 1561, in which expressions of much esteem for the departed are
mingled with expressions of cordial sympathy with him in his loss
and grief. " Your widowhood," says he, " as it ought, is sad and dis-
tressing to me. You had obtained a wife whose equal is not every-
where to be found. But as you have been well taught whence con-
solation under sorrow is to be derived, I doubt not that you patiently
bear this affliction." And in a letter to Christopher Goodman, of
the same date, he says, " I am not a little sorry that our brother
Knox has been deprived of his most amiable wife." 2 Time, while
it gradually lightened, and ultimately removed the pressure of this
affliction, never extinguished in Knox's mind the remembrance of the
dear departed, who had shared the hardships of his exile. He fondly
recalled her memory in his closing days, delighting to retrace the
first affections of his heart ; and it is observable that in speaking of
her in his last will, his language is more tender and endearing than
when he speaks of his second wife, who was then alive, though he
sincerely loved her, as she was in every respect worthy of his affec-
tion. In this document, executed on the 13th of May, 1572, not
quite six months before his death, when leaving various legacies to
his two sons by his first wife, he says, " To my two sons, Nathaniel
and Eleazar Knox, I unfeignedly leave the same benediction that

their dearest mother, Marjory Bowes, left unto them

Further, I have delivered by Master Eandolph to Mr. Eobert Bowes,
sheriff of the bishopric, and brother to the said Marjory, my umquhile^
dearest spouse, the sum of five hundred pounds of Scots money, to

1 Calvini Opera, torn, ix., p. 150 2 Knox's History, vol. ii., p. 138

a i.e., late, deceased.

550 Ladies oftlw Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

the utility and profit of my said two sons ; the which money is that
part of substance that fell or pertained to them by the decease of
Marjory Bowes, their mother, of blessed memory." '

Mrs. Knox appears never to have had more children than her two
sons, Nathaniel and Eleazar. In 1566 they were sent by their father
to England, to reside with their relations. They received their edu-
cation at St. John's College, in the university of Cambridge, their
names being enrolled in the matriculation book only eight days after
their father's death. Nathaniel, the eldest, after obtaining the
degrees of bachelor and master of arts, and being admitted fellow of
the college, died in 1580. Eleazar, the youngest, in addition to the
honours attained by his brother, was created bachelor of divinity,
ordained one of the preachers of the university, and admitted to the
vicarage of Clacton-Magna. He died in 1591, and was buried in the
chapel of St. John's College. 2

Mrs. Bowes survived her daughter, Mrs. Knox, several years.
This appears from an advertisement prefixed to one of Knox's letters
to her, published in 1572, in his vindication of the reformed religion,
in answer to a letter written by Tyrie, a Scottish Jesuit. In this
advertisement he informs us that Mrs. Bowes had lately departed
this life, and that he had published that letter to let the world know
the intimate Christian friendship which had so long subsisted be-
tween them. 3 She was probably interred in the same grave with her
daughter.

i M'Crie's Life of Knox, voL ii., p. 415. 2 Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 147, 268.

3 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 208.

K.-min of the Castle of Kinjeaucleuch.

ELIZABETH CAMPBELL,

WIFE OF ROBERT CAMPBELL OF KINYEANCLEUCH.

L.IZABETH CAMPBELL was probably, as Robertson,
in his Ayrshire Families, conjectures, 1 the daughter
of John Campbell, of Cesnock, the second represen-
tative of the Campbells of Cesnock, by his wife Janet,
third daughter of Sir Hugh Campbell, of Loudoun,
the eighth representative of the Campbells of Loudoun, to whom,
as stated by Crawford in his Peerage," he was married in 1533. She
was thus descended from the Loudoun Campbell family, and on the
father's side from a distinguished branch of it which had early con-
nected itself with the Lollards of Kyle. Her ancestors, John Camp-
bell, of Cesnock, and his lady, Janet Montgomery, to whose attachment
to Wicklifie's doctrines we have already adverted, 3 were apparently
her grandfather and grandmother.

Robert Campbell, of Kinyeancleuch, to whom this lady was mar-
' Vol iii., Supplement. -' P. 234 3 See p. 519.

552 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

ried, was the son of Hugh Campbell, of Kinyeancleuch, who was
the first of that family, and a younger son of Sir George Camp-
bell, of Loudoun, the sixth in the genealogy of that house. Thus
both of them were cadets of the ancient family of Loudoun, which
held the office of sheriff of Ayr so early as the 13th century, and
which was afterwards elevated to the peerage of Loudoun. This is
noted by Mr. John Davidson, in his poem commemorative of their
life and death, a work from which we derive the most of our mate-
rials for the present sketch. 1

"But to be plainer is no skaith,
Of surname they were Campbells baith :
Of ancient blood of this cuntrie,
They were baith of genealogie :
He of the shiress house of Air,
Long noble, famous, and preclair :
Sho of a gude and godly stok,
Came of the old house of Cesnok."

His father, Hugh, like her ancestors, had ardently embraced the
reformed doctrines, and hospitably entertained at his residence at
Kinyeancleuch, and given all the encouragement in his power, to the
fervid and apostolic George Wishart when in Ayrshire. 2 Eobert,
following in his father's footsteps, maintained the reformed principles
from an early period of life with uncommon zeal and activity, and
from his sincere piety, from the soundness of his understanding, the
disinterestedness of his spirit, the decision of his character, and the
consistent part which he uniformly acted, he acquired much personal
influence, and proved of great service to the reformed cause. He
was the intimate friend of John Knox, Eegent Murray, and the

i It is entitled, " A Memorial of the Life and Death of two Worthye Christians,
Robert Campbel of the Kinyeancleugb, and his wife, Elizabeth Campbel. IQ English
meter. Edinburgh: printed by Robert Walde-graue, printer to the king's majestie,
1595. Cum Privilegio Regall." It was written by Davidson in 1574, but not published
till 1595. So rare did that, the only edition, become, that only one copy of it was
known to exist, when, in 1829, it was reprinted at Edinburgh among " The Poetical
Remains of Mr. John Davidson, Regent in St. Leonard's College, and afterwards minister
of Salt Preston."

* Calderwood's History, vol. i., p. 188.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Campbell. 553

leading Eeformers of his day, who greatly valued his counsel, and
reposed with entire confidence in his integrity. In the beginning
of the year 1556 he conveyed Knox to Kyle, where the Reformer
preached in the castle of Kinyeancleuch, which stood on the margin
of a deugh, or deep ravine, near the confluence of a small streamlet
with the water of Ayr, about a mile southward from the town of
Mauchline, 1 - and in the houses of other gentlemen in those parts who
adhered to the Reformation, dispensing in some of them the sacra-
ment of the Lord's Supper. He then accompanied Knox to Castle
Campbell, the seat of the Earl of Argyle, in the parish of Dollar,
Clackmannanshire, where the Reformer preached for some days. 2
In 1562 he attended Knox on the occasion of the famous disputation
between the Reformer and Quintin Kennedy, of Maybole. The
family traditions relate that on the resignation of Mary Queen of
Scots, he was chosen by the burghs to represent them at the corona-
tion of her son, James VI., and that in that character he had the
honour of handing the crown to Knox, who placed it on the head of
the first Protestant king of Scotland, at Stirling, on the 29th of July,
1567. 3 He visited Knox on his death-bed, 24th November, 1572,
and the Reformer left to him the care of his wife and children. 4

Educated in the same religious principles, nearly of the same age,
and possessing much similarity of character, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell
were models of conjugal affection, and their household a model of a
well regulated Christian family.

"Sic twa I knowe not where to finde,
In all Scotland left them behinde :

1 " The ancient castle is now in ruins. The scenery around it is at once wild, pic-
turesque, and beautiful in the extreme." Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. iii., Sup-
plement, p. 85.

2 Knox's History, vol. i., pp. 250, 253.

3 These, and many other circumstances highly honourable to his character, were, it
is said, recorded among the family papers ; but the most of these documents were bar-
barously destroyed by Claverhouse and his troopers, in 1684, when they plundered
Mauchline and the castle of Kinyeancleuch. Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. iii.,
Supplement.

4 Calderwood's History, vol. iii , p. 237.

554 Ladies of the. Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

Of sa great faith and charitie,
With mutuall loue and amitie :
That I wat an mair heauenly life
"Was neuer between man and wife:
As all that kend them can declair,
Within the shiresdome of Air." '

At the time of their union the Protestant religion was but in its
infancy, and from the tyranny of the government and priesthood, it
was perilous for Protestants openly to profess the truth. In these
circumstances the reformed ministers resorted to the house of this
excellent pair, where they privately preached the new doctrines, and
were hospitably entertained. By these meetings for prayer and the
exposition of the Scriptures, such as attended them were greatly
confirmed in their attachment to the reformed faith, and the way
was prepared for its ultimate triumph in Scotland.

Mrs. Campbell was a diligent student of the Scriptures, and few
women of her time surpassed or equalled her in the knowledge of
them. Endowed with a retentive memory, a sound judgment, and
readiness of utterance, she expressed herself with great propriety on
religious questions, much to the edification and comfort of others,
and her whole deportment did honour to the religion which she pro-
fessed. These, and other good qualities by which she was distin-
guished, Davidson thus celebrates :

"And as for her the trueth to tell,
Among women she hure the bell :
During her daies in her degrie,
In godliness and honestie :
Of judgement rypest in God's law,
Of any woman that I knaw :
In God's buke she was so verseit,
That scarce wald men trow to rehearse it :
Of so excellent memorie,
And als of sic dexteritie,
God's Word to vse to her comfort,

And theirs who did to her resort,

That her to heare it was delyte,

In Scriptures she was so perfyte :

1 Davidson's Poem.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Campbell. 555

Quhilk was not words and babling vaine,

Bot words with knawledge joyned certaine :

Quhilk in her life she did expresse,

By doing as she did professe :

All God's true seruants far and neir,

She did esteim as freinds most deir :

And neuer loued societie,

With any godlesse companie :

Baith wise and provident was sho

In houshold things she had ado :

Quhat should I say, this woman od,

Was his great comfort vnder God :

And doubtles was of God a blessing,

Of speciall gifts after his wishing."

She was eminent, too, for her disinterestedness in supporting the
reformed cause. After describing the self-denied exertions of Mr.
Campbell, who rode early and late through all parts of the country,
north and south, east and west, through Angus, Fife, Lothian, and
Argyle, to stimulate the zeal of such as favoured and supported "the
liberty of Christ's kirk and the gospel," Davidson eulogizes Mrs.
Campbell for having encouraged his pious and patriotic zeal, instead
of grudging the time and money thus expended, and giving him the
ungracious reception at his home-coming, which some wives would
have done, even though they had not been of the race of the Norwe-
gian Amazons, who, the poet tells us, had, by the agency of the Evil
One, found their way into Scotland.

"Bot yet or I passe further mair,
I man speak something of his wife,
Quha neuer made barrat nor strife :
Nor this his doing did disdaine,
"Was neuer man heard her complaine,
As many wiues in the cuntrie,
I trow had luked angerlie
On her gude-man, who at all tyde
Was ay so reddy for to ryde :
For so oft ryding could not misse,
Bot to procure great expensis :
He might look as they tell the tale,
When he came hame for euill cooled kail :

556 Ladies of tJie .Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

Ze haue so meikle gear to spend,
Ze trow neuer it will haue end :
This will make you full bare there ben,
Lat see (says she) what other men,
So oft ryding a field ye finde,
Leaning thair owne labour behinde :
This and farre mare had oft bene told,
Be many wiues, yea that we hold
Not of the worst in all the land.
I speak not of that baleful band,
That Sathan hes sent heir away.
"With the black fleete of Norroway,
Of whom ane with her tyger's tong,
Had able met him with a rong,
And reaked him a rebegeastor,
Calling him many warlds weastor ;
Bot latting their euil wiues alane,
This gude wife murmuring made nane,
Bot ay maist gladly did consent,
To that wherewith he was content ;
Rejoysing that he had sic hart,
For Christis kirk to take that part."

Mrs. Campbell, in like manner, co-operated with her husband in a
lenient and generous treatment of their tenants. They were ever
ready to counsel them in difficulty and to comfort them in distress.
He took payment of their rents as they were able to make it, and
never pressed them to the uttermost, nor " set their rooms over their
heads," " nor made them poor with great grassums. 1 ' Sloth, impiety,
and wickedness, were the only causes on account of which he would
warn any of them to remove, the 101st Psalm being his rule in the
management of his estate as well as of his family ; and, as Davidson

testifies

"His wife also was of his minde,
Though many be not of her kinde -
Bot on their husbands daylie harp,
That to their tennants they be sharp :
Thinking their state can na wayes lest,
Except their pure-anes be opprest."

Like Mr. Campbell, she was also noted for her liberality in reliev-
ing the wants of the poor. Many of this class obtained lodgings

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Campbell. 557

nightly at the castle of Kinyeancleuch, and she treated them with
kindness and compassion. Nor were their religious interests ne-
glected. After supper they were brought into the hall and examined
on the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, which
had the good effect of stimulating the ignorant to diligence in acquir-
ing some measure of Christian knowledge, that, on returning to
Kinyeancleuch, they might be able, by their answers to the questions
put to them, to please the laird and his lady.

Among those of the reformed who shared in Mr. and Mrs. Camp-
bell's kindness and hospitality at their house at Kinyeancleuch, was
Mr. John Davidson, then regent of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews,
afterwards minister of Prestonpans. What brought him to their
residence was the trouble in which he was involved on account of a
poem of his composition, which was printed without his knowledge,
entitled, Ane Dialog, or Mutuall Talking, betwix a Clerk and ane Cour-
teour, concerning four Parishe Kirks till ane Minister, in which he
exposed the avaricious policy of Regent Morton, who, with the view
of seizing upon a large portion of the revenues of the church, obtained,
in 1573, an order of the privy council for uniting two, three, or even
four parishes, and placing them under the care of one minister. For
this offence he was summoned before a justice-air at Haddington,
and a sentence of imprisonment was pronounced against him. He
was, however, liberated on bail. By the General Assembly which
met at Edinburgh in March, 1573-4, 1 he was tried for this perfor-
mance; but afraid of offending the regent, the Assembly, though of
the same sentiments with Davidson, would neither approve nor con-
demn it. Campbell of Kinyeancleuch, who 1 was at the Assembly,
being dissatisfied with the timid temporizing conduct of the supreme
ecclesiastical court in shrinking from their duty, took Davidson along
with him to Kinyeancleuch, where, being introduced to Mrs. Camp-
bell, he found her a person of not less intelligence, devotion, and public
spirit, than her husband. " Such a good example of piety and holy

i The poem was printed in the January preceding.

558 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

exercise," says he, " 1 saw in that family, that methought all my life-
time before but a profane passing of the time." '

Campbell was seized with fever at Eusco. He had accompanied,
by special request, Sir Hugh Campbell, of Loudoun, the young sheriff
of Ayr, on a journey to his father-in-law, Sir John Gordon, of Loch-
invar. 2 In this journey, having come to Eusco, where they staid
with Lochinvar all night, Campbell on the following morning com-
plained, after prayers were ended, of pain in the head, and was forced
to return to bed. His illness turned out to be fever. Lochinvar and
his lady paid him every attention, frequently visiting him, and com-
manding everything to be brought to him which he needed. The
sheriff was much distressed at the illness of his friend, and

" The shirefPs wife with hart full sare
Him visited also late and are."

Believing that his end was approaching, Canipbell desired David-
son, who had accompanied him in this journey, and who since his ill-
ness had read to him, at his request, passages from the Scriptures,
particularly the Psalms of David, to go to Kinyeancleuch. to Mrs.
Campbell, on a twofold errand, first, to obtain from her for himself
what was requisite in order to his safe and comfortable escape into
England, from the vengeance of Eegent Morton ; and, secondly, to con-
vey to her intelligence of her husband's sickness, that, after having
despatched her business, she might come to him. " Brother," said
Campbell to him, in reference to the first of these objects, "I see I
must depart out of this life, which time I have long looked for. There-
fore ye shall go with expedition to my wife, and cause her furnish you,
and send some to convoy you a gateward to England, where ye shall
address yourself to Mr. Goodman, 2 and he will find you a convoy to

' Calderwood's History, vol. Hi., p. 312.

a Sir Hugh was married to Lochinvar's daughter, Margaret, in 1572. Like his father,
Sir Matthew, he was a promoter of the Reformation. Robertson's Ayrshire Families,
vol. ii., p. 209.

* Mr. Christopher Goodman, formerly successively minister of Ayr and St. Andrews,
had returned to England, his native country, in 1565, where he remained till his death,
which took place at Chester, in 1601.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Campbell. 559

Kochelle. Take my best horse with you, and ride your way with my
blessing." Having taken farewell of his friend, Davidson, on the
17th of April, proceeded to Kinyeancleuch, where he arrived on
the same day, and communicated the tidings with which he was
intrusted. Mrs. Campbell would gladly have done everything in
her power to assist him on his way to England, but he was dissuaded
by some of his friends from fleeing in the meantime, lest his brethren
should be discouraged. On the following day she hurried off on
horseback for Rusco, and

"She raid that wilsome wearie way,
Neir fourtie myles on Law Sunday ; "

the journey being rendered still more arduous from the badness of
the roads. After her arrival she did all that the assiduous and
affectionate ministry of woman could do to mitigate Mr. Campbell's
sufferings; and though death was to all appearance near, it was
comforting to her to hear him expressing his confidence of victory,
and his desire to depart and to be with Christ. She had been with
him only three days when death terminated his earthly course. He
died in the prime of life, not having completed the forty-third year
of his age; and his corpse being brought from Galloway by an
honourable attendance, it was interred in the church-yard of Mauch-
line, on the 24th of April. 1

Mrs. Campbell did not survive him two months. A few weeks
after his death she went to Ayr, to reside for some time with his
much esteemed and pious relative, James Bannatyne,

"Thinking to live most quietly,
Among that godly company :
For the hale race of all that hous,
Of Kinyeancleuch are right zealous :
And of lang tyme hes sa bene kend,
The Lord assist them to the end :
For Robert and this James of Air,
Sister and brother barnis were :
And sa nane meeter she could finde,
For to remaine withall behinde."

1 Davidson's Poem.

560 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

But her appointed time on earth was also now nearly completed.
She had not been long under her friend's roof when she was taken
ill of a fever, and she obtained the desire which she had heartily
expressed to follow her husband if it was the will of God having
died, after a short illness, about the middle of June, also in the prime
of life, being only about forty years of age. She was buried in the
church-yard of Mauchline, close by Mr. Campbell.

Having recorded the death and burial of both of them, Davidson,
in summing up their character, says

"Lang may ye seek to finde sic tway,
As God there nowe hes tane away."

And after expressing his doubts whether a man and woman of "such
rare and heavenly qualities " were left behind in Scotland, he adds
that their " away-taking "

"Should make vs clearlie vnderstand,
That God's just judgements are at hand,
To punish the rebellion,
Of this maist stubborne nation :
Who to God's will dois not attend,
For no punition he dois send :
For we may easilie considder,
The way taking of thir together,
Of so excellent behaveours,
And that almost bot in their flowers,
For nane of them was past tliroughlie,
The age of fourtie yeares and thrie,
Is not for nought what euer it be,
That is to followe hastelie :
For why sic as the Lord God loues,
Before the plague he oft remoues :
According as the Scripture sayes,
Quhilk shortned good .Tolas' dayes."

Mrs. Campbell had by her husband a son and a daughter,
Nathaniel and Elizabeth. Nathaniel having died young and with-
out issue, before his parents' death, Elizabeth inherited her father's
estate. 1 She was married about the year 1574, to Eobert Carnp-

1 This is evident trom the Commissary Records of Edinburgh, MS. in her majesty's

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Campbell. 561

bell, her cousin-german, the son of Hugh, the younger brother of
her father, who had obtained the lands of Mongarswood, in Kyle,
a considerable and pleasant property, situated about half-way
between Mauchline and Sorn, by marriage with a daughter of
Mungo Campbell, of Brownside, and who thus became the founder of
the family of Mongarswood. Upon marrying her he renounced his
right to his paternal estate, carrying on the line of the Kinyean-
cleuch family ; and Mongarswood fell into the hands of his next
younger brother, who carried on the line of the Mongarswood
family. 1 Davidson, on publishing his poem commemorative of her
parents' worth, from which we have so largely quoted, dedicated it
to this lady, who appears to have inherited her parents' spirit. In
the dedication he says : " Finding this little treatise (sister, dearly
beloved in Christ) of late years amongst my other papers, which I
made about twenty years and one ago, immediately after the death
of your godly parents of good memory, with whom I was most dearly
acquainted in Christ, by reason of the trouble I suffered in those
days for the good cause, wherein God made them chief comforters
unto me, till death separated us. As I viewed it over, and read it
before some godly persons of late, they were most instant with
me, that I would suffer it to come to light to the stirring up of the
zeal of God's people amongst us, which now beginneth almost to

be quenched in all estates, none excepted To their

request at length I yielded, although long unwilling, in respect of
the baseness of the form of writing, which yet, at the time of the
making thereof, I thought most familiar, according to the old man-
ner of our country, to move our people to follow the example of
these godly persons according to their calling and estate. And so
being yet put in good hope that it would profit, I was contented it

General Register House, from which we learn that " the testament dative and inven-
tar of the goods, gear, and sums of money, and debts pertaining to " her father, were
"faithfully made and given up " by her, " their daughter and executrix," as the "de-
creet of the Commissary of Edinburgh, of the date the 25th April, the year 1585, at
length purports."
2 Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. iii., Supplement, pp. 79, 80.

2 N

562 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

should be after this manner published The saying also

of Gregory Nazianzen, writing of Basil the Great after his death,
did not a little encourage me, it being by God's providence in my
hands when I was about to write this, the sense whereof followeth :
' It is a thing of most dutiful affection to commend the memory of
holy persons that are departed, especially of such as have been of
most excellent virtues, whether it be by friends or strangers.' I
have directed it unto you, dear sister, by name, that ye may make
your profit of it in particular, for confirming you by the worthy
example of your parents, in these evil and declining days, in that
godly course of Christianity, wherein it hath pleased God to make
you succeed unto them, no less than to the worldly heritage, pro-
ceeding rightly from them to you, after the death of their only son

Nathaniel, your brother From Edinburgh, the 24th of

May, 1595. Your assured friend in Christ, " J. D."

This lady lived to an advanced age, having died in 1627, as may
be inferred from her son, John Campbell's being returned her heir in
the lands of Kinyeancleuch, on the 20th of October that year. 1 The
lands remained in the family till towards the close of the 18th cen-
tury, when they were sold to Claud Alexander, Esq., of Ballochmyle.
1 Inquititionum Retornatarum Abbreviatio, vol. i., Ayr, No. 243.

ELIZABETH KNOX,

WIFE OP JOHN WELSH.

ELIZABETH KNOX was the youngest daughter of
the celebrated John Knox, by his second wife, Mar-
garet Stewart, youngest daughter of Andrew Stewart,
Lord Ochiltree, a nobleman who, under all circum-
stances, had proved Knox's faithful and constant friend.
The marriage between Knox and this lady was contracted in March,
1564. Popish writers, unable to dissemble their malice and envy,
that the man who had overthrown the Papacy in Scotland had
succeeded in forming a matrimonial alliance with one of the noble
houses of his country, and a house, too, allied to the royal family,
represent him as actuated by the ambition of raising his family to
the Scottish throne ; and they attribute his success in gaining the
affections of the young lady to sorcery, and the assistance of no
less a personage than the devil. " To the end that his seed, being
of the blood-royal, and guided by their father's spirit, might have
aspired to the crown, ... he did pursue to have alliance with the
honourable house of Ochiltree of the king's majesty's own blood.
Riding there with a great court, on a trim gelding, not like a pro-
phet or an old decrepit priest, as he was, but like as he had been
one of the blood-royal, with his bands of taffeta fastened with gold
rings and precious stones : And as is plainly reported in the

564 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

country, by sorcery and witchcraft did so allure that poor gentle-
woman, that she could not live without him ; which appears to be ot
great probability, she being a damsel of noble blood, and he an old
decrepit creature of most base degree of any that could be found in
the country : So that such a noble house could not have degenerated
so far, except John Knox had interposed the power of his master,
the devil; who, as he transfigures himself sometimes in an angel
of light, so he caused John Knox appear one of the most noble
and lusty men that could be found in the world." 1 We have
better authority for affirming that Knox rather owed this honour-
able matrimonial alliance to the high reputation he had acquired as
a man of Christian worth and ability, and as the reformer of Scot-
hind. 2 Another Popish writer, equally veracious, informs us that
the young lady, soon after the nuptials, observing Knox and the
devil engaged in earnest conversation, was thrown into such terror
that she immediately fell sick and died. " For as the common and
constant bruit of the people reported, as writeth Reginaldus and
others, it chanced, not long after the marriage, that she lying in her
bed, and perceiving a black, ugly, ill-favoured man, busily talking
with him in the same chamber, was suddenly amazed, that she took
sickness and died ; as she revealed to two of her friends, being
ladies, come thither to visit her a little before her decease." 3 " It
is unfortunate," remarks Dr. M'Crie, " for the credit of this ' true
information,' that the Eeformer's wife not only lived to bear him
several children, but survived him many years." Notwithstanding
their disparity of years, she lived very happily with Knox till his
death, cheerfully bearing her share in the trials of his life, and min-
istering to his comfort with affectionate assiduity.

Her children by Knox were three daughters, Martha, Margaret,
and Elizabeth. Martha, the eldest, was married to Mr. James

1 Nicol Burne's Disputation, pp. 143, 144, quoted in M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii.,
p. 329.

2 See Ladies of the Covenant, p. xvii.

3 Father A. Baillie's True Information, p. 41, quoted in M'Crie's Life of Knox,
vol. ii., p. 330

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Knox. 565

Fleming, minister of Bathans, now called Tester, in the Presbytery
of Haddington, East Lothian. 1 Margaret was married to Zachary
Pont, minister of Bower, in Caithness, and son of the celebrated
Robert Pont, minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. 2 And Eliza-
beth, the youngest, the subject of this notice, became the wife of
the famous John Welsh, minister of Ayr.

Elizabeth was probably born about the year 1568 or 1569. At
her father's death, which took place on the 24th of November,
1572, she would be only about three or four years old, and therefore
of an age too tender to have derived much advantage from his
instructions. After her mother's marriage, secondly to Andrew Ker,
Fadounside, in Roxburghshire, a zealous Reformer, which took place
before the 25th of May, 1574, 3 she probably resided for the most
part at Fadounside, and received such education as it was customary
for ladies in her rank to receive at that time in Scotland.

Her first acquaintanceship with John Welsh is not recorded. It
was probably after his settlement as minister of Selkirk, which took
place in the course of the year 1589, when he had an opportunity of
frequently meeting with her in his intercourse with the family of
Andrew Ker, who probably attended his ministry. A mutual affec-
tion sprung up between him and her, which ultimately issued in
their happy wedlock. The precise date of their union is uncertain.
In the year 1594 Welsh was translated from Selkirk to Kirkcud-
bright, but whether their marriage was solemnized while he was
incumbent of the former place, or after his removal to the latter, we
are without the means of determining. It is, however, certain that

1 Mr. Robert Fleming, author of the Fulfilling of the Scriptures, was a son of this
minister, but by a second marriage. Steven's Hist, of the Scottish Church at Rotter-
dam, p. 83.

2 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 356.

3 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 353. One of her children by this second mar-
riage was Mr. John Ker, who succeeded Mr. John Davidson, who died in 1604, as
minister of Prestonpans. He was the father of Mr. Andrew Ker, who became clerk t
the General Assembly upon the resignation of Archibald Johnston, of Warriston, and
continued to fill this office till the restoration. Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, printed
for Maitland Club, p. 89.

566 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

they were married before the 8th of April, 1596. 1 In 1600 2 Welsh
was translated to Ayr.

If, during the first years of her wedded life, Mrs. Welsh's days
were not altogether unclouded, she met with nothing peculiarly trying.
But when James VI., upon his accession to the throne of England,
in pursuance of his resolution to bring the Church of Scotland into
conformity with the Church of England in its government and dis-
cipline, first endeavoured to destroy the freedom of the General
Assembly, the most formidable barrier, from its popular constitu-
tion, to the consummation of his purpose, this subjected her to a
series of afflictions, first in Scotland and afterwards in exile, on
account of her husband's fidelity in maintaining the liberties of the
Scottish Church.

To accomplish his object James dissolved and prorogued the meet-
ings of the Assembly, threatened and bribed its members, and had
recourse to all the arts of kingcraft, of which he thought himself a
perfect master. Mr. Welsh resisted these proceedings, and, in con-
sequence, incurred the royal displeasure. In July, 1605, a general
assembly, which had been legally appointed, having been kept at
Aberdeen by several ministers of the church, contrary to the ex-
pressed wishes of the monarch, who was afraid of their passing some
acts against the bishops, Mr. Welsh, who had been appointed a mem-
ber of that assembly, but at which he was not present, it having been
abruptly dissolved before his arrival in Aberdeen, was, on the 26th
July, brought before the privy council at Edinburgh, where he then
was ; and refusing to answer the questions put to him, he was com-
mitted prisoner to the Tolbooth, and on the same day was trans-

i This appears from the following extract from Particular Register of Inhibitions, vol. v.
"11 Feb., 1602. Said Mr. Zach. Pont and spouse inhibited by Mr. Johne Velsche,
minister of Godis word at our bust of Kirckcudbryt, and Elizabeth Knox his spous."
Pont owes complainers 1000 m , as per contract between parties at Schyrismylne, 8th
April, 1596. M'Crie's Life of Knox. vol. ii., p. 356.

3 For this and the two fir^t dates in this paragraph, the author is indebted to his
friend, the Rev. James Young, Edinburgh, who is about to publish a very interesting
Life of Welsh.

SCOTLAND.]

Elizabeth Knox.

567

ported by the guard to Blackness Castle. 1 In January, 1606, he and
five other ministers who had kept the assembly, were brought to
trial before the court of justiciary, held in the palace of Linlithgow,
under a charge of high treason.

Linlithgow Palace- the Quadrangle.

On this occasion Mrs. Welsh, leaving her children at Ayr, set out
for Linlithgow in the depth of winter, and through roads almost
impassable. The wives of the other ministers also came to that town.
She and these other ladies were doubtless present in the court on the
day of trial, but they had retired before the close, and all of them were
anxiously waiting the issue, which did not take place till eleven o'clock
at-night. On hearing that the prisoners had been found guilty of
high treason, a crime inferring the punishment of death, by the ver-
dict of the majority of a packed and overawed jury, instead of lament-
ing their condition, they rejoiced, and thanked the Lord Jesus that
their husbands had received strength and courage to stand to their
Master's cause, saying that, like him, they had been tried and con-
1 Forbes's Records, Wod. Soc. pub., pp. 4 3, 404, 406.

568 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

demned under covert of night. 1 The ministers at their trial had
declared before the judges and jury, "As for the matter whereof we
are to be accused, and ye are to be our judges this day, we are fully
resolved of it that it is the undoubted truth of God, and belongs
essentially to Christ's crown and kingdom ; . . . and through the
Lord's grace we are resolved to seal it up with the testimony of our
blood, if it shall please him to call us thereto." 2 And these intrepid
women were prepared to see those dearest to them suffer death
rather than desert what they believed to be the cause of Christ, and
to be left, with their fatherless children, destitute upon the world.
Thus it is that persecution calls forth the noblest sentiments, and
inspires for the noblest deeds of heroic self-sacrifice. But the
tyranny which calls them forth is thereby rendered only the more
hateful, and the tyrant only the more overwhelmingly exposed to
the execration of man and the retribution of heaven.

" Power to the oppressors of the world is given,
A might of which they dream not. Oh ! the curse
To be the awakener of divinest thoughts,
Father and founder of exalted deeds." 3

The pronouncing of the sentence upon the condemned ministers
was delayed till his majesty's pleasure should be known. The
king at length resolved to banish them out of all his dominions for
life, never again to return without license, under pain of death and
all the penalties due to convicted traitors. The sentence was for-
mally pronounced upon them on the 23d of October, a month being
allowed them to prepare for their departure ; and on the 7th of
November they embarked at Leith for France.

Mrs. Welsh accompanied her husband and the other banished
ministers to the pier of Leith, and joined in the solemn reli-
gious exercises engaged in before their embarkation. 1 Having
taken farewell of him for she did not intend to follow him for a
few months she returned to her children at Ayr, with conflicting

i Row's History, Wod. Soc. edition, p. 240. 2 Forbes's Records, p. 486.

3 Wordsworth. " Melville's Diary, p. 669.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Knox. 569

emotions of joy and sorrow ; of joy, at the constancy and courage in
the cause of Christ she had witnessed ; of sorrow, at the thought of
being driven from the land of her birth, destitute and unprotected,
into a land of strangers. On his arrival in France "Welsh remained
for some time at Rochelle; he then removed to Bordeaux, and
ultimately became minister of Jonsack, in Angoumois. In the fol-
lowing year Mrs. Welsh joined him, as we learn from his letters to
Robert Boyd, of Trochrig, who was then minister and professor of
theology in the college of Saumur. In one of these, dated Rochelle,
March 16, 1607, he says "I look for my wife with the first fair
wind, if it please God ; pray for his blessing therein." J In another,
to the same friend, dated Bordeaux, June 26, 1607, he says " My
wife salutes you after the most hearty manner, and longs greatly to
see you, and is greatly sorry that that occasion offers not." 2

At Jonsack the circumstances of Mrs. Welsh and her family were
very uncomfortable, and their health far from good. They suffered
much from the rude and unfeeling character of the people, who,
instead of condoling with so illustrious exiles, who were expelled
their country for the testimony of Jesus, and showing how sincerely
they sympathized with them in their afflictions, were so destitute of
the sentiments of justice and generosity, that they neither paid
Welsh the stipend they promised him, nor evinced the smallest
desire to promote the comfort of himself and of his family ; and he
was, besides, often treated with much disrespect and contumely.
This we learn from various passages in his letters to Robert Boyd.
In a letter to him, dated Jonsack, September 17, 1611, he says
" Brother, trust me in one thing, day nor night I have no repose
here ; and think now the Lord is opening a door to me, for want
of payment ; whereof I have made plaint both to the consistory and
colloquy, who have granted me the liberty of the discipline, that
if within three months they pay me not, that shall be in my liberty.
Brother, I cannot show you the particulars of my grief here, unless

1 Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, printed for Maitland Club, p. 287.

2 Ibid , p. 308.

570 Ladies oft/te Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

I had occasion to see you. . . . My wife salutes you heartily ; she
has been sick of a continual fever this month and more. We are
here in a miserable hole, without pity or compassion, among, as it
were, barbares ; and notwithstanding that our lodging be [such] for
unwholesomeness, that ever since I came here my family has been
sick, yet they would never show me that mekle favour as to provide
for a lodging to me that was contenable for my health and the
health of my family. The indignities I receive, and have received
here, are intolerable ; but I have learned to bear them for Christ's
sake." 1 In the course of Welsh's correspondence with Boyd, fre-
quent references are made to Mrs. Welsh's illness, caused, doubtless,
by the privations and hardships she endured at Jonsack. But she
bore all her afflictions with tranquillity and fortitude, which greatly
encouraged and sustained Welsh, who was sometimes ready to sink
under accumulated bodily and family distresses. " I thank my God,"
says he, " my wife bears her cross with comfort and contentation,
the which to me is no small comfort." 2

On Sabbath, September 14, 1614, Mrs. Welsh lost her eldest
daughter, who died of sickness on the seventh day of her illness. In
reference to this bereavement, and to the deep affliction of the mother
and of himself under it, Welsh, in a letter to Boyd, written on the
day of his daughter's death, says " I am extremely sorry that I
cannot keep the tryst as I promised to you by my letter ; for I am
so sore afflicted, through the death of my eldest daughter, who took
sickness upon Monday and died this Sunday, as the bearer can tell
you. Also my wife is in sic an estate that I dare not leave her, by
no means, lest that doleur and langeur get the upper hand of
her. . . . She is in very great distress, more than can be ex-
pressed. My soul is in anguish ; but the God of consolation, who
comforts them that are cast down, knows how to comfort us. I
would beseech you to come this length, though you should find
little but subject of sorrow. We are at present, indeed, in case for

1 Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, printed for Maitland Club, p. 320.

2 Ibid, p. 308.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Knox. 571

little thing but mourning. Let us have a room in your most ardent
prayers."

