The first Parliament convoked by Mary had voted the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic worship; the second had adopted the treaty of marriage; the third was summoned to declare the reunion with Rome; but the interests of the House of Lords were opposed to this measure. Before repealing the act of supremacy, the Lords, enriched by the spoliation of the monasteries, required guarantees from the court of Rome; the Pope gave them, through the mouth of Cardinal Pole, who had arrived in England as legate; Parliament then became submissive, and presented a petition to the king, queen and cardinal, begging them to intercede with the Holy Father to obtain the pardon of the English people and their reconciliation with the Holy See. Pole was furnished with the necessary powers, and he pronounced the absolution. The work of Henry VIII. as well as that of Edward VI. was destroyed; and the conscience of Queen Mary was able to rest in peace. Parliament thought to have done enough; but Mary desired to feel her way towards securing the royal crown to her husband, but she encountered so much ill-feeling that she was obliged to renounce her project; the commons also refused the subsidies which she had caused the Emperor and his son to expect, as an assistance in prosecuting the war with France. Philip in vain endeavoured to win a little popularity by interceding with the queen in favour of the prisoners of state detained at the Tower. Several were restored to liberty. Courtenay received permission to travel upon the Continent, and the Princess Elizabeth reappeared at court, but she did not long remain there; her position was difficult; she was constantly watched by jealous eyes; when she returned, however, to her residence at Ampthill, the queen began to look upon her sister with less uneasiness, for she was now expecting an heir to the throne.
The year 1555 opened under sinister auspices for the Reformed Church; the laws against heretics had been put in force again, and on the first day in January the Bishop of London, Bonner, followed by a great procession, repaired to St. Paul's, to return thanks to God for the light with which He had once more illumined the sovereign of the nation. A court commissioned to try heretics was soon formed. The prisons were filled with the accused; the first who was summoned belonged to the clergy of St. Paul's; Gardiner presided over the tribunal. "Did you not pray for twenty years against the Pope?" cried the prisoner, driven to extremities by the questions of his judge. "I was cruelly forced to it," replied the bishop. "Why, then, do you wish to make use of the same cruelty towards us?" asked Rogers; but this simple notion of liberty of conscience had not yet penetrated into the most enlightened minds, Catholic or Protestant; each party, in turn, had recourse to force, to aid what it looked upon as the truth, to triumph, and William of Orange, loudly proclaiming toleration towards the Catholics in a country which he was snatching from the horrors of the inquisition, drew down upon himself the censure of his Protestant friends. Rogers was condemned to be burned, and was refused the consolation of saying farewell to his wife. She was at the foot of the stake with her eleven children, the youngest at her breast, encouraging her husband until the last moment. He died worthy of her, augmenting by his firmness the long series of martyrs of the Reformed faith with whom the fanaticism of Mary was about to enrich the Church. Executions succeeded each other. Hooper, the dispossessed bishop of Gloucester, an eloquent and austere divine, and Robert Ferrar, bishop of St. David's, were burned in their former dioceses. Condemnations and executions increased every day. Gardiner, weary of so many horrors, had ceased to preside over the court commissioned to try heretics, and the zeal of Bonner himself did not suffice to satisfy Philip and Mary. Cardinal Pole in vain endeavoured to moderate the persecuting ardour of the queen; the gentleness of his character and the experience which he had acquired in Germany, equally rendered him averse to executions as a means of conversion; but the conscience of Mary was pledged to the work; she desired to make England Roman Catholic; and, notwithstanding the terror of some, the hesitation of others, and the servility of a great number, she, day by day, found her task greater and more difficult; it was not the moment for relaxing her efforts.
