On the 11th of November the third Parliament of Mary's reign was summoned, and she and her Royal husband rode from Hampton Court to Whitehall to open the session. The king and queen rode side by side, a sword of State being borne before each to betoken their independent sovereignties. The queen was extremely anxious to restore the lands reft from the Church by her father and brother to their ancient uses, but she must have known little of the men into whose hands those lands had fallen, if she could seriously hope for such a sacrifice. The Earl of Bedford, than whom no one had more deeply gorged himself with Church plunder, on hearing the proposition, tore his rosary from his girdle and flung it into the fire, saying he valued the abbey of Woborn more than any fatherly counsel that could come from Rome. All the rest of the Council were of the same way of thinking as Bedford, and Mary saw that it was a hopeless case to move them on that point, though she set them a very honourable example by surrendering the lands which still remained in the hands of the Crown, to the value of £60,000 a year.
Though Mary could not recover the property for the Church, she resolved to restore that Church to unity with Rome. She expressed her earnest desire to have the presence of her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, in her kingdom, and he now set out for England, from which he had been banished so many years. He rendered this return the more easy, by bringing with him from the Pope a bull which confirmed the nobles in their possession of the Church property, on condition that the Papal supremacy was restored. The queen despatched Sir Edward Hastings to accompany the cardinal; and Sir William Cecil, who had been Edward's unhesitating minister in stripping the Church, set out of his own accord to pay homage to the Papal representative. Cecil's only real religion was ambition, and Mary knew that so well that, in spite of all his time-serving, she never would place any confidence in him, whence his bitter hostility to her memory.
Pole, on his arrival, ascended the Thames from Greenwich in a splendid State barge, at the prow of which he fixed a large silver cross, thus marking the entrance of the legatine and Papal authority into the country, as it were, in a triumphal manner. On the 24th of November the king and queen met the united Parliament in the presence-chamber of the palace of Whitehall: this was owing to the indisposition of the queen. Gardiner introduced the business, which, he told them, was the weightiest that ever happened in this realm, and begged their utmost attention to Cardinal Pole. Pole then made a long speech, reverting to his own history as well as that of the nation. All listened in solemn seriousness and yet apprehension when he announced to them the fact that the Pope was ready to absolve the English from their crimes of heresy and contumacy. But when he added that this was to be done without any reclamation of the Church lands, there was a unanimous vote of both Houses for reconciliation with Rome.
The next morning, the king, queen, and Parliament met again in the presence-chamber, when, Pole presenting himself, Philip and Mary rose, and, bowing profoundly to him, presented him with the vote of Parliament. The cardinal, on receiving it, offered up thanks to God for this auspicious event, and then ordered his commission to be read. The Peers and Commons then fell on their knees and received absolution and benediction from the hands of the cardinal, and thus for a time again was the great breach between England and the Papacy healed.
Parliament proceeded to pass Acts confirming all that was now done, and repealing all the statutes which had been passed against the Roman Church since the 20th of Henry VIII., while the clergy in Convocation made formal resignation of the possessions which had passed into the hands of laymen. The legate also issued decrees authorising all cathedral churches, hospitals, and schools founded since the schism, to be preserved, and that all persons who had contracted marriage within prescribed degrees should remain married notwithstanding.
The year 1555 opened with dark and threatening features. The queen's health was failing; and, under the idea that she was merely suffering maternal inconvenience, she was rapidly advancing in a dropsy which, in less than four years, was destined to sink her to the tomb. The king, gloomy, despotic, and, consequently, unpopular, though he often endeavoured to act against his nature, and assume a popular character, still hoping for an heir to the English crown, had obtained from Parliament an Act constituting him regent, in case Mary should die after the birth of a child, during the minority of that child. Thus, whether the queen lived or died, he appeared to possess a reasonable prospect of obtaining the supreme power in this country; and how he would have used it, we may judge from his government of Spain and the Netherlands. If the child was a female, he was made governor till her fifteenth year; if a male, till his eighteenth year. Philip protested on his honour that he would give up the government faithfully when the child came of age; but Lord Paget asked "who was to sue the bond if he did not?"—a suggestion never forgiven. With this flattering but illusive prospect before him, the tempest of persecution soon burst forth; and, had Providence permitted, England would soon have exhibited the same scene of tyranny, bloodshed, and insult which Flanders did under his rule. As it was, for a short period, terrible war for conscience' sake burst forth, the prisons were thronged, and the fires of death blazed out in every quarter of the island. Mary, with failing health, and doting absurdly on her husband, was easily drawn to acquiesce in deeds and measures which made her name a byword to all future times.