Mrs. Welsh was much tried from her husband's ill health during
the whole period of his exile. He originally possessed an iron frame ;
but the climate of the parts of France where he settled did not agree
with his constitution, and what he had suffered before he left Scot-
land, by an imprisonment of about fifteen months in the dungeon of
Blackness, and in the castle of Edinburgh, rendered him a more easy
victim to the influence of an insalubrious atmosphere and uncomfort-
able dwelling. Having left Jonsack, he became minister of St. Jean
d'Angely, a town in Lower Charente, in France ; but his constitution
was broken, and at last serious pulmonary symptoms began to make
their appearance. After the reduction of St. Jean d'Angely, in 1621,
by Louis XIII., war having broken out between that monarch and his
Protestant subjects, Welsh sent a supplication from Zealand, whither
he had removed, to James VI., praying that he might have liberty
to return to Scotland, his physicians having recommended his native
air as the only remedy offering the prospect of recovery. 2 Permis-
sion having been granted him to come to London, he and Mrs. Welsh
set out on their journey for the English capital. On their arrival they
consulted with their friends, and it was thought that the most likely
way of succeeding in their object, was for Mrs. Welsh personally to
make an appeal to the compassion of the sovereign; and from the
rank of her relatives on the mother's side, she obtained access to his
majesty. She laid her case before him; but James, who regarded
Welsh with something of the same antipathy felt by his mother
towards John Knox, would not allow him to return to Scotland
except on conditions with which he could not conscientiously com-
ply. The particulars of the interview have been preserved, and they
are strikingly characteristic both of Mrs. Welsh and of King James.
He asked her who was her father? "John Knox" was her reply.
" Knox and Welsh ! " he exclaimed, pronouncing an oath, after his

1 Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, printed for Maitland Club, p. 330.

2 Calderwood's History, vol. vil, p. 511.

572 Ladies of il& Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

usual manner, " the devil never made such a match as that." " It's
right-like, sir," she returned, "for we never speired 1 his advice."
He then asked her how many children her father had left, and
whether they were lads or lasses. " Three," she answered, " and
they are all lasses." 2 " God be thanked !" he profanely cried, lifting
up both his hands, " for an they had been three lads, I had never
bruiked 3 my three kingdoms in peace." She again renewed her
suit that his majesty would be pleased to give her husband his
native air. " Give him his native air ! " replied James, again uttering
an oath, " give him the devil." " Give that to your hungry courtiers,"
she instantly retorted, in a tone of stern reprehension, little con-
cerned, in her zeal against profanity, about provoking his wrath.
The utmost limits to which his condescension would go, was to pro-
mise to grant her request, provided she would persuade Mr. "Welsh
to submit to the bishops. This heroic woman, who, resembling her
father, stood fast to her principles, like a pillar of brass, lifting up
her apron and holding it towards the king, replied, " Please your
majesty, I'd rather kep 4 his head there." 5 She withdrew from his
presence, doubtless repeating in her own mind that inspired text,
" Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there
is no help " (Psalm cxlvi. 3), and leaving James, if we may venture
to guess his feelings, astonished at her boldness, her inflexible ad-
herence to her principles, and her uncommon readiness and sarcastic
power of reply.

Had this matron been the wife of a Popish ecclesiastic of Mr.
Welsh's energy of character, she would probably have obtained all
she sought. Not that James had any love for Papists, but he greatly
dreaded them. He knew that regicide, or the killing of heretical
and excommunicated princes, was the doctrine, not only of the
Jesuits, but of all the Popish orders, and of almost all the Popish
clergy, and the dread of the pistol or dagger of some fanatical Popish

1 1>., asked. 2 The other two, besides Mrs. Welsh, were Martha

and Margaret. See p. 564. Knox had two sons by his first wife, but they were born
dead by this time, and had died without issue. See p. 574.

3 i.e., enjoyed. * i.e , receive. 5 M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 273.

SCOTLAND.] Elizabeth Knox. 573

assassin would have extorted from him concessions which he would
never have granted from a sense of justice. He had pronounced the
Papists to be dexterous king-killers. The numerous attempts made
upon the life of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, and the fate of
Henry IV. of France, whom Kavaillac, so recently as 1610, had
stabbed in his coach in open day in the streets of Paris, were fresh
in his memory. But he knew the Presbyterians too well to have
any apprehension of their having recourse to such desperate means
of redress, and he therefore rudely denied the suit of the humble
presbyter's wife, because he could do it with impunity.

In refusing Mrs. Welsh's petition, James was probably influenced
by private views and resentments ; for he had often been reproved
by Mr. Welsh for his habit of profane swearing, and he so shrunk
from the reproofs of this venerable man, that if he had been swear-
ing in a public place, he would turn round and inquire whether
Mr. Welsh was present.

Soon after her unsuccessful interview with the king, Mrs. Welsh
had the affliction to lose her husband, who died in May that year, in
London, after upwards of fifteen years banishment "one of the
fathers and pillars of this church, and the light of his age ; . . . .
a man filled with the Holy Spirit, zeal, love, and of incredible labour
and diligence in the duties of his vocation," as Eobert Boyd of
Trochrig, in his obituary, describes him in recording his death. 1
He was interred in one of the church-yards of London. Having per-
formed to him the last offices of respect, she returned to Scotland,
and spent the remainder of her days in Ayr, where she had many
Christian friends. She survived him little more than two and a
half years, having died in January, 1625. Her death is thus recorded
by her relative, Eobert Boyd of Trochrig: "In the month of Janu-
ary, 1625, died at Ayr, my cousin, Mrs. Welsh, daughter of that great
servant of God, the late Mr. John Knox, and wife to that holy man

1 Bannatyne Miscellany, vol. i., p. 291, where Boyd's obituary is given in the
original French. Wodrow, in his Life of Robert Boyd, printed for the Maitland Club,
p. 263. has given an English translation of it.

574 Ladies of the Reformation. [SCOTLAND.

of God, Mr. John Welsh, above mentioned, a daughter and spouse
worthy of such a father and husband. God bring us with them to
a holy and happy end in his own time by the way he hath prepared
in his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen." l

From Mrs. "Welsh's last will and testament, subscribed by her on
the 8th of January, 1625, 2 we learn that she left behind her two sons,
Josias and Nathaniel, and a daughter, Louise. She had another
daughter, her eldest, who, as we have seen before, died in France.
If Louise is the daughter whose birth is referred to in her father's
letter to Eobert Boyd, dated Jonsack, May 20, 1613, " My wife, thank
God, is safely delivered of a daughter," 3 she would be at the death
of her mother in the twelfth year of her age. Mrs. Welsh had given
birth to three sons. But the eldest, whose name is not given, who
studied medicine, and took his degree of M.D., had been accidentally
killed in the Low Countries. 4 Josias, the second, who inherited
much of his father's talents, energy of character, and piety, was
educated at Geneva, and on his return to Scotland was appointed
professor of Humanity in the university of Glasgow. 5 Upon the
introduction of Prelacy, being expelled from this situation, he went
to Ireland, where he became minister at Templepatrick, and one of
the distinguished founders of the Presbyterian Church in Ulster.
He died of consumption, in early life, on the 23d of June, 1634. His
son John, minister of Irongray, in Galloway, is well known as one of
the most intrepid of the persecuted ministers during the reign of
Charles II. Nathaniel, Mrs. Welsh's third and youngest son, after-
wards perished at sea. The vessel in which he had embarked having
been shipwrecked, he swam to a rock, but was there starved to death,
and his body, when found upon the rock some time afterwards, was hi
the prayerful attitude of kneeling, with the hands stretched out. 7

1 Bannatyne's Miscellany, vol. i., p. 291.

2 See this document in M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 417.
8 Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, p. 326.

4 Kirkton's Life of Welsh.

s Reid's Hist. ofPresb. in Ireland, vol. i., p. 112.

6 Life of Robert Blair, Wodrow Society edition, p. 135.

"' Kirkton's Life of Welsh

3latiies of ti)t fcrformatum

THE NETHERLANDS.

" And I saw a womaii, with whom the lungs of the earth have committed fornication, sit
upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs
of Jesus : and, when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration" (Revelation xvu. 3, 6).

INTRODUCTION.

KINDER this division of our undertaking, the female
J supporters of the Reformation, as in Scotland, are,
with two exceptions, of an humbler order than those
in England, and, it may be added, than those in
Germany, France, and even Italy. The two excep-
tions are Charlotte de Bourbon and Louise de Colligny, successively
wives of William, Prince of Orange, the celebrated founder of the
commonwealth of the United Provinces. These exceptions were
natives of France ; but having become connected with the Nether-
lands by marriage, their subsequent history is involved in the history
of these provinces, and they may therefore properly enough take the
place and designation we have assigned them, though the circum-
stance that France, together with Germany, were the scenes of the
story of their early life, unavoidably breaks in upon unity of subject.
The deficiency of native female characters of peculiar mark in the
16th century in the Netherlands, as in Scotland, may be attributed
to the imperfection of female education in that country ; but, unlike
Scotland, which suffered Popish persecution to a comparatively
limited extent, the Netherlands were doomed to endure it through a
long series of years, in its utmost severity ; and under it many Chris-
tian females displayed an exalted faith, and an intrepid courage, not

578 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

surpassed by the brightest names recorded in Christian martyro-

To enable the reader the better to understand our notices of the
female worthies in the Netherlands, and to sympathize with them,
not only in their martyrdom, but in the trying circumstances under
which they had embraced and maintained the truth before falling
into the hands of their persecutors, it may be necessary to take a
general view of the terrible ordeal through which the supporters of
the Eeformation had to pass in that country.

The Netherlands formed part of the hereditary dominions of
Charles V., the government of which he assumed in 1515, when only
fifteen years of age. Charles from the first took up an attitude
hostile to the Eeformation, and the doctrines of Luther having, in
the early part of his reign, found their way from Germany into these
provinces, where they threatened to spread rapidly, he immediately
had recourse to violent measures against such as embraced them ;
and until he resigned his crown, he persecuted them with relentless,
unrelaxing severity. In 1521 was published the first placard which
he issued against Luther's doctrine, books, and followers, in the Low
Countries, dated 8th May. This was followed by numerous other
placards, denouncing penalties of various sorts, from the more mo-
derate to the most extreme ; and all these edicts were executed with
the utmost rigour. Strict searches were made in houses for prohi-
bited books, and for suspected persons. The more surely to appre-
hend the reformed preachers, their portraits were drawn and set up
at the gates of the cities and other public places, while liberal re-
wards were promised to such as arrested them, or gave such informa-
tion as led to their arrest. Many sought safety in flight ; and those
seized were bound with cords, and hurried to prison. Multitudes, to
compel them to discover their brethren in the faith, were put to the
rack, under which, however, they generally displayed astonishing re-
solution, refusing to accuse any, though, when questioned concerning
their faith, they freely answered. Multitudes were beheaded, burned,
or first strangled and then burned, roasted before slow fires, drowned,

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 579

buried alive, massacred. 1 Women, near the time of their confine-
ment, were drowned or burned, and some of them, when just expir-
ing at the stake, were delivered of their offspring.

Terrified by these severe proceedings, some abjured the reformed
sentiments. The penance imposed upon such was to walk in pro-
cession before the host, with lighted tapers in their hands, till they
came to the Town House, where they were to throw their Lutheran
books into the fire ; to wear a yellow cross upon their upper gar-
ments ; not to stir out of the town within a year; and to attend all
processions with wax tapers in their hands. 2 But the number of this
class was small, compared with the hundreds and thousands who
steadfastly maintained their principles to the death. The heroic faith
of the martyrs, who on their way to execution sung psalms, and
comforting one another, called upon the name of Jesus with their
latest breath, having produced a powerful impression upon the spec-
tators, exciting sympathy and awakening to inquiry, which issued in
the best results ; to prevent this salutary public sympathy, as well
as to inspire others with the greater terror, the magistrates were
authorized, according to their discretion, to execute to behead,
strangle, or put to the sword, obstinate heretics in private.

The Anabaptists, who were very numerous in the Netherlands,
were persecuted with peculiar severity. Many edicts were published
against them in particular; and the disturbances created in 1534
and 1535, throughout Germany and in the Low Countries, by a new
sect claiming that name, who pretended to be stirred up by the
Spirit of God, as the peasants' war, the tumults at Munster, the riots
at Amsterdam, and the insurrections in other places, in which this
fanatical sect was concerned, gave a colour of justice to these severe
edicts, while they greatly increased the prejudices entertained against
the whole body of the Anabaptists. But, though many simple well-

1 Women were very often buried alive or drowned, in which last case they were put
into sacks, and a large stone being tied to their necks or bodies, they were thrown into
the sea or into lakes. This rule, however, was not uniform, for many of them were
burned. The men were generally beheaded or burned.

2 Brandt's Hist, of the Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. i, p. 60.

580 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

meaning people among the Anabaptists were at first drawn to join
in communion with this sect, on account of its professing the same
opinions about baptism and some other points, and were in conse-
quence involved in great troubles, yet many of them had no connec-
tion with it, disavowed it, and entertained sentiments as to the use
of the sword which must have led them to condemn the proceedings
of these wild enthusiasts. The fury of the government was, how-
ever, extended against all the Anabaptists. In apprehending, con-
demning, and putting them to death, hardly any distinction was
made between those who approved, or were guilty of the disorders
now referred to, and the innocent and well-disposed. If a man or a
woman had been rebaptized, for this alone they were put to death
the man being beheaded or burned, and the woman burned or buried
alive. 1 Hundreds and thousands of Anabaptists, both male and
female, who had no concern in any outbreak against the state, who
held no principles leading to insubordination or rebellion, whose
lives were irreproachable, who were possessed of sincere and fervent
piety, were, for their attachment to the doctrines of the gospel, as
well as for their belief in their peculiar principles, subjected to the
most excruciating tortures, and to the most agonizing of deaths.

During the course of his reign, Charles V. had sacrificed in the
Netherlands, for their religious sentiments, about 100,000 of his sub-
jects, who perished by the hands of the executioner; 2 and yet after
this great slaughter, the suppression of heresy in these provinces
seemed as far distant and as difficult as ever.

When, in the month of October, 1555, Charles divested himself of
his imperial and royal dignities, resigning the Low Countries, Spain,
and the Indies, to his son Philip, but the imperial crown of Ger-
many to his own brother Ferdinand, this brought no mitigation
to the persecution of the Eeformers in the Netherlands. While in
the monastery of St. Justus, into which he entered on February 24,
1557, and where he purposed to spend the remainder of his days, he

1 Brandt's Hist, of the Reformation in the Low Countries, vol. i., pp. 61-69.

2 Grotius's Annal, lib.)., p. 12.

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 581

is indeed said, when, alas ! too late, to have seen the folly of compul-
sory interference with men's consciences in matters of religion.
Having a mechanical genius, he sometimes amused himself in this
retreat by constructing works of mechanism, as clocks and watches ;
and finding himself unable, by all his ingenuity, to bring any two of
these instruments to go exactly alike, the thought struck him that it
was not less impossible to make men think precisely in the same
way on the profound and mysterious questions of religion, and he
could not help feeling astonishment and regret that he should have
expended so much effort, and shed so much blood, in the vain at-
tempt to achieve a result so impracticable. But the just and tole-
rant sentiments awakened by his clocks and watches, made no lasting
impression on his mind. He had surrendered himself entirely into
the hands of his ghostly confessor, who, by the fears of purgatory,
and the hopes of heaven, as by the wand of a conjurer, succeeded in
stifling them. Twelve days before his death he added a codicil to
his will, in which he "begs and commands" his son to inflict signal
and severe punishment on heretics without exception, and without
regard to the prayers or to the rank of the persons. " It is danger-
ous," says he, " to dispute with heretics. I always refused to argue
with them, and referred them to my theologians ; alleging with truth
my own ignorance, for I had scarcely begun to read a grammar
when I was called to the government of great nations." ' Thus does
Popery pervert the moral sense, and thus do men become hardened
by familiarity with cruelty. So far from expressing or feeling com-
punction for the cruelties he had committed in the Netherlands,
Charles, with his dying breath, recommends his son Philip to re-
enact the same black, bloody, and revolting scenes.

From his severe, gloomy, bigoted temper, 2 Philip was abundantly

1 Lloreute, quoted by Sir James Mackintosh. See also M'Crie's Reformation in
Spain, pp. 246-250.

2 So deeply seated was his constitutional gloomy and stolid temper, that when his
father on one occasion made his entry into Antwerp, and was received with great re-
spect and honour by the magistrates and all the people, Philip beiield it all unexcited,
and without once moving his bonnet, which so provoked the emperor that he publicly

582 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

disposed to act upon his father's dying advice in reference to reli-
gion. He issued new placards against heresy in the Netherlands, re-
newing, confirming, and converting into perpetual edicts those of his
father, and adopting more stringent measures for the discovery, pun-
ishment, and suppression of heretics. The more effectually to suppress
them, he determined to establish the Spanish Inquisition, in its most
horrible form, in that country. Into the details of the measures he
adopted, and the cruelties he perpetrated, we cannot here enter. But
he proved himself a greater persecutor than his father. When, in
1559, on his resolving to leave the Netherlands for Spain, among
other reasons to check the growth of heresy which had taken root and
was springing up in the Spanish soil, he committed the government of
the Netherlands, during his absence, to his illegitimate sister, Mar-
garet of Austria, wife of Octavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, he strictly
charged her and the privy council to put in execution all the pla-
cards or decrees emitted both by his father and by himself. He also
personally recommended to the great council, and to the states in
Flanders, the extirpation of heresy j 1 and he despatched letters to all
the stadtholders and governors of provinces, commanding them not
to admit any excuses tending to exempt men from the rigour of the
placards, of which he had not constituted them judges in order to ex-
plain or moderate them, but punctually and literally to put them in
execution; declaring farther, that coolness or remissness in this matter
would expose them to suspicion, and render them liable to be proceeded

gave him a box on the ear, saying, " Did Vives * teach you these manners ?" On this
account he never gained the popularity of his father in the Netherlands. While he
resided in that country, during the commencement of his government, " there appeared,"
says Maurier, " such avast difference between the father and the son, that all the people,
and particularly the nobility, conceived as much aversion and contempt for the one, as
they had love and adoration for the other. The emperor was good-natured, easy of
access, treated all sorts of nations familiarly, and talked to them in their own language,
which won him an universal respect and veneration. King Philip rarely appeared in
public, wore his clothes always in the Spanish fashion, talked little, and only Spanish,
which procured him the general hatred of the nobility and the people of the Nether-
lands." Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 13.

1 Le Clerc, Histoire des Provinces Unies, torn, i., p. 4.

* Johannes Ludovicus Vives, a learned scholar of Erasmus", who had been Philip's preceptor.

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 583

against. As he embarked for Spain he ordered the Prince of Orange,
whom he had appointed stadtholder of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht,
to put to death certain honourable persons suspected of heresy, orders
which the prince evaded by giving private warning to the parties.
From Spain he often wrote to the governess, enjoining her to extirpate
heresy ; showing her how to discover heretics, and how to worry them
when discovered ; sending her lists of their names, with such infor-
mation concerning their residence, condition in life, age, personal
appearance, and other circumstances as might assist in their detec-
tion and apprehension. 1 And when the Count of Egmont, whom he
had appointed stadtholder of Flanders and Artois, went to Spain as
commissioner from the council of state to represent to the king the
condition of affairs in the Netherlands, Philip's answer to him, which
was approved by the Spanish divines, was, "' that he would rather
die a hundred thousand deaths than consent to the least change in
religion ; that he by no means intended to suspend the prosecution
of heretics, which his duty to God and the commonwealth impera-
tively demanded ; that he would rather have a new and more ade-
quate punishment substituted for the old and usual method, so as the
more effectually to curb their insolence, and pluck up the tares even
by the roots ;" and he suggested to the count whether private execu-
tion might not be preferable to public, as that would take away the
honour the heretics fancied themselves to acquire by dying publicly
for their religion. 2

In executing their bloody sentences, the government met with a
gradually increasing opposition from the people, who openly ex-
pressed their sympathy for the sufferers, comforted them as they
were led forth and bound to the stake, joined them in singing psalms
at the highest pitch of their voices, and in such numbers as rendered
it unsafe to apprehend them. At last the feelings of opposition be-
came so intense that whole communities, rising in tumult, attempted

1 Strada, De Bella Belgico, torn. i.. lib. iv., pp. 102, 103. This historian states that
he had in his possession more than a hundred of these letters, written either in Philip's
own hand or in the hand of his secretary.

"- Ibid., torn, i., lib. iv., pp. 110-112.

584 Ladies oftJte Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

in several places to force the condemned out of the hands of the exe-
cutioner in which they succeeded in various instances broke open
the prisons, and relieved such as were in confinement for religion. To
avoid the concourse of the people and the danger of a tumult, some
were executed early in the morning ; and at length the inqusitors,
not daring any longer to bring forth heretics to public execution,
despatched them privately, as the king had ordered, which they
commonly did by binding their victim neck and heels, and then
throwing him into a tub of water, where he was left to lie till he was
dead. No sooner was it known that the martyrs were thus privately
made away with in prisons, than increased endeavours were every-
where made to liberate the imprisoned.

Even many of the citizens, gentry, and nobility, who had no design
of altering or renouncing the established Eoman Catholic religion,
abhorred the cruelties committed, trembled at the name of the in-
quisition, and strenuously opposed its introduction. " There can be
no viler slavery," said some, " than to lead a trembling life in the
midst of spies and informers, who register every word, action, look,
and even every thought, which they pretend to read from the look,
upon which they put the very worst construction." At the close
of the year 1565 a number of the chief nobility entered into a con-
federacy for opposing the establishment of the inquisition and the
placards relating thereto ; and on the 3d of April the following year,
300 noblemen and gentlemen 1 having assembled in the Hotel de
Culemburg, at Brussels, proceeded to the palace, marching two by
two, to present a petition to the governess, beseeching her to put a
stop to these persecuting measures, which threatened to issue in riot,
insurrection, bloodshed, and the ruin of their country. On this
occasion the Count of Barlemont, it is related, seeing them coming
in such numbers into court that the governess was alarmed, said
to her, " Madam, why are you afraid of these Gueuses . ? " a French
word, which signifies vagabonds or beggars. 2 Hence the name

1 Brandt's Hist, of Reformation, &c., vol. i., p. 165. Maurier says 400.

2 According to others he exclaimed, " See what a brave company of Gueuses are

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 585

Gueux was applied to them, just as the French Reformers obtained
the nickname of Huguenots. But the confederates, so far from feeling
this to be a term of reproach, gloried in it as a badge of honour,
saying, " It is no shame to be beggars for our country's good." At
festivals the toast by which they pledged mutual fidelity in the cause
of freedom was, " Vive les Gueux" " Live the Gueuses." They dressed
themselves and their families in the beggars' costume of gray cloth.
They wore medals upon their necks, made at first of wax and wood,
afterwards of gold and silver, on one side of which was engraved the
king's image, on the other, two right hands joined together, holding
between them a beggar's wallet, with the following motto, in which,
while struggling for liberty, they emphatically testified their loyalty
to their sovereign, " Fideles au roi, jusques a la Besace" " Faithful to
the king, even to the wallet." Some fastened on their breasts, or hung
upon their caps, a small beggar's wooden dish or bowl, on which was
engraved in silver " Vive le Gueux f and the greatest lords embroi-
dered on their footmen's liveries dishes, bottles, and beggars' wal-
lets. 1

But the power and ruthlessness of the oppressor were too great for
these demonstrations in behalf of toleration and freedom to be suc-
cessful. To crush the spirit of reform and of liberty, Philip de-
spatched into the Netherlands Ferdinando Alvarez, Duke of Alva
a man after Philip's own heart, cruel, inexorable, and, from the time
of Charles V., accounted by the Netherlanders their implacable
enemy with an army consisting of between 8000 and 9000 foot, and
1200 horse, being the best of the Spanish and. Italian soldiers, not
only committing to him the supreme command of the forces, but
appointing him to take cognizance of all causes in religion, and in-
vesting him with full power to pardon or to punish. The direction

there." " Because he saw a great many in the company," says Maurier, " not so rich
as himself, he told the governess, by way of contempt, that they were a troop of beggars,
and that she ought to take no notice of, or have any regard to them." Lives o/ the
Princes of Orange, p. 17.

1 Ibid., pp. 17, 18. Brandt's Hist, of the Reformation, &c., vol. i., p. 167. Strarta,
De Bella Belgico, torn, i., lib. v., p. 135.

586 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

of civil affairs remained, as before, in the hands of the Duchess of
Parma, as governess.

Before Alva's arrival, William, Prince of Orange, foreseeing the
calamities likely to befall his country, to which, in the meantime, he
saw no prospect of being able to render effectual assistance, had
retired to his estates in Germany, where he renounced Eomanism,
and made an open profession of the reformed faith. 1 Multitudes,
following his example, fled, and Germany was filled with exiles.

From the terror inspired by his very name, Alva met with no
opposition from the Dutch on the frontiers; and on the 28th of
August, 1567, he arrived at Brussels with his troops. One of his
first acts after his arrival was the erection of a tribunal, consisting
of twelve persons, which he called " The Council of Disturbances,"
but which, from its cruelty, was styled by the Netherlanders " The
Council of Blood." The members of this council were all lawyers,
and, with the exception of two, who were gentlemen of quality, were
recommended neither by birth nor merit. At the head of it was
placed John de Vargas, a Spaniard, who surpassed all men living in
brutal cruelty, in the estimation of even his own countrymen, who
were wont to say that the cankered wounds of the Netherlands had
need of such a sharp knife (as Vargas was) to cut away their dead
flesh f and all its sentences were to be confirmed and signed by Alva.
From this court there was no appeal to a superior one, nor was there
any revision of causes. Being once established, all matters were
drawn to it, the ordinary courts being passed by ; and it proceeded
without delay to business by apprehending, banishing, executing,
and confiscating the property of multitudes, of all sexes, ages, and
conditions, not only of those concerned in the late insurrections, or

1 The prince, though his father, William of Nassau, had embraced the reformed reli-
gion, and banished the Popish out of his dominions, having been early placed near the
person of Charles V., who had contracted a great liking for him, and much desired his
conversion to Catholicism, had first made a public profession of that religion in which
he had hitherto continued. Maurier, p. 12. Davies's Hist, of Holland, vol. i, p. 557.

2 Grimeston's History of the Netherlands, I-omlon, 1627, p. 311. Manner's Lives
of the Princes of Orange, p. 21.

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 587

who had embraced the reformed religion, but of those who were
guilty in neither of these respects, on some slender pretext, as, for
example, their having been seen once or twice at a conventicle, to
which they had been led from mere curiosity.

The numbers who consulted their safety by flight, carrying with
them their goods, their skill, and enterprise to foreign lands, now
daily increased. The duke had not been long in the country' when
those who had left it since his arrival, or shortly before, amounted
to above 100,000, and many more were flying into exile every day. 1

The Duchess of Parma, who was dissatisfied from the first with
the amount of power committed to Alva. finding herself less taken
notice of than before, and foreseeing the troubles which these
severities were likely to occasion, implored the king so earnestly to
be released from the office of governess, that her resignation was at
last accepted, and leaving the Netherlands she returned to Italy.
Alva succeeded her as governor.

Philip was recommended by some of his councillors to exercise
greater moderation towards his subjects in the Netherlands; but
Vargas and his assessors strenuously opposed all such recommenda-
tions, and to enlist the avarice of the monarch on the side of seve-
rity, persuaded him that they had discovered a second Indies in the
forfeiture of so many excellent estates. Independently of pecuniary
considerations, Philip, as we have said before, was sufficiently dis-
posed, from his natural cruelty and bigotry, to adopt the severest
measures; and having consulted the Spanish Inquisition, he was
confirmed in this course by that body, whose judgment, dated

1 Brandt's Hist, of the Reformation, &c., vol. i., p. 277. The greater portion of this
numerous body of fugitives " took refuge in England, and settled about the towns of
Norwich, Sandwich, Maidstone, and Hampton, where, protected and permitted the free
exercise of their religion by the wise policy of the queen, they established factories,
and instructed the natives in the art of making baize, serge, and other articles of woollen
manufacture." Davies's History of Holland, vol. i., p. 567. The same author adds in
a foot-note, " We are told by the Duke de Sully, that at the time of his visit to Eng-
land (1603), two-thirds of the inhabitants of Canterbury were Netherland refugees ;
a circumstance which, he says, accounted for the superior civilization and politeness he
remarked in that city. Tom. iv., lib. xiv , p. 217."

588 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Madrid, 16th February, 1568, was, that having seen the representa-
tions, memorials, and answers which had been transmitted to his
majesty by the sub-inquisitors of the Low Countries, they were of
opinion that all the Netherlander, excepting those whose names had
been transmitted to them, should be declared heretical or abettors
of heresy, and had been guilty of high treason either by commissions
or omissions ; and particularly such of the nobility as had presented
the petition against the inquisition. This terrible sentence, dooming
a whole nation to extermination, was confirmed at Madrid, on the
26th of the same month, by his majesty, who commanded that it
should be put in execution without respect of persons. 1 In this
Philip rivalled the bloody Nero, who wished that all the people of
Rome might have but one head, which he might cut off at a single
blow; and established his claim to be classed with the greatest mon-
sters who have oppressed and desolated the world.

Such was the commission intrusted to Alva, and if he did not
succeed in executing it to the letter, it proceeded neither from want
of will, nor from sluggishness of effort. No shrinkings of humanity,
much less religious obligation and moral duty, restrained this cruel
and remorseless man in that ruthless career by which the Nether-
lands were reduced to a condition of immeasurable unprecedented
wretchedness. " The gallows," says Heer Hooft, in summing up in his
history the shocking atrocities every day witnessed in that unhappy
country at that period, " the wheels, stakes, and trees in the high-
ways, were loaded with carcasses or limbs of such as had been hanged,
beheaded, or roasted ; so that the air, which God had made for the
respiration of the living, was now become the common grave or
habitation of the dead. Every day produced fresh objects of pity
and mourning, and the noise of the bloody passing bell 2 was con-
tinually heard, which, by the martyrdom of this man's cousin, and
the other man's friend or brother, rung dismal peals in the hearts
of the survivors. Of banishments of persons and confiscation of

1 Grimeston's History of the Netherlands, p. 320.

2 The bell usually tolled when the martyrs were to suffer.

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 589

goods, there was no end." By the council of blood it was accounted
of no moment whether the evidence against the pannel was adequate
or not. He was condemned to the flames, to the gallows, or to the
sword, though nothing like proof of having violated the laws had
been established against him. One of the members of the council,
James Hessels, a Fleming, was wont to sleep at the trial of the
prisoners, especially after dinner, and on being awakened at the
close of the trial, when it came to his turn to give his vote, rubbing
his eyes, he cried out, half asleep half awake, ad patibulum, ad
patibulum " to the gallows, to the gallows ;" though he had heard
little or nothing of the case. ' The same thirst for blood, and the
same unprincipled recklessness in indiscriminately sentencing their
victims to death, characterized the ruling members of this bloody
tribunal. Nor did they shrink from imbruing their hands in the
blood of the noblest in the land Alva having laid it down as a
principle that " one salmon's head is worth a thousand frogs." In
June, 1568, about twenty-one of the nobility (some of whom were
Eoman Catholics, others Protestants), including the Counts of Egmont
and Horn, two noblemen greatly beloved by the people, and whose
services, both to Philip and to his father could not save them, were,
by the sentence of this bloody council, beheaded at Brussels, amidst
the horror and suppressed indignation of the spectators. Such were
the shocking barbarity and tyranny of the men who carried all in
the council, that the greater number of the members, who were
Flemings, having some sparks of humanity left unextinguished in
their bosoms, ashamed and horrified, absented themselves during
the greater part of the proceedings, and at length left the whole
authority in the hands of three Spaniards, Vargas, Louis del Rio, a
Spanish priest, and la Torre, their secretary. 2

1 Hessels, by a merited retribution, ultimately suffered the same fate wiiich, with
such cold-blooded disregard to evidence, he had awarded to others. He " was hanged
upon a tree, without any form of justice or process, by the governors of Ghent, Imbise
and Rihove, whom he had often threatened, by his gray beard, to hang." Manner's
Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 21.

? Le Clerc, torn, i., p. 14.

590 Ladies of tfie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Being in want of money to carry on this execrable tyranny, Alva
resolved to impose upon the Netherlands exorbitant taxes, and thus
make them pay the expenses of keeping them in slavery. These
were a general tax, first of the 100th penny of every man's estate, to
be paid immediately, and then the twentieth penny of immoveable
property, and the tenth penny upon the sale of all moveable goods
as often as sold. From these sources, as from inexhaustible mines,
Alva anticipated an immense revenue, boasting that he would make
a stream of gold, reaching from the Netherlands to Spain, as thick
as his arm. 1 To these ruinous taxes the opposition made by the
people was so strong, that their imposition was delayed for two years,
when he revived his demand of the twentieth and tenth penny, and
ordained, without the consent of the states without having even
consulted them that these taxes, with some modifications, should
be raised by placard. The Netherlanders had hitherto borne his
tyranny with comparative submission, 2 though the miseries it had
wrought language is unequal to express ; but this attack upon their
purses exhausted the measure of their patience, and was met with a
strenuous resistance. The burghers of Brussels, upon whom he first
attempted to levy the new taxes, shut up their shops and ware-
houses, declaring that they had no goods to sell, and consequently
ought to pay no taxes. But he was not thus to be defeated in his
object. Roused to fury by resistance, he prepared to exact payment
by military force ; but while he was just on the eve of hanging up
some of the principal citizens at their own doors and windows, to
terrify the rest into submission, the news of the taking of the Brill
by the Gueux, and of an expected sudden revolt of the province of
Holland reached him. These disasters, which he had not anticipated,
filled his hands with new work, and, dispensing for the present with
his taxes and executions, he bent his energies to the suppression of
these other revolutionary movements.

1 Maurier, p. 30. Brandt, vol. i., p. 278.

2 " The quiet and patient temper of the people of Holland and Zealand had inspired
Alva with so sovereign a contempt for them, that he was accustomed to say he would
smother them in their own butter." Davies's Hist, of Holland, vol. i., p. 582.

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 591

As if he would compete for the palm of ferocious butchery with
the most sanguinary characters recorded in history, Alva was wont
to boast, after he left the Netherlands, that during the few years
that he had governed that country, namely, from the close of August,
1567, to the beginning of December, 1573, he had caused 18,000
heretics and rebels to pass through the hands of the executioner,
without including those who had lost their lives in the war. Yet
his right-hand man, Vargas, would at the same time affirm that the
Low Countries were lost by foolish compassion. '

Such were the tyranny and oppression to which the Netherland
provinces were subjected on account of the Reformation during the
period embraced in the sketches of the first five female martyrs
included in this portion of our work ; and these martyrs are the re-
presentatives of thousands, and tens of thousands of female worthies,
who suifered imprisonment, banishment, or death, for the truth in
the Netherlands.

The sketches of the last two ladies, who were the wives of William,
Prince of Orange, introduce us to a scene in the history of the
Netherlands which somewhat relieves the feelings of desolation
experienced in contemplating the preceding unmitigated persecution,
namely, the efforts of that prince, by an appeal to arms, to deliver
his country from this terrible oppression, and the success which, to
a great extent, attended these efforts ; though it is painful to find
that so disinterested a patriot at last fell by the hands of an
assassin.

On the 19th of December, 1567, while the prince was in Germany,
whither, as we have seen before, he had retired previously to Alva's
arrival in the Netherlands, he was, by Alva's orders, publicly cited
to appear before the council of blood within six weeks, in violation
of his rights and privileges ; for, being a knight of the golden fleece,
he could only be tried by the king, assisted by his peers and knights.
Alva, at the same time, apprehended Philip William, Count of Buren,
the prince's eldest son, a youth of about thirteen years of age, who
' Maurier, p. 44. Brandt, vol. i., p. 306.

