[Sidenote 1: 1557, June: the War with France]
[Sidenote 2: 1558, Jan: The loss of Calais]
In the spring of 1557, France and Spain were again at open war, and Philip paid his last brief visit to his wife to obtain English co-operation. Anti-Spanish feeling was strong; but when one of the refugees, Sir Thomas Stafford, [Footnote: A grandson of Buckingham] starting from France, landed in Yorkshire, captured Scarborough Castle, and attempted to raise a rebellion, jealousy of French interference proved an effective counterpoise. The rebellion collapsed at once, and war with France was declared in summer. The success of Philip's troops, which included a considerable English contingent, at St. Quentin in Picardy compelled the French to withdraw from Italy; and the Pope, thus deserted, was forced to a reconciliation with Philip. His animosity however, now aroused against England, was not easy to remove: and it was an additional source of grief to Mary and a great vexation to the Cardinal that Paul deprived him of his Legatine authority. The contest between Philip and Henry of France continued. It is curious that after the experience of the previous year the English authorities still did not realise the precarious position of Calais, and allowed the garrison to be weakened again—though the strain of maintaining its strength with the depleted exchequer would have been almost impossible. The natural result followed. At the end of December, Guise appeared before its walls: on January 6th 1558 it surrendered. Calais was lost for ever. A fortnight later, Guisnes, after a desperate resistance by its commandant, Lord Grey de Wilton, was forced to surrender also.
[Sidenote: National depression]
Whatever else was won or lost in France, the maintenance of the English grip on Calais had been a point of military honour for centuries—like the retention of its colours by a regiment. Nothing substantial was lost with its fall; but the wound to the national honour was deep and bitter. For Mary herself it was the bitterest portion in a cup that was filled with little else than bitterness. Talk of recapture was vain. A subsidy was demanded and granted, but only on the theory that the whole was required not for expeditions but to set the home defences in order against invasion. More could not be done without taxation, which the country could not support. In the attempt to fulfil what Mary and Pole deemed a pious and supreme duty—the restoration to the Church of the property whereof it had been sacrilegiously robbed—political considerations had been ignored and the absolutely necessary expenditure on national objects had been diverted into ecclesiastical channels, at a time when the national revenue was already desperately impoverished. The loss of Calais was reckoned as one more item in the account against Rome.
[Sidenote: Mary's death Nov.]
The whole country was in fact in a condition of irritated despondency, sick of persecution, sick of disaster, disheartened by epidemics and bad harvests; without the spirit or the material means to attempt a whole- hearted prosecution of the war, yet too sore to be willing to make peace till Calais should be recovered. And so in despair and gloom dragged out the last months of Mary Tudor's life. The last message she received from her husband was to beg her to make no difficulties about the succession of the sister who, she knew, would seek to reverse her policy. It was not till November that she passed away—to be followed in a few hours by her one trused friend, Cardinal Pole: the most disastrous example on record of one who with conscientious and destructive persistence aimed at an ideal which her own methods made for ever impossible of attainment.
[Sidenote: and character]
From the time of her childhood she was exposed to unceasing harshness; a princess born, she was treated as a bastard; despite it all, her natural generosity survived. Royally courageous, loyal and straightforward; to her personal enemies almost magnanimous; to the poor and afflicted pitiful; loving her country passionately: she was blind to the forces at work in the world, obsessed with the idea of one supreme duty, and she set herself, as she deemed, to do battle with Antichrist by the only methods she knew, though they were alien to her natural disposition, facing hatred and obloquy. She whose life was one long martyrdom, for conscience' sake offered up a whole holocaust of martyrs: she who thirsted for love died clothed with a nation's hate. Where in all history is a tragedy more piteous than that of Mary Tudor?
CHAPTER XVI
ELIZABETH (i), 1558-61—A PASSAGE PERILOUS