We are now called upon to pass through a reign of terror, a time of fire and blood, such as has no parallel in the history of England. The statutes against the Lollards enacted in the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V., were revived and were to come into force on the 20th of January. Bonner, accompanied by eight bishops and 160 priests, made a grand procession through the streets of London, and held services of public thanksgiving for the happy restoration of Catholicism. A commission was then held in the Church of St. Mary Overy, in Southwark, for the trial of heretics. The first man brought before this court, over which Gardiner presided, was John Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, who had nobly distinguished himself by defending the first priest sent by Mary to preach Papacy at St. Paul's Cross. The Court condemned him to be burnt, and on the 4th of February this horrible sentence was executed in the most barbarous manner. The day of his death was kept a profound secret from him, and early that morning he was suddenly awakened out of a sound sleep and informed that he was to be burnt that day. The condemned man, so far from sinking under the appalling announcement, only calmly observed, "Then I need not truss my points." He requested to be permitted to take leave of his wife and children, of whom he had eleven—one still at the breast—but this Bonner refused. As he was led by the sheriffs towards Smithfield, where he was to suffer, he sang the "Miserere." His wife and children were placed where he would have a full view of them at the stake, and it was expected that this would induce him to recant and save his life, and thus induce others to follow his example; but outwardly unmoved, he maintained the most sublime fortitude.
Bishop Hooper, Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, Dr. Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows, Coventry, were all condemned to the same death, and, like Rogers, were offered their lives on recantation, which one and all refused. The treatment of the pious Bishop Hooper was a most glaring case of ingratitude. Decided Protestant as he was, and of the most primitive simplicity of faith, he had from the first manifested the most staunch loyalty to Mary. In his own account of himself he says, "When Mary's fortunes were at the worst, I rode myself from place to place, as is well known, to win and stay the people to her party. And whereas when another was proclaimed [Lady Jane Grey] I preferred our queen, notwithstanding the proclamations. I sent horses in both shires [Gloucestershire and Worcester] to serve her in great danger, as Sir John Talbot and William Lygon, Esq., can testify." Hooper was sent down to Gloucester, his own diocese, to suffer, where he was burnt on the 9th of February, in a slow fire, to increase and prolong his agonies to the utmost. On the same day Dr. Taylor was burnt at Hadleigh.
This shocking state of things was interrupted for some time by the sudden and extraordinary outbreak of Alphonso di Castro, the confessor of King Philip, a Spanish friar, who preached before the Court a sermon in which he most vehemently and eloquently inveighed against the wickedness and inhumanity of burning people for their opinions. He declared that the practice was not learned in the Scriptures, but the contrary; for it was decidedly opposed to both the letter and the spirit of the New Testament; that it was the duty of the Government and the clergy to win men to the Gospel by mildness, and not to kill but to instruct the ignorant. A mystery has always hung over this singular demonstration. Some thought Philip, some that Mary, had ordered him to preach this sermon, but it is far more probable that it was the spontaneous act of zeal in a man who was enlightened beyond his age and his country. It is not probable that it proceeded from Philip, for he could at once have commanded this change; it is besides contrary to his life-long policy. Had it been the will of the sovereigns it would have produced a permanent effect. As it was, it took the Court and country by surprise. The impression on the Court was so powerful that all further burnings ceased for five weeks, by which time the good friar's sermon had lost its effect; and the religious butcheries went on as fiercely as ever, till more than two hundred persons had been slaughtered on account of their faith in this short reign. Miles Coverdale, the venerable translator of the Bible, was saved from this death by the King of Denmark writing to Mary and claiming him as his subject.