592 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHEBLANDS.

was studying at the college of Louvain, and carried him to Spain,
where he was detained a prisoner at large for the space of twenty-
eight years. 1 This hard usage, combined with the miserable condi-
tion of his country under the iron rule of Alva, determined the
prince to hazard all to deliver his country from intolerable tyranny.
This resolve proved fatal to the interests of Philip in the Nether-
lands. The prince was, indeed, the only one of the nobility capable
of forming and maintaining a party. Of profound wisdom and
heroic courage ; of enlarged and liberal views, far in advance of his
age ; a equally distinguished in the cabinet and in the field ; cautious
and resolute ; wisely bending to circumstances and patiently waiting
for favourable conjunctures ; never losing sight of his great object,
and never losing hope even when all others despaired; nerved by
difficulties only to more indomitable perseverance, and possessing,
in an uncommon degree, the ability of rallying his affairs when they
were thought to be ruined ; deriving large revenues from his depen-
dencies in the provinces: having powerful resources in Germany, from
his great possessions, credit, and alliances in that country ; esteemed
and honoured abroad, and idolized by the people at home, he was pre-
eminently fitted to be the leader in that great struggle for freedom
maintained in the Netherlands in the last half of the 16th century.
Of this his enemies were fully persuaded. The sagacious Antoine
Perrenotte, Cardinal Granville, when tidings were brought to Rome
that Alva had arrested all the great lords of the Netherlands, asked if
Silent was taken, meaning the Prince of Orange, who, from his talking
little, was known by the sobriquet "The Silent," or "The Taciturn ;" 3

1 Maurier, p. 23. Brandt, vol. i., p. 262. Le Clerc, vol i., p. 15.

2 The liberality of his sentiments, with respect to religious toleration, was falsely
attributed by the Romanists, after their usual manner, to his indifference about reli-
gion. The Jesuit historian, Strada, speaks of his religion as doubtful, or nothing at
all. De Bella Belgico, torn, i., lib. ii., p. 57.

3 Maurier, pp. 12, 23. " He talked little," says Maurier, " thought much, but spoke
always to the purpose, and his words passed for oracles." His speeches and the docu-
ments drawn up by him, which have descended to our times, are remarkable for a
vigorous Roman-like eloquence. Though not a man of many words, the prince was
yet not averse to convivial intercourse arid enjoyment, and he would enter into friendly

NETHERLANDS.] Introduction. 593

and when answered, " No," lie replied, " if he is not in the net, Alva
has caught nothing." '

By the representations of the prince, the German Protestant
princes were so far moved as to connive at his raising troops ill
their dominions, and even to lend him money. His brother, Count
John of Nassau, supplied him with a large sum, and the Netherland
refugees at London, Emden, Cleves, and other places, made contribu-
tions, while the prince himself sold all his jewels, plate, and furni-
ture, to enable him to raise troops. His earliest efforts were unsuc-
cessful ; but, undiscouraged by defeat, and rendered more determined
from the Duke of Alva's having declared him to be banished on pain
of death, and all his estates within the dominions of Spain forfeited,
he watched for a concurrence of more propitious circumstances, which
at last he found from Alva's continued cruelties, and especially from
his exorbitant taxes, which made the Spanish government univer-
sally hated in the Netherlands by all orders and creeds, Eomanists
as well as Protestants, and, driving them to desperation, made them
ready to receive with open arms a prince so greatly beloved and
trusted. By the states of Holland, which met at Dort on the 15th
of July, 1569, though he was then in Germany, he was declared the
lawful stadtholder of the king; and in August, 1569, he came into
the Netherlands with an army from Germany. The insurrection
under him becoming daily more formidable, Philip at length began
to dread the total defection of these provinces, and recalled Alva
from the government, appointing, as his successor, Don Lewis de
Eequesens, governor of Castile, a man of a less violent and sangui-
nary temper. Eequesens entered Brussels on the 17th of November.
1573, and on the 1st of December Alva surrendered to him the
whole government, civil and military, departing the following day
for Spain, accompanied by his son, Don Frederick, and Vargas.
The appointment of the new governor did not, however, promise to
conversation with persons of all ranks, even with the humblest, observing to some of
liis friends, who thought this condescension a lessening of his dignity, "that what was
gained by a little complaisance was bought at a very easy rate." Maurier, pp. 114. 115.

1 Strada, De Bella Belgico, torn, i , lib. vi., p. 216.

2 P

594

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

the Netherlander the security arid liberty which they demanded;
and the Prince of Orange continued vigorously to carry on the war.
His resources were vastly inferior to those of Spain; but by his
military genius he maintained the struggle for years against the
might of that kingdom, and laid the foundations of a free and Pro-
testant commonwealth the United Provinces, which covered the
ocean with its fleets, and surpassed all Europe in naval power.

WENDELMUTA KLAAS,

A WIDOW OF MONICKENDAM.

CAVING issued his persecuting placards, Charles
V., as we have seen in the Introduction, was not
long in finding victims on whom to execute
them ; and among the first who fell a sacrifice
in the Netherlands, on account of their stead-
fastness to the reformed principles, after these
placards were issued, was WENDELMUTA KLAAS,
a widow of Monickendam, in North Holland.

Her reformed sentiments becoming known,
she was apprehended in the year 1527, and imprisoned in the castle
of "Woerden. On the 15th of November that year she was con-
ducted from that castle to the Hague. On the 18th she was brought
before Count Van Hoogstraten, stadtholder of Holland, and the
great council, by whom she was closely examined. Tran substantia-
tion, prayers to saints, auricular confession, and other Popish doc-
trines supplied ample materials for questions ; to all which she gave
ready and judicious answers. The following is a specimen of the
interrogatories put to her, and of the answers she returned

Council. " If you are not free in answering us, and unless you
renounce your errors, a dreadful death awaits you."

596 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Wendelmuta. " If the power is given you from above, I am pre-
pared to suffer."

Coun. " You do not fear death because you have not tasted it."

Wend.'- That is true, neither shall I ever taste it, for Christ
hath said, ' If any man keep my sayings, he shall never see death.'"

Coun. " What is your belief as to the sacrament of the mass ?"

Wend. "I believe it to be nothing but a piece of dough; and
whereas you hold it to be a God, I say that it is your devil."

Coun. "What do you think as to the saints, their pictures and
images ?"

Wend. " I know no other mediator than Jesus Christ."

Coun. "You must die if you hold to this. . . . Will you have a
confessor or not V

Wend. " I have confessed all my sins to Christ, my Lord, who
taketh away all sins; but if I have offended any one, I heartily ask
of him forgiveness."

Coun. " Who has taught you this opinion ? and how have you
come by it?"

Wend. "The Lord, who calls all men to him: I am one of his
sheep, therefore I hear his voice."

Coun. " Are you alone then called?"

Wend. " Oh no ! for the Lord calls to him all that are heavy
laden."

After many other questions of a similar kind were put to her, to
which she gave corresponding answers, she was led back to her
prison. On the two following days, the last of which was the day
of her execution, many persons monks, priests, women, and her
nearest relatives came to visit her, with the view of inducing
her to save her life by abandoning her faith ; but she resisted all
their entreaties, refusing to purchase life on such dishonourable
terms. Among her visitors was a noble matron, who, in condoling
with her, advised her, as the line of policy best befitting the times,
to keep her opinions to herself: "Dear mother, can you not think
as you please, and be silent; so that you should not die?" "Ah! "

NETHERLANDS.]

Wendelmuta Klaas.

597

said this magnanimous martyr, " you know not what you say. It
is written, ' With the heart we believe to righteousness, with the
tongue we confess to salvation.' I cannot be silent, dear sister. I
cannot be silent ; I am commanded and constrained to speak out by
Him who hath said, ' Whosoever shall confess me before men, him
will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But who-
soever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my
Father which is in heaven'" (Matt. x. 33). "I am afraid, then,"
rejoined the lady, " that they will put you to death." " Whether,
to-morrow, they burn me or put me into a sack and drown me,"
replied Wendelmuta, " that to me is a matter of indifference. If
such be the Lord's appointment, it must come to pass ; not other-
wise. It is my purpose to cleave to the Lord."

Two Dominican friars, the one as father confessor, the other as au

Wendelmuta Klaas and the Dominican Friars.

instructor, came also to her cell, to persuade her, if possible, to relin-
quish her heretical opinions, and obtain absolution. These men, it
is evident, were grossly ignorant, unable to say anything in vindi-

598 Ladies of t/te Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

cation of their church, aiid they did not even attempt to enter the
lists in argument with her. The last-mentioned friar, placing a
crucifix before her, said, " See. here is the Lord your God." " That
is not my God," she calmly but boldly answered. " It is another
cross by which I am redeemed. That is a wooden god ; throw him
into the fire, and warm yourselves by him." The other friar asked
whether on the morning of her death she would receive the sacra-
ment of the mass, which he would readily administer to her. She
rejected the preferred service, demanding, " What God would you
give me ; one that is perishable, that is bought for a farthing ?"
And the priest having expressed to her the joy he felt in having
that day celebrated mass, she told him that he had crucified the
Son of God afresh. " Methiuks you are beside yourself," said the
friar uncourteously, and then he put to her the question, " What do
you think of the holy unction'?" "Oil is good in a salad, or to
smear your shoes with," was her reply. Thus fruitless were the
attempts made to bring her "to retract her sentiments. She dreaded
acting contrary to her convictions of truth and duty more than
agony of body and death.

On the 20th of November, the last day of her life, she was brought
into court for trial. While she was entering the hall, the monk
formerly sent to her prison to instruct her, advanced towards her,
and holding forth a crucifix, called upon her to recant, before the
sentence should be pronounced. Turning away from the crucifix,
she said, " i cleave to my Lord and my God. Neither death nor
life shall separate me from him." The trial proceeded. To convict
her of heresy a shorter process than the examination of witnesses
was deemed sufficient. A few questions were put to her, and these,
in the estimation of her judges, being unsatisfactorily answered, the
Dean of Maeldwyk, sub-commissary and inquisitor, read her sen-
tence in Latin from a paper, and then repeated it in Dutch, pro-
nouncing her guilty of holding a false faith respecting the sacramerft
of the altar, and of obstinately continuing in the same, and deliver-
ing her over to the secular arm, or to the civil authorities, beseeching'

NETHERLANDS.] Wendelmuta Klaas. 599

them to treat her with clemency, not to break a bone of her body,
nor to shed her blood. " This the inquisitors did," says Dr. M'Crie,
" to escape falling under the censure of irregularity, which the
canons of the church had denounced against ecclesiastics who should
be accessory to the inflicting of any bodily injury. Yet they not
only knew what would be the consequence of this act, but had taken
all the precautions necessary for securing it." ' Having pronounced
this sentence, the dean, with two other ecclesiastics, who had sat
with him on the bench, withdrew from the council. The chancellor,
then, upon the ground that she was an obstinate heretic, condemned
her to be burned at the stake, and declared all her goods to be con-
fiscated. On hearing her doom, she thus addressed the judges, " If
your proceedings are now closed, I pray all of you to forgive me if I
have injured or provoked any of you." This at least is an evidence
of the peaceful inoffensive spirit of this woman. Wherein she had
wronged them it is not easy to see. Instead of asking forgiveness
for any injury which she had done to them, she had rather a right
to complain of the injustice and inhumanity of their treatment of
her. The monk who had been so assiduous in his efforts for her
conversion redoubled them after her condemnation, but with as
little success as before.

She was immediately conducted from the council hall to the place
of execution, to undergo the fatal sentence. While she was leaving
the hall, the monk exhorted her to call upon " our dear lady," the
Virgin Mary, to pray for her. " Our lady," said she, " is happy in
repose with God." " Call upon her," repeated the monk eagerly. " We
have Christ," rejoined Wendelmuta, " who sits at the right hand of
the Father, he intercedes for us." As she approached the scaffold,
the monk, holding the crucifix before her, as he had frequently done
before, importuned her, but again in vain, to look once on her Lord
who died for her. " Do you not fear the ordeal you must suffer in
the fire ?" he demanded. " I do not," she answered, ' : for I know how
I stand with my God."

1 History of the Reformation in Spain, p. 278.

600 Ladies of tJte Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Having reached the scaffold, a Christian friend standing by
called out to her to turn to the people, and entreat them to forgive
her if in anything she had offended them. This she at once did in
the frankest and most cordial manner. The monk again presented
to her the crucifix, which she pushed aside with her hand, and turn-
ing away, said, annoyed by his harassing solicitations, " Why do you
tempt me? The Lord, my God, is in heaven above." Still he con-
tinued urging her to recant with such persistency as was offensive
even to the executioner, who advised her to abide by God, and not
to suffer herself to be drawn away from him. Meanwhile she took
her place at the stake at which she was to be burned, and was
unmoved at the sight of the fire. The executioner having made
ready the cords to strangle her, she took off her neckerchief or
scarf; and when the cord was fastened around her neck, she was
again assailed by the monk, who to the last moment of her life
evinced extreme solicitude for her conversion ; whether from a sin-
cere though blinded concern for her welfare, or from an ofiicious
impertinent disposition, it is not easy to determine. "My good
Wendelmuta," said he, " do you wish to die as a Christian ? Do you
renounce all heresy ?" "Yes I do," she replied. "That is right,"
continued the monk. " Are you likewise sorry that you have erred ? "
" I erred formerly," she cried out, " for that I am sorry ; but this is
no error, it is the right way; I cleave to God." These were the last
words she spoke. As soon as she had uttered them the executioner
proceeded to strangle her ; on feeling which she closed her eyes, as
if about to fall asleep, and life became extinct without a struggle,
before the flames had seized upon her to consume her.

1 Brandt, vol. i., p. 56. Foxe's Acts and Man., vol. iv., p. 377. Braght's Marlyro-
loyy of the Baptists, vol. i., pp. 40-44. In this last work she is named " Weyuken Claes."
Though included among the martyrs of the Baptists, it is doubtful whether she be-
longed to that sect. She was not accused of any heterodox opinions about baptism,
which she probably would have been had she denied the validity of infant baptism.

Antwerp Cathedral from the Egg Market.

LYSKEN DIRKS,

WIFE OF JERONIMUS SEGERSON.

YSKEN DIRKS belonged to the body of the Ana-
baptists, who form so large a proportion of the vast
numbers that were slain in the Netherlands for the
Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The fate of the Anabaptists was peculiarly hard.
Not only were they treated with unusual severity by the govern-
ment, but strong prejudices and antipathies were entertained by
the other Reformers against them, not merely against the party

602 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

called by that name, which, under the influence of a fanatical enthu-
siasm, dishonoured and injured the Eeformation by their extrava-
gance and insubordination to civil authority, but against those Ana-
baptists who had no share in these excesses, who condemned them,
who were as sincere in their loyalty as they were fervent in their
piety. These prejudices and antipathies, perpetuated in a great mea-
sure through ignorance and misrepresentation, have been trans-
mitted to our own time. Even the best of the Anabaptists of that
period are still very generally regarded as a moody, whimsical sort
of beings, who, setting sober judgment aside, were actuated by mere
fantastical feeling, and who are rather to be contrasted than com-
pared or equalled with the martyrs of the Lutheran and reformed
churches, as if there was an entire opposition in all material points
between the two parties. An impartial investigation into their his-
tory in conducting which we ought not to trust implicity to the
statements of their opponents will teach us to discriminate. The
Anabaptist martyrs were in error, as we believe, in denying the
validity of infant baptism, and were mistaken on some other ques-
tions; 1 but they held the great fundamental articles of Christian
truth, particularly the doctrine of justification exclusively through
faith in the blood of Christ, and they displayed under their suffer-
ings much of the spirit of Christ. How scriptural, devout, edifying,
and consolatory, were the sentiments they expressed in their letters,
written from their prisons to their Christian friends ! How fervent

1 One of the other tenets maintained by them was, that while Christ was born of
the Virgin Mary, he did not derive his human body from her flesh, it being formed
in her womb by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. But the Scriptures ex-
pressely say that Christ was " the seed of the woman" (Gen. iii. 15); that he was con-
ceived in the womb of the Virgin, and was "the fruit of her womb" (Luke i. 32, 42) ;
that he was " made of the seed of David according to the flesh " (Rom. i. 3) ; and that
he was " made of a woman " (Gal. iv. 4). See also Heb. ii. 14, 16, 17. The argu-
ment of the Anabaptists, that the Virgin being a sinful woman, nothing but an impure
being could proceed from her flesh, whereas Christ was perfectly pure (Braght's Mar-
tyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 308), evinces a commendable zeal for the purity of
Christ's humanity, but the premises do not warrant the conclusion. The human
nature of Christ was formed of the flesh of the Virgin without sin, by the miraculous
power of the Holy Ghost (Luke i. 35).

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 603

and disinterested their love to their Christian brethren, whose names
their enemies could not extort from them by the most inhuman
tortures! How unshrinking their courage, and triumphant their
faith in meeting the most terrible deaths ! No Christian person who,
laying prejudice aside, reads with candour the truthful and touching
narratives of their martyrdom, can hesitate in coming to the con-
clusion that many of them, both male and female, as little deserve
to be reproached as misguided visionary zealots, and were governed
by as sincere a love to Christ, and as ardent a love to the truth,
according to the measure of their light, as Luther, Zwingle, and
Calvin, whose names are sanctified and immortalized in the memory
of the church. They were, indeed, almost exclusively confined to the
humbler ranks of life, and their names are unknown to fame. But
the sacrifice they made of their lives for God, was not on that ac-
count the less precious to Him, nor did that prevent them from
being included, and we believe that thousands and tens of thousands
of them are included, among that honoured company described in
the Apocalypse : "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me,
What are these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence came
they ? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto
me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have
washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and
night in his temple ; and God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes" (Kev. vii. 13-17).

The character and spirit of the excellent woman of whose suffer-
ings and martyrdom we are now to lay before the reader a brief ac-
count, afford a fair representation of the character and spirit generally
of the maligned body of martyrs with whom she was associated in
ecclesiastical fellowship. l

By whatever other means Lysken was brought to the knowledge

1 Van Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, printed for the Hariserd Knollys Society,

is our chief authority for this sketch. This work contains interesting narratives of

many other pious female Anabaptists, who intrepidly suffered death for their principles,

in the various forms of beheading, burning, drowning, and burying alive.

G04 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

of the truth, it is evident, from the memorials left concerning her,
that the Sacred Scriptures were the chief. Being a woman of aii
active and inquiring mind, she eagerly perused them in her secret
hours, drinking deep at the great fountain of Divine truth, and
thereby she discovered that Popery is a system of imposture, and
the mystery of iniquity. This discovery was not inoperative. Too
many in those times of persecution, while abhorring the system of
Popery, yet joined in its idolatrous and impure worship, from the
dread of personal danger. But true to the light which shone upon
her mind, Lysken having renounced the Popish faith in her heart,
deserted its worship, and openly professed the doctrines of the Re-
formation, undaunted by the persecution which awaited all who
avowed or were suspected of a leaning to these doctrines.

She was married, probably in the year 1549 or 1550, to Jeronimua
Segerson, an intelligent young man of high Christian character, and
also a convert to the reformed and Anabaptist principles. They
were united before the church at Antwerp, of which they were mem-
bers, the Anabaptists refusing to have this rite performed by the
Popish clergy ; " which was made a matter of reproach and accusa-
tion by their enemies, as if they encouraged and practised licen-
tiousness." '

Having both attached themselves to the Reformation and to the
Anabaptists, they were surrounded by the snares of death ; and in
entering into wedlock, they could hardly have been without some
presentiments that they might be called, as thousands in their native
country had been called before them, to die as martyrs to seal their
faith with their blood. That they had such forebodings appears from
one of Segerson's letters, written to his brethren and sisters in the
church, after his imprisonment. "This is the hour," says he, "re-
garding which I so long besought the Lord, knowing myself to be
unworthy to suffer for his name's sake." 2 To human nature this

1 " When marriage became a civil act in the Netherlands, in 1574 and 1580, the
Baptists ceased to marry in their assemblies, and resorted to the civil authorities."
Braght's Martyrolorjy of the Baptists, note by editor, vol. i., p. 374

a Braght's Martyrohgy of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 393.

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 605

was doubtless an appalling prospect, and that, as they looked it in
the face, a feeling of withering desolation should sometimes pass
over their spirits, is what might be expected. But it does not seem
to have abated for a single moment their devotion to the cause they
had embraced. The great doctrines of the Reformation, and parti-
cularly the doctrine of salvation through the righteousness of Christ
alone, which had now burst forth upon a darkened world after an
obscuration of ages, had taken full possession of their understandings
and their hearts ; and though they might have many fears, doubts,
and misgivings, as to their being able in their own strength to stand
the fiery trial, it was their united prayer that God, by his grace,
would enable them to be steadfast to the truth, whatever they might
suffer from the power and the malice of men.

In 1551, while quietly residing in Antwerp,' they were both ap-
prehended and thrown into prison. They were confined in separate
cells, and never again saw each other in this world. They were,
however, allowed the use of pen, ink, and paper, and the correspon-
dence between them when in prison is singularly affecting and beau-
tiful. The tone pervading it is not that of sullen spirits refusing to
yield, from stubborn inflexible obstinacy, but that of calm, enlight-
ened, conscientious minds, determined to be true to God and con-
science at all hazards. Tenderly loving each other, and recently united
in marriage, these circumstances naturally attracted them to this
world, and aggravated the struggle between the desire to live and
the resolution they had formed, from a sense of duty and by the
grace of God, to surrender their lives rather than deny their Saviour.
But their faith in Christ and their love to Him triumphed over the
feelings of nature, and produced devoted unrepining submission. If
Jesus laid down his life for us, they reasoned, shall we refuse to Lay
down our lives for Him ? They were persuaded that, painful as the
sacrifice might be to flesh and blood, they would be no losers in the
end ; that death, in whatever way it might befall them, at the stake,

1 Antwerp contained at that time a population of 200,000. Les Uelices des Pays
Bas edit., a Liege, 1769, torn, i., pp. 261, 262.

606 Ladies of llie Reforiruation. [NETHERLANDS.

in the river, or in the ocean, as well as on a bed, would be the pas-
sage to blessedness unspeakable and eternal. His letters to her ai*e
the most numerous and the longest, and they evince a heart open to
all the best feelings of our nature. His whole heart and soul are
plainly in all he says. There is a touching pathos in his endeavours
to soothe her under the cruelty and injustice of which she was the
victim. From these letters she derived great advantage; they sent
hope and joy into her heart when ready to sink, and gradually all
despondency fled. The gloom of a prison was forgotten, it bright-
ened even into a bower as she thought of the faithful promises of
God's Word, and beheld the future gilded with the glories of im-
mortal life.

In one of his letter's to her from prison, Segerson thus begins :

" Fear God always.

"In lonesome cell, guarded and strong, I lie
Bound by Christ's love, his truth to testify ;
Though walls be thick, the door no hand unclose,
God is my strength, my solace and repose.

Grace, peace, gladness, joy, and comfort, a firm faith, good confi-
dence, with an ardent love to God, I wish my most beloved wife,
Lysken Dirks, whom I married in the presence of God and his holy
church, and took thus, agreeably to the Lord's command, to be my
wife." After an account of his examination before the margrave and
two justices, in the course of which the margrave stigmatized his
wife as being the greatest heretic in the town, he addresses himself
to the painful yet grateful task of supporting her faith, patience, and
fortitude. "My most beloved wife, Lysken, submit yourself to pre-
sent circumstances ; be patient in tribulation, and instant in prayer,
and look at all times to the precious promises everywhere given us,
if we continue steadfast to the end. . . . Fear not the world, for
the hairs of your head are all numbered. Men have no power, ex-
cept it be given them from above. Christ said, 'Fear not them that
kill the body, but fear him who is able, after he hath killed the body,
to cast the soul into hell; there shall be weeping of eyes, and gnash-

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 607

ing of teeth, and their worm shall not die; they shall rest neither
day nor night'" (Matt. x. 28; Luke xiii. 28; Is. Ixvi. 24; and
Rev. xiv. 11). May the almighty and eternal God so strengthen
and comfort you with his blessed Word, that you may abide faithful
to the end. Then shall you likewise be found under the altar with
all God's dear children, where all tears shall be wiped away from
your eyes. There shall all tribulation have an end. Then shall our
despised body be glorified, and fashioned after the likeness of His
glory. Then shall our weeping be turned into laughter, and our
sorrow into joy. Then shall we who for a short space are despised
and contemned, yea, persecuted and cast out, and in great reproach,
pain, and contempt are brought to death for the testimony of Jesus
Christ, enjoy an everlasting triumph, and dwell for ever with the
Lord. We shall be clothed with white robes, as John testifies in
his revelation concerning the souls of them that were slain for the
Word of God, and for the witness they bore (Rev. vi. 9-11). Oh !
what a glorious company shall we be, when united with the great
multitude of which John in his revelation speaks: he 'saw a great
multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds,
and people, and tongues, standing before the throne, and before the
Lamb, clothed with white robes, and having palm branches in their
hands ; and they cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our
God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb' (Rev. vii. 9, 10).
. O, my wife, from my inmost heart beloved, I cannot suffi-
ciently thank the Lord for all the great kindness which he shows to
me-ward. He gives me such strength that I cannot express it. Ah !
I now find that the Lord is a faithful helper in time of need. He
forsaketh not them that put their trust in him. For he that trusteth
in the Lord shall not be put to shame. He will keep us as the apple
of his eye. He will deliver us from all the assaults of the devil, and
from the tyranny of this world ; yea, he will preserve us, that we
shall not descend to hell, provided we faithfully abide by him unto
the end; for Christ saith, 'He that endureth steadfast unto the end
shall be saved.' O, my heartily beloved wife, abide faithful to the

608 Ladles of tlie Reformation. [NETHEBLANDS.

Lord, even unto death ; for the crown is not at the beginning, nor in
the middle, but at the end. If you abide faithful to the Lord he
will not forsake you ; he will give you the crown of everlasting life,
and lead you into his kingdom ; he will crown you with praise and
honour ; he will wipe away all tears from your eyes."

It was a settled plan of the persecutors to endeavour, by every
means, by promises and threatenings, and by such argumentation as
Popish priests could employ, to bring the heretics who had fallen
into their hands to recant. Segerson's fidelity was put to this
trying test. "When brought before the margrave and two justices,
he was strongly pressed to renounce his Protestant and Anabaptist
heresies, and reconcile himself to the Romish Church ; and they had
brought along with them two Dominican friars, to convince him by
their arguments The hope of life was held out to him provided
he yielded ; otherwise, he must perish at the stake. Without hesita-
tion he thus briefly expressed his unalterable determination not to
abandon his faith : " Though you should set the door of the prison
open, and should say to me, ' Go, only cry you are sorry/ I should
not stir, because I know I have the truth on my side." '

Segerson well knew that similar endeavours would be made to
extort from his wife a recantation ; a step which, should she be
prevailed upon to take, would inevitably destroy the peace of her
mind, without, in all probability, saving her life. He, therefore, in
a subsequent letter to her, thus puts her on her guard : " Christ
himself hath warned us that in the last days many false prophets
and false Christs shall arise, insomuch that, if it were possible, they
should deceive the very elect. But that is impossible ; for the Lord
upholds them with his strong arm, so that the gates of hell cannot
hurt them. . . . Christ hath warned us also agaiast the doctrine
of the Pharisees, and of those that come in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly are ravening wolves. Marvel not that the ministers of
Antichrist are transformed as the ministers of God, that they come
with dissembled sanctity and lying lips ; for Satan can transform
1 Braght's Marlyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 379.

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 609

himself into an angel of light. ... I therefore beseech you, my
dear wife, from the bottom of my heart, seeing we are so faithfully
warned against the false prophets, who have only the doctrine of
devils, and seek nothing but to rend and destroy our souls; I
beseech you once more that you give no heed to them, and have
nothing to do with them." 1

These precautions and admonitions were very seasonable ; for
attempts were repeatedly made, though without success, to betray
her into an abjuration of the principles dearest to her heart.
" Why," said the monks and persecutors, with sarcastic sneers, at
one time on visiting her, " should you meddle with the Scriptures ;
you had better mind your sewing V " Christ commands us to search
the Scriptures," she answered, " and God is to be obeyed rather than
man." " It seems," added they, " that you will follow the apostles ;
what are the signs that you show ? They spake with divers tongues
after they had received the Holy Ghost. "Where is the tongue that
you have received from the Holy Spirit ?" But she did not, like
the apostles, profess to work miracles, and to speak tongues she had
never learned. " It is enough for us," said she, " that we are become
believers through their words." They told her that because she
had not been married by a Popish priest, she was not truly married,
and that she had been living in adultery with him whom she called
her husband. But even by this calumny she was unmoved. " My
dear husband in the Lord," said she in a letter to him, communi-
cating these facts, " whom I married before God and his people, but
with whom they say I have lived in adultery, because I was not
married in Baal ; the Lord saith, ' Eejoice, when men shall say all
manner of evil against you ; rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great
shall be your reward in heaven ' " (Matt. v. 12). 2 In the same letter,
encouraging both herself and him to sustain their trials with Christian
patience and fortitude, she says" Praised be God the Father who
hath had, and hath shown such love to us, that he hath given his dear

1 Braght's Martyroloyy of the Baptists, vol. i., pp. 395, 396.

2 Ibid., vol. i., pp. 406, 407.

610 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Son for us. He will bestow upon us such love, such joy, such wisdom
and such a steadfast mind through Christ, and by the might of the
Holy Ghost, that we may stand firm against all devouring beasts;
against dragons and serpents, and against all the gates of hell. . . .
I desire that Christ crucified may be our everlasting joy and strength.
. . . "We are now here in the wilderness among these ravenous beasts
that spread out their nets daily to take us therein; but the Lord is
very mighty, who forsaketh not his own that put their trust in him.
He preserves them from all evil, yea, as the apple of his eye. Let
us then be at rest in him, and take up our cross with joy and pa-
tience, and expect, with firm assurance, the fulfilment of the pro-
mises he has given us, nothing doubting (for he is faithful that
hath promised) that we shall be crowned on the hill of Zion, and
adorned with palms, and follow the Lamb. I pray you, my beloved
in the Lord, be of good cheer in the Lord, with all dear friends, and
pray to the Lord for me. Amen." 1

At another time two priests were brought into her cell to make
renewed attempts to reclaim her to the Romish Church.; but her
steadfastness remained unshaken, and in Scripture argumentation
she proved more than a match for the priests. The following is a
report of what was said on both sides :

Priests (Speaking in a tone of apparent sympathy). " We are
much grieved that you hold such opinions, for we cannot consider it
to be faith but only opinion, seeing you do not hold what the church
enjoins." Here they repudiate the right of private judgment,
maintaining that men and women should extinguish the light of
their own understandings, shut their eyes, and believe just what the
church believes and teaches, whether it be transubstantiation, that
the earth stands still, and that the sun revolves around it, or any
other absurdity.

Lysken. "I and my brethren and sisters desire to do and to
believe only what the true Church of Christ, guided and governed
by the "Word of God, enjoins. But we will have nothing to do with
1 Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., pp. 405-409.

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 611

Baal's temple, or other temples that are made with hands, after the
doctrines and commandments of men, and not after Christ. Paul
saith, ' Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ' " (Col. ii. 8).

Priests. " We are consecrated and have a divine commission ; we
are the apostles' successors ; we are those who sit in Moses' seat."

Lysken. " To you belongs the woe recorded in Matthew xxiii. 13,
' "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye shut up
the kingdom of heaven against men : for ye neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.' "

Priests. " Do you mean to say that he who taught you these
things is sent of God?"

Ly s:\en. " Yes, indeed ; I know assuredly that he is sent of God."

Priests. " Do you know what qualifications should belong to a
teacher?"

Lysken. " A teacher should be the husband of one wife, blameless,
having obedient children, no drunkard, not given to wine, not incon-
tinent" (1 Tim. iii. 2). In this answer she touched upon some sore
points, and the priests felt reproved, as appears from their reply.

Priests. "If we do wrong the consequences will fall upon our
own heads ; but the Lord is merciful."

Lysken. " Would you sin because of the mercy of the Lord ; is it
not written that we should not add sin to sin (Eccles. v. 5), nor take
encouragement to commit it, because the grace of God abounds
(Bom. vi. 1). You are ever learning, and yet never able to come to
the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. iii. 7).

Priests." Christ said to his apostles, ' It is given unto you' and
we are the successors of the apostles' to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them' to the people 'it is not given,'
and to them, therefore, Christ spake in parables" (Matt, xiii. 11).

Lysken. "Those among the people who rightly understand, and
who are taught of God, to them it is now also given to understand
these mysteries. ' I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and

612 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHEKLANDS.

earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it
seemed good in thy sight' " (Matt. xi. 25, 26).

Priests (Crossing themselves most devoutly, making a long face,
and assuming an air of seriousness, and speaking in a solemn tone.
" You shall know the truth of what we have now said, when you
shall stand before the judgment-seat."

Lysken. " True, indeed ; we shall then know whether it is truth
or falsehood ; and when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of
his glory, we also who have followed Him in the regeneration, shall
sit upon thrones, to judge this disobedient and adulterous genera-
tion" (Matt. xix. 28). ]

So far from being overcome, or even moved, by the endeavours
made to draw her into a recantation, her resolution to persevere in
the confession of the faith to the death, became the more confirmed
the longer she lay in prison. The following letter, which, if not the
last, was among the last she wrote to her husband, is a proof of this ;
and the sentiments expressed in it, so truly apostolic, do equal
honour to her understanding and her heart :

" The abundant grace of God be ever with us both : the love of
the Son and his inscrutable mercy, and the joy of the Holy Ghost be
with us eternally. Amen. To Him who hath begotten us again from
the dead, be glory from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.

" I desire Christ crucified to be to us both the defender and
guardian of our souls. May he preserve us in all righteousness, holi-
ness, and truth to the end ! He will keep us as his sous and daugh-
ters, if we maintain our devotedness to him to the end ; yea, as the
apple of his eye. Let us therefore confide in him, and he will never
forsake us ; but will keep us, as he has kept his own from the begin-
ning of the world, and will not let any temptation overtake us, but
such as is common to man.

'' The Lord is faithful, saith Paul, who will not suffer us to be
tempted above that we are able. Blessed be God, the Father of our
J Braght's Martyroloyy of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 414.

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 613

Lord Jesus Christ, who hath counted us worthy to suffer for His
name, a suffering short and transitory, through the precious pro-
mises which he hath given us and all who remain steadfast to his
truth. In a few things we may suffer here, but with many shall
we be rewarded.

" My dearly beloved husband in the Lord, you have partly passed
through your trial, wherein you have remained steadfast. The Lord
be for ever praised and glorified for his great mercy. I beseech the
Lord with tears, that he will make me also meet to suffer for his
name's sake ; they are all chosen sheep that he hath chosen thereto ;
for he hath redeemed them from among men, to be first fruits unto
God. Yea, we know, as Paul saith, ' If we suffer, we shall also reign
with him ; if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.'
Therefore let us not despise the chastening of the Lord ; ' for whom
he loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiv-
eth,' as Paul relates. Herewith I commend you to the Lord, and
to the word of his grace and glory, whereby he will glorify us, if we
remain therein to the end. The grace of the Lord be with us." 1

Lysken, when apprehended, had the prospect of becoming, for the
first time, a mother. This made her sufferings the more severe, and
naturally strengthened her love of life. The thought of being torn
from the lovely babe to which she expected to give birth, and of
leaving it in a world of sorrow and temptation upon the care of
others, agonized her mind beyond conception. Her husband endea-
voured to alleviate her feelings of anguish, of which he himself par-
took, arising from this source. In one letter to her he says, " Be
not anxious for our child, for my friends will take care of it ; yea, the
Lord will watch over it." In another letter to her he says, " I have
committed us both, and our issue into His hands, that he may
accomplish His divine will in us." And in his last letter to her the
closing words are, " I am somewhat sorry that I leave you amongst
these wolves ; but I have commended you and the fruit of our union
to the Lord, and am fully persuaded that he will preserve you to the
l Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 416.

6J4 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

end. In this persuasion I rest myself in peace." l But, strongly as
the tie of maternal feeling bound her to life and to the world, her
faith in Christ, her love to him, aud her hope of the future reward,
enabled her, though it is not to be supposed without a severe
struggle, to triumph even over this tie, and made her willing to
have it broken rather than be unfaithful to Christ. This view of
her circumstances the more strongly excites our sympathy, and
enhances our admiration of her exalted Christian heroism. It
kindles into deeper intensity our indignation at the cruelty of the
men who could thus wantonly sport with such a sacred thing as
maternal affection. And it confirms, what has been before observed,
that it was not a dogged obstinacy, nor a stoical carelessness of her
fate, which made her steadfast and bold in the confession of her
faith, but a calm determination to be true to Christ, at whatever
earthly sacrifices.