Upon the accession of Mary, the relative strength of the two religions was about equal in her kingdom, although irregularly divided according to localities. The Protestants were numerous in nearly all the towns; the Catholics remained powerful in the north; but great influences were struggling against the royal authority, passionately engaged, as it was, in the struggle; the great noblemen were imperfectly assured of the security of their possessions, notwithstanding all the protestations and promises of the Pope. The Protestant faith had taken firm hold upon a great number of souls among the clergy and the people. The ranks of the nobility did not furnish any religious martyrs, but the uneasiness which their temporal interests caused them contributed to keep up the agitation which produced so many political victims, and the masses of the people sealed their convictions with their blood. Two bishops and a great number of priests had already perished at the stake, in company with a host of unknown and obscure martyrs. The most illustrious witnesses of persecuted Protestantism were still captives; two bishops and an archbishop, all three celebrated for their eloquence and the part which they had played in the past, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, had been conducted to Oxford, in the month of March, 1554, there to argue in public with the Catholic doctors; all three had boldly maintained their opinions, and all three had been declared obstinate heretics. They had been awaiting their sentence for eighteen months, when, on the 12th of September, 1555, the royal commissioners arrived at Oxford. In his capacity of former Primate of England, Cranmer, a prisoner, was summoned to appear in Rome within eighty days, according to the forms of the canon law. Ridley and Latimer were condemned to die forthwith. A learned Spanish theologian was, however, despatched to them to enlighten them upon their errors. Latimer refused to see him, Ridley combated all his arguments; he was learned, eloquent, admirably versed in the Holy Scriptures, and it was he who had maintained the discussions with the Catholic doctors, with the most brilliant results. The day for argument had gone by, that of martyrdom was arriving. On the 16th of October, 1555, the two prelates were conducted to the stake prepared for them near Baliol College, where the monument now stands which commemorates their execution. Latimer was old and worn out; he walked with difficulty. Ridley, who had preceded him, ran to meet him and embraced him "Be of good heart, brother," he said, "for God will either assuage the fury of the flame or strengthen us to bear it." The old man smiled, suffering himself to be stripped by the guards; Ridley divested himself of his clothing, which he distributed among the bystanders. When both were clothed in their shrouds and fastened back to back at the stake, the old bishop drew himself up, as though suddenly endowed with that superhuman strength which his companion in punishment had promised to him. "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley!" he cried, "and play the man, and we shall see this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out." The flames immediately suffocated him, but Ridley suffered for a long time. One of the bystanders at length had the charity to stir the embers, and the bag of gunpowder which had been attached to the necks of the victims having ignited, Ridley died by the explosion, while the prophetic words of old Latimer still resounded in every ear. England has remained illumined by the candle thus lighted by the martyrs of the sixteenth century.
Gardiner died on the 12th of November, and the queen confided the seals to the Archbishop of York, Heath, a prelate more zealous than his predecessor in the persecution of heretics, but less skilful and prudent in the conduct of public affairs. Upon the assembling of Parliament, Mary touched a tender chord; she asked for authority to restore to the Holy See the first-fruits and tithes, annexed under the reign of her father to the crown. "I set more value upon the salvation of my soul," she said, "than upon the possession of ten kingdoms such as England." The Houses did not oppose the salvation of the soul of the sovereign, but they trembled to see her lay hands upon their property, and the subsidies rendered necessary by the decrease in the royal revenues which the return of the annats to the court of Rome involved, were voted with ill-humor, and not without objections. The queen was obliged to have recourse to many vexatious courses in order to procure the money which her husband constantly demanded of her, thus increasing every day, the unpopularity of the Spaniards in the kingdom. All the English detested Philip. Mary alone loved him, with the sad tenderness of an unrequited affection. The king was almost always away from his wife, and only replied to her constant letters when he demanded of her the sums which he needed to maintain the wars with France. It was in vain that English prudence stipulated that peace should be maintained between France and England. What could laws effect against the devotion of the queen for her husband?
The weakness and timidity of Cranmer, deprived of the firm example of his companions in captivity, had been counted upon with good reason. The eighty days had elapsed, and the Primate, not having appeared at Rome, was declared guilty, degraded from his holy office, and delivered up to the secular power. Then began the attempts at conversion. The prisoner was transferred to the house of the Dean of Christchurch, where indulgences were lavished upon him. It was represented to him that he was still in the prime of life, healthy and vigorous; why should he be obstinate in his errors and die like Latimer, who had only renounced a few years of a miserable existence? The unhappy archbishop suffered himself to be gained over, and signed six abjurations in succession, adding each time something to his shame. At the termination of these humiliations, at the moment when he at length thought to have purchased his liberty, it was announced to him that penitence did not absolve from punishment, that his return to the bosom of the Church insured, indeed, eternal life to him, but could not save him from the stake, and he was condemned to die on the 21st of March. In view of this perfidy, which deprived him of the fruits of all his acts of cowardice, Cranmer at length saw the extent of his mistake, and from the platform upon which he was placed, read to the people his last confession, boldly rejecting the Papal authority and the doctrines which he had recognized a few days previously, protesting his attachment to the Reformed faith, and his resolution to die faithful to it. At the same time he humbled himself before God and men for the base fear of death which had led him to belie the truth and his conscience. The agitation among the people was great; something totally different had been expected. "Recall your senses," said Lord Williams, "and show yourself to be a Christian." "That is what I am doing: at this moment," replied Cranmer; "it is too late to dissemble, I must come to the truth." When he was conducted to the stake, before the flames reached him, he plunged his right hand into the raging fire to punish it for having signed the abjuration. "That is the one which has sinned," he exclaimed. Motionless in the midst of the flames, he appealed neither to the mercy nor the justice of men. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," he cried, and expired. The impression produced by his execution was immense; he had redeemed, by his firm courage at the stake, all the vacillations and inconsistencies of his life, and his executioners had placed upon him the seal of glory as the Reformer of the Church of England, by employing against him a base act of perfidy somewhat rare in the annals of the persecutions under Mary. Those who recanted sometimes died of remorse, like the diplomatist Sir John Cheke; they were rarely dragged to the stake. Cardinal Pole was immediately nominated Archbishop of Canterbury; but his counsels were unable to arrest the persecutions, stimulated by the violent zeal of Pope Paul IV., recently elevated to the pontifical throne. Eighty-four persons perished that year by the flames. Nor did the living only suffer condemnation; the bones of Martin Bucer, who had died in England, whither he had been summoned by Cranmer during the reign of Edward VI., were disinterred and publicly burned. The body of the wife of Pierce., the martyr, suffered the same outrage; after her grave had been first desecrated she was buried in a dunghill. The reign of Mary lasted but five years; but in this short space of time two hundred and eighty-eight persons were legally condemned to execution on account of religion, and it would be impossible to enumerate the obscurer martyrs who died of hunger or suffering in the prisons. The greater part of the victims belonged to the middle classes and the people; it was in those ranks that the most faithful attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation was manifested. The great enriched by by the spoliation and governmental reform of King Henry VIII., took no care but for their property. The poor defended their precious convictions by dying for them. Secret discontent was great even among the Roman Catholic population; the Spaniards were detested; crimes increased. Notwithstanding the stern repression which they had suffered under Henry VIII.,—seventy-two thousand murderers, thieves, or vagabonds, had, it is said, perished upon the gallows during his long reign,—the executioners of Queen Mary also had much to do; several times men of good birth, who had degraded themselves to the profession of highwaymen, were detected and seized. Certain parts of the kingdom were secretly agitated, and it was amidst this general uneasiness that Philip, who had become King of Spain in 1556, through the abdication of the Emperor Charles V., at length contrived to involve his wife and England in his quarrels with France.
The personal influence of Philip over Queen Mary was alone able to obtain this concession; the king was aware of this, and he arrived in England in the month of March, determined to recruit his armies with English forces. The whole of the council of Mary, with Cardinal Pole at their head, at first opposed the measure; in vain did Philip threaten to leave her for ever. The ministers of the queen appealed to the marriage contract, affirming that England would find herself reduced to the state of a vassal if she allowed herself to be dragged at the heels of Spain into a war of no interest to her. An enterprise attempted by an English refugee in France, Thomas Stafford, who crossed the British Channel with some few troops, and took the castle of Scarboro by surprise, happened to second the solicitations of Philip II. Being made a prisoner, Stafford asserted that the King of France, Henry II., had encouraged him in his attempt, and the queen eagerly seized this pretext to satisfy the wishes of her husband by declaring war with France. When Philip quitted England, upon the 6th of July, 1557, never to return, he was shortly afterwards followed to Saint-Quentin, by a thousand English knights and six thousand foot-soldiers, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke. Queen Mary had great difficulty in raising this small corps; for the first time, perhaps, war with France was not popular in England.
It was destined soon to become still less popular, notwithstanding the successes of the King of Spain in France. The capture of Saint-Quentin, and the fear of seeing the victorious army advance against Paris, recalled the Duke of Guise from Italy, where he had threatened the territories of Philip; the latter took up his winter-quarters in Flanders, when the French general laid siege to Calais. The Spaniards had foreseen the danger and proposed to strengthen the garrison, but the council of England had jealously rejected this offer; they were preparing to send reinforcements. Meanwhile, the French had appeared before Calais, on the 1st of January, 1558; on the 8th, after a skilful and bold attack upon the ramparts, the town capitulated and the garrison issued forth with their arms and baggage, while the English troops were waiting at Dover until the state of the sea should permit them to proceed to the assistance of their fellow-countrymen. On the 20th, Guisnes succumbed in its turn, and the English lost the last foot of ground which they possessed in France. Calais had been in their hands two hundred and eleven years, and the loss of it was bitterly painful to the queen and the people. Parliament immediately voted subsidies for prosecuting the war more vigorously. The Dauphin, subsequently Francis II., had recently married the young Queen of Scotland (April 24th, 1558), and the Scotch took up arms upon the frontiers, thus associating themselves with the quarrel of their sovereigns, by one of those aggressions towards which they were always disposed. They refused, however, to formally declare war with England, as they were urged to do by Mary of Guise, the regent of Scotland in the name of her daughter. The English fleet, under the orders of Lord Clinton, ravaged the coast of Brittany without much result; but a small squadron of ten vessels contributed to the victory of Gravelines by ascending the Aa, as Egmont was beginning the combat, and opening fire upon the right wing of the French. The Marshal de Termes, and a great number of French noblemen were made prisoners in this battle, which cost France dearly, yet brought nothing to England but a little glory in the wake of the Flemish general.