Times of persecution bind more strongly the ties of affection by
which the persecuted are linked together. Lysken had many Chris-
tian friends in Antwerp who felt for her the deepest Christian sym-
pathy, and who were anxious to know the state of her mind, and
how she was supported in her distressing situation. To gratify
their wishes she wrote a letter to them, telling them that, painful as
her condition was to human nature, she was not unhappy ; that, on
the contrary, she was peaceful and resigned; that she was con-
strained by her love to Jesus to submit to whatever men could
inflict upon her for his sake ; that she was animated by the hope of
a glorious reward ; and she expresses an earnest desire for an inte-
rest in their prayers, the more especially as, from her circumstances,
she would be longer than her husband in being relieved from all
her sufferings by martyrdom. " I cannot fully thank nor praise the
Lord on account of the great mercy and unfathomable compassion,
and great love which he has shown towards us, that we should be
his sons and daughters if we overcome as he has overcome. . . Let
us observe, dear friends in the Lord, .what great love worldly people

i Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., pp. 403, 420, 426.

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 615

have for each other. There are those in prison (we have heard it
said) who rejoice if they may but go to the rack for the sake of
those they love, since they then would be more closely united to
each other in spirit, although they might not in person come toge-
ther. How then, iny beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord, if
the world have such love, O, what love ought not we to have who
wait for such glorious promises '? I have before my eyes a beautiful
resemblance in a bride, how she ornaments herself to please the
bridegroom of this world. 0, how ought we, then, to adorn our-
selves to please our Bridegroom ! . . . I beseech the Lord, night
and day, that he will give us such an ardent love that we may not
regard whatever torments they may inflict upon us ; yea, that we
may say with the prophet David, ' I fear not, whatever men may
do unto me.' This our suffering, which is light and temporary, is
not to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Since, then, the will of the Lord is that, with Daniel, I should lie
long in the lion's den, and await howling and ravening wolves and
lions, and the old serpent that was from the beginning and shall be
to the end, I entreat all my dear brethren and sisters, that they
forget me not in their prayers. I will likewise cheerfully remember
them according to my ability. O, my dear friends, how can I suffi-
ciently thank my heavenly Father that he hath thought it meet for
me, a poor sheep, to lie so long in bonds for his name's sake!
Night and day do I pray the Lord that this, my trial, may prove to
my soul's salvation, to the praise of the Lord, and to the edification
of my dear brethren and sisters. Amen." 1

Jeronimus was burnt at the stake, at Antwerp, on September 2,
1551.

Lysken, who had been long kept in prison, till she should be deli-
vered of her child, was at length brought to the bar, to undergo her
final trial and receive her sentence. The natural tendency of the
peculiar situation in which she had been placed, was to render her
timid and apprehensive. But she felt no embarrassment, and
1 Braght's Martyrology of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 413.

616 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

betrayed no symptoms of timidity in the presence of her judges, and
of the multitude assembled to witness the proceedings. Her exami-
nation is imperfectly recorded by the chronicler of her sufferings ; but
she answered the questions put to her concerning baptism, and the
other points on which it was common to examine the martyrs, without
hesitation, and in a tone of firm determination. Her answers not
satisfying her judges, they stood up, and after consulting together a
short time, pronounced sentence tipon her, condemning her to be
drowned in the Scheldt on the following day. On hearing this sen-
tence she could not forbear reminding them, that for the injustice
dealt out to her they would one day have to answer at the tribunal
of the righteous judge of the world. " Ye are now judges, but the
time will come when ye will wish that ye had been in the humblest
station, for there is a judge and Lord who is above all, he shall, in
his own time, judge you ; but we have not to wrestle against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, and powers, and rulers of the
darkness of this world." Irritated at this appeal to their con-
sciences, and to the justice of heaven, they ordered her to be removed
from the bar.

- Whilst the officers were removing her, curiosity drew after them
a crowd of people, to whom she said, " Know that I do not suffer
for robbery, or murder, or any kind of wickedness, but solely for the
incorruptible Word of God." As she was passing by the Barg
church, reflecting on the purposes to which it was appropriated, the
superstitious doctrines taught, and the idolatrous worship practised
within its precincts, by which the people were deceived and their
souls ruined, she exclaimed, " O thou den of murderers, how many
souls are murdered in thee ! " When near the prison, the officers bade
the crowd stand aside and make way for her. " They do not hinder
me," said Lysken, " they are welcome to see me, and to take an
example by me, even all that love the Word of the Lord;" and,
while speaking these words, she re-entered the prison.

The people were greatly moved, and deeply sympathized with the
martyr. In the afternoon some of her Christian friends, followed

NETHERLANDS.] Lysken Dirks. 617

by many others, went to the prison to encourage and comfort her.
" It is well," said they, "that you suffer only for well-doing, and not
for any wicked work" (1 Peter ii. 20) ; and she felt the full force of
this consolatory consideration. Two monks, ignorant or hypocriti-
cal, perhaps both, also came to endeavour to prevail upon her to
abjure her principles, and they were shut up with her for some
time; but she was not now to make shipwreck of her faith when so
near the haven of everlasting rest, and she would in no wise listen
to them. " Go till you are sent for," said she, " for I will give no
ear to you. Had I been satisfied with your leaven, I should not
have come here." One of her Christian brethren, who was present,
exhorted her, in opposition to the persuasion of the monks, to strive
manfully, at which they indignantly vociferated, " Here is another
of her people encouraging her, more deserving of burning than she
is ;" and failing to make any impression upon her mind, they departed,
mortified and enraged.

She was now shut up in the cell fronting the street, where she
had been hitherto imprisoned, and none was permitted access to her
save the jailers. Towards evening a Christian brother came to the
window of her cell, and had a long interview with her. But their
conversation at length attracting many of the passers by, he took
farewell of her, bidding her, at the same time, stand up and show
herself, by looking from the window. This she immediately did ;
and as she looked out upon the people collected in the street before
her, some voices from the crowd cried out, "Dear sister, strive
piously, for the crown of life is set before you." These encouraging
words quickened in her heart the holy resolution to meet death
with unshaken courage. Addressing herself to the people, she said,
" Drunkards, whoremongers, and adulterers are borne with, who will
read and talk of the Scripture, but they who live according to the
will of God, and walk consistently therewith, must be harassed,
oppressed, persecuted, killed." She then began to sing a religious
hymn, and some, as this strain, it may be of rustic but also of
heavenly melody, fell soothingly upon their ears, cried, " Sing out

G18

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Lysken;" but before she had finished the hymn, the magistrates
with the officers came to the prison, and they drew her from the
window, after which, the evening coming on, she was then no more
seen.

The dreadful morning arrived the morning of her execution
and many who took a lively interest in her fate, full of anxiety and
with deep emotion, rose early, some before day, others with the day-
light, to cheer her with their presence and with comfortable words
to the last. But the unsleeping vigilance of the crafty murderers
had anticipated them. Before the dawn they had taken her from
prison, and conducting her to the Scheldt, put her into a sack, and
drowned her in that river between three and four o'clock, ere a
concourse of people should assemble. Some, however, witnessed the
tragedy, and they bore testimony that she went with unfaltering
steps and an intrepid heart to death, and that the last words which
dropped from her lips were, " Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit."

MRS. ROBERT OGUIER,

OF THE TOWN OF LISLE.

^pXTENSIVELY spread as were the reformed senti-
ments in the Netherlands, there were few places in
which they were preached with greater boldness, and
received with greater cordiality, than in Lisle, one of
the most flourishing mercantile towns in the province
of Flanders. For the space of three years preceding the date of our
present narrative, which is the spring of the year 1557, the reformed
faith had been preached in that town ; and though, in consequence
of the persecuting violence of the times, this was done secretly in
private houses, in the neighbouring woods, fields, and caves, yet the
thirst of the people for instruction in the truth was so great that
they were not to be deterred, even at the peril of their lives, from
frequenting these meetings. Powerful were the effects which fol-
lowed. Many were thus enlightened in the knowledge of the pure
doctrines of Christianity, and brought under their saving power.
Among other conspicuous features of this Christian resuscitation,
was the enlarged Christian liberality to which the hearts of the con-
verts were opened ; for, after the example of the primitive church,
they ordained deacons to collect their freewill offerings for the poor ;
and their works of charity were not limited to their own party, but
extended to whoever around them were in destitute circumstances.
From small beginnings this church rapidly increased in numbers,

620 Ladies of the fiefonnation. [NETHERLANDS.

and its assemblies were attended by men, and women, arid little chil-
dren, not only of the town, but also of the villages four or five leagues
around, who flocked thither from an eager desire to be instructed in
the Word of God. Being for some time connived at by the magis-
trates, these assemblies were held the more frequently, and attracted
a larger concourse of people.

Mrs. Oguier and her family were among the leading members of
the reformed church in this place, and all of them adorned it by their
exemplary Christian deportment. Their entire household establish-
ment was regulated as if a temple for the worship of God. They
were pre-eminent in their zeal for the diffusion of the truth. They
abounded, too, in works of charity ; and being in good worldly cir-
cumstances, they possessed the means of gratifying their benevolent
inclinations. They regularly attended the secret meetings held by
the Keformers for prayer and the exposition of the Scriptures ; and
these meetings were often held in their house. For a short period
this excellent family remained undisturbed, but in those perilous
times the faithful stood in jeopardy every hour. The Dominicans,
alarmed lest the whole town of Lisle should be infected with heresy,
began to censure the magistrates from the pulpits for their slackness
in enforcing the laws against heretics, and for conniving at conven-
ticles. Thus incited by the monks and friars, the provost of the
town, accompanied by his bailiffs, went armed through the houses of
suspected persons, on Saturday, the 6th of March, 1556-7, between
nine and ten o'clock in the evening. Bushing impetuously into the
house of Mrs. Oguier, whose character, and the character of whose
family were well known to them, they searched every part of it for
prohibited books, some of which they found, and then carried away
herself, her husband, and her two sons, Baldwin and Martin, to prison.
While the prisoners were passing through the streets, Baldwin, who
had been the chief object of the 'search, cried, with a loud voice,
which was heard by numbers, " O Lord, not only to be prisoners for
thee, but also give us grace boldly to confess thy holy doctrine before
men, and that we may seal it by the ashes of our body for the edifi-

NETHERLANDS.] Mrs. Robert Oguier. 621

cation of thy poor church." They were thrown into prison and
rudely handled ; but all of them praised God, who had accounted
them worthy to suffer for his name's sake.

A few days after, they were brought before the magistrates of
Lisle and examined. " We are informed," said the magistrates, "that
you never go to mass, and that you hinder others from going to it.
"We are also informed that you keep conventicles in your house ; and
that in these erroneous doctrine is taught, contrary to the doctrines of
our holy mother church ; by all which you have contravened the sta-
tutes of his imperial majesty." The father, for himself and the rest,
answered : " Honourable Sirs, you ask why we do not go to mass. The
reason is because the precious blood of the Son of God and his oblation
are thereby rendered void; and because Christ, by one offering, hath
perfected them who are sanctified. Paul speaks of only one sacri-
fice (Heb. x. 14). Christ and his apostles celebrated the supper, in
which all the Christian people communicated ; but we do not read in
the Holy Scriptures that they ever offered the sacrifice of the mass,
or appointed it to be offered, or knew what it is. It has, therefore,
no authority in the Word of God. It is the invention of men ; and
Christ has said, ' In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines
the commandments of men' (Matt. xv. 9). Nor do we deny that we
have held assemblies of good and pious people in our house ; but
these have been for the advancement of the glory of Jesus Christ,
and have not been to the prejudice of the government. We know
that the emperor has forbidden them, but we also know that Christ
has commanded them. We could not, therefore, obey the one with-
out disobeying the other, and we have preferred obeying God rather
than man." One of the magistrates then asked the prisoners what
was done at their conventicles. "With your lordships' permission,"
said Baldwin, the eldest son, "I will give you a full account of that
matter ;" and having obtained leave, he proceeded thus : " When we
are come together in the name of the Lord, to hear his holy Word, we
all fall at once down upon our knees, confess in humility of heart
our sins before the Divine majesty, and earnestly beseech him that his

622 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Word may be purely preached to us, and rightly understood by us.
We also pray for our sovereign lord the emperor, and for all his
council, that the commonwealth may be governed with peace, and
to the glory of God. Nor are you, my lords, forgotten by us, as our
immediate governors ; we supplicate God for you and this whole city,
that he would support you in what is good and just. Do you, there-
fore, still believe that our assembling together for these purposes
can be so criminal as has been represented to you ? As a proof of
the truth of what I now state, I am ready, if you please, my lords,
to recite these very prayers before you." Some of the judges hav-
ing notified their assent, he immediately kneeled down before them,
and poured forth a prayer with such fervency of spirit and vehement
emotion, that it drew tears from the eyes of the judges. Having
concluded, and standing up, " These," said he, " are the things which
pass in our meetings."

These four confessors were afterwai'ds put to the rack, to extort
from them a discovery of those who frequented their meetings ; but
they completely baffled their inquisitors, refusing, under the extremity
of the torture, to reveal the names of any of their brethren, except-
ing some who were already known, or who had made their escape.

Four or five days after, the father and the eldest son, Baldwin,
were adjudged to the flames, which they endured with unshrinking
courage. The two martyrs were heard conversing together in the
midst of the flames, even when they were at the highest ; and the son,
as long as he had strength to speak, was observed to encourage his
father.

The condemnation of Mrs. Oguier, and of her son, Martin, was de-
ferred, probably in the hope that she, being a woman, and that her
youngest son, from his youth, might be brought to recant. The
more effectually to produce this result, they were separated from
each other, and harassed by the monks, with incessant exhortations,
to repent and return to the bosom of the Romish Church. Like his
father and brother, Martin was not to be trepanned into a compro-
mise of his principles, even by the prospect of saving his life. He

NETHEBLANDS.] Mrs. Robert Oguier. 623

was, however, afraid that his mother, plied by ceaseless impor-
tunities, might, from the dread of an appalling death, be driven to
renounce with the mouth those truths which she continued to be-
lieve with the heart. His fears were too truly realized. By promises
and threatenings she at last yielded ; and the monks, who had been
unsuccessful in their efforts to shake the constancy of her son, even
prevailed upon her to use her influence to induce him to abjure his
errors, and return to the path of truth, as they expressed it. This
her enemies accounted a great victory, of which they loudly boasted;
and her Christian friends, on hearing the rumour of her falling cour-
age, were deeply grieved. The former had not long cause to exult,
nor the latter to grieve. Love to the truth all the while burned in
her breast, and an affectionate appeal to her heart fanned it into a
flame, raising her superior to torture and death. Her son, when ad-
mitted to see her, on discovering that she had fallen from her stead-
fastness, and that she began to advise him to follow her example,
cried out, weeping, "O, my mother, what have you done ? Have you
denied the Son of God who redeemed you ? Alas ! what has he done
to you, that you should so injure and dishonour him ? Now is that
misfortune befallen me which I most dreaded. O my God! why
have I lived to the present moment, to witness what pierces to my
inmost soul 1 " This at once recovered her from the shock she had
received. The words and tears of a son who was in every respect
so dear to her, went to her heart, and, ashamed of her pusillanimity,
she burst into tears, acknowledged with unfeigned sorrow her apos-
tasy, and besought forgiveness from God. " Good God ! " she cried,
" have mercy upon me, hide my transgressions under the righteousness
of thy Son, and grant me strength to abide by my first confession,
and confirm me in it to the last breath of my life." That, yielding to
natural feeling, her constancy in the day of trial should for a moment
have failed, the more especially as she was precluded from all inter-
course with her friends, need not excite our surprise. The terror of
the stake has shaken the resolution of the stoutest hearts ; and yet
when we see them, by trusting more to that strength which is made

624

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

perfect in weakness, recovering themselves from depressing terrors,
and submitting to the utmost that men can inflict upon them, with
.a courage rendered only the more determined from their having

Mrs. Oguier and her Son.

stumbled and fallen, it would be to violate every generous feeling of
our nature harshly to censure the temporary irresolution into which
they have been hurried, in circumstances so difficult and trying.

Soon again the monks visited Mrs. Oguier, expecting to find her
in the same state of mind into which they had brought her. But
immediately as they entered her cell, she addressed them, " Depart,
ye messengers of Satan, for you have no more share in me ; I wish
to subscribe my first confession, and if I cannot do it with ink, it
shall be done with my blood." In vain did they now promise to
spare her life as the reward of recantation ; in vain did they hold

NETHERLANDS.] Mrs. Robert Oguier. 625

forth the dreadful death certainly awaiting her, if she persisted in
her alleged errors. She stood firm, like a rock amidst the buffet-
ings of the tempest.

The consequence was that she and her son were brought before
the judges, and condemned to be burned alive. They both heard
their sentence with unaltered countenance, which their persecutors
mistook for sullen obstinacy. On their way from the bar to the
prison each of them blessed God for his goodness, in causing them
to triumph by Jesus Christ over all their enemies. And the son,
encouraging his mother, said to her, "My mother, do not forget the
honour and the glory which our God confers upon us in conforming
us to the image of his Son. Remember those who have walked in
his ways ; for they have gone no other road than this. Let us then
boldly advance, my mother, and follow the Son of God, bearing his
reproach, with all his martyrs, and thus shall we enter into the glory
of the living God. Doubt not, my mother, that this is the way in
which we ought to go ; for you know that through much tribulation
we must enter into the kingdom of God." Upon hearing these
words, one of the officers vociferated, " Villain, we now see that the
devil entirely possesses you, soul and body, as he did your father and
your brother, who are now in hell." My friend," said Martin, "your
curses are blessings to me, before God and before his angels."

After this the mother betrayed no symptoms of weakness. No
longer did her mind waver between a desire to live and a readiness
to die for the truth. The latter sentiment supplanted and swal-
lowed up the former. "Through faith, out of weakness she was made
strong, and waxed valiant in fight tortured, not accepting deliver-
ance, that she might obtain a better resurrection." At her martyr-
dom she conducted herself with the utmost intrepidity. As she
went up to the scaffold she said to her son, who was to suffer with
her, "Ascend, Martin ascend, my son." When he was about to ad-
dress the spectators, she called to him, "Speak out, Martin, that they
may know that we are not heretics ;" and when he was not permitted
to speak, moved at this, she cried out with a loud and clear voice to

2 R

626 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

the bystanders, while the executioner was binding her to the stake.
" We are Christians ; and what we are about to suffer is neither for
theft nor murder, but because we will not believe anything in re-
ligion save what is taught in the Word of God." This, the true
cause of their being committed to the burning pile, was a consola-
tion, a ground of rejoicing to them both. The flames soon enve-
loped them; but amidst their violence the constancy of the martyrs
remained undiminished, and lifting up their eyes to heaven, they ex-
claimed with one voice, "Lord Jesus, into thy hands we commend
our spirits." Their martyrdom took place about eight days after
that of the father and the eldest son. 1

1 Histoire des Martyrs, edit. ^Genevre, 1619, pp. 41 7-421. Brandt, vol. i., pp. 103-110

BETKEN,

MAID-SERVANT OF PETER VAN KULEN, GOLDSMITH IN BREDA.

HIS humble Christian -woman was a convert to the
reformed doctrines, and her Christian intelligence,
conscientiousness, and intrepidity, would have done
honour to the most exalted rank. Kulen himself, who
had embraced the same sentiments, had long held,
with much approbation, the office of deacon or elder among the
reformed in Breda, and they secretly held their meetings for the
exercises of religious worship in his house, for they were not allowed
to assemble publicly.

Both these worthy persons were doomed to suffer for their stead-
fast adherence to the truth. In spite of the circumspection Kulen
had exercised over his words and actions, his sentiments were dis-
covered, and being accused of heresy to the authorities, he was appre-
hended, imprisoned, and laid in irons ; and to seclude him from all
intercourse with his Christian friends, he was removed from the
common prison to the castle. He had to support himself in prison ;
and his servant, Betken, brought him his food from day to day. On
these occasions she was unremitting in her endeavours to comfort
and confirm him from the "Word of God. This she continued to do
without obstruction, for a period of more than nine months. At
last, however, she too was imprisoned ; but so far from regretting this

G28 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

as a calamity, she rather rejoiced, accounting herself happy in being
called to suffer for righteousness' sake.

To extort both from her and from her master a confession of their
faith, and information respecting their Christian brethren, it was
resolved upon to put them to the rack. The master passed through
this trying ordeal, which he appears to have endured with firmness,
refusing to reveal his associates. Betken providentially escaped it.
When about to have applied to her the engines of torture, she thus
addressed the commissioners who had come to her for that purpose :
" My masters, wherefore will you put me to this torture, seeing I
have in no way offended you ? Is it for my faith's sake ? You need
not torment me for that : for as I was never ashamed to make a con-
fession thereof, no more will I be so now when I am before you ;
I will freely disclose to you my mind therein." But they wanted to
extract from her more than a candid and full confession of her be-
lief ; and perceiving that her words had no effect upon them, she said,
" Alas ! my masters, if it be so that I must suffer this pain, then
give me leave first to call upon God." This request was granted
her, and so deeply affecting was her prayer, that in the midst of it
one of the commissioners, convinced of her innocence, was so over-
whelmed with terror at the idea of having any hand in her sufferings,
that he swooned, and could not for a long time be recovered. This
accident was the occasion of her escaping the torture.

Soon after, she and her master were examined at the same time.
Both made confession of their faith ; and neither by persuasions nor
threatenings could they be induced to recant and return to the bosom
of the Romish Church. They were therefore sentenced to be com-
mitted to the flames.

To witness their execution, which took place on the 29th of May,
1568, about two months from the date of the incarceration of Betken,
a vast multitude assembled. Among the crowd were many of their
Christian friends, who had come together, not for the purpose of
gazing upon the revolting spectacle of their corporeal struggles, but
to encourage them with their presence, and to be able to bear testi-

NETHERLANDS.] Betken. 629

mony to their intrepidity and constancy in death. Whilst Betken
and her master were led forth to execution, strong expressions of
sympathy and indignant complaints were made by the people.
Several women, observing the cheerful courage and steadfastness of
them both, were so greatly excited, that, disregarding the danger they
might thereby incur, they broke through the crowd and embraced
them, praising God for the grace given them, and crying out, " Fight
manfully, for the crown is prepared for you." But no uproar was
created, nor were any attempts made to force them out of the hands
of the magistrates, as had been done with success in various instances
in other places. Meanwhile the two martyrs earnestly besought God
that he would be pleased to perfect the good work which he had merci-
fully begun in them, and assist them, by the power of his Holy Spirit,
until they had finished their course. On reaching the place of execu-
tion, Betken began to address the people with a serene countenance,
exhorting them to be always obedient to the Word of God, and not to
fear those who can kill the body, but who have no power over the
soul. " As for me," she added, " I am now going to meet my glorious
spouse, the Lord Jesus Christ." She and her master then fell down
upon their knees, and engaged in prayer with great fervour. Having
risen up, they were bound with chains to the stake by the executioner,
during which operation Betken, in whom was not to be seen the least
symptom of fear, encouraged her master to be strong in the Lord.
He was first strangled and then burned. Being more obnoxious, from
her greater intrepidity and freedom in owning her sentiments, which
was interpreted as a proof of her invincible obstinacy, she was
denied the poor favour of being strangled before the flames bad
seized upon her. But her faith, if it did not literally quench the
violence of the fire, gave her fortitude to endure it without shrink-
ing ; and out of the midst of the devouring element she was heard
and seen, to the admiration of many of the spectators, to magnify
the Lord.

The martyrdom of this female took place the year after the Duke
of Alva's arrival in the Netherlands. Had it taken place somewhat

630 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

later, she would, in all probability, have been prevented by the gag
from speaking to the people. To prevent the martyrs, whose dying
words produced a powerful impression on the spectators, from speaking
at their execution, wooden balls were at first put into their mouths,
but as these sometimes slipped out, in which case the martyrs did
not fail to open their mouths and tell the people how joyfully they
suffered for the sake of Christ, a new and a more effectual mode of
gagging them was invented, by the infernal ingenuity of some of the
persecutors under the administration of Alva. The tongue was first
screwed between two pieces of iron, and then it was seared at the
tip with a red-hot iron, which caused it to swell to such a degree, as
to become immoveable, and incapable of being drawn back. " Thus
fastened, the tongue would wriggle about with the pain of the burn-
ing, and yield a hollow sound ;" upon which, shocking as was the
sight, some of the friars looked with savage delight, as upon a curi-
ous experiment ; and to provoke mutual laughter, made jocular
remarks on the sound produced by the suffering member. 1

' Foxe's Acts and Monuments, folio edit., vol. iii.. Appendix, pp. 49, 50. Brandt,
vol. i., p. 275.

The Tovrnhall, Utrecht.

ELIZABETH YANDER KERK,

WIDOW OF ADAM VAX DIEMEK.

sUMEEOUS as were the martyrs, female as well as
male, whom the Duke of Alva more immediately
made to pass through the hands of the executioner,
we shall confine ourselves to a notice of the hard fate
of only one lady, in 1568, namely, Elizabeth Vander
Kerk, widow of Adam van Diemen, who had been some time burgo-
master of the city of Utrecht. She was a lady of respectability and
opulence, having an income of four thousand gilders per annum; and
she was now advanced to the extreme boundary of human life, being

632 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

eighty-four years of age. Her fate affords an example of the slight
pretences upon which the Netherlander were deprived of their lives
and properties during the administration of the Duke of Alva. She
had not formally joined the ranks of the Keformers, though she was
favourably inclined to the reformed sentiments. The only charge
brought against her was, that she had harboured Mr. John Arentson,
an eminent reformed minister in the Netherlands, or that she had
allowed his nephew, Mr. Eichard Kater, to bring him into her house.
Upon this slender ground she was arrested and thrown into prison
at Utrecht, the place of her residence. Hearing of her incarceration,
and of the amount of her wealth, the rapacious Duke of Alva, look-
ing with a greedy eye upon her four thousand gilders per annum,
chuckled with his associates over the idea of clutching them. But
how was this delightful idea to be realized ? Why, by a very simple
process. " She is reported to be a heretic," said they ; " as such we
shall put her to death, and with her life will go her estate." It was
accordingly determined that she, along with three individuals of the
other sex, namely, Heer Gerard van Renesse, councillor in the court
of Utrecht, who was a prisoner in the castle-; Adrian de "Waelvan
Vroonestein, and Henry Albertson, should be executed without delay.
On the 24th of August, 1568, the duke's provost arrived at Utrecht
about eight o'clock in the evening, and acquainted the magistrates
of that city with the commission he had received to inflict capital
punishment upon this lady, and upon the three other persons just
named. He also consulted with Mr. John Lent and Mr. Grysperen,
two of the members of the council of blood, how he might most
conveniently give effect to Alva's orders. The result was, that the
four prisoners were put to death on the following day, being the
25th of August. Henry Albertson was burned alive, " obstinately
persisting in his errors," as Lent and Grysperen phrase it ; that is to
say, intrepidly refusing to renounce his reformed principles. The
other two male sufferers were beheaded ; but whether this leniency,
as it was accounted by the persecutors, was owing to their having
renounced their heresies, or to their being reckoned less guilty than

NETHERLANDS.] Elizabeth Vander KerJc.

633

Albertson, is uncertain. It might be thought that if compassion
for Mrs. Adam van Diemen, whose withered form was bending to the
dust from age, did not touch their hearts, they would have consi-
dered it hardly worth their pains to shorten her days, as she could
not, in the course of nature, be long in dropping into the grave.
But like the rest she was doomed to the slaughter. The form of
a trial was not gone through in her case any more than in the case
of the others. She was interrogated in prison whether Richard
Kater, who had brought the reformed minister, Mr. John Arentson,
into her house, lived with her, or whether she lived with him ? She
answered that he resided with her. This admission was deemed
sufficient, and upon this, her only offence, rested the sentence ad-
judging her to be beheaded, and declaring her estate to be confis-
cated. On the scaffold, thinking that her extreme old age entitled
her to respect and favour, she asked one of the officers whether
there was any room for mercy ? He replied, " No." Upon which,
shrewdly guessing the cause to be her wealth, which it had been
determined to seize upon, she observed" I know what you mean ;
the calf is fat, and must be killed." Her fortitude did not forsake
her to the last. Turning to the executioner, she said to him, with a
masculine courage, jesting upon her great age, " Is your sword sharp ?
for I have a very tough neck." At the block she somewhat raised
her hands, and folded them in the attitude of prayer. The execu-
tioner having desired her to lower them, lest he should strike them
when performing his office, the heroic sufferer, waiting for the fatal
stroke, instantly cried out, " Do your business ; when the head is off
the fingers will feel no pain." '

i Brandt, vol. i., p. 270.

CHARLOTTE DE BOURBON,

PRINCESS OF ORANGE.

'HAKLOTTE DE BOURBON was the fourth aiid
youngest daughter, save one, of Louis de Bourbon,
Duke of Montpensier, a prince of the blood-royal of
France, by his first wife, Jaqueline de Longvic. Some
account of both her parents will be given in the second
series of these biographies. Here it is only necessary to observe,
that they entirely differed from each other in their religious senti-
ments, the father being the personification of Popish bigotry and in-
tolerance, while the mother had sincerely and ardently embraced
the reformed doctrines. The romantic history of Charlotte resulted
from these two conflicting forces, the Romanism of her father and
the Protestantism of her mother being brought to bear upon her
destination in life, each striving, after its own manner, to mould her
character and lot.

Her mother had carefully instructed her in Protestant principles,
but secretly, that it might not be known to her father. The duke,
however, was not altogether ignorant of the predilection of his wife
for the new doctrines, and of the care she took in instilling them into
the minds of their children. Partly in revenge for this offence, as
he judged it, partly from blinded Popish superstition, and partly to
release himself from the duty of providing for his daughters, his
house having, by a combination of causes, become impoverished, he

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 635

consigned three of them, of whom Charlotte was one, to the cloister ;
and from his illustrious rank, he had no difficulty in procuring for
her the dignity of a lady-abbess. 1 At that period, and many ages
before, when it was common for the most beautiful and promising
daughters of kings, princes, and nobles to become the inmates of
convents, the conduct of the duke, in thus disposing of his daughters,
was accounted in no respect disreputable, but rather a proof of
superior devotion to the holy mother church.

The life of a nun is invested by that church with peculiar sanctity.
And in the dreams of sentimentalists convents may be very fine
places. Poets and novelists may throw a kind of enchantment over
them ; for the theme is prolific with the poetical and the romantic.
Their loneliness and seclusion, seldom disturbed, save occasionally
by some weary pilgrim or benighted traveller their romantic as
well as secluded situations, which have evidently been selected with
the view of affecting the imagination the images of repose, of lux-
urious contemplation, and of impassioned reverie, tinged with a
pleasing melancholy which they awaken in the mind the grateful
and welcome retreat they proffer to the religious enthusiast, the
disappointed, the splenetic, or such as desire to retire from a world
with which they are disgusted, and the pleasures of which they are
no longer able to enjoy the peculiar dress of the world-renouncing
devotees, their " saintly habit, their beaded rosary," and their reli-
gious ceremonial, superstitious and absurd though it be all this
affords ample scope to the genius of poetry and romance ; and under
the magic spell of poets and novelists, sentimental mothers have
devoted their daughters to the convent, and sentimental daughters
have sighed for such a retreat, as they pored over some beautiful but
fictitious description of the convent as the seat of poetry and art, of
lettered leisure and devout contemplation, and of the nun as the
bride of heaven and the spouse of the Redeemer.

But Charlotte's mother, who was neither in heart a Romanist, nor

i Les Hiatoires du Sieur D'Aubigne, torn. ii.,liv. i., p. 6. DeThou, Histoire, torn. iv..
liv. li., p. 533.

636 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

led away by the fascinating dreams of sentimeutalism, was opposed,
in all the feelings and sentiments of her soul, to her daughter's taking
the veil. Having no belief, from her Protestant principles, in the
pre-eminent sanctity of a monastic life, she shrunk at the thought of
sacrificing her daughter by shutting her up in a convent, to become
as dead to the external world as if she had in it neither friend nor
kindred. She thought it infinitely better and in this her judgment
was in harmony at once with reason and revelation that her daugh-
ter should be a useful member of society should sustain and adorn
the relations of life, rather than be doomed to the dormitory of a
monastery, there to spend her days in lazy contemplation, in wor-
shipping relics, in singing masses, in counting her beads, in offering
up matins and vespers to the Virgin Mary. It was much more na-
tural for her as a mother to wish that her daughter should be united
in marriage to a husband suitable to her rank, and she is said to
have destined her to become the wife of the Duke of Longueville. 1

Like many young ladies who, to gratify the bigotry of a parent,
have been compelled to become nuns, Charlotte was strongly disin-
clined to leave her mother, and associate herself with the sisterhood
of a convent. 2 But it would have been vain, either for herself or for
her mother, to have sought to counteract the duke's purpose. From
his irritable temper, they knew well that by neither of them could
domestic peace be enjoyed, were his intentions to be thwarted. Char-
lotte, who was now only thirteen years of age, had no alternative,
and she was forced to take the vows before she had attained the age
or completed the probation prescribed by the canons. 3 But before
setting out for the nunnery of Jouarre, in Normandy, the place of her
destination, she secretly signed, under the direction of her mother,
and unknown to her father, a written protestation against the ex-
torted engagements. 4 Her signing this document afforded some com-

1 De Thou, Histoire, torn, iii., liv. xxviii., pp. 59, 60.

2 Spanheim, Memoires de la Louise Juliane, p. 12.

3 De Thou, Histoire, torn, v., liv. lx., p. 166. Prince of Orange's Apology.

4 Prince of Orange's Apology. Miss Bender's Memoirs of Elizabeth, Queen of Bo-
hemia, vol. i., pp. 12-14.

NETHERLANDS.] Cliarlotte de Bourbon. 637

fort to the afflicted mother, who, as she gave her beloved daughter
her parting embraces, and poured forth her fervent prayers that God
would preserve, bless, and deliver her, conjured her by a mother's
love to remember the protestation to which she had now affixed her
name. The mother, it would appear, strongly hoped that Providence,
in the course of events, might one day liberate the captive, who,
friendless and unprotected as she now seemed, might yet take the
place due to her rank among the dames of France, an honoured and
beloved wife and mother. The hope was substantially realized, but
she did not live to see its fulfilment. She died ' upwards of ten years
before her daughter was released, without the consolation of seeing
her before leaving the world.

Charlotte, as a matter of necessity, resigned herself to her fate ;
and though she continued in the convent for many years, she was
never aught else than an unwilling captive. Upon hearing of her
mother's death, she could not but feel how hard it was to have been
deprived of an opportunity of attending the death-bed of her dearest
earthly relative. This would recall with intenser feelings the memory
of the cruel separation between them in her tender years ; nor would
it enhance her ideas of the comfort of a life spent within the walls
of a nunnery. In her retirement and seclusion she had not forgot-
ten her mother's last embraces, and parting blessing and advice. She
remembered, too, her mother's early instructions, and cherished the
faith which in secret had been imparted to her.

During the period of her residence in the convent, a great struggle
was maintained between the two parties the Romanists and the
Huguenots who then divided France. The Huguenots, who had been
rapidly increasing in numbers and in strength, had been forced to take
up arms in self-defence against the Eomanists, who sought nothing less
than the extermination of their opponents. The result was a series
of disasters, involving the loss of life and property to thousands. The
Huguenots were often defeated, and as often rallied under the superior
military talents and wonderful resources of Admiral Colligny. Char-
i 28th August, 1561.

638

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

lotte's judgment and feelings were all on the side of this party. The
murders and massacres which deluged France with blood deeply
affected her, and in proportion to her sympathy with the suffering
Huguenots grew her detestation of the persecutors, and her aversion
to the whole system of Popery.

Nor did she keep the reformed faith she had embraced shut up in
her own breast. It was at that time no uncommon thing for the
reformed doctrines to find their way into monasteries, and for abbots
and abbesses to instil these doctrines into the minds of the monks
and nuns under their care. The abbess of Jouarre was of this class.
If she did not boldly attack the doctrines of the Popish Church, she
taught her nuns the great doctrines of Christianity, which have been

Charlotte Instructing the Nun of Jouarre.

either directly denied or grievously corrupted by Popeiy. In this
respect she followed the counsel and example of her near relative,
Jeanne Chabot, abbess of the Paraclit convent, who was particularly
assiduous in instructing the nuns under her superintendence in the
Protestant doctrines. That lady openly avowed her attachment to
the reformed faith, though she never departed from her monastery,

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 639

except when driven from it in the height of the war against the Pro-
testants, and she continued all her life to wear the dress of a nun. 1

In this useful work of instruction Charlotte continued to perse-
vere for a long time with evident tokens of success. As years passed
away she experienced an increasing disinclination to the monastic
life. The dignity of lady abbess could not reconcile her to it. She
became tired of the same superstitious round of Popish ceremonial,
and of making confession to ghostly monks in cowl and serge, in
whose power of absolution she had no faith. She equally disbelieved
the common-place discourse addressed to young ladies who take the
veil, which tells them " of their approaching happiness, that they
will thenceforward belong to God, that by this act of devotion their
eternal felicity is secured, that heaven is opening its gates to receive
them." 2 But her father's house was shut against her, and this, taken
in connection with the consideration that she was usefully employed
in instructing others, made her passively submit to a situation iuto
which she had been forced, and which she had never ceased to regard
as a sort of imprisonment.

Whether Charlotte had been winked at, or had communicated her
instructions with a caution which eluded discovery, does not appear;
but she continued long to prosecute her labours of love undisturbed.
At length, however, from her zeal and success, she became an object
of suspicion, was regarded in high quarters as a heretic, and as hav-
ing been engaged in the inexpiable crime of instilling the Lutheran
poison into the nuns of the convent of Jouarre. She was threatened.
Proceedings were about to be instituted against her ; and in those
times, when the fury of the Komanists in France against the Protes-
tants was wrought up to diabolical frenzy, even her personal safety
was exposed to the utmost peril. :

In these circumstances, when she was at a loss how to act, the con-
vent of Jouarre, like similar places, which, during the course of the

1 Les Histoires du Sieur VAubignt, torn, ii., liv. i., p. 6 -De Thou, Histoire, torn, iv.,
Jiv. li., p. 533.

2 Whiteside's Travels in Italy, vol. iii., p. 219.

640 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

civil wai'S, were exposed to the violence of arms, was invaded and
thrown open by the Huguenots. 1 This afforded her an opportunity of
making her escape, of which she did not fail to avail herself. In the
beginning of the year 1572 she quitted the convent for ever, thus
taking the benefit of the protestation against the monastic life which
she had signed by her mother's advice, and of which she had never
repented. But whither was she to flee for safety ? "Where was she
to find an asylum securing to her liberty of conscience ? She could
not go home to her father, who would not have received her unless
she had at least renounced her Protestant principles. She therefore
first fled to her eldest sister, Frances, who was married to Henry
Eobert de la Mark, Duke of Bouillon, and Seigneur of Sedan, a lady
not less attached to the reformed faith than herself. From the house
of her sister she was conducted to Heidelberg, the capital of the
Palatinate, 3 to reside with the Elector Palatine, Frederick III., a Pro-
testant prince of great excellence of character, who welcomed and
treated her with all the kindness and respect due to her illustrious
rank. 3

At Heidelberg Charlotte publicly abjured the Romish faith, and
openly joined the ranks of the Reformers. 4

Whither she had gone was at first unknown to her father and her
friends in France. But a clue was soon found to the place of her

1 Les Hiitoires du Sieur D'Aubigne, torn, ii., liv. j., p. 6. De Thou, torn, v , liv. Ivii.,
pp. 5, 6 ; and liv. Is., p. 166. Spanheim, Memoires de la Louise Juliane, p. 12.

2 Amidst the revolutions which the Reformation produced in Germany, the Palati-
nate enjoyed undisturbed tranquillity, for which it was indebted partly to the modera-
tion of its princes, who prudently declined to join with either of the contending parties,
but chiefly to the policy of Charles V., who, though he visited Lutheranism in Hesse and
Saxony with the violence of persecution, overlooked the efforts of the Reformers to pro-
mulgate their tenets in the dominions of Frederick. During this happy interval the
Palatinate greatly advanced in wealth, in civilization, and learning ; and in the court
many illustrious Huguenots found refuge from the persecution which had driven them
from France.

3 De Thou, tora. iii., liv. xxviii., p. 59 ; and torn, v., liv. lx., p. 166. Les Histoires
du Sieur D'Aubignf, torn, ii., liv. i., p. 6. Spanheim, Memnires de la Louise Juliane,
pp. 12-15.

4 Bayle's Dictionary, art. " Longvic. "

NETHERLANDS.]

C/iarlotte de Bourbon.

G41

retreat. Her escape from the convent was deemed so important
that, immediately on its becoming known, it engaged the attention of
the French court. Christopher de Thou, first president of the Par-

Tne Town and Castle of Heidelberg.

liament, received orders to repair to the abbey of Jouarre, in order
to make a particular inquiry as to what had taken place, and to make
a report of the result of his inquiries to the king. Meanwhile the
duke, her father, who was at that time at Aigueperse in Auvergne.
received a letter from the Elector Palatine, dated 15th March, 1572,
justifying the conduct of Charlotte in having followed the dictates
of her conscience, and begging her father not to be offended with her
on account of the steps she had taken. The duke was too zealous a
Eoma7iist, and too bitter an enemy to Protestants, to take the matter
so coolly. He was mortified, not so much at his daughter's having
made her escape from the convent, as at the cause which prompted

642 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

her to make it her Protestant principles. He quite lost his tem-
per ; and in his reply to the elector, dated 28th March, he gave vent
to the indignation he could not suppress. He told him that he was
in despair at the intelligence which had reached him respecting his
daughter, and that he could listen to no excuse. He inveighed
against her irreligion, saying that, when from under the eye of her
parents, she had violated the promise she had made of devoting her-
self to God, that she had disappointed the hopes of the whole
family, and was wanting in the respect she owed to her father. He
protested that he would never forgive her if she did not without
delay return to France, and submit herself to the orders of the king,
and to the will of her father. He begged the elector to interpose his
good offices to engage her to do this, and to do to a prince, who was
his friend and relative, what he would have to be done to himself in
like circumstances. " Can it be at all honourable in you," he added,
" to receive into your house children who have run away from their
father 1 Is it not more worthy of you, kindly to advise them to
return to their duty ? " '

It is easy to conceive the sadness and anxiety which Charlotte
would experience when this letter, written in such sullen and angry
mood, was put into her hands by the elector that she might read it.
But she could feel no just cause for self-condemnation. The re-
proaches cast upon her by her father, as being wanting to him in
filial respect and obedience, were altogether undeserved. If a father
has an absolute, incontrollable authority over his child's religious be-
lief, according to the extravagant notions the duke had of the extent
of parental authority, these reproaches were merited. But if that
authority has definite limits if it does not warrant a parent to claim
to be the supreme dictator of his children's faith to force their judg-
ment and violate their conscience the duke was acting tyrannically
and cruelly in requiring his daughter to renounce the religious sen-
timents which she had been led to adopt from the exercise of her
judgment upon the "Word of God. Having no idea how any body
1 De Thou, torn, iv., liv. li., pp. 533, 534.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 643

could have scruples of conscience, he could not enter into the motives
and feelings by which she was governed, and probably ascribed her
conduct solely to an unfilial, wayward self-will, prompting her to
fly in the face of his authority. He could not have put a greater
misconstruction on her motives and feelings. She believed aud ac-
knowledged that it was her duty to be obedient to him in things
lawful. The thought of incurring his censure and frown had given
her many a sore heart, and drawn from her many a bitter tear. She
was anxious to be reconciled to him in any way not involving her
in the betrayal of her conscience, and in sin against God, who had
the first and the highest claims upon her obedience. All she desired
was, that instead of being fettered by her father in matters of
religion, she should be allowed to think and act in these matters for
herself.

The Elector Palatine, in answering her father's letter, expressed
himself with great courtesy and command of temper, but without,
iu any respect, giving in to his Popish intolerance. Being a Pro-
testant he could not, he said, sympathize with the duke's feelings
in regard to Charlotte's desertion of the Eomish Church, a step, in
his view, so far from being blameworthy, entitled to all commenda-
tion. He could not regret that a lady so eminently fitted to adorn
society, had been brought out of a situation which could afford no
appropriate sphere for the useful exercise of her virtues and accom-
plishments. He was not ignorant of the duties incumbent upon
children towards their parents, and he would be the last man in
the world to wound the heart of a father by throwing the shield of
his protection over a disobedient child. But he could assure the
duke that his daughter did not mean to offend him ; that it was
from deliberate inquiry and enlightened conviction, not from rash-
ness or self-will that she had embraced the reformed opinions ; and
he would have him to treat her gently in a matter which ought to
be left between God and her own conscience. As to the appeal
made to his sense of honour, he expressed his readiness to send
her back to her father, provided the king became surety that she

644 Ladies of t/te Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

should be allowed the free exercise of her religion. 1 The duke, in
whose estimation the embracing of Protestantism was the most
inexpiable of all offences, and whose intolerance of heresy was
stronger than his natural affection, was unmollified by the cour-
teous and reasonable reply of the elector. Frederick wrote also to
Charles IX. on the same subject, and in a similar strain, the justice
of which Charles evidently felt, for talking familiarly with Admiral
Colligny, he laughed at the resentment entertained by Montpensier
at his daughter, calling him "brutal" and "blood-thirsty," on ac-
count of the cruelties he had committed in Anjou and in other
places. 2 On perusing the elector's letter, the king came to the
resolution to send President M. de Thou and John d' Amount, a
man of great condition, and lieutenant of Montpensier, to the Pa-
latine court, to bring her back. When this mission was proposed,
her father, in the bitterness of his displeasure, declared that if she
meant to persist in the Protestant religion, he would rather that
she should remain in Germany than return to France, to scandalize
every body, and be the misfortune of his old age. 3 The two com-
missioners appointed repaired to Heidelberg, and were received by
Frederick with all the respect due to the ambassadors of a great
monarch. They could not prevail with the young lady to return to
the communion of the Eomish Church ; but they were fully satisfied,
from what they observed and heard, that she had committed no fault,
and that the elector had treated her as kindly and affectionately as
if she had been his own daughter. On returning to France, and
making their report, the commissioners spoke of the hospitality of
the elector in such high terms, that the king and her father were
constrained to acknowledge that she could nowhere be more com-
fortable than under the protection of that excellent prince. 4

Being forbidden by her father to return to France, unless as a

1 Les Histoires du Sieur D'Aubignt, torn, ii., liv. i., p. 6. De Thou, torn, iv., liv. li.,
p. 534. 2 Ibid.

3 Manner's Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 48. De Thou, torn, iv., liv. li., p. 534.

4 Spanheim, Memoires de la Louise Juliane, pp. 12-15.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 645

Papist, she resolved not to return at all. Painful as it was to her
to be disowned by him, and earnestly as she desired to be restored
to his favour, she could not comply with the only terms on which
he was willing to relent without renouncing the truth of God, and
professing as God's truth what she believed to be falsehood. And
who will say that she acted wrong in declining to renounce the
truth at the bidding even of her father 1 Did she not act precisely
in the spirit of the apostle Paul, who declares that " when it pleased
God to reveal His Son in him, immediately he conferred not with
flesh and blood." Did she not act in conformity with the lessons of the
Saviour, who has taught us that such as would be his disciples must
be prepared to lose the favour and incur the displeasure or the
enmity of their nearest and dearest relations, rather than deny Him
by abjuring His truth ? " He that loveth father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me." And did not that promise of the
Saviour, made to such as voluntarily submit to great earthly losses in
obeying him in preference to human authority, when its mandates
are contrary to, and in subversion of his did not that promise
apply to her " And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren,
or sisters, or father, or mother, for my name's sake, shall receive an
hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life?" But though cast
off by her father she was not desolate and friendless. She continued
to reside at Heidelberg, in the court of Frederick III.; and this
court being at that time a school of virtue and piety, she could not
have found a retreat more conducive to her moral, religious, and
intellectual improvement. 1

During the negotiations which were going on in the first half of
the year 1572 as to the marriage of Elizabeth, Queen of England,
with the Duke of Alenjon, an English nobleman, Eobert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, a widower, and the great favourite of Queen Eliza-
beth, had some thoughts of forming a matrimonial alliance with
Charlotte de Bourbon. He hinted to La Mothe Fenelon, the
French ambassador in London, " that if the marriage were accom-
i Spanheim, Memoires de la Louise Julians, pp. 12-15.

646 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

plished [the marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Duke of Alen-
gonj through his good offices, he should have no objections to
a noble and wealthy French match himself, and expressed a wish
that the queen-mother [Catharine de Medicis, of France] would send
him the portrait of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who he knew
well was in the house of the Count Palatine." 1 Leicester does not
appear to have followed out this idea.

Charlotte's father continued to brood over her disobedience. He
had set himself up as the implacable enemy of the Huguenots ; he
had performed a conspicuous part in the war of extermination
maintained against them during most of the years of her residence
in the convent, and he was indignant at the idea of being now
bearded by his own daughter. Subsequent attempts were made, but
without success, to bring him to a more considerate and forgiving
temper of mind.

As an evidence of the interest taken in her situation, it may be
stated that, in 1573, when ambassadors from Poland arrived at Paris
to inform Henry, Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles IX., that he
had been elected as successor to Sigismond Augustus, their lately
deceased king, having obtained an audience of Henry, those of them
who were friends of the Reformation besought him, among other
things, to do what he could to reconcile the Duke of Montpensier to
his daughter Charlotte, who was still a refugee at the court of the
Elector Palatine. But Henry, who was not inclined to interfere,
eluded the request, under the pretext that it was a matter which
in no respect affected Poland. 2

After Charlotte had passed almost three years in the Palatine
court, overtures of marriage were made to her by William, Prince of
Orange. "William had already been twice married. His first wife
was Anne of Egmont, daughter to Maximilian of Egmont, Count of
Buren and Leerdam, an heiress of extensive property. Shortly after
her death he married secondly, at Leipsic, in 1561, Anne, daughter

1 Despatches of La Mothe Fenelon, quoted in Miss Strickland's Queens of England,
voL vi., p, 391. 2 De Thou, liv. Ivii., vol. v., pp. 5, C.

NETHERLANDS.] Gltarlotte ds Bourbon. 647

of the celebrated Maurice, Elector of Saxony. 1 With this wife he en-
joyed little domestic happiness. She was a woman of a violent, resent-
ful temper, which often broke forth into the wildest transports ; and
she was unfaithful to her bridal oath. Her guilt was discovered in
the spring of the year 1571, and the proofs of it were so complete
that even her own relations were constrained to censure her conduct,
though they wished her dishonour to be concealed. 2 The prince, it
would appear, now lived separated from her ; but, to avoid involving
himself in embarrassment by offending her relatives, and bringing
shame upon the children born to him by her, he took no immediate
steps for obtaining a legal divorce from her. Such were the circum-
stances in which he was placed when he began to think of taking to
wife Charlotte de Bourbon, in whose romantic history he felt deeply
interested. Her reported youth and beauty prepossessed his fancy;
her connection with the house of Bourbon was flattering to his am-
bition; nor was he less captivated by what he had heard of the sensi-
bility and enthusiasm, the intrepidity and gentleness so happily
blended in her character, and displayed in a calm but firm and
self-sacrificing devotion to Protestantism. Having resolved upon
demanding her hand, he communicated his intentions to her and to
the court of Heidelberg. At that court, with which he was on the
very best of terms, the bad conduct of Anne of Saxony was fully
known, and as a divorce would be perfectly legal and warrantable,
Charlotte was disposed to lend a favourable ear to his proposals.
The chivalrous heroism, the illustrious career of a prince who for

1 De Thou, torn, iii., liv. xxviii., p. 87.

2 De Thou, Histoire, torn, v., liv. lx., p. 166. Brandt's History of the Reformation
in the Low Countries, vol, i., p. 316, and the authorities there quoted. Le Clerc, vol. i.,
p. 46 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, Princess of Bo-
hemia, pp. 5-15. By this last writer the culpability of Anne is placed beyond all
doubt, from various documents published for the first time, from the archives of the
house of Orange. According to Maurier, the prince had lost her by death the year
before he married Charlotte. Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 48. Maurier must
have fallen into this mistake by writing from recollection. The death of Anne of
Saxony took place in December, 1577, at Dresden, where the Elector Augustus, her
uncle, had kept her. De Thou, torn, iii., liv. xxviii., p. 87. Baroness de Bury, p. 41.

648 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

many years had been successfully engaged in the unequal yet glorious
struggle of defending his oppressed country against the might and
the tyranny of Spain, then one of the most powerful kingdoms of
Europe, had impressed her susceptible imagination; and smitten
with a noble admiration of the hero, "she sympathized in his heroic
sentiments, and passionately desired to consecrate to him that life
which should seem to have been redeemed from a monastic grave." 1
At first various obstacles seemed to thwart the consummation of
their wishes. For obvious reasons it was deemed desirable that the
union should receive the approbation of Charlotte's father and of the
French government, who, it was feared, might raise objections against
it, on account of her extorted monastic vows. Requisite measures
were taken to obtain the sanction of these parties. Application to
this effect was made to the French monarch, Henry III., and his
answer was so far favourable. " The king," says he, " will noways
compromise himself in all this, as it is against his religion, but he
thinks Mademoiselle would be very lucky to get so fine an establish-
ment ; and, all things considered, the French court would not openly
object to whatever Mademoiselle should do by advice of the Elector
Palatine." 2 The French Parliament was also consulted, and an
assembly of prelates and doctors was convoked to give judgment.
After mature deliberation it was declared that the young lady was
free to marry, the strictest laws of the Romish Church being in her
favoiir, since, though she had come under some of the monastic en-
gagements, she had not taken the final vows irrevocably binding
herself to the monastic life. The consent of her father was also
sought in due form, and this appeared not the least formidable ob-
stacle in the way to the realization of the union. He was not yet
reconciled to his daughter, whom he still regarded as the reproach
of his house. At first he made scruples on the score of religion,
but at last parental affection, and the dignity of this alliance, so far
overcame his Popish perversity, that, relenting somewhat, he not

1 Miss Benger.

2 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 24.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 649

only gave his consent to the marriage, but bestowed upon his daugh-
ter an ample portion. 1

Having got clear of these difficulties, William resolved, without
delay, to conclude the marriage. He therefore despatched Count
Hohenlohe, and his brother, Count John, to the court of Heidelberg,
to give full information of his circumstances to the Elector Palatine,
the Electress, and Charlotte ; and, upon their obtaining the final con-
sent of all these parties, to make the necessary arrangements for the
speedy solemnization of the marriage.

On hearing of this mission, the relatives of Anne of Saxony, the
prince's former wife, were deeply oifended, convinced that the prince,
in order to render legal his new marriage, would adopt measures for
obtaining a legal divorce from Anne, whose disgrace, which they
were desirous of concealing, would thus be published to the world.
Her uncle, William, Landgrave of Hesse, in the utmost indignation
thus writes to Count John : " I have received yours of the 28th
May [1575], announcing the arrival of the lady of Bourbon upon the
banks of the Ehine ; from the excuses wherewith you accompany the
news, I am easily persuaded that neither you nor any one else in
his senses can have coimselled such a proceeding." And a few days
after, in another letter to the count, he says : " None of us can ima-
gine what could possibly induce the prince, and that booby, St. Alde-
gonde, and whoever else meddled in it, to enter into such a business.
If you consider the religious side of the question, why, she is a
Frenchwoman, a nun, and a runaway nun to boot ! You can fancy
all that is said thereupon ; and how it is surmised that the prince,
changing his old wife for this new one, will be merely going out of
the frying-pan into the fire. If personal attractions be thought of,
I'll answer for a bitter disappointment, and will venture to say that
when he sees her he will be frightened rather than pleased. Is the
idea of perpetuating his race an argument? Surely he has got
heirs and heiresses enough already." 2

1 Maurier, p. 48.-Spanheim, Mtmoires de la Louise Juliane, pp. 12-15.

2 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 17. The

650 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Count John, afraid of the difficulties in which the prince might be
involved by the opposition of the Landgrave of Hesse, and likewise
of the Elector of Saxony, who was also Anne's uncle, strongly urged,
in his letters to M. de St. Aldegonde, to the Elector Palatine, and to
the prince himself, the policy of delaying the marriage, in the hope
that a better understanding might be brought about between his
brother and the houses of Saxony and Hesse. But William, regard-
less of the displeasure of his former wife's relatives, was deaf to all
his brother's entreaties and counsels. 1

The nuptials were celebrated on June 12, 1575, at the Brill,
whither the beloved and happy bride had been conducted from
Heidelberg, by the Lord de St. Aldegonde, who had been employed
at an early period in negotiating as to the marriage. 2

In several of the German courts, particulary in those to which
Anne of Saxony was related, William, and especially Charlotte, were
now the subjects of free animadversion. But the stories prejudicial
to her, circulated by these courts, were happily mere slanders, the
offspring of ill-will or of a love for idle gossip. Being well assured
.of this, Count John, who, though from motives of policy he had
strongly urged the delay of the marriage, had never any objections
to Charlotte personally, now, when she had become his brother's
wife, generously came forward as her defender. " As to the outcry
against the prince's present wife, raised at the diet of Ratisbon,"
writes he to the Landgrave of Hesse, in November, 1575, " it can
only be laid to the account of downright calumny, . . . The per-
sons who come daily from Holland, and, above all, those who have

prince had already, by Anne of Egmont, a son, named Philip William, who afterwards
succeeded him, and a daughter, Mary, who was married to Philip, Count of Hohenlohe ;
and by Anne of Saxony, Maurice, afterwards Prince of Orange, and Emilia, who mar-
ried Emmanuel, son of Anthony, King of Portugal, who was dethroned by Philip II.
of Spain. Maurier, pp. 124, 125.

i This marriage certainly proved prejudicial to himself in various ways, by alienating
from him powerful families in Germany, who were formerly his friends ; nor was it less
prejudicial to his successors and descendants. On these grounds the Baroness Blaze
de Bury pronounces it to have been impolitic, but, adds she, " that it was strictly legal
and legitimate, according to the tenets of the reformed church, is beyond all discus-
sion." 2 De Thou, torn, v., liv. be., p. 166. Maurier, p. 48.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 651

been enabled to stay the longest in the neighbourhood of the prin-
cess, report of her, thank God, very different things, and pay her a
very high tribute of praise. In order that your lordship may learn
better to appreciate her grace, and may also discover what, in some
degree, perhaps, will have served as a basis for the calumny in ques-
tion, 1 I send you, in the original, a letter she wrote some days since
to my mother." 2

During the few years that this union lasted Charlotte enjoyed an
uncommon degree of domestic felicity. She and William resembled
each other not a little in their general character, in their generosity
and benevolence, in their sympathy for the suffering, in their
affability and condescension towards the humblest, in their enthu-
siastic devotion to the cause of Protestantism and of liberty. It
delighted her to think that she was not, as might have been the case
had she returned to France, the wife of a man who, however high
his rank, was wedded to Popery, and whose hands were red with
Protestant blood. She loved the prince with an attachment border-
ing on the idolati-ous, and he requited her affection with tenderness
and fidelity. "Writing to him on the 4th of September, 1577, he
being then in Brussels, she says: " Take care of yourself; I implore
you to be more solicitous for your health than you have shown your-
self within these few days, for on yours depends mine, and, after
God, you dispose of my happiness. My lord, therefore, I pray the
Almighty, that, in the midst of such labours and anxieties as yours,
he will preserve you through a long and happy life." 3

1 "Whatever this particular report might be," says the Baroness Blaze de Bury,
" does not appear, and is nowhere further specified."

2 " Unfortunately," says the same authoress, " this letter is not amongst those
already collected, as it was probably never returned by the landgrave." Memoir* of
the Princess Palatine, &c., pp. 38, 39.

3 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 39. "Many,"
says this authoress, "are the letters the archives of the house of Orange possess of
Charlotte de Bourbon ; and there are none which do not bear witness to her purity of
mind, her gentleness, and unbounded devotion to her lord." She adds, " Her letters
to William's mother, the Countess Juliana, are touehingly beautiful, from their sweet
submissiveness, and the tender filial love they breathe in every line."

652 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

The virtues, good understanding, and endearing qualities of Char-
lotte had the happiest influence upon the prince, and gained her the
esteem and admiration of all about her. " The prince," says Count
John, in a letter to Count Schonenburg, " looks so well, and is of
such good courage, in spite of the small comfort he enjoys, and the
extent of his troubles, his labours, and his perils, that you would
hardly believe it, and would be immensely rejoiced thereat. Of a
surety it is a most precious consolation and a wondrous relief, that
God should have given him a wife so distinguished by her virtue,
her piety, her vast intelligence in a word, so perfectly all that he
could wish ; in return, he loves her tenderly." 1

The princess obtained the good graces even of Elizabeth, the
maiden Queen of England, who sent her, on the occasion of her
second confinement, a present, and became sponsor for the new-born
infant, which was named Elizabeth. In reference to this gift from
the English sovereign, Charlotte thus writes to the prince: "My
lord, I have received the present it has pleased you to send me on
the part of the queen, and have found it very pretty and ingenious.
As to the signification of the lizard as it is said when any sleeping
person is near being stung by a serpent, the lizard waketh him I
fancy, my lord, that you are meant thereby, you having awakened
the States of Holland, fearing lest they should be destroyed. God's
grace grant that you may preserve them from the serpent !" 2

Among Papists it was easy to excite violent prejudice against a
nun for having married, and against the man who had taken her to
wife. To render William odious for having married the nun of
Jouarre, the King of Spain, in the proscription he published in June,
1580, 3 against William, outlawing him, giving his life, his body, his

1 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 46.

a Ibid., p. 43.

a It was dated Madrid, 15th March, 1580, and sent to the Duke of Parma, then go-
vernor of the Low Countries, with orders to publish it through the whole extent of his
government ; but the duke delayed its promulgation until the month of June follow-
ing, and affirmed in his circular letter that he did it only after having received pressing
and repeated orders to that effect from the king. Les Delices des Pays-Bas, 6th
edition, a Liege, 1769, torn, v., pp. 5, 6.

NETHERLANDS.] C/utrlotte de Bourbon. 653

estate to whoever could seize on them, and promising, "upon the
word of a king, and as a minister of God," 25,000 crowns to whoever
should bring him, dead or alive, to his majesty in this document the
Spanish monarch not only denounces him for having introduced the
reformed religion into the Low Countries, but brands him as a rebel,
a disturber of the public peace, a wicked and perjured man, the
source of all the troubles of the Netherlands, the plague of Christen-
dom, the common enemy of mankind, a heretic, a hypocrite, a Cain,
a Judas, one that had a hardened conscience, a profane wretch, who
had taken a nun out of the cloister to marry her, and had children
by her. 1 This last imputation was inflicting a double wound it was
stigmatizing both the prince and his wife, as living in unlawful con-
cubinage.

From such a charge William and the princess required at that
time no vindication in the Low Countries, which, having thrown off
the Papal authority and the Popish doctrines, were disposed, instead
of censuring, to honour ladies who, whether they had been trepanned
or forced into taking the veil, had had the determination to break
loose their fetters, and assert the liberty given them both by nature
and revelation. But in his eloquent and triumphant apology or
vindication in answer to this proscription, 2 dated 4th February, 1581,
and which he caused to be printed in Flemish and in French, and
sent to all the courts of Europe, William, indignant at this attack
upon his own and his wife's virtue, severely retaliated on the Spanish
monarch, whose character was so thoroughly bad, that it had been
prudent in him not to have attempted to blacken the reputation of
a prince who, whatever might be his faults, was free from the fla-
grant crimes which have rendered that monarch one of the most infa-
mous characters recorded in history. In this document William
states that slanderers ought to be free from all blame, and that it is
an unaccountable impudence in the king, who is all covered over
with crimes, to reproach him with a marriage which was lawful and

' Maurier, pp. 74, 75.

2 Maurier has given the substance of the vindication, pp. 75-101.

654 Ladies of tlte Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

agreeable to the Word of God. He maintains that Philip was ac-
tually married to Donna Isabella Osorino, and had three children by
her at the time when he married the Infanta of Portugal, mother to
Don Carlos ; that he murdered his own son for speaking in favour of
the Low Countries, and poisoned his third wife, Isabella, daughter to
Henry II. of France, while in the lifetime of that princess he publicly
kept as his mistress Donna Euphratia, whom, when she was preg-
nant by him, he forced the Prince of Ascoti to marry, that his bas-
tard might inherit the great estate of that prince, who died of grief,
if not of a morsel more easy to swallow than to digest ; that after-
wards he was not ashamed to commit public incest by marrying his
own niece, the daughter of Maximilian, the emperor, by his sister.
"But," says the king, "I had a dispensation." "Yes," replies the
prince, "but only from the god on earth ; for the God of heaven
would never have granted it." The prince therefore argues, that it
was as strange as it was intolerable for a man blackened with adul-
tery, murder, incest, and parricide, to make a crime of a marriage
approved of by Monsieur de Montpensier, his father-in-law, a more
zealous Catholic than the Spaniards were, with all their grimaces
and pretensions. He adds, that if his wife had made vows in her
tender age, this was contrary to the canons and decrees of the
Romish Church, according to the opinion of the ablest men ; and
that, though she had never made any protestations against these
extorted vows, he was not so little versed in the Holy Scriptures
as not to know that all engagements of that sort had no force in the
sight of God. 1

In the cup of earthly enjoyment there are always some bitter
ingredients. Happy as Charlotte was in the prince to whom she
was united, she frequently suffered from delicate health, to which,
however, " she seldom alludes, except as it happens to militate
for or against some plan connected with him or his movements."
In the year 1576, when residing at Delft, she is obliged, from the
state of her health, to refuse going out to meet the prince, who had
1 Maurier, pp. 80, 81.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 65o

been for some time absent from her. " The Sire de Viry," says she,
" has imparted to me your commands that I should go to meet you,
but I am unhappily too weak. I must wait at least six or eight
days, during which time I can, if it pleases God, take the air as far
as the Hague, in order to see what I am equal to." And on the 3d
of April she thus writes : " Respecting my state, I have at moments
apprehended danger, which annoyed me, on account of your absence ;
but now I have no more apprehension, but hope, on the contrary,
with God's help, for a return of good health. I have from time to
time fits of faintness a weakness to which I am, as you know, sub-
ject, but I hope that will also cease." 1

The numerous personal dangers which beset the prince's path also
occasioned her no small anxiety. Not only was he surrounded with
the perils necessai'ily incident to war, but he was exposed to the risk
of being assassinated by the unprincipled emissaries of Spain and
Rome, hurried on to the perpretation of the horrid deed by a relent-
less fanaticism, as well as by a tempting bribe the price set upon his
head. He himself was not insensible to these dangers ; but he was
exempt from the restlessness, suspicion, and stern character al-
most invariably acquired by public men whose lives are constantly
threatened by the dagger of some assassin. He had uniformly con-
sulted the good of his country in preference to his own particular
interests ; and in his career, when most triumphant, he had never
been wantonly cruel, and had never betrayed haughtiness or inso-
lence of demeanour. His lofty patriotism, therefore, an approving
conscience, and, crowning all, well-founded Christian hope, composed
his mind in an uncommon degree in the midst of threatened dan-
gers. a But the princess, from feminine softness, was more susceptible
to alarming impressions, and especially after he had been proscribed
by the Spanish monarch. What she dreaded was attempted, and
and well nigh with fatal issue, in 1582.

1 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine. &c., pp. 44. 45.
He took for his device a sea-gull, with the motto, " &row tranquillus in undis,"
i.e., " undisturbed in the midst of the stormy waves." Maurier, p. 114.

(J56 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

In that year John de Jaureguy, a young man aged about twenty
years, a Spaniard of Biscay by birth, who served in a bank at Ant-
werp, was instigated by the master of the bank, Gaspard d' Annastro,
also of Spanish birth, to attempt the destruction of the Prince of
Orange. Annastro, being on the verge of bankruptcy, hoped, by the
large reward offered by the Spanish monarch, to retrieve his ruined
fortunes ; and to satisfy his conscience as to the lawfulness of the
deed, he had, according to his own account, consulted the priests of
Spain, who assured him that whoever should assassinate this pro-
scribed heretic would perform a highly meritorious action. Con-
ceiving that it would not be difficult to engage Jaureguy in this
desperate enterprise, and judging that, from his gloomy and obstinate
temper, if once engaged, he would not shrink from the hazards of
its execution. Annastro sent for him, and, in a state of great agita-
tion, disclosed to him his bloody project " Did I not know," said
Annastro, "your fidelity, your constancy, and your sincere piety, I
would not address myself to you in the present unhappy state of the
public affairs and of my own. You see my eyes quite red and
soaked with weeping, and I believe you are not ignorant of the
cause ; for it is long since I noticed how sensible you are to the out-
rages done to our sovereign, and how, though born in Spain as well
as I, you do not fail to be touched with the calamities of these pro-
vinces, which are to us as an adopted country." Then representing
the prince as the cause and author of all these calamities, he comes
to the disclosure of his daring purpose. " This man," says he, " we
must destroy, if we would discharge our duty to God, to the king,
and to the country. The king promises great rewards, but I am less
moved by these though they may be useful in the present state of
my affairs, and also of yours than by the duty which conscience
imposes upon us." On concluding this speech he burst into tears,
and believing that Jaureguy, from his manner and fixed look, cordi-
ally entered into the conspiracy, Annastro fell upon the neck of the
youth, and warmly embraced him. Jaureguy immediately answered
with an intrepid air, " I am quite prepared ; I am now confirmed in

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 657

a design I have long ago meditated. I despise the danger and the
conditions ; I desire no reward, for I am resolved to die. I only ask
of you one favour to pray God, on my account, to incline the king
to be kind to my father, and not to leave the old man to die in
misery."

Everything being arranged, Jaureguy was to carry his despei*ate
purpose into execution on Sabbath, the 18th of March. On the
morning of that day a Dominican monk, named Timmerman, came
to confess him in the house of Aunastro. The monk, who, like the
Spanish priests whom Annastro had consulted, approved of Jaure-
guy's design, as his motives were not avarice, but the glory of God,
the service of the king, and the good of his country, fortified him in
his resolution, persuaded him that he should go invisible, for which
end he gave him some characters in paper, frogs' bones, and other
magical charms, administered to him absolution, and subsequently
the mass, as a sure passport to heaven should he lose his life in the
enterprise. Jaureguy, besides, " carried about him, in the fashion
of an amulet, prayers, in which he invoked the merciful Deity, who
appeared to men in the person of Christ, to aid the murder with
his favour, promising that Being a part of the booty, as it were,
should the deed be successful, viz., for the mother of God of Bayonne
a garment, a lamp, and a crown ; for the mother of God of Aranzosu
a crown; and for the Lord Christ himself a very rich curtain!" 1
Such is Jesuit morality ; for Timmerman and Jaureguy acted not
merely from the impulse of their own fanatical dispositions, but in
conformity with the explicit doctrines of Jesuitism, which, upon the
principle that the end sanctifies the means, have baptized murder,
when the good of the church may be thereby promoted, as a meri-
torious action, and taught the murderer to believe, as he passed, his
hands reeking with the blood of his victim, into the presence of his
judge, that the atrocious deed had merited for him the kingdom of
heaven.

Protected by so many mysterious charms, and having drunk a

iRanke's Hist, of the Popes, book v.

2 T

658 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

glass of foreign wine, Jaureguy went to the castle of Antwerp, the
residence of the Prince of Orange, accompanied by Timmerman, who
continued to exhort him and to confirm him in his resolution, until
they arrived at the foot of the stairs of the prince's court, where
the ghostly father, having given him his blessing, left him and went
away. The prince had attended sermon at the chapel in the morn-
ing, and on returning to the castle had sat down to dinner with the
princess, his children, many of the nobility, and persons of quality.
Jaureguy, who had succeeded in getting even into the dining cham-
ber, being taken, from his French dress, for the servant of some
French nobleman present, repeatedly pressed to get near the person
of the princa, but was always repulsed. When, on dinner being
ended, the prince, as he was passing, attended by the company, from
the hall to his withdrawing chamber, stopped to show the Count of
Laval the tapestry, in which were wrought the cruelties practised
by the Spaniards in the Netherlands, Jaureguy, who was watching
in the hall, now found a more favourable opportunity for executing
his purpose. The guards, observing him, would have put him out,
but were prevented by the prince, who reprimanded them, saying
that it was some citizen who wished to see him ; a courtesy which
proved nearly fatal to his life. Presenting a pistol above the shoul-
der of the Count of Laval, the assassin fired upon the prince with
effect. The bullet having entered at the throat, under his right ear,
passed through the palate, under the upper jaw, and went out by the
left cheek, near the nose, breaking one, some say several of his teeth,
but leaving the tongue untouched. The prince was stunned with
the wound, and thought, as he afterwards declared to Philip Du
Plessis Mornay, that the house had fallen, and buried him in its
ruins. Immediately after, he became so weak that he would have
fallen, had he not been supported. Having recovered from his
stupor, he suspected, from the agitation and muttering of those
about him, and from observing the hair of his head singed, and
his ruffle burned, which had been caused by the fire of the pistol,
in consequence of the weapon having been fired so near him, that

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 65'J

an attempt had been made on his life. But the generous and noble-
hearted William begged them to spare the assassin, adding, " I
forgive him with all my heart." The ruffian, however, had been
already despatched. The noblemen and gentlemen who were in the
chamber, and the body-guard, unable to control themselves, had
instantly and simultaneously rushed upon him, and put an end to
his life by many wounds inflicted with their swords. 1

The prince, who was of a robust and healthy constitution, rapidly
rallied. The fire of the pistol, from the nearness of the weapon to its
victim, having entered with the bullet into the wound, had cauter-
ized the jugular vein, and consequently stanched the blood. But on
the tenth day the scar which had formed on the wound fell off, and
the blood began to flow anew so abundantly as to threaten imme-
diate dissolution, baffling all the attempts employed to stop it. In
this emergency, Leonard Botal, physician of the Duke of Brabant,
advised that the bleeding should be stopped by a continued pressure
of the thumb on the wound. But this means, notwithstanding its
being employed by a succession of attendants for several days, would,
without the intervention of an accidental circumstance, have failed
to save the prince's life ; for though the pressure kept the wound
closed on the outside, the bleeding continued to go on internally,
and to such an extent that Du Plessis Mornay, as he informs us,
one morning saw the prince vomit more than five pounds of blood.
The true cause of the preservation of his life was the stoppage of
the bleeding by a small portion of lint, softened by a little ointment,
which the physicians had inadvertently pushed farther into the
wound than they intended, and which they had in vain endea-
voured to take out. After some days, nature, with a little assist-
ance, drove it back, when at the end of it was found a little white
pus, a proof that the vein was closed. 2

This unforeseen attempt on the prince's life gave a severe shock
to the sensitive frame of the princess. She rushed to the spot

1 De Thou, torn, vi., lir. Ixxv., pp. 178-181 Grimeston's History of the Netherlands,
pp. 676, 677. 2 De Thou, torn, vi., liv. Ixxv., pp. 182, 183.

660

Ladies oftlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

where he was the moment she knew that he had been wounded, and
she fainted at the sight of his blood. Belief was afforded to her
mind by the favourable appearance which his wound soon began to
assume, and which it continued to present for several days. But
she was again plunged into distress by the sudden re-opening of the
wound on the tenth day, and the violent rushing forth of the blood,
threatening his immediate dissolution. During the several days that
the vein was closely compressed by some attendant, she assiduously
waited upon him, assisted by the Countess of Schwartzburg, his

Charlotte tending the wounded Prince.

sister, who never quitted his apartment. Nor did she cease from
this devoted ministry of affection till the danger appeared averted,
and the prince was restored to her prayers and the supplications of
his people. 1

When the prince appeared past danger, and on the fair way of reco-
very, she sent the following letter the last she ever wrote to Count
i De Thou, torn, vi., liv. Ixxv., p. 183.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon. 661

John, the prince's brother : " Monsieur, my brother, As your se-
cretary is going back to you, I would not omit to write in order to
recall myself to your good graces, and assure you that I have never
for an instant ceased thinking of you and of the countess, my sister.
For this long time past, however, I have given you no assurance to
that effect by my letters ; I have much neglected my duties, because
I hope you are good enough not to doubt my sentiments, and also
because my daughter, Madame d'Orange, 1 gives you regularly news
of us all. These news, alas ! have been latterly extremely bad,
from the wound of my lord the prince, your brother ; and several
times he has passed through such alternations and dangers on account
of this cut vein, that, according to human foresight, he was nearer
death than life. But God in his mercy has miraculously assisted us
when our hope was at an end. The blood has ceased to flow for
fourteen days, the wound has become better every hour, and yester-
day morning there came out a tent that the surgeons had pushed into
the wound the day he bled for the last time, and that had lain there
ever since. The wound heals now so well and naturally that we
have no doubt of his recovery, with the aid of God's grace, for which
I pray with all my heart, as I also pray, Monsieur my brother, that
he may give you good health and a long and happy life, where-
with I commend myself to your good graces. Your very humble
and obedient sister, " CHARLOTTE DE BOURBON.

"From Antwerp, 12th April, 1582." 2

On the 2d of May, a solemn thanksgiving was observed in the
church of Antwerp for the recovery of the prince. Charlotte and
William were present, and from her inmost soul she united in the
outpourings of gratitude presented by the minister to the hearer of
prayer in name of the vast multitude assembled. But her con-
stant anxiety and watching, the agonizing suspense, the alternations
of hope and fear she had every moment experienced, from the time
he was wounded till his recovery was placed beyond doubt, brought

1 Mary of Nassau, later Countess of Hohenlohe.

- Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 50.

662 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

on a dangerous illness. Her disease was pleurisy. She passed direct
from the church to the bed of death. Nor did she regret falling a
victim to the unceasing care and vigilance by which she had brought
back William from the gates of death ; "too happy," says Spanheim,
"to have sacrificed her remaining days to preserve an existence far
dearer than her own ; and having once raised her eyes with thank-
fulness to heaven, she closed them for ever." Believing her end
approaching, she devoted herself to earnest preparation for another
world. She was surrounded by kind, sympathizing, and pious friends.
But, perhaps, from no individual did she derive more spiritual com-
fort than from Lady Philip Du Plessis Mornay, a woman distin-
guished for enlightened and fervent piety, who was present with
her during the whole of her illness. " The princess/' says Mornay,
"died in a very Christian manner. My wife attended her to the
last, and she observed, what is a very uncommon circumstance,
that some hours after the princess had breathed her last, a bleeding
at her nose commenced, which continued for two hours." She died
on the 5th of May, deeply regretted by her husband, and indeed by
all ; her gentle and winning graces, and her benevolent, charitable
disposition having made her universally beloved ; and the strongest
sympathy was evinced by the people with William under his bereave-
ment. Four days after her death, her corpse, attended by more than
twelve hundred persons in mourning, was carried with great pomp
to the cathedral of Antwerp, 1 and was there interred in the chapel
of the Circumcision . a

On the 29th of May, 1582, three weeks after his loss, the prince, in
a short letter to the Prince de Conde, thus writes: "Although
I have suffered the nearest loss of all in my wife, I cannot, for many
reasons, avoid acknowledging that some other persons have also
partaken in my bereavement, on account of the great affection which

1 The cathedral church of Notre-Darae of Antwerp is a vast and wonderful structure.
It contains a great number of chapels, enriched with marble columns, and adorned
with beautiful paintings by different masters. Les Dilices des Pays-Bos, torn, i.,
pp. 263, 264.

2 De Thou, torn, vi., liv. kxv. pp. 182, 183.

NETHERLANDS.] Charlotte de Bourbon, i 663

she bore them ; and for you, sir, I can assure you, you have lost a
good friend and relative, who honoured and loved you as much as
she did any one." 1

The princess left behind her six daughters, all of whom, except
one, were honourably married, and had numerous descendants : 1st,
Louise Juliane de Nassau, the eldest, whose life will form the subject
of a subsequent sketch. This princess was married to Frederick IV.,
Elector Palatine, by whom she had Frederick V., Elector Palatine and
King of Bohemia. This Frederick married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter
of James I. of England ; and from them her majesty Queen Victoria,
who now sways the British sceptre, is descended. (See next page.)
2d, Elizabeth de Nassau, who was married to Henry de la Tour,
Duke of Bouillon, a famous general in the wars of Henry IV. of
France, on the 15th of May, 1594, after the death of his first wife,
Charlotte de la Mark. She left two sons and four daughters, who
had also children. "She was living," says Maurier, "in the year
1641, and I saw her in the castle of Sedan, after the battle wherein
the Count de Soissons was killed." 3d, Catharine Belgique, who mar-
ried Philip Louis, Count of Hanau, a nobleman near Frankfort-on-
the-Maine, "from whom," says Maurier, "besides the Counts of Hanau,
is descended Amelia Elizabeth, wife to that generous William, Land-
grave of Hesse, who died in the year 1637, after whose death this
princess, a woman of a masculine courage, continued to carry on the
war against the Imperialists, and pursued the steps of her husband,
who, after the peace of Prague (where most of the Protestant princes
forsook their allies and joined with the house of Austria), had the
courage and resolution to make head, almost alone, against so formi-
dable a power." 4th, Charlotte Brabantine de Nassau, wife to Claude,
Duke de la Trimouille and de Thouars, Count de Laval, by whom
she had also descendants. 5th, Charlotte Flandrine de Nassau, who
embraced the Popish religion, and -died Abbess of St. Croix, in
Poictiers. " She was a very good princess," says Maurier, ' I knew
her, but she was little, and so deaf that she could not hear without
1 Baroness Blaze de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess Palatine, &c., p. 47.

664 Ladies of t/ie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

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NETHERLANDS.]

Charlotte de Bourbon.

665

a little silver trumpet." 6lh, ^Emilia de Nassau, wife to Frederick
Casimir, Count Palatine of the branch of Duponts, called the Duke
of Lansberg. 1 Such was the illustrious progeny of this fruitful
abbess, who had the good sense, as well as the Christian principle, to
believe that to become a wife and a mother was to adopt a life more
rational, more Christian, than the indolent, the useless, and ; alas !
too frequently, the impure life of the inmates of a convent.

1 Manner, pp. 120. 130-134.

LOUISE DE COLLIGNY,

LADY TELIGNY, AFTERWARDS PRINCESS OF ORANGE.

DE COLLIGNY was the daughter of Gas-
pard Colligny, Lord of Chatillon, and Admiral of
France, by his first wife, Charlotte de Laval, daughter
of Guy de Laval, by his wife, Antoinette de Daillon. 1
Her father, one of the noblest characters and truest
patriots which France ever produced, had attached himself to the
cause of the Reformation from convictions of duty, not from motives
of faction, and to its advancement he deliberately devoted his talents,
the best years of his life, his worldly substance and prospects, and at
last his life. Her mother was a lady of corresponding spirit. Her
self-denied devotion to the reformed cause almost exceeded that of
her husband, whom she encouraged to gird on his armour to defend
it, expressing her willingness to submit to the loss of whatever men
count dear for its sake. Her piety was displayed in her whole de-
portment, especially in the arrangements of her domestic establish-
ment, which were formed on the resolution expressed by the Hebrew
patriarch, "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord;" and
she abounded in works of beneficence and mercy. Louise was born
in the year 1553. She received the finished education bestowed at

1 Notice sur Branl6me et sur ses Ouvrages, prefixed to his Oeuvres, edit. Paris, 1822,
torn, i., p. 36. Lady Colligny's sister, Louise de Daillon, was Lady-Dowager of La
Chateigneraie, and maid of honour to Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 667

that time upon the daughters of the nobility of France, and was care-
fully instructed in the principles of the reformed faith. Both her
parents, much as they had suffered in those trying times in their
estate, as well as in other respects, in advancing the cause of the Re-
formation, desired to see her its intelligent and steadfast adherent,
even at the sacrifice of earthly advantages. They taught her to seek
after a better inheritance than this world can give, to be prepared to
suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christ, not to shrink from
casting in her lot with the people of God, though at the risk of
poverty, contempt, persecution, and death. In a letter which her
father wrote, towards the close of the year 1569, to her and her
brothers, and the children of his recently deceased brother, Francis
D'Andelot, who were then at Eochelle, after he had been de-
feated at the battles of Jarnac and Moncontour in the same year,
after the spoliation of his property by the government, and the
immense pecuniary losses he had sustained in carrying on the war
in this letter we have a beautiful specimen of the precious instruc-
tions by which her understanding was enlightened and her Christian
character formed.

"I could much have wished to say to you in person what I now
write, and also to see you, but that not being possible at present, I
have thought it right to exhort you ever to bear in mind the love
and fear of God ; and the more as experience may have already
taught you that we ought not to account ourselves secure in the
possession of what is called property, but ought to place our confi-
dence elsewhere than in this world, and to have better possessions
than our eyes can see or our hands touch. But as this is not in our
own power, we ought humbly to beseech God to be pleased to con-
duct us to the last, along that good and safe path which we must
not expect to be smooth and pleasant, or accompanied with all sorts
of temporal prosperity. We must follow our head, Jesus Christ,
who himself leads the way. Men have deprived us of all that it was
in their power to take from us, and should it be God's will that we
should never recover what we have lost, still we shall be happy, and

C68 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

our condition will be a good one, inasmuch as these losses have not
arisen from any harm done by us to those who have brought them
upon us, but solely from the hatred which they bear towards me
for its having pleased God to make use of me in assisting His church.
And notwithstanding that in this case we suffer losses and incon-
veniences, we are well off, and shall receive a reward of which men
will not have it in their power to deprive us.

" Had I leisure I should like to write to you about several other
matters, but for the present let it suffice that I admonish you and
conjure you in God's name courageously to persevere in the study
of virtue, and to testify, both by your actions and your words,
through the whole course of your lives, the horror you entertain for
every kind of vice. Obey your master and your superiors in such
wise that though I may rarely enjoy the satisfaction of being pre-
sent with you, I may often hear at least of your good and honourable
behaviour. To conclude ; if it be the will of God that we should
suffer some loss, whether in person or property, in the cause of that
religion by which he desires to be worshipped, we ought to account
ourselves fortunate. And I do assuredly beseech Him to be assist-
ing to you, to keep you in his protection, and to preserve you in your
tender years. Adieu. From Xaintes, this 16th of October, 1569.

" CHASTILLON." '

"The admiral," says Maurier, ''loved Louise very much, both for
her modesty and prudence." Nor was she without the charms of
personal beauty. Though she was of low stature, " her form," as the
same writer testifies, " was exquisitely symmetrical, her eyes very
beautiful, and her complexion lovely;" while her manners were
highly graceful, and her conversation eminently attractive. 2

In disposing of his daughter in marriage, the admiral, though not
indifferent to her forming a connection with a noble family, was
more desirous to have her united to a young man of high character,

1 Anonymous French Memoirs of Admiral Colliyny, translated by Dundas Scott,
Esq., pp 141-143.

- Maurier's Lives of the Princes of Orange, p 137.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 669

combined with rare accomplishments, than to one of merely high rank
and great wealth. And among all the persons of quality belonging
to his religion and party, he found none of whom in these respects he
formed so high an opinion as of Charles de Teligny, son of Louis
de Teligny, a famous military officer in the wars in Italy. 1 Young
Teligny, though descended from an honourable family, was without
title and fortune, his father, who was yet living, having wasted by
his extravagance the rich patrimony which he had inherited from
his ancestors. But he was possessed of much personal merit, had
maintained an unblemished reputation, was surpassed by few in
letters and in arms, excelling especially in the delicate arts of nego-
tiation, and uniting valour with the most engaging mental qualities,
which gained him the esteem and affection of all who knew him,
and even of the French monarch, to whom he always seemed more
welcome and agreeable than any of the nobility. From the love of
true religion and liberty, he had joined the ranks of the Reformers,
and distinguished himself by his zealous advocacy of the reformed
cause. From his ability and prudence he was admitted into the
counsels of his party, with whose affairs he was thoroughly ac-
quainted, and gave promise, should his life be spared, of becoming
one of its most enterprising and influential leaders. 2

A warm affection having sprung up between Teligny and Louise
the admiral encouraged the hopes they had mutually formed of
being one day united in happy wedlock. "You may have other
suitors rich and titled," said he to his daughter; "but I advise you
to choose Teligny for your husband, as more worthy of your affec-
tion than those who have higher adventitious pretensions, on account
of the good and rare qualities which I know him to possess. I give
you this counsel, because I think it will contribute to your happiness

1 Louis de Teliguy, besides Charles, had a daughter, Margaret, who was married to
Francis de la Noue, a distinguished military officer among the Protestants in the civil
wars in France, and called Bras-de-Fer, because, having lost his arm in an engagement,
he substituted an artificial one of iron Brant6me, Oeuvres, torn ii., p. 100.

- Manner's Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 137 Esprit de la Ligne, liv. iv.
Bantrdme, Oeuvres, tom. ii., p. 102.

670 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

in life, which we ought rather to seek in all things than great pos-
sessions and dignified titles." * In this Colligny acted with the same
spirit of disinterested disregard to mere worldly considerations which
he so remarkably displayed in his whole career. Louise was mar-
ried to Teligny at the town of Rochelle, in 1571, on the same day
on which her father, who had now been a widower four years, was
married to his second wife, Jacqueline of Eutremont, widow of Claude
de Batarnai, Baron of Anton, who was killed at the battle of St.
Dennis. 2

Louise was not long married when she became a widow. Her
husband, like her father, perished in the St. Bartholomew massacre.
He had previously received warning of some secret impending
danger. It was told him that porters loaded with arms had been
seen entering the Louvre, and that this seemed to be an alarming
omen. But unwilling, from the natural generosity of his character,
to call in question the good faith of the court, which had been
pledged to the Huguenots in the most solemn manner, he would not
believe that he and his party were exposed to any danger, and despised
the premonition. " It is very wrong," said he, " to multiply suspi-
cions, in the distressing circumstances in which we are placed. Let
nothing be said to the admiral : these arms are intended to attack,
by way of recreation, a fort erected within the Louvre." Never was
confidence more misplaced. The massacre of the Protestants, includ-
ing himself, had been resolved upon by the court. It is, indeed,
affirmed by some writers, that Catharine de Medicis, notwithstand-
ing her mortal hatred of the admiral, and that the king, her son,
had great difficulty in consenting to the death of Teligny, who, in
his intercourse with them had gained the good-will of both, by his
good qualities and his honourable conduct, "which," as Maurier

1 Mrs. Marsh's Protestant Reformation in France, vol. ii., p. 273." He gave him
his daughter in marriage," says Brantome, " a very beautiful and accomplished lady,
who might have got a more advantageous match ; but he was pleased to choose such a
son-in-law, having a regard rather to Teligny's perfections than to his means."
Oeuvres, torn, ii., p. 102.

2 De Thou, Histoire, torn. iv.,liv. 1., p 490. Anonymous Memoirs of Colligny, p. 152.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 671

observes, " shows that virtue is always attractive, from whencesoever
it proceeds, and that it has uncommon charms to make itself admired
and favoured, though in the person of an enemy." ' But if they felt
some reluctance to include Teligny among those who were counted
as sheep for the slaughter, so entirely had they yielded themselves
up to their furious passions, that he was notwithstanding included.
On the fatal day, when a party of murderers invaded his lodgings,
he escaped their pursuit by betaking himself, along with Merlin,
Colligny's minister, to the tiles of the house. In this extremity of
peril he was not in a condition calmly to reflect. But among the
thoughts which now passed in hurried confusion through his mind,
he could not help reproaching himself for the confidence he had
reposed in the perfidious court. The hard fate of his father-in-law,
who by this time was a mangled corpse, was unknown to him, but
he had reason to conjecture the worst; and what, perhaps, caused
his intensest agony, the most vehement, the most terrific struggle in
his bosom, was the image of his Louise rising up before his mind,
the image of that beloved object to whom he had so recently plighted
his faith their connubial happiness blighted, terminated for ever
at the close of a few months the cup, when just tasted, dashed from
their lips. But he had not long time to think. Some courtiers who
saw him traversing the roofs of the houses with Merlin, 2 though they
had been ordered to kill him, had not the heart to do so, such was
the affection with which, from his amiable character, he was regarded.
After this he was discovered on the loft of the house of the Sieur de
Chasteauneuf by some soldiers, who asked his name, and left him.
But at last the Duke of Anjou's guards finding him, killed him,

1 Maurier, p. 138.

2 Merlin's preservation was very extraordinary. In attempting his escape over the
roofs of the adjoining houses, he fell into a loft filled with hay. Here he lay concealed
for many days, but must have perished from hunger had it not been for the singular
circumstance, that a hen, as if guided by the same Providence which of old sent the
ravens to feed Elijah, laid, every day, her egg "in his hand." Les Histoires du Sieur
D'Aubigne. Merlin is, with much probability, supposed to be the author of the ano-
nymous Life of Admiral Colligny, translated from the original French by Dundas
Scott, Esq.

672 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

together with several of the admiral's servants, who had betaken
themselves with him to the same place for shelter. 1

Thus Louise became a widow in the nineteenth year of her age.

At the time of the massacre she was in Paris with Colligny. 2 How
she effected her escape while he perished, we are not informed ; but
she appears to have made her way to her father's castle of Chatillou,
in Burgundy, where her mother-in-law and her brothers were resid-
ing. The intelligence of the fate of her father and husband, and of
the atrocities of St. Bartholomew's day in Paris, threw the whole family
into a state of indescribable distress. The blow fell the heaviest
upon Louise. She sustained a twofold bereavement, the loss of a
father and of a husband, the relatives of all others the dearest to her
heart, and their loss by such a death pierced, mangled, maltreated
by the butchers of Paris. In the fearfully bewildered state of her
mind she sometimes thought, as often happens under the stunning
blow of some terrible calamity, that all was a dream ; but this was
only for a moment, and, the delusion being speedily dispelled, she
revived to a realization of all the horrors of the dreadful tragedy,
which was confirmed by proofs too strong to be doubted. Truly she
was made to bear the yoke in her youth.

Amidst the agony of their grief, Louise and the rest of the family
had to consult their personal safety, which they evidently saw was
exposed to the utmost peril. " The present moment is ours," they
said ; " there is no time to lose ; the carnage of the Protestants is
general throughout France; delay may cost us our lives;" and their
resolution was to flee to some Protestant territory. Many others,
alarmed for their safety, betook themselves to flight. Some sought
sanctuary at Rochelle, some at Montauban, and in other towns or
strongholds of France; while multitudes, after having wandered
from place to place, resolved to settle in some foreign country. The

' Histoire Des Martyrs, p. 779. De Thou, torn, iv., liv. Hi , p. 586. " He was de-
stroyed," says Brantfime, " like other good people, at the massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew. As for myself, I regret him as my brother, such was the intimate friendship
between us." Oeuvres, torn. ii. p. 102. 2 Memoirs of Colligny, p 178.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 673

Queen of England, the humane Elector Palatine, Frederick III., the
cantons of Zurich and of Berne, and especially the city of Geneva,
received them with open arms. 1 Louise's two eldest brothers imme-
diately hurried away, and made good their escape. Her mother-in-
law also succeeded in getting beyond the reach of their bloodthirsty
enemies. Her third and youngest brother, then only seven years
and eight months old, an uncommonly good-looking boy, and the
object of his father's fondest love, was taken by a detachment of
the body-guards, which had been sent by the orders of the king
to Chatillon Castle, to arrest the wife of the admiral, his children,
and the children of Andelot, his brother; and being brought to
Paris, together with the precious movables which were in the
castle, he " began," as Colligny's biographer observes, " from his early
childhood to bear the cross of Christ." Louise herself, with the
Count of Laval, eldest son of her paternal uncle, Andelot, fled at first
to Geneva. After a short stay in that hospitable asylum, they
removed to Basle, where they remained some months. At last pur-
posing to take up their abode in Berne, they went to that city, where
they were received with as much honour as humanity. 2

Here, and wherever she afterwards resided, Louise maintained her
principles with the utmost constancy. No considerations of worldly
advantage could induce her to renounce them. Many of her country-
men not having sufficient courage to endure the inconveniences of
exile, to live at a distance from their homes and their wives, and to
sacrifice the other ties which bind men to the place of their birth,
yielding to the violence of persecution, accommodated themselves to
the times, and returned to the religion of their ancestors. But
Louise de Colligny, imitating her parents, neither of whom ever
shrunk from cleaving to the Reformation, even in its most adverse

1 The refugees in this last named city having been reduced to great poverty, from
the pillage of their property by their enemies, and from their being necessitated t
leave what they had behind them. Beza and his colleagues endeavoured as far as they
could to mitigate their hardships, by causing contributions to be made for their relie

2 Anonymous Memoirs of Colligny, p. 183.-De Thou, torn, iv., hv. hi., pp. 597,

598; and liv liii., pp. 628, 629.

2 U

674 Ladies of tJw Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

fortunes, could not be prevailed upon to abjure her principles, either
from the hope of thereby being allowed to return to her native
country, or of receiving her share of her father's inheritance, which
the French court had avariciously and unrighteously seized upon.
She had been instructed in the true nature of Romanism by her
parents, and she had seen no reason to reject the doctrines instilled
into her mind in early life. Romanism, besides, had lacerated the
tenderest feelings of her heart. It had been for years the deadly
enemy of her beloved father, and at last his murderer. It had also
imbrued its hands in the blood of a husband whom she loved with
a sincere, a deep affection, and by whose death all her earthly happi-
ness seemed to be destroyed. The horrors of the St. Bartholomew
massacre could never be effaced from her memory, and to her mind's
eye they afforded a key to the real character of the Popish system,
which more than ever was abhorrent to every feeling of her heart,
as well as to the matured convictions of her understanding.

Louise and her brothers, it would appear, were at the court of
Frederick III., at Heidelberg, in 1573. Frederick was now a vener-
able man of fifty-eight years of age. By none could they have been
welcomed with greater affection than by this truly generous and
humane prince, who had himself suffered much for establishing the
reformed religion in his own dominions, who had assisted the Dutch
in their struggles for civil and religious liberty, and who had vigor-
ously promoted the Huguenot cause in France. 1 Their very name,
which would have exposed them to the greatest danger in their
native country, was enough to procure for them the kindest reception
from him and his family, who loved and honoured their father as one
of the best and greatest of men ; and warmly did they sympathize
with these orphan children, and congratulate them on their escape
from the wolves of their father-land. Louise had much to tell them of
her own journeyings and adventures of her flight from France of
the places she had visited of the kindness she had met with from

1 Frederick III. was born February 14, 1515, and succeeded to the Electorate in
1559. He caused the Heidelberg confession to be published in 1563, and died in 1576.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 675

Protestants of other countries. She had also much to tell them of
the multiplied horrors of St. Bartholomew day, and of the succeed-
ing days, during which the massacre was continued, full and par-
ticular accounts of which having since been communicated to her by
friends.

In the same year, while Louise and her brothers were resident at
this court, the Duke of Anjou, one of the contrivers of the St. Bar-
tholomew massacre, a young man about twenty years of age, who
was on his way to Poland to take possession of that kingdom, to
which he had been elected, having passed the Ehine, visited the
elector at Heidelberg ; a visit which, besides that this was a conve-
nient halting place in his journey, he could not honourably neglect
to pay. On passing through the city no acclamations greeted him,
which is not surprising. The wonder rather is, that a Protestant
population, roused to a pitch of incontrollable indignation at the
sight of the complotter of cruelties which had filled all Europe with
horror, did not, disregarding his rank, strike the miscreant to the
ground, beat him to death, or hang him on the first tree they met
with. Such, at least, has been the treatment which the excited popu-
lace have sometimes awarded to criminals less deeply stained with
blood than he was. On reaching the palace, finding no preparations for
his reception, he suspected that this proceeded from a design to offer
him disrespect; but his suspicions were unfounded, for the elector did
not know of his coming, and his household had been thrown into
confusion by a fire which, during the night, had accidentally broke
out in some part of the palace. The elector received him with the
courtesy claimed by one of the royal family of France. But from
the subtle, deceitful, intriguing, bloodthirsty character of the duke,
the elector, who was in all respects different, could not possibly
esteem him, and he could not refrain from giving honest expression
to his feelings of virtuous indignation at the atrocities so recently
committed in France upon the unoffending Huguenots. He had
received from the Huguenots a present of one of the portraits of
Admiral Colligny, which they had caused to be executed after the

676

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Bartholomew massacre, to be distributed in divers places and
countries among the friends of the deceased, in honour of his me-
mory. This portrait he showed to the duke. Having conducted
him, along with two or three other persons of distinction, through a
long gallery adorned with beautiful portraits of many princes and
great men, on coming to that of Colligny, which he had placed
among the collection, pointing to it with his finger, he asked the
duke, "Do you know the man whose portrait that is?'' "Yes, it is
the late admiral," was the answer. "It is even he," rejoined the

The Portrait of Colligny.

elector, his blood rising as he thought of the cruel tragedy of Col-
ligny's death: "it is even he, the best of men, the wisest and the
greatest captain of Europe, whose children I have under my protec-
tion, lest the dogs of France should tear them in pieces, as they have
done their father." The bold freedom of these words the duke felt

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 677

intensely, and bitter remorseful agony wrung his guilty heart ; but
he tried to conceal his feelings. " Of all the lords of France whom I
have known," continued the elector, again pointing to the portrait
with his finger, "that is the one whom I have found the most zeal-
ous for the glory of the French name, and I am not afraid to affirm
that the king and all France have suffered in him a loss which can
never be repaired." This he repeated several times, and in a tone of
mingled grief and reproach at the inhumanity of the queen-mother,
of the King of France, and of the duke. The duke, still endeavour-
ing to dissemble his feelings, was proceeding to palliate the massacre,
and to talk of the Huguenots' conspiracy to murder the whole court,
when the elector stopped him short, by briefly replying, " We know
all that story, sire;" and theii led the way from the picture gallery. 1

Louise's secluded life subsequently to the mournful loss of her
father and of her husband, removed her from the gay scenes of the
world, and favoured the cultivation of her judgment, and her improve-
ment in all the virtues. After she had remained a widow for eleven
years, William, Prince of Orange, upon the death of his third wife,
Charlotte de Bourbon, inspired with admiration of her character an
admiration doubtless strengthened from the veneration in which he
had always held her father made her proposals of marriage. She
had no marriage-portion, the cruel and oppressive French govern-
ment having, after the massacre of her father, plundered and disin-
herited his children; but her good qualities were, in William's esti-
mation, a sufficient dowry ; and she appears to have accepted of his
proposals, less from motives of ambition than from sentiments of
generous sympathy and enthusiasm awakened by a prince who, re-
sembling her father in character, in courage, and military talents,
had fought valiantly and successfully against tyranny and tyrants.
She saw in him a disinterested patriot, who, at the expense of toil,

1 L'Estoile, in Petitot, torn, xlv., p. 78. De Thou, torn, v., li?. Ivii., p. 22. Bran-
tome, Oeuvres, torn, iii., discours Ixxix., p. 300. In the concluding part of the anecdote
\\e have followed Brant&me. According to De Thou, the duke made uo answer to the

observations of the elector.

678 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

hardship, suffering, at the risk of the loss of large possessions, and
even of life, had fearlessly resisted the vast power of Spain, put an
end to the horrible persecutions of the Reformers in the Low Coun-
tries by Philip of Spain, and established civil and religious freedom ;
and this became the nurse of a pure and sacred affection.

The marriage between Louise and the prince was solemnized at
Antwerp, on the 12th of April, 1583 ; ! and they took up their resi-
dence at Delft. This union, it might be supposed, would have been
almost universally popular in the Confederated Provinces. The
bride was a Protestant lady of irreproachable life and exalted piety,
and the daughter of a man who had done and suffered more for the
Protestant cause than almost any other man of his age. The mar-
riage did not, however, give general satisfaction, in consequence of the
strong feelings of animosity at that time entertained by the people
against France, from the various indignities and injuries which they
had received from the Duke of Anjou, brother of Henry III. of
France. It afforded the enemies of the prince occasion to represent
his affection to that kingdom in the most odious terms, to charge
him with a design of enslaving the Confederated Provinces by
bringing them under the dominion of that foreign power ; a design
which the prince never entertained, though he was very desirous
of establishing a friendly understanding between France and the
Netherlands, notwithstanding the difference between the two coun-
tries as to religion, to enable the latter the more successfully to resist
the power of Spain. 8

Upon her first arrival in Holland, the princess was struck with the
simple manners of all classes, so different from what she had seen in
her more refined native country. She was surprised to find that
there even the higher ranks were remarkable for the homeliness
and plainness of their tables, that it was the custom for them un-
ostentatiously to walk along the streets without pages, or even
lackeys, and that they rode in carts without springs, instead of

1 De Thou, torn, vi , liv. Ixxvii., p 285. 2 Brandt, vol. i., pp. 390, 391.

NETHERLANDS.]

Louise de Colligny,

679

coaches. But she gradually became reconciled to the manners and
habits of the Low Countries ; and she was afterwards wont, good-
humouredly, to relate to her friends the uneasiness and discomfort
she sometimes felt from usages to which she had not been accus-
tomed. "She has told my father freely," says Maurier, " that at her
coming into Holland she was very much surprised at their rude way
of living, so different from that in France, and whereas she had been
used to a coach, she was there put into a Dutch waggon, open at top,
guided by a Vounnan, where she sat upon a board; and that in
going from Rotterdam to Delft, which is but two leagues, she was
crippled, and almost frozen to death." 1

The Townhall, Delft.

Being only thirty years of age at her second marriage, Louise still
retained her personal charms, and she promised much domestic
happiness to the prince, while by her amiable accomplished manners

i Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 141.

G80 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

and her cultivated mind, she adorned and dignified his court, dis-
sipating prejudice, and rendering herself universally beloved. " In
this admirable woman," says Miss Benger, "the prince found a com-
panion to whom he might equally refer for counsel, for sympathy, or
amusement. With affections equally susceptible and tender, she
possessed more firmness of character, and an understanding more
vigorous and better cultivated than the Princess of Bourbon. She
soon vied with the prince in affability, and almost surpassed him in
the art of winning popularity. The simple republicans, by whom the
daughter of Bourbon had been approached with reverence, almost as
a being of another world, loved and confided in Louise as an affec-
tionate and honoured mother." '

At Delft, on the 28th of February, 1584, the princess gave birth to
a son, who was named Frederick Henry, and who afterwards became
illustrious as Prince of Orange. 2

Prosperity now seemed to smile upon her; and apparently the
only alloy in her felicity was the distressing feelings which, as in
the case of her predecessor, Charlotte de Bourbon, would sometimes
intrude into her thoughts, in consequence of the personal dangers
which surrounded the prince. Sooner, perhaps, than she had at all
anticipated, she was again taught, from bitter experience, that the
present life is a scene of trial, in which affliction and sorrow, for the
loss of the tenderest objects of affection, may speedily overwhelm the
heart, and dissipate all the bright images formed of earthly happi-
ness. In less than five months after the birth of her son she saw her
husband expiring before her, assassinated by a second emissary of
Spain, more desperate and more successful than the former, namely,
Balthazar de Gerard, a Frenchman, about twenty-seven years of
age, being a native of Villefons, in Franche Comte, which was
subject to the King of Spain. He had meditated the crime six
years before, prompted partly by Popish fanatical zeal, and partly
by the hope of a pecuniary reward; and having come to Delft in the

1 Memoirs of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, vol. i, pp. 22-26.

2 Maurier, p. 177. Braiidt dates Henry's birth the 29th of January, vol. iv , p. 197.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 681

month of May, 1584, with the view of carrying his resolution into
execution, he succeeded, under false pretences, in getting into the
confidence of the prince, who employed him in confidential service.
On the 10th of July, the day on which he perpetrated the fatal deed,
he was watching in the palace when the prince should go into the
hall to dinner, and to cover his design, he asked from him a passport.
This he did with a disconcerted meiu, and with a hollow tremulous
voice ; which the princess observing, she suspected him of some bad
intention, and asked the prince what sinister-looking man that was,
and what he wanted. "He wishes a passport," answered the prince,
" and I will cause one to be given him." During dinner the assassin
sauntered about the stables behind the palace, towards the ramparts
of the town. But he again returned to his former post, to wait the
opportunity of giving effect to his bloody purpose ; and while the
prince, after dinner, was leaving the dining hall to go up to his cham-
ber, the murderer placed himself behind a pillar in the gallery, with
his two pistols hanging at his girdle on the left side, and hidden
under his cloak ; but he let the cloak hang off his shoulder, that he
might not seem to have anything concealed under it, and he held in
his right hand a paper, as if it had been a passport which he wished
the prince to sign. As the prince was about to go up stairs, and had
one foot upon the first step, the ruffian, advancing, drew forth one of
his pistols loaded with three balls, which he discharged into the body
of his victim, shooting him from the left side to the right, through
the stomach and the vital parts ; and this he did so suddenly, that
none perceived him before the fatal blow was given. The balls, pass-
ing through the body of the prince, struck against the stone of the
gate, into which they entered, leaving marks which were shown to
strangers at Delft long after. The wound was mortal. On receiv-
ing it the prince cried out in French, "Mon Dieu! aye pitie de mon
ame ; je suis fort blesse ; mon Dieu! aye pitie de mon ame, et de ce
pauvre peuple;" "O, my God! have mercy upon my soul; I am
severely wounded; O, my God! have mercy upon my soul, and
upon this poor people." Having uttered these words, which were

682 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

the last he spoke, he began to stagger, but his gentleman usher
laying hold of him, prevented his falling, and set him upon the
stairs. l

The alarm being given, the princess and his affectionate sister,
Katharine, Countess of Schwartzburg, and such of his children as
were then residing with him, 2 hurried to the spot, littering shrieks
and bursting into tears, as they saw what had taken place. His
sister, believing that he was dying, asked him in German whether
he did not recommend his soul to Jesus Christ the Saviour; to which
he answered, according to some, in the same language, " Yes ;"
according to others, simply by an inclination of the head. He
was immediately carried back to the hall where he had dined, and
scarcely had he been put upon his bed when he breathed his last,
having nearly completed the fifty-second year of his age. The dis-
tress of the princess cannot be described. She gave vent to her feel-
ings in cries of bitter lamentation, and at this moment recalled how
her first husband and her father had perished in a similar tragical
manner. But the piety of her spirit turned her thoughts towards
God, and she earnestly prayed for strength to be given her from
above to enable her to behave aright under this heart-rending be-
reavement, to be patient and resigned, to acknowledge that all events
are ordered and appointed by God, that he has a right to dispose of
his creatures as seemeth him good, and that he does all things well,
in infinite wisdom, righteousness, and love. 3

" She had this advantage," says Maurier, " to be sprung from the
greatest man in Europe, and to have two husbands of very eminent
virtues, the last of whom left behind him an immortal reputation ;
but she had likewise the misfortune to lose them all three by hasty
and violent deaths, her life having been nothing but a continued

1 Maurier, p. 115. De Thou, torn, vi., liv. Ixxix, p. 380. Grimeston's History of
the Netherlands, pp. 731, 732, 736. Les Helices des Pays-Bas, torn, v., pp 7-9.

2 Only two of his children were absent, Philip-William, his eldest son, and Emilia,
Anne of Saxony's youngest daughter. Baroness de Bury's Memoirs of the Princess
Palatine, &c., p. 71.

3 De Thou, torn, vi., liv. Ixxix., pp. 380, 381. Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 107.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 683

series of afflictions, able to make any one sink under them, but a
soul that, like hers, had resigned itself up entirely to the will of
heaven." 1

The princess and the family of the prince were deeply sympathized
with throughout the Confederated Provinces. Universal lamenta-
tions were heard among the people, as if each had lost what was most
dear to him, and as if the state had lost its chief protector against
the power of Spain. The funeral, which was conducted with great
pomp, was attended by all the nobility and the chief men of the pro-
vinces. Philip "William, the prince's eldest son, being a prisoner in
Spain (see p. 591). Maurice, the prince's second son, followed the corpse
as chief mourner to the grave, which was in the new church of Delft,
at the spot where the great altar formerly stood. Here Prince Mau-
rice, 2 in 1620, erected to the memory of his father a magnificent
monument of marble, accounted not inferior to the most sumptuous
tombs in Italy. In the middle is the statue of the deceased prince.
The pillars are four columns of marble, having in their front four
figures of bronze, representing the four cardinal virtues. At the feet
of the prince are the statues of his two sons, Prince Maurice and
Frederick, and the upper part of the monument is surrounded with
weeping loves. 3

The states of the United Provinces granted to the widowed princess,
who, as we have seen before, had no other dowry but her good qua-
lities, an annual pension of 20,000 francs during life. 4 To the
daughters of her deceased husband, and particularly to those of them
born by Charlotte de Bourbon, who, from their tender age, most
needed her care, she faithfully and affectionately discharged the
duties of a mother. Elizabeth, Queen of England, to whose protec-
tion William, foreseeing the danger to which his life was exposed
from the plots of his enemies, had during his life committed his

1 Lives of the Princes of Orange, p. 140.

2 Upon the death of Philip at Brussels, in 1618, Maurice became Priuce of Orange.
Before this he bore the title of count. Maurier, p. 124.

3 Maurier, p. 120. Les Delices des Pays-Bas, torn, v., p. 5.
< Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 108.

684: Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

daughters, made arrangements for those of them by Charlotte being
brought up in different families.' But these arrangements failing to
be carried out, Louise gladly took them under her maternal guar-
dianship. In a letter addressed by her to Count John, the prince's
brother, at the end of October, 1584, she thus speaks of the nume-
rous family under her charge : " My son, Count Maurice, is very
well, thank God, and is about starting for Zealand. My daughters,
Mademoisselle d' Orange [Mary of Nassau] and Anne, are now at
Buren. Little Catharine Belgique is with the Countess of Schwartz-
burg, my sister. The others are with me, all in excellent health
(as also my son), except Louise, who is extremely ill since six weeks;
so ill, that the doctors have but a bad opinion of her, and give
but bad hopes. I do, and will do, God willing, all I can for her." 2
Under her care and the care of their aunt, the Countess of Schwartz-
burg, these daughters became early distinguished for their mental
attainments, and the princess imparted to them those graces of de-
portment which their excellent aunt had not to bestow. The charac-
ter of some of them accordingly resembled rather that of their step-
mother than that of their own parent ; and in all of them, as well as
in the prince's second son, Maurice, Louise de Colligny inspired con-
fidence and respect. 3

After her bereavement Louise resided for some time at Middle-
burg, in the province of Zealand. A letter which she wrote, while
resident in that city, to Philip Duplessis Mornay, expressing her
anxiety as to the education of her son, Frederick Henry, and her
desire of obtaining a well qualified tutor, has been preserved. The
letter is as follows :

" Monsieur, Some time ago M. de Buzanval sent me an account,
which you were pleased to order to be transmitted, as to the method
observed in the education of your son. M. de Turenne, and the said

1 A letter of Elizabeth's on this subject to the Duke of Moutpensier, Charlotte's
brother, dated Hampton Court, October 17, 1584, is given in Barouesi de Bury's
Memoirs of the Princess Palatine. &c., p. 73.

2 Ibid., pp. 75, 76.

a Miss Beuger's Memoirs of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, vol. i., pp. 26, 21.

NETHERLANDS.]

Louise de Colligny.

685

Sieur de Buzanval, and many others, have given me so favourable a
report of the high expectations formed of so excellent a youth, that
it has made me extremely desirous of having my son educated after
the same manner, and earnestly to beg M. de Buzanval to write to
you on the subject, as he has done. Monsieur, I render you many

The Townhall, Middleburg.

thanks for the proof you have herein given me of your care of a son
whose father and grandfather you loved so much. I preserve this
account as very precious, regretting that I cannot begin to put it into
practice. "We are here in a country so barren of suitable men for
the training of youth, that I despair of being able to find one so long
as I remain in this place, and with difficulty elsewhere, unless, as I
humbly pray, you assist me in so good a work, and thus by your
means I again obtain one worthy of such a charge. Monsieur, if I
am so happy as to be able to do you service, employ me, I beseech
you, as the person who of all others most honours your virtue, and

686 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS

you shall always find one ready most humbly and affectionately to
serve you, in " LOUISE DE COLLIGNT. '

Middleburg, July - ~ ."

In the year 1591 the princess removed from Middleburg, and
settled at the Hague. In some respects she would have preferred
Leyden, but to it as a place of residence she had contracted a strong
aversion, because one of the ministers of that town, named Peter
Hackhouse, had publicly said in one of his sermons, that the late
prince, her consort, " had been guilty of a great offence by his recent
French marriage, as likewise by the pomp and costly feastings at the
baptism of his son, for which cause this judgment had fallen upon
him." 2 Thus to anathematize her simply because she was a French-
woman, and to represent the late prince as having sinned so fear-
fully by marrying her, that he was on that account exhibited a
monument of the Divine justice to all Europe, made, as was natural
enough, a deep impression upon her mind. Like many others, Hack-
house was opposed to the prince's marrying her because she was a
French lady, from an unfounded apprehension, actively propagated
by the enemies of the prince, that he intended to subject the Confe-
derated Provinces to the power of France ; and his hatred of the mar-
riage on this ground, combining with what seems to have entered as
chief elements into his character, a gloomy asceticism and a self-
complacent spiritual pride, as if he had been specially admitted to a
knowledge of the counsels of Heaven, prompted him to put this rash
and perverted interpretation upon Providence. The causes he assigned
as provoking the wrath of Heaven against the prince cannot be ad-
mitted, for, in the first place, the Sacred Scriptures sanction festive
rejoicings at the birth of a child, particularly of a man child, and
these in a style corresponding to the rank which men occupy in the
world ; and, secondly, it is certain that the prince committed no sin
in taking to wife so pious and exemplary a lady as was Louise de
Colligny. His whole character, indeed, was such as to forbid us to

1 Mtmoires et Correspondance de Duplessis-Mornay, torn, v., p. 71.

2 Brandt, vol. iv., p. 197.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 687

regard his assassination in the light of a judgment from God. We
can observe no sin legibly written upon his death, as the sin of the
debauchee upon his ruined constitution, his blasted reputation, his
blighted earthly prospects, which bespeak a judicial infliction as dis-
tinctly as if we heard it proclaimed by a voice from heaven. So far
from this, he was a virtuous, pious, patriotic man. Had he been less
a patriot, had he consulted only his own temporal interests, and not
those of his country, he might have died quietly upon his bed. He
fell a sacrifice to his devotion to the civil and religious liberties of
his country ; and his death, instead of being viewed as a judgment
of God, is to be contemplated as belonging to that portion of the
Divine dispensations in which, for reasons beyond the power of
human skill or sagacity to discover, God has often permitted patriots
and martyrs, men of whom the world was not worthy, to fall victims
to the inexorable vengeance of tyrants and persecutors.

Upon her settlement at the Hague, no French Protestant church
being then established in that place, one was founded there, chiefly
at her request ; and John Uitenbogard, one of the reformed ministers

of the Hague, was appointed to serve it, by preaching in the French
tongue ; a service which, after some reluctance, he was ultimately
induced to undertake, mainly in compliance with the wishes of the
princess, who had formed a highly favourable opinion of his character,

688 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

piety, and talents. To him also she committed the instruction of
her son, Frederick Henry, whom Uitenbogard taught not only the
first principles of the Christian religion, but also the Latin tongue,
carrying him through the grammar and some of the classic authors,
till Mr. Torse arrived from France, and undertook the duties of his
preceptor and governor. 1

From various allusions made by the chroniclers of the time, we
learn that the princess after this visited France. One of these allu-
sions is characteristic of the abhorrence with which she shrunk from
intercourse with ladies of nefarious reputation, and the decision
with which she expressed and acted upon her feelings of recoil. On
Sabbath, the 18th of September, 1594, having, when in Paris, gone
to see the Princess Catharine of Navarre, sister of Henry IV. of
France, she found in the apartment of that princess the Duchess
of Montpensier. 2 The duchess had had a share, in a manner too
shameful to be here specified, in prompting Jacques Clement to
assassinate Henry III. of France (August 1, 1589), against whom she
cherished an implacable hatred ; and, in expression of her joy at the
execrable murder, she had distributed green scarfs, as emblems of
mock mourning, among the chiefs of the league for the extermination
of the Huguenots. Louise de Colligny knew all this, and, there-
fore, on finding this wicked woman in the chamber of the princess,
she abruptly quitted it, saying aloud that she could not remain
in the company of such as had participated in the murder of the
late king, because she was a Frenchwoman, and loved the French. 3

In the controversy between the Arminians and the Calvinists, 4

i Brandt, vol. iv., p. 197. Le Clerc, torn, i., p. 302.

a Catharine de Lorraine, daughter of Francis, Duke of Guise, by Anue d'Este. She
courted, with disgusting servility, the favour of Henry IV. ; and it is surprising that
she obtained such familiar access to the royal person. By her intrusions she greatly
annoyed Catharine of Navarre, who was an excellent princess.

* L'Estoile, in Petitot, torn, xlvii., p. 83.

4 James Arminius, professor of divinity in the university of Leyden, the father of
the system bearing his name, taught it in his theological lectures, and in various pub-
lished works; and a considerable number of Dutch ecclesiastics, with several persons
of distinguished abilities and rank in the state, became converts to his opinions. His

.NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 689

which arose iu Holland in the early part of the 17Jh century, the
princess declared herself on the side of the Arminians. In taking
this step she was probably influenced, in no inconsiderable degree,
by the esteem in which she held her minister, Uitenbogard, who
was a leading man in that party. ] Perhaps, also, like many others,
she was swayed by misrepresentations or caricatures of Calvinism,
or by the plausibility given to the objections against it, from the
exaggeration and false colouring under which they were presented.
She seems to have been of opinion that the questions at issue
between the two parties did not affect the essential principles of the
Christian faith, that upon either system the foundations of human
hope remained unshaken, and that the disputants should not allow
their differences of sentiment to obstruct Christian affection and har-
mony, but should leave each other to entertain their respective views
on subjects so profound and mysterious. Hence, says Brandt, " all
her discourses and counsels tended to peace."

In order, if possible, to put an end to these unhappy differences,
so detrimental to the welfare of the church and state in the pro-
vinces, the princess, and several individuals of note on both sides,
were extremely desirous that Duplessis Mornay, a nobleman high in
reputation among the Reformers of all countries, should visit them,
and interpose his friendly offices for the accomplishment of an object

opponents, who embraced the majority of the clergy, and the principal professors in
the Dutch universities, strenuously maintained the Calvinistic system, and were there-
fore called Calvinists. The name Gomarists, by which they were also designated, was
derived from Francis Gomar, Arrninius's colleague, who particularly signalized himself
by his opposition to the new system. The two parties were also called Remonstrants
and Contra-Remonstrants, from a petition or remonstrance which the former party
presented to the States-General in 1610. After the death of Arminius, in 1609, the
controversy was carried on with redoubled vigour; and it produced such violent dis-
sensions, animosities, and divisions as, unless authenticated by indisputable documents,
could hardly be credited of a people naturally so cool and phlegmatic in temperament
as the Dutch.

1 Uitenbogard, when at Geneva, studying theology under Theodore de Beza and
Antoine de la Faye, became acquainted with James Arminius, who was a theological
student there at the same time, and an intimate friendship was formed between them,
which continued without interruption till the death of the latter. Le Clerc, torn, ii.,
pp. 232, 233.

2 x

690 Ladies of iJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

so important. In the year 1617, a meeting of commissioners from
Holland and from France having taken place at Rouen, in Nor-
mandy, some eminent persons, both of the Remonstrant and Contra-
Remonstrant party, earnestly besought Mornay, who was one of the
commissioners, to come over to Holland, being now so far on his
way as Rouen, that they might enjoy the benefit of his advice. As
lie could not undertake this journey without the knowledge and
consent of the French king, they prayed his majesty, both by letters
from the French ambassador Maurier, in Holland, and by letters
from Heer Langarak, the ambassador of the States-General in France,
that Mornay might be sent thither in the character of extraordinary
ambassador. The king, it would appear, was not adverse to granting
the request, and one of his principal ministers was instructed to
propose it to Mornay. When informed of the proposal, Mornay,
who knew well the state of matters in Holland, had little hope,
should he proceed thither, of being able to compose the existing
dissensions, though he would gladly have done anything in his
bower for the realization of so great a good. " The disease," said he,
"is so inveterate, that I am afraid it is too late to apply any remedy.
I will, however, do my utmost to give his majesty this proof of my
zeal for his service, when it shall be thought necessary, knowing
how much he is interested in the preservation of this republic."

At the same time, the Princess-Dowager of Orange wrote to
Mornay the following letter, entreating him to come to the help of
that distracted commonwealth : " Sir, I perceive by a letter which
Monsieur de Villebon has written me, that I have still the felicity
to be in your thoughts ; and I assure you, you cannot admit any one
into them who honours and esteems you more highly than I do.
But I am not the only person here that would gladly see you in
these parts for a few days, in order to convince you of the respect we
have for you. It is certain, sir, that we stand in the utmost need
here of your wise and prudent counsels ; and I verily believe that
both parties will hearken more to yours than to any other man's
whatever. Sir, our quarrels are not only about religion our

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 691

country is likewise at stake if some care be not speedily taken. You
are one of those who assisted my lord and husband in laying the
foundations of this state : come now to the help of his children, and
keep them from burying themselves in its ruins. If the dead had
any knowledge of what passes upon tthe earth, I am sure he would
conjure you to it in his own name, and by his ashes. Sir, I beg it of
you most heartily. I know that in order to be qualified for this
you must come with a commission ; but I know, too, that if you be
but disposed, it will not be difficult for you to procure such a com-
mission. For God's sake, sir, do not stand upon punctilios. We
are straitened in time, and since you are now at Eouen, it will be
much more easy for you to take this journey, than when you shall
have returned to Paris or Saumur. I beseech God to inspire you
with the best resolutions, and I entreat you to continue the honour
of your friendship to her who will remain, during life, your humble
and very affectionate, the " PRINCESS-DOWAGER OF ORANGE.

" Hague, December 28, 1617." J

The desire expressed by the princess in this letter was not grati-
fied. The French monarch did nothing more in the matter than
order, as was said before, one of his chief ministers to inform Mornay
of his majesty's intention to send him into Holland, to try what he
could do to compose the differences that existed there. Some of the
French clergy, or some of his majesty's council, who now began to
aim at reducing the power of the Protestants in France, perhaps
opposed the mission from motives of policy, perceiving that their
purpose would be more easily gained by the continuance of the dis-
sensions among the Protestants in Holland, which would greatly
weaken the Protestant interest.

Several years before, this controversy had created much irritation
in the Hague. There were at that time four regularly appointed re-
formed ministers in that place, John la Faille, John Lamotius, Henry
Boseus, and John Uitenbogard, who took their turn in preaching in
the Great church. The two first were Contra-Remonstrants, but,
i Brandt, vol. ii., pp 394, 395.

692 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

conformably to the ordinance of the states of 1614, enjoining upon
the contending parties Christian charity and concord for the good of
the commonwealth and of the church, they made the differences
between them and the Eemonstrants matters of forbearance. Roseus,
the youngest of the four, had been for a long time the particular
friend of Uitenbogard, and was understood, at the commencement
of the disputes, to entertain the same opinions as that minister, until
the year 1612, when his sentiments underwent a change, and from
that time he began publicly to preach against the Remonstrants.
The result was that Roseus, with a large body of the people, number-
ing upwards of 1200, separated from the other three ministers, and
formed themselves into a distinct congregation, with a distinct con-
sistory. They obtained permission from the states to preach in the
Hospital church, a permission the more readily granted them in
consequence of the open support which Count Maurice, from political
motives and personal resentments, rendered them.* The Hospital
church being too small to contain them, they took possession of the
Cloister church, formerly a church of the monks, and converted, on
the overthrow cf Popery, into an arsenal. They first assembled in
this church on the 9th of July, 1617, on which day they had two
sermons preached to them. 9

The controversy between the two parties continued to rage with
increasing violence. On the 23d of July, 1617, Maurice, who had
been accustomed to attend on the Sabbath the French church of

1 Maurice at first declared that he did not wish in any way to mingle in theological
controversies, but to remain neutral, saying that he was a soldier, and understood no-
thing in theology. Le Clerc, torn, i., pp. 299, 315. At length, however, he put him-
self at the head of the Calvinists, partly in the hope of effecting his ambitious pur-
poses by means of them, as they were the majority, and partly from hatred to John
van Olden Barneveldt, Grand Pensionary of the States of Holland, and a zealous re-
publican, who, jealous of his aspiring to undue, it is even said to sovereign power, in
the state, had thwarted him in some of his favourite measures. The fact that Barne-
veldt took the side of the Remonstrants greatly contributed in moving Maurice to
take the side of the other party. Thus the controversy inflamed political differences,
and was inflamed by them ; and it actually grew into a state faction. Maurier,
pp. 156-158.

* Le Clerc, torn, i., pp. 300-303, 313, 314.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 693

the court, to hear Uitenbogard, whom he had highly esteemed, 1
went with the Prince William Louis of Nassau, and a numerous
retinue, to the Cloister church. 2 At the celebration of the Lord's
Supper in the Hague, at Christmas in the same year, the two parties
in that city separately observed the ordinance. Maurice and many
persons of quality, ministers of state, military officers, several coun-
cillors, both of the French court and of the court of Holland, toge-
ther with the great body of the people, observed it in the congrega-
tion which met in the Cloister church. 3 The princess-dowager, who
declared herself openly on the side of the Bernonstrants, and of
such as maintained church-fellowship with them, partook of the
Lord's Supper in the French church, under the charge of Uitenbo-
gard. Her example was followed by her son, Frederick Henry ; the
Grand Pensionary, Olden Barneveldt ; the Heers van Asperen, van
Veenhusen, van der Myle, and van Groonevelt ; the Yonkers van
Sevonder and van Liere; the Heers Hugens, Melander, Martini,
and other persons of distinction. But Uitenbogard's congregation
and communicants were few in number compared with the multi-
tude of communicants and hearers who assembled in the Cloister
church."

The princess continued regularly to attend the sermons of Uiten-
bogard, and declared she would do so as long as the states allowed

1 Maurice had brought him to be minister at the Hague, and so greatly regarded
him, that he did not rest till he had obtained him from the states and from the church
at the Hague for his own minister, who should accompany him in all his campaigns.
Uitenbogard attended him from the year 1599 to the year 1614. Le Clerc, torn, ii.,
p. 233. But Maurice, now suspecting him to be united with Barneveldt in opposition
to his schemes of political ambition, contracted a dislike to him, and treated him
somewhat contumeliously, calling him publicly the enemy of God. He complained to
the princess-dowager, his mother-in-law, that Barneveldt, Uitenbogard, and others,
held a cabinet council to oppose him.-/6td., torn, i, pp. 302, 313.-Brandt, vol. iv.,
p. 197.

3 Le Clerc, torn, i., p. 315.

s At the celebration of the Supper in February, 1617, Prince Maurice, who had pre-
viously always communicated with Uitenbogard, had absented himself, not wishing to
receive the communion from the hands of that minister, by whom it was on that occasion
administered. Le Clerc, torn, i., p. 313.

* Brandt, vol. ii., p. 395.

694 Ladies of tlie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

him to preach. Her son, Frederick Henry, did the same, and said
that he was not of the sentiments of Roseus, whom his brother went
to hear. 1 When Maurice and his partizans had taken great offence
at Uitenbogard's inculcations of peace, in some of the sermons which
they heard before leaving him, the princess zealously defended him.
" She seemed extremely surprised," says Brandt, " that when Uiten-
bogard preached up peace and moderation, he should be so con-
temptuously treated for it, even by those very persons whom she
had heard praising the like sermons of his about twenty years
before." 2 If by "peace and moderation" he meant that controversy
ought to be conducted in a candid and peaceful spirit, to the exclu-
sion of the angry passions, clamour, and evil speaking, which have
too often mingled in theological debates, he was inculcating an
important lesson, to which both parties had much need to listen.
But if he meant, as it appears he did, that all controversy on the
disputed points should cease, and that they should not be made the
ground of a division in the church, every one being left to hold and
to teach his own sentiments, he was maintaining positions more diffi-
cult to establish.

When Uitenbogard, on having lost the favour of Prince Maurice
and the principal courtiers, who deserted his ministry for that of the
Contra-Remonstrants, began to think of resigning his office as minis-
ter of the French congregation, the charge of which he had been at
first unwilling to undertake, he consulted the princess on that point.
She entreated him not to do so ; and having expressed himself to
her as so much discouraged that he did not know whether he should
go into the pulpit again, from fear of displeasing the prince, and
because of the trouble in which he was involved by the Walloon
Synod, she fell a-weeping, beseeching him not to yield to the influ-
ence of depressing thoughts. He added, that he could not preach to
the chairs and stools ; to which she affectionately answered, " I and
my son will always hear you, in spite of synods, and in spite of all
opposition, if you continue to preach there." On other occasions she

' Le Clerc, torn, i., p. 315. - Brandt, vol. iv., p. 197.

NETHEELANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 695

used the same language, and was true to her word, her favour towards
him remaining unchanged, when the storms of religious contention
increased in violence, and the dangers which had fallen upon others
hung over his head. 1 In this great controversy which shook Holland,
she ranked herself, in our judgment, on the wrong side, but she no
doubt acted conscientiously, and her whole conduct towards Uiten-
bogard, who was a good man, however mistaken as to some parts of
Divine truth, from the commencement of these disputes to her
death, presents her amiable and sympathizing character in a very
interesting light.

Foreseeing that a storm was gathering, ITitenbogard thought of
betaking himself to flight. The princess, conceiving that he was in
no personal danger, advised him to remain. " We are fallen into
such times," said she, in a brief note which she wrote to him in her
native tongue, "that we cannot assist one another but with our
prayers. I am not of the number of those who advise you to retire
till the storm is blown over ; on the contrary, I think you ought to
stand it, though it should fall upon you, which, however, I do by no
means believe." She was afraid lest his flight should be construed
into a confession of political guilt, and was desirous, should it be
necessary, that he should put himself under her protection. " I will
afford you an asylum," said she, " in my own house, as far as I can ;
and I will do it publicly, in the persuasion that nobody will forcibly
take you from thence." He, however, judged it more prudent to
leave the Hague than to seek shelter under the roof of the princess,
who, however much inclined, might have been unable to shield him
from the power of Prince Maurice. Having obtained leave from his
consistory, he left the Hague on the 29th of August, 1618, the day on
which Barneveldt was arrested, and went to Antwerp. 2 On the day
of his departure the princess wrote to him these words : " The wisest
of your friends, who see deepest into matters, are of opinion that
you ought to lie concealed for some days, during which time a better

1 Brandt, vol. iv., p. 198. 2 Le Clerc, torn, ii , p. 11.

696 Ladies of tlw Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

judgment may be formed of things. In the meantime, I do not
think you are in danger, since the first fury is over." 1

Things assumed a darker aspect than she anticipated. In March,
1619, Barneveldt and three other eminent statesmen, namely, the
learned Hugo Grotius, Pensionary of Rotterdam, Heer Hoogerbeets,
Pensionary of Leyden, and the Sieur de Leydenberg, Secretary to
the States of Utrecht,' 2 who had also been arrested and imprisoned,
were brought to trial before judges nominated by the States-
General, and consisting chiefly of their enemies. They were ac-
cused, but falsely, of various crimes against the state ; among others
that they had plotted to change the religion of the provinces, and to
betray them to the Spaniards. The court, notwithstanding the
flagrant inadequacy of the evidence, found them guilty. On the 13th
of May, Barneveldt, who was the devoted victim, was sentenced to
be beheaded on that same day. 3 The other prisoners were condemned
to perpetual imprisonment, and were sent to the castle of Louvesteiu,
near Gorcum, in South Holland. Strong apprehensions having been
entertained, some time before the pronouncing of the sentence, that
Barneveldt's death had been resolved upon, applications from various
quarters had been made in his behalf to Prince Maurice. The
princess, who, during the differences between him and her son-in-
law, Prince Maurice, had always vindicated the former, whom she
esteemed and honoured as having been one of the chief confidents
of Prince William, her husband, and as having ever acted the part
of a true friend to his children, had evinced extreme anxiety to save
his life. 4 Taking advantage of her anxiety, Maurice, through her,
endeavoured by a stratagem, unworthy of a generous prince, to
ensnare Barneveldt's family into a confession of his guilt. He

1 Brandt, vol. iv., p. 198. Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 11.

2 These three last, like the first, were Remonstrants and staunch republicans.

3 " The Spanish Inquisition itself, against the arbitrary and bloody jurisdiction of
which the first Prince of Orange had raised the Low Countries, never conducted a trial
and execution with more injustice, more secrecy, or more infamous rigour." Life of
Barneveldt in Eminent Foreign Statesmen, Cabinet Cyclopedia, vol. i., p. 200.

4 Maurier, p. 141.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 697

ordered Count William, governor of Friesland, to say from him to
her, that he was astonished that no application had been made by
Barneveldt' a family for a pardon to him. In the hope that Maurice
was beginning to relent, she lost no time in conveying this commu-
nication to Madame de Barneveldt. But that high-spirited lady,
having consulted with her friends, came to the conclusion to take no
step which would imply an acknowledgment of her husband's guilt,
and replied, that she could not ask pardon for an innocent man. l
The princess herself besought, but in vain, an audience of Maurice,
to intercede for the life of her friend. The prince was inexorable,
and, much as he respected her, refused to allow her to speak to him
on the subject. 2 Barneveldt prepared for death, asking no favour
for himself, though the tenderness of a husband and a father induced
him to plead for the protection of his wife and children. He was
executed, according to the sentence, in the court of the castle at the
Hague, and met his fate with Christian fortitude. 3

This tragic event much affected the princess. " No less affection,"
says Brandt, " did she discover to the advocate, Olden Barneveldt
[than to Uitenbogard], lamenting his death with public and unfeigned

1 When all correspondence between Barneveldt and his friends was strictly in-
terdicted, this lady contrived an ingenious mode of communicating with him by
writing. Having found means of sending him at different times a quantity of large fine
pears, which might serve him for a dessert, she put into some of them writing quills,
within which she had inserted billets, written in very small characters. The artifice
was, however, at last discovered by the soldier who kept watch at the time when a
quantity of pears arrived. Having taken two of them, which for the present he put
into his pocket, on coming to his house he gave one of them to his wife, who, cutting
it, found it to contain a quill, within which was a small scroll written on both sides,
in Latin. Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 49. Grimeston's History of the Netherlands, Con-
tinuation by Cross, pp. 13, 93.

2 Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 54.

3 Barneveldt left two sous. They had held considerable situations in the s
which being now deprived, and in revenge of their father's death, they engaged in a
conspiracy against the life of the prince. One of them made his escape. The other
was condemned to lose his head. His mother fell at the feet of Maurice, pleading for
his life. The prince expressed surprise that she who had refused to ask her husband a
pardon should condescend to intercede in behalf of her son. " I did not ask pardon
for my husband," was her noble-minded reply, "because he was innocent. I

for my son, because he is guilty."

698 Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

tears, as having received of him, whilst he was in the administration
of affairs, many good services; nay, she did not scruple to say ' that
Prince Maurice, her son, Prince Henry, and the whole house of
Nassau ought to look upon the advocate as their father, on account
of what he had done for them.' !>1

Though Uitenbogard had succeeded in making his escape, and
had therefore secured his personal safety, yet, to soften the resent-
ment of Maurice against him, the princess interceded in his behalf
with the prince, but without effect. On the 24th of May, 1619, he
was condemned, in his absence, and without the specification of any
crime of which he was guilty, by judges delegated for that, purpose,
to perpetual banishment, upon pain of death should he return to
the territories under the jurisdiction of the States-General, and all
his goods declared to be forfeited. In a letter to the princess,
dated 29th May, 1619, after complaining of the severity of this
sentence, he says, " I have been informed that this rigour would
have been moderated if, instead of justifying myself, I had made
some acknowledgment of a fault, but that I could not and ought
not to do, without being convinced of guilt in my own conscience."
He begs her to grant him recommendatory letters for some lord
of the French court, or to obtain them for him from Monsieur du
Maurier, French ambassador at the Hague, as he intended to pro-
ceed to France." 2 From this sentence, as well as from the
fate of Barneveldt, and of the three eminent statesmen who had
been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, 3 the princess was
now convinced of Uitenbogard's danger. She now admitted that
he had acted wisely in leaving the Hague, and advised him, as he
purposed, to retire into France. " She omitted nothing," says
Brandt, " that could contribute to his preservation or consolation,

1 Brandt, vol. iv., p. 198. 2 Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 64.

3 Grotius, after an imprisonment of a year and a half, effected his escape by the ad-
dress of his wife, Maria van Reigersberg, a lady descended from one of the best fami-
lies in Holland, and in every respect worthy of the great man to whom she was united.
See an account of the ingenious artifice by which she accomplished his deliverance, in
Appendix, No. VII.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de CoUigny. 699

and poured out her heart with a motherly tenderness in many let-
ters which she wrote to him with her own hand, of which ten or
twelve are still in my custody." 1

At the close of April, 1620, the princess left the Hague for France.
Her residence in Holland had become uncomfortable from her wit-
nessing the violence with which religious quarrels raged, so fatal to
the welfare of the Protestant cause, without any hope of seeing these
differences extinguished. She was also sensibly touched at perceiv-
ing the jealousy and coldness with which she was regarded by the
Contra-Remonstrant party. Such was the odium she had incurred
by siding with the Remonstrants, that on riding one day through
Delft, she was hooted and maltreated by the blinded fanatical mob,
the canaille, who ran after her coach, throwing into it filth, and call-
ing her Arminian whore, the usual slang of the mob against ladies
whom they mean to insult. These were probably the motives
inducing her to go to France. On her way she stopped some days
at Antwerp, with the prince, her son. Uitenbogard, who resided
there at that time, waited upon them, and was received with the
utmost kindness by them both, especially by the princess, who showed
her affection to him by her tears. With much piety she exhorted
him to patience and perseverance, thanking him for the good instruc-
tions she had received from him when under his ministry, and
offering him all civility and favour should he come to France.

The princess had been only a few months in France when she was
overtaken by her last illness, at Fontainebleau. On her death-bed
she was visited by Marie de Medicis, the queen-mother, who hap-
pened at that time to be at Fontainebleau, and by several princesses.
Stephen de Courcelles, minister of the reformed church in that place, 8
frequently conversed and prayed with her. On one occasion John

1 Brandt, vol. iv., p. 198. Uitenbogard returned from France to Holland in 1626,
when he was allowed to live in peace ; and he died at the Hague, on the 14th of Sep-
tember, 1644, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. Le Clerc, torn, ii., pp. 109, 232.

2 There were only a few reformed families in Fontainebleau ; but de Courcelles had
a numerous auditory when the court came there, his ministry being attended by the
reformed lords who followed the court, and others brought thither by business. De

700

Ladies of the Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

Armand du Plessis, at that time Bishop of Lupon, and afterwards
Cardinal Duke de Richelieu, who figured so conspicuously during the
reign of Louis XIII. of France, went to see her by order of Marie de
Medicis, in whose establishment he held the office of almoner or
chaplain. As he entered the chamber of the princess, observing de
Courcelles at one side of her bed, and a zealous Protestant lady
at the other, the bishop said to her, " Madame, prenez garde a votre
ame, car vous avez deux demons a vos cotez " " Madam, take care of
your soul, for you have two evil spirits beside you ;" and professing

Death-bed of the Princess of Orange.

a deep interest in her eternal happiness, lie exhorted her to renounce
her Protestant principles and to re-enter the Romish Church, out of
which, he assured her, there is no salvation. He was an insinuating
man ; but the daughter of Admiral Colligny, and the widow of Wil-
liam, Prince of Orange, had met with too much in her chequered
and tried life to convince her of what Popery really is, to be per-
suaded to die in the communion of the Popish Church. She had

Courcelles was afterwards professor of divinity to the Remonstrants at Amsterdam.
He was the grand paternal uncle of Jean Le Clerc, the author of Histoire des Pro-
vinces Unies des Pays-Bus.

NETHERLANDS.] Louise de Colligny. 701

long since come to a decision on the great questions which divided
Popery and the Reformation. Her confidence in the truth of the
reformed principles, unshaken in the prospect of death, was the
only foundation of her hope in looking to another world. She there-
fore wished now to be spared the intrusion of admonitions from
which she expected neither security nor peace in death. De Cour-
celles addressed her in a different strain from that of the Popish
prelate. He spoke to her of the Saviour, of the all-sufficiency of his
divine righteousness, of the cordial welcome given to all to trust in
this righteousness, of the exceeding great and precious promises by
which God engages to be present with his people, to support and
comfort them in the hour of death. On these and kindred topics
he dwelt, and she listened to his words like one who felt that these
were the truths which, apprehended by a living faith, dissipate all
anxiety, and afford a well-grounded hope of eternal life. She died on
the 9th of October, 1620, in the sixty-seventh year of her age. 1

The body of the princess was embalmed and carried to the Hague,
whence it was conducted to Delft, and interred on the 24th of May,
the following year, in the magnificent tomb which had been erected
in honour of the prince. This lady was not without enemies ; but
the candid of all parties, and especially such as best knew her, have
united in paying a tribute of respect to her virtue and piety. The
ambassador De Boissise speaks of her as "an incomparable princess,
and one who very much loved both France and the United Provinces."
Baudart, a strong Contra-Eemonstraut. testifies "that her piety, good
nature, and civility, together with her other virtues, were such that
all who knew her were compelled to love and honour her." Philip
Duplessis Mornay, in a letter which he wrote to the ambassador
Buzenval, says "that he could never speak to her, nor concerning
her, without being struck to the heart by the remembrance of her
father and of her husband, to whom France, in his estimation, lay
under the deepest debt of gratitude; but that he was yet more parti-

1 Brandt, vol. iv., pp. 198, 199 Le Clerc, torn, ii., pp. 68, 69.

702 Ladies of tJie Reformation. [NETHERLANDS.

cularly affected with the observation of her own virtues, which were
so great that that wretched age was unworthy of her." 1 " This lady,"
says Maurier, " had very excellent virtues, without having the least
mixture of any weakness incident to her sex, through the course of
her whole life, though it was very long. . . . She gained every
body's heart and affection by her way of conversation, which was
easy, graceful ; and had a universal respect, as well for her true sense
as her extraordinary good nature. . . . There never was one of a
more noble soul, or a truer lover of justice than this princess." In
testimony of her zeal for the advancement of the cause of Christ in
the world, she adopted for her motto, "Adveniat regnum tuum"
" Thy kingdom come ;" a motto inscribed on some of her portraits.

Louise de Colligny had no children by her first husband. By her
second she had only one child, the illustrious Frederick Henry,
Prince of Orange. He was famous as a military leader, and was
held in such high esteem by the army, that he was called "the
father of the soldiers." By his wife, Amelia de Solrnes, he had one
son, William, born in 1626, and four daughters. His son William
married the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of Charles I., King of
Great Britain, and by her he had Prince William Henry of Nassau,
who, upon the expulsion of James II., ascended the British throne,
under the title of William III. Thus Louise de Colligny was the
great-grandmother of William, Prince of Orange, who delivered
Britain and Ireland from tyranny and Popery at the memorable
revolution. 2

Brandt, vol. iv., p. 199. * Maurier, pp. 134, 177, 178, 200.

APPENDIX.

No. L (p. 111.)
Anne Boleyn's Letter to Henry VIII., from the Tower.

"SiE, Your grace's displeasure and my imprisonment, are things so strange
unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant.
Whereas you send unto me (willing me to confess a truth, and so to obtain
your favour) by such, and whom you know to be mine ancient professed
enemy, I no sooner received this message by him 1 than I rightly conceived
your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure
my safety, I shall, with all willingness and duty, perform your command.

"But let not your grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be brought
to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought ever proceeded. And,
to speak a truth, never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all
true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn, with which name
and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your grace's
pleasure had so been pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget
myself in my exaltation or received queenship, but that I always looked for
such an alteration as now I find ; for the ground of my preferment being on
no surer foundation than your grace's fancy, the least alteration was fit and
sufficient (I know) to draw that fancy to some other subject. You have
chosen me from a low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond
my desert or desire. If, then, you found me worthy of such honour, good
your grace, let not any light fancy, or bad counsel of my enemies, withdraw
your princely favour from me ; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain of
a disloyal heart towards your good grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most
dutiful wife, and the infant princess, your daughter. Try me, good king,
but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my
accusers and judges ; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall

1 Probably the Duke of Norfolk, or Sir William Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the house-
hold.

704

Appendix.

fear no open shame. Then shall you see either mine innocency cleared,
your suspicion and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world
stopped, or my gviilt openly declared. So that whatsoever God or you may
determine of, your grace may be freed from an open censure ; and mine
offence being so lawfully proved, your grace is at liberty, both before God
and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me as an unfaithful
wife, but to follow your affection, already settled on that party for whose
sake I am now as I am, whose name I could some good while since have
pointed unto, your grace not being ignorant of my suspicion therein.

"But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death,
but an infamous slander, must bring you the enjoying of your desired hap-
piness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and
likewise my enemies, the instruments thereof; and that He will not call
you to a strait account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at His
general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and
in whose just judgment, I doubt not, whatsoever the world may think of me,
mine innocency shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared. My last
and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your
grace's displeasure ; and that it may not touch the innocent souls of these
poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment
for my sake. If I have ever found favour in your sight if ever the name
of Anne Boleyn have been pleasing in your ears then let me obtain this
request ; and so I will leave to trouble your grace any farther. With mine
earnest prayer to the Trinity, to have your grace in His good keeping, and
to direct you in all your actions, from my doleful prison in the Tower, the
6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife, " ANN BDLEN."'

No. II. (p. 134.)
Popish Plots against Anne Boleyn.

WTATT, in his Memoirs of Queen Anne Boleyn, not only ascribes her down-
fall to the plots of her Popish enemies in England, who inspired Henry's
mind with jealousy by slanderous accusations against her, but he asserts that
these Popish evil instruments were in league with Popish emissaries abroad,
and even with the Pope himself. "She waxing great again," says he, "and
not so fit for dalliance, the time was taken to steal the king's affections from

1 The original of this beautiful letter is not now known to exist ; but there is no reason
to doubt its authenticity. "The copy of it," says Ellis, "preserved among Lord Crom-
well's papers, is certainly in the handwriting of the time of Henry VIII." Original Let-
ters, first series, vol. ii., p. 53.

Appendix. 705

her when most of all she was to have been cherished Having

thus so many, so great factions at home and abroad set loose by the distorned
favour of the king, and so few to show themselves for her, what could be
the issue ! What was otherlike but that all these gusts lighting on her at
once should prevail to overthrow her, and with her those that stood under

her fall? Her very accusations speak and even plead for her;

all of them, so far as I can find, carrying in themselves open proof to all
men's consciences of mere matter of quarrel, and indeed of a very prepara-
tion to some hoped alteration ; the most and chief of them showing to have
come from Eome, that Popish forge of cunning and treachery, as Petrarch
long since termed it :

'Nest of treasons, in which is hatch'd and bred
What ill this day the world doth overspread.' "

That Anne was the object of the intensest hatred of the Pope, as she was
of the whole Papal hierarchy, is undoubted. Her marriage with Henry
having occasioned the separation of this kingdom from the Roman see ; her
support of the Reformed party ; her protection of the importers and circula-
tors of the English Bible ; her promotion of Shaxton and Latimer, two in-
dividuals particularly obnoxious to the Popish party, to bishoprics made
vacant by the deprivation of two Italian cardinals ; in short, all the steps
taken in opposition to the Papacy in England, from the time of her union
with Henry ; these were the unpardonable sins which called forth against
her Rome's deepest enmity. How far the Pope and the Papists abroad were
concerned in the plot for her overthrow, it may be impossible now to ascer-
tain, but that they were early in the secret is placed beyond all doubt, from
manuscript documents of indisputable authority still in existence.

In a despatch to Henry, dated Rome, 27th May, 1536, Sir Gregory
Cassalis says, " Ten days have elapsed since I went to the Pope, and nar-
rated to him the tidings that the queen had been thrown into prison, with
her relations, for concurring in her adultery. He then said that he had been
beseeching God to enlighten the mind of your majesty with his own light in
this affair; that indeed he always had something of this sort in his eye,
because he regarded your majesty as adorned with such virtues, and as having
merited so well for your services towards Christendom, that God would not
desert you, but would rather exalt your mind by the grace of his illumina-
tion, that in times when certainly it is especially necessary, your majesty,
like as in other respects you have acted, may perform an excellent work for
Christendom, being released from a marriage which was truly too unequal
for you." 1 From this report, given by Cassalis of his interview with the

1 Cotton MS. Vitellius, B. xiv., folio, pp. 215-218, in British Museum. -Turner's Hi*t.
of Henry VIII., p. 478.

706 Appendix.

Pope, it is evident 1, That the Pope knew the conspiracy formed against
Anne previously to his being told of her imprisonment by Cassalis ; for, on
hearing Cassalis' communication, he says that he had been beseeching God
to enlighten Henry's mind on that matter. 2, That he had been long
thinking of a similar plan for the destruction of Anne; and contemplat-
ing her destruction as an event very likely to be realized. And, 8, That
he saw with undoubted certainty how her trial would terminate. He
seems almost ambitious of claiming the merit of originating the plot.
But whether it originated with him or no, it is certain that the evil instru-
ments engaged in it put themselves at an early period in communication
with him.

The precise date of his becoming acquainted with it is uncertain. From
a letter written by Cassalis to Henry, dated Rome, February 20, 1535-6,
Anderson, in his Annals of the English Bible, concludes that the Pope and
his agents at Rome were in the secret of the conspiracy at that period, when
Anne had not yet recovered from a premature and dangerous childbirth. 1
The letter, which is in the British Museum,* is so mutilated by fire that it
is difficult, if not impossible, now to determine with perfect certainty the
precise drift of the portion of it referring to the subject in hand ; but the
conclusion is probably correct. From what remains of the letter it appears
that, even when entire, there was in it more than met the eye somewhat
of mysterious obscurity. It relates to some point, evidently a matrimonial
one, which was likely to bring about a better understanding between the
Pope and the king ; and the Pope, who in great wrath had so recently ful-
minated a sentence of excommunication against him for marrying Anne, is
exceedingly anxious to gratify the monarch's wishes as to the point involved.
"He [the Pope] told me," says Cassalis, "that he would ask the advice of
divers learned men of the said cause, meaning those whom I write of. I
speaking generally told him only that if he shall so do, he shall do as it
becometh a good bishop to do, and consult for his wealth and the profit of
this church. I letted not to speak and show your majesty's puissance, force,
and strength, and the stability of your own matters and of your friends.
And in the said matter I intend to speak and answer none other thing until
such time as I shall have answer from your majesty." If this letter does
refer to the contemplated repudiation of Anne, then the Pope knew all about
it when yet it was a secret in London. His agents, delighted with it them-
selves, and knowing that it would equally delight him, were in haste to
communicate to him the joyful tidings, and he hallooed and cheered them
on to violence and blood. Gardiner, who was then in France, and who
maintained correspondence both with England and with Italy, would, in

' Vol. i., p. 480. 2 Cotton MS. Vitellitis, B. xir., folio, p. 162.

Appendix. 707

all probability, communicate the information to the Papal court. He had
been abundantly active in endeavouring to obtain for Henry a divorce from
Katherine of Aragon, and had thus promoted the elevation of Anne ; but
from his inveterate animosity against the Eeformers, he became the mortal
enemy of Anne because she supported them ; and into any scheme for com-
passing her ruin he would enter with all his heart and soul.

Another circumstance, creating suspicion that her conspirators at home
were in communication with her enemies abroad, is that Richard Pate, the
English ambassador at the court of Charles V., is writing so early as the
12th of April to the king, in ciphers, about legitimating the Princess Mary,
and enforcing the subject with great earnestness. 1 But was the ambassador
likely to have ventured to press the legitimating of that princess on the
attention of such a man as Henry, had not the subject been included in his
embassy ? And may it not reasonably be questioned whether the mysterious
ciphers had not some connection with the evil meditated against Anne and
her daughter?

While Popish conspirators combined with Henry in the destruction of
Anne, the two parties, equally anxious for her death, performed each its own
work, and were each actuated by its own motives. The Papists, by exciting
Henry's jealousy and framing accusations, placed the arrow in the bow.
He pulled the string. Their object was the removal of a woman whose
influence, so far as it went, had been exerted on the side of the reforming
party. His object was to get quit of her, in order to substitute in her place
another to whom his affections were now transferred.

The Pope luxuriated in the great advantages he anticipated to the Romish
Church from her ruin. He flattered himself that, were she out of the way, a
very serious obstacle to the return of Henry and of England to the commu-
nion of the Popish Church would be removed ; and, with the artful blandish-
ments of a thorough- bred parasite, he now made eager advances to the schis-
matical monarch. This we learn from Cassalis' despatch to Henry of the
27th May, in which, after the passage already quoted, he observes that the
Pope praised his majesty's liberality and magnanimity in having often shown
himself ready to supply the church with sums of money, together with all as-
sistance and counsel, and in having valiantly defended her doctrine against
the furious attacks of Luther. "The Pope," he adds, "said that the Roman
Church, were your majesty joined to it, would, without doubt, have so much
authority as to be able to command at once the emperor and the King of
France, and to compel both to peace, the honour of which is to be shared
with your majesty by no one ; both because it is evident that, though he
[the Pope] had endeavoured by every means to accomplish this, he had

1 Cotton MS. Vitellius, B. xiv., folio, p. 177, in British Jlnsenm.

708 Appendix.

effected nothing; and because it is manifest that your majesty, if you
have with you the Roman pontiff, might authoritatively command the other
princes as you pleased. He would pledge himself to obey you in this busi-
ness. He desired nothing but peace ; nor was he addicted to factions, nor
disposed to strive covetously to increase his fortune in immense sums, or to
extend the boundaries of the Pontificate. Your majesty ought not to regard
him with angry, but rather with friendly feelings ; for he had always most
earnestly sought to gratify you in your affair, and had never wished to
damage it, having given many tokens of love and attention in the cause of
your marriage, and done all things in his power for you in the consistories
with Clement VII., both publicly and privately, and at Bologna with the
emperor. This duty he had done from his heart, considering that God
would call him to account for it. Nor did he wish to offend your majesty
in anything, although he understood something was daily doing in England
against the apostolic see. " The Pope then apologized for having made John
Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, ' a cardinal ; acknowledged that he had erred
in that step ; and that in what followed, referring to the excommunication
pronounced upon Henry, he had acted at solicitations on all sides urging
him to avenge the death of the cardinal, not from his own inclination, which
had not gone along with it. After other intimations equally humble, obse-
quious, and wheedling, he was asked by Cassalis whether he wished these
sentiments to be reported to the king. "You may say," said the Pope,
after a deliberative pause, "that you had found the pontiff in such a good
disposition, that his majesty might without doubt be assured of everything
concerning himself."

How different the language of his holiness now from what it was in
August, 1535, when he issued his famous bull of excommunication against
Henry! Then, raging and foaming like a demoniac, he could hardly find
in the Papal vocabulary, so exuberant in terms of opprobrium and execra-
tion, words adequate to express his fell spirit of revenge against the repro-
bated monarch. But now, when the prospect of Anne Boleyn's destruction
has awakened in his breast bright anticipations as to his returning ascendency
in England, to regain the favour of Henry he becomes all at once tamed into
submission, is now as fawning as before he was insolent, and as lavish of
his flattery as formerly of his curses. Nor does he conceal that the cause of

1 Fisher, when nearly eighty years of age, had been thrown into prison for denying
Henry's ecclesiastical supremacy. The Pope, apprised of his situation, sent him a car-
dinal's hat, foolishly intended, perhaps, to express his contempt of Henry, and to excite
the popular sympathy in behalf of the prelate. This irritated the monarch, and hastened
the destruction of Fisher, who was tried on the 17th of June, 1535, and beheaded on the
22d of that month. See an account of his trial and death in Arcluzologia, vol. xxv.,
pp. 61-69.

Appendix. 709

this sudden, this marvellous change, was because he was dreaming of now
recovering his lost supremacy in England.

The hopes of the Pope were happily doomed to disappointment. Henry
made no advances for a reconciliation with his holiness, and the ecclesiasti-
cal condition of England remained unchanged. Various causes combined to
produce this result. In the first place, the new queen, like her predecessor,
was favourable to the Reformation. Had Henry's affections and hand been
disengaged when he received Cassalis' despatch, its artfully earnest and
submissive tone would very likely have produced a more powerful impression
on his mind. But long before this communication had reached him, and
even before it was written, he had married Jane Seymour, and her heretical
leanings interposed a formidable barrier to renewed friendship with Rome.
Secondly, he was now reaping the benefit of the confiscated wealth of the
monasteries, and had the agreeable prospect of still farther augmenting his
revenue from the same source. Add to this that he had now lost his educa-
tional veneration for the Roman see ; and from the growing obstinacy of his
character, he was not to be stayed in any course which self-interest, passion,
or caprice might dictate, by the cajolery of the Vatican or by its direst
anathemas. Under the joint operation of these influences, in which we
cannot fail to mark the merciful hand of Providence in continuing to over-
rule for good the evil passions of the monarch, England escaped the restora-
tion of Papal despotism. Finding that Henry was not to be lured back into
the arms of the Papacy, and that it was not to derive the least advantage
from the death of Anne Boleyn, his holiness quickly altered his tone and
conduct towards the intractable monarch, changing his praises into vitupera-
tion, and his blessings into curses.

No. III. (p. 302.)

Lady Jane Grey's Letter to Tier Father, written Three Days before her
Execution.

"FATHEB, Although it hath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by
whom my life should rather have been lengthened, yet can I so patiently
take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woful days
than if all the world had been given into my possession, with life lengthened
at my own will. And, albeit I am well assured of your impatient dolours,
redoubled many ways, both in bewailing your own woe, and especially, as
I am informed, my woful estate; yet, my dear father (if I may, without
offence, rejoice in my own mishaps), meseems in this I may account myself

710 Appendix.

blessed, that, washing my hands with the innocency of my fact, my guiltless
blood may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent ! And though I must
needs acknowledge that, being constrained, and, as you know well enough,
continually assayed, in taking [the royal authority] upon me, I seemed to
consent, and therein grievously offended the queen and her laws ; yet do I
assuredly trust, that this my offence towards God is so much the less, in
that, being in so royal estate as I was, my enforced honour never blended
with mine innocent heart. 1 And thus, good father, I have opened unto you
the state wherein I presently stand. My death at hand, although to you,
perhaps, it may seem right woful, yet to me there is nothing that can be
more welcome, than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne
of all joy and pleasure, with Christ our Saviour, in whose steadfast faith (if
it may be lawful for the daughter so to write to the father) may the Lord,
that hath hitherto strengthened you, so continue to keep you, that at the
last we may meet in heaven with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
I am, your obedient daughter till death, ' JANH DUDLEY." 2

No. IV. (p. 305.)

Lady Jane Grey's Letter to her Sister, Lady Katharine, written on the Even-
ing before her Execution, in the end of the Greek New Testament which she
sent to Lady Katharine.

"I HAVE here sent you, my dear sister Katharine, a book, which, although
it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, or the curious embroidery of the
artfulest needles, yet inwardly is more worth than all the precious mines
which the vast world can boast of. It is the book, my only best and best
beloved sister, of the law of the Lord; it is the testament and last will which
he bequeathed unto us wretches and wretched sinners, which shall lead you
to the path of eternal joy. And if you with a good mind read it, and with
an earnest desire follow it, no doubt it shall 'bring you to an immortal and
everlasting life. It will teach you to live and learn you to die; it shall win
you more, and endow you with greater felicity, than you should have gained
by the possession of our woful father's lands; for as, if God had prospered

1 This, in addition to what is stated in her letter to Queen Mary, and in her dying
speech, affords a complete refutation of Dr. Lingard's assertion, that Lady Jane's "con-
tempt of the splendour of royalty, and her reluctant submission to the commands of her
parents," are to be considered as the fictions of historians.

2 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi., p. 417. Nicolas's Literary Remains of Lady Jane
Grey.

Appendix. 711

him, you should have inherited his honours and manors, so if you apply
diligently to this book, seeking to direct your life according to the rule of
the same, you shall be an inheritor of such riches as neither the covetous
ehall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, neither yet the moths
coiTupt. Desire, with David, my best sister, to understand the law of the
Lord your God; live still to die, that you by death may purchase eternal
life, and trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life ;
for unto God, when he calleth, all hours, times, and seasons are alike, and
Llessed are they whose lamps are furnished when he cometh, for as soon
will the Lord be glorified in the young as in the old.

"My good sister, once more again let me entreat thee to learn to die;
deny the world, defy the devil, and despise the flesh, and delight yourself
only in the Lord; be penitent for your sins, and yet despair not; be strong
in faith, yet presume not; and desire, with St. Paul, to be dissolved and to
be with Christ, with whom even in death there is life

"Be like the good servant, and even at midnight be waking, lest, when
death cometh and stealeth upon you like a thief in the night, you be, with
the servants of darkness, found sleeping; and lest, for lack of oil, you be
found like the five foolish virgins, or like him that had not on the wedding
garment, and then you be cast into darkness or banished from the marriage.
Rejoice in Christ, as I trust you do; and, seeing you have the name of a
Christian, as near as you can, follow the steps, and be a true imitator of
your Master, Christ Jesus, and take up your cross, lay your sins on his
back, and always embrace him.

"Now, as touching my death, rejoice, as I do, my dearest sister, that I
shall be delivered of this corruption, and put on incorruption; for I am
assured that I shall, for losing of a mortal life, win one that is immortal,
joyful, and everlasting; the which I pray God grant you in his most blessed
hour, and send you his all-saving grace to live in his fear, and to die in the
true Christian faith, from which, in God's name, I exhort you that you never
swerve, neither for hope of life nor fear of death; for if you will deny his
truth to give length to a weary and corrupt breath, God himself will deny
you, and by vengeance make short what you, by your soul's loss, would pro-
long; but if you will cleave to him he will stretch forth your days to an
uncircumscribed comfort, and to his own glory; to the which glory God
bring me now, and you hereafter, when it shall please him to call you. Fare-
well, once again, my beloved sister, and put your only trust in God, who
only must help you. Amen. Your loving sister, " JANE DUDLET." '

1 Foxe's Act* and Monument, vol. vi., p. 422.-Nicola8'8 Literary Remain* of Lady Jan*
Grey.

712 Appendix.

No. V. ( P . 313.)
Notice of Lady Katharine Grey, sister o/ Lady Jane Grey.

LADY KATHARINE GREY, after the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the
throne, became one of her majesty's maids of honour. It was while she was
residing in the court that a secret marriage took place between her and the
Earl of Hertford. The queen having gone one morning to Eltham to hunt,
Lady Katharine, accompanied by Lady Jane Seymour, the Earl of Hert-
ford's sister, who was also one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, according to
previous concert, left the palace at Westminster by a private door, and pro-
ceeded by the sands to the earl's house in Chanon Row. Lady Jane then
went for an ecclesiastic, and the parties were married; after which the two
ladies returned to the palace, and were in time for dinner. Having con-
summated his marriage, Lord Hertford, with the queen's permission,
travelled into France. It being rumoured in course of time that Lady
Katharine was pregnant, the queen was greatly indignant. To soften her
majesty's displeasure, Lady Katharine revealed that she had been married;
but Elizabeth, who was inexorable, committed her prisoner to the Tower,
where she was afterwards delivered of a son. Lord Hertford was summoned
home to answer for his misconduct, and having, in like manner, acknow-
ledged the marriage, he too was committed prisoner to the Tower. A com-
mission, of which Archbishop Parker and Bishop Grindal were at the head,
having been appointed to investigate the cause, and to decide upon it without
appeal, the parties being unable to produce witnesses in attestation of the
marriage within the time prescribed, a definite sentence was pronounced, to
the effect that their intercourse had been criminal, that their offspring was
illegitimate, and that their imprisonment should be continued during the
queen's pleasure.

By bribing the keepers, the Earl of Hertford obtained access to Lady
Katharine, and the consequence was that she was brought into the same
interesting situation as before. This increased Elizabeth's irritation against
the parties ; and the Earl of Hertford being brought before the Star Chamber
under a threefold charge that he had deflowered a virgin of the blood-royal,
broken prison, and repeated his vicious act was fined 5000 for each of
these imputed offences, or 15,000 in all, and kept prisoner for a period of
nine years.

Lady Katharine's friends endeavoured, by repeated letters to Sir William
Cecil, to mitigate the queen's resentment. She herself wrote more than once
to Cecil, beseeching his friendly interposition, and also sent a petition to the
queen, acknowledging her fault in matching without her majesty's consent, and

Appendix. 713

praying for her majesty's forgiveness. But all was in vain. Under the Life
of Queen Elizabeth (p. 436) we have attributed the barbarity exercised towards
this young lady to that queen's jealousy of all who, being nearly related to
the throne, had a chance of one day succeeding her. * Another cause pro-
bably combined with this. Having, for reasons which historians can only
conjecture, doomed herself to a single life, she seems to have envied the mar-
ried their connubial happiness, and she interdicted marriage when she had
the power, and could do so under a plausible pretext. This cruel treatment
greatly impaired Lady Katharine's health, drew many bitter tears from her
eyes, and, as she expressed herself, made her " rather wish of God shortly to
be buried in the faith and fear of him, than in this continual agony to live."
" I never came to her," said her uncle, Lord John Grey, in a letter to Cecil,
"but I found her either weeping, or else saw by her face she had wept."

She was released from her sufferings by death, in the beginning of the year
1567. A record of "The Manner of her Departing" has been preserved,
which exhibits in a very interesting light the pious and amiable spirit of this
ill-treated lady. "All the night she continued in prayer, saying of psalms,
and hearing them read of others, sometimes saying them after others; and
as soon as one psalm was done she would call for another to be said. Divers
times she would rehearse the prayers appointed for the visitation of the sick,
and five or six times the same night she said the prayers appointed to be said
at the hours of death; and when she was comforted by those that were about
her, saying, ' Madam, be of good comfort, with God's help you shall live and
do well many years,' she would answer, ' No, no; no life in this world, but in
the world to come I hope to live for ever; for here is nothing but care and
misery, and there is life everlasting.' . . . Then said the Lady Hopton
unto her, ' Madam, be of good comfort, for, with God's favour, you shall live
and escape this; for Mrs. Cousen saith, you have escaped many dangers,
when you were as like to die as you be now.' ' No, no, my lady; my time is
come, and it is not God's will that I should live any longer, and His will be
done, and not mine;' then looking upon those that were about her [she added],
'As I am, so shall you be; behold the picture of yourselves.' About six or
seven of the clock in the morning, she desired those that were about her to
cause Sir Owen Hopton [lieutenant of the Tower] to come unto her ; and
when he came he said unto her, ' Good madam, how do you,' and she said,

1 Lady Katharine was, in point of family proximity to the English throne, the third
princess of the blood-royal. After Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots was nearest heir.
Failing her issue, the next heir was Margaret Douglas (wife of Matthew Stuart, fourth
Earl of Lennox), only daughter of Archibald, seventh Earl of Angus, by Margaret, eldest
daughter of Henry VII. of England, and sister of Henry VIII. Failing her issue, Lady
Katharine Grey came next, as being the descendant of Henry VII., by his second daugh-
ter, Mary.

714 Appendix.

' Even now going to God, Sir Owen, even as fast as I can: and I pray you
and the rest that be about me to bear witness with me that I die a true
Christian, and that I believe to be saved by the death of Christ, and that I am
one that He hath shed bis most precious blood for; and I ask God and all the
world forgiveness, and I forgive all the world.' " Having besought Sir Owen
Hopton to promise to request the queen with his own mouth to forgive her
for having married without her majesty's knowledge, to be kind to her
children, and to set her husband, the Earl of Hertford, at liberty, "then
she said unto Sir Owen, ' I shall farther desire you to deliver from me
certain commendations and tokens unto my lord;' and calling unto her
woman, she said, ' Give me the box wherein my wedding ring is,' and when
she had it she opened it, and took out a ring with a pointed diamond in it,
and said, ' Here, Sir Owen, deliver this unto my lord; this is the ring that I
received of him when I gave myself unto him, and gave him my faith.'
'What say you, madam,' said Sir Owen, 'was this your wedding ring?'
' No, Sir Owen,' she said, ' this was the ring of my assurance unto my lord,
and there is my wedding ring,' taking another ring all of gold out of the
box, saying, ' Deliver this also unto my lord, 1 and pray him, even as I have
been to him, as I take God to witness I have been, a true and a faithful
wife, that he would be a loving and a natural father unto my children, unto
whom I give the same blessing that God gave unto Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.' And then took she out another ring with a death's head, and said,
' This shall be the last token unto my lord that ever I shall send him; it is
the picture of myself.' The words about the death's head were these, ' While
Ilyve yours;' and so, looking down upon her hands, and perceiving the nails
to look purple, [she] said, ' Lo, here he is come;' and then, as it were, with a
joyful countenance she said, 'Welcome death,' and embracing herself with
her arms, and lifting up her eyes and hands unto heaven, knocking her hands
upon her breast, she brake forth and said, '0 Lord! for thy manifold
mercies, blot out of thy book all mine offences ! ' whereby Sir Owen perceiv-
ing her to draw towards her end, said to Mr. Bockeham, 'Were it not
best to send to the church that the bell 2 may be rung,' and she herself hear-
ing him [said], 'Good Sir Owen, let it be so.' Then immediately perceiving

1 This ring had been exhibited by Lady Katharine to the Commission of Inquiry. It
consisted of five links, the four inner ones containing the following lines, of the Earl's
composition :

" As circles five by art compact shewe but one ring in sight,
So trust uniteth faithfull nundes with knott of secret might,
Whose force to breake but greedie Death noe wight possesseth power,
As time and sequels well shall prove. My ringe can say no more."

2 " The Passing Bell. It was rung at the passing from life to death, with the intention
that those who heard it should pray for the person dying."

Appendix. 715

her end to be near, she entered into prayer, and said, Lord ! into thy
hands I commend my soul, Lord Jesus receive my spirit,' and so putting
down her eyes with her own hands, she yielded unto God her meek spirit,
at nine of the clock in the morning, the 27th of January, 1567-"

Lady Katharine had to the Earl of Hertford three sons, Edward, who
died young; Edward, Lord Beauchamp; and Thomas. "Portraits of Lady
Katharine holding her infant son, Edward, Lord Beauchamp, in her arms,
are preserved both at Alnwick and at Warwick castles; that at the former
by Hans Holbein."

The validity of the marriage between Lady Katharine and the Earl of
Hertford was not established till 1606, when, upon its being tried by a jury
at common law, the ecclesiastic who had united them being produced, and his
testimony to the fact being corroborated by other circumstances, the marriage
was pronounced good. '

No. VI. (p. 464.)

Notice of Ladies Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, Daughters of Edward
Seymour, Duke of Somerset.

EDWARD SEYMOUK, Duke of Somerset, had by his second wife, Anne,
daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope, of Sudbury, in Suffolk, and of Hampton,
in Nottinghamshire, six daughters, Anne, Margaret, Jane, Mary, Katharine,
and Elizabeth.

The three first, to whom we now limit our attention, were noted for their
scholarship in their day. They took their place in the ranks of noble authors
by the publication of a Latin poem of a hundred and four distichs, which
they composed upon the death of Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre,
who died on December 21, 1549; and which they dedicated to Margaret of
Valois, Duchess of Berri, sister of Henry II. This poem, or elegy, com-
posed by ladies so young and in high station, attracted attention, and acquired
them no inconsiderable reputation among the learned, who pronounced them
not less illustrious for the splendour of their genius than for that of their
birth. It was so admired, particularly in France, where Margaret, the sub-
ject of it, was extremely popular, that it was immediately translated into
Greek, French, and Italian, by the most distinguished wits of the French
court. The whole, with other verses upon the death of Margaret subjoined,

' Camden'8 Elizabeth, book i., pp. 84, 85.-Collins' 8 Peerage of England, Brydges'8 dit.,
vol. i., p. 173. Ellis's Original Letters, second series, vol. ii., pp. 272-290.

716 Appendix.

and preceded by addresses eulogistic of the fair authoresses, was printed at
Paris, in 1551, under the title, Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois, Royne
de Navarre. The book is now rarely to be met with. Nicholas de Her-
berai, Sieur des Essars, in a preliminary epistle, addressed to the ladies, by
a piece of poetic gallantry, supposes them dead, and proposes the following
epitaph to be inscribed on their tomb : "Here lies the dust of Anne, Mar-
garet, and Jane Seymour, the light and glory of the ladies of England, in
whom were united the beauty of Helen, the modesty of Thiroi, the genius of
Socrates, the language of Homer, and the elegant pen of Crane, their pre-
ceptor." Epitaphs on the great are generally little else than effusions of
extravagant and fulsome flattery. But the elegy of these ladies on the death
of the Queen of Navarre is free from this blemish, abounding more in pious
reflections than in praises of the deceased queen, from which Ronsard has
styled it a "Christian song," and Richelet, his commentator, "Christian
distichs."

Anne was married first, 3d June, 1550, to John Dudley, Lord Lisle, af-
terwards Earl of Warwick, eldest son and heir of John, Earl of Warwick,
who subsequently became Duke of Northumberland; and, secondly, to Sir
Edward Unton, of Wadley in Farringdon, in Berks, Knight of the Bath.
Margaret died unmarried. Jane, who was one of Queen Elizabeth's maids
of honour, also died unmarried, March 19, 1560, at the early age of nine-
teen, and was buried in St. Edmund's chapel, Westminster Abbey, where
a .small but neat monument, with a suitable inscription, was erected to her
memory by her brother Edward, Earl of Hertford. 1

No. VII. (p. 698.)

Maria van Reigersberg, Wife of Hugo Grotius. Manner in which she
liberated Grotius from Prison.

MES. GBOTIDS desired from the first to share her husband's imprisonment.
This permission she obtained with much difficulty ; and by her presence, for-
titude, and attentions, she much alleviated the rigour of his sufferings, as he
pathetically commemorates in one of his Latin poems. She was not, like
him, kept under close confinement, but was permitted to go out occasionally
to purchase necessaries, and to procure from his friends loans of books to
assist him in his learned studies ; for while a prisoner in the castle of Louve-

'Bayle's Dictionary, art. Seymour. Ballard's Learned Ladies, pp. 138-143. Crull'a
Antiquities of Wettmintter Abbey, p. 41.

Appendix. 717

stein he composed commentaries upon the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and the beginning of John, besides translating into Latin verse various pas-
sages from the Greek poets, and performing other literary labours. Cargoes
of books were thus brought to the prison, and sent away after he had made
use of them. At first the chests containing them were opened and searched;
but as they were found to contain nothing but books and linen, the keeper
of the castle and the guards at last dispensed with this precaution. This
suggested to Mrs. Grotius the idea of liberating her husband by inclosing
him in one of these book-chests. Having communicated to him the idea,
and having, after he had made repeated trials, ascertained that he could
remain confined for a considerable time in a chest of scarcely four feet in
length, she addressed herself to the wife of the lieutenant of the castle,
during the absence of the lieutenant, who had gone to Huesse, pretending
that, from her anxiety to prevent Mr. Grotius from injuring his health by
hard study, she wished to send off a large chest loaded with books. The
lieutenant's wife, whose favour she had previously conciliated by small
presents, at once granted her the desired permission. Grotius having
secreted himself in the chest, his wife drew the curtains close around his
prison-bed, and placed his clothes on a chair, to convey the impression that
he was confined to bed by illness, and bade the soldiers carry away the chest.
From the unusual weight of the chest, one of them, on lifting it, exclaimed,
"How comes it so heavy? Is there an Arminian in it?" "No," replied
Mrs. Grotius, not in the least disconcerted, "only Arminian books." The
governor's wife, who did not suspect any strategem, allowed the precious
cargo to be carried out of the castle without inspection. This was on the
22d of March, 1621. A faithful maid-servant, named Elsje van Houwenin-
gen, to whom Mrs. Grotius had imparted the secret, took charge of the chest,
and succeeded in getting it safely conveyed in a boat to Gorcum. On its
landing at that place there was, however, some danger of discovery. The
skipper and his son having been prevailed upon, at the request of Elsje,
though with some difficulty, to carry the chest from the shore to the house
she named, instead of drawing it on a sledge, the son observed to the father
that there was something alive in it. " Do you hear that ? " said the skipper
to Elsje. "Yes," she smartly replied, "books have life and spirit too."
So the idea of the chest's containing anything alive was laughed at, and it
was brought unopened to the house of a friend, a flax merchant, Abraham
Datselaer, where Grotius quitted his place of concealment. To elude detec-
tion in his subsequent movements, he dressed himself in the garb of a mason ;
and carrying with him a rule, trowel, and other implements of the trade,
he passed through the market-place, and, taking boat, was transported with-
out hindrance to Antwerp, whence he proceeded to France. To afford him
time to escape, his wife kept up the deception that he was confined to bed

718 Appendix.

from ill-health, till, having received the happy tidings that he had got safely
beyond the reach of his persecutors, she explained what had taken place.
The officer of the castle, enraged at the deception practised upon him, kept
her in close custody for a fortnight. But having presented a petition to the
States-General on the 5th of April, praying to be released, she was liberated
two days after. When her liberation was proposed and discussed, some
were unmanly enough to vote for keeping her in prison. Others could not
forbear launching forth into high encomiums upon this noble example of
conjugal fidelity, and the majority were ashamed to punish a woman for an
act which entitled her to universal admiration. Grotius, on proceeding to
France after his escape, was graciously received by Louis XIII. He was
afterwards employed by Christina, Queen of Sweden, in transacting impor-
tant affairs connected with her kingdom, and was sent by her as her ambas-
sador into France. Eeturning from Sweden to his own country in 1645,
he fell sick at Rostock, where he died that same year. 1

1 Le Clerc, torn, ii., p. 71. Leeven van de Groot, bl. 242-251, 270, quoted in Davies'
History of Holland, vol. ii., pp. 539-541.

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