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All these troubles proved, like herself, unbearable, and on the 17th of November, 1558, she expired, after a short and yet too long a reign of five years, four months, and eleven days. She had reached the forty-third year of her age, and must have made the most of her time, in one way at least; for no woman of her age had obtained so much odium of a durable quality, as she in her comparatively short life had acquired.
If we were to draw a faithful character of this princess, we need do nothing more than upset our inkstand over our paper, and cause the saturated manuscript to be transferred to our pages in one enormous black blot; for we are sure that no printer's type could furnish a type of the person whom we have the horribly black job of handing down—or rather knocking down—to posterity. Those indefatigable readers who are desirous of having the appropriate epithets which Mary's character deserves, are requested to take down the dictionary, and having selected from it all the adjectives expressive of badness that the language contains, place them in a string or a series of strings, before the name of Mary.
To look for her virtues would require the aid of one of those solar microscopes which give visibility to the merest atom, and the particle, if even discovered, might be deposited in the mental eye without its being susceptible of anything having entered it. She seems to have possessed some sincerity; but this only gave a certain degree of vigour to her evil propensities. She was perhaps susceptible of some attachments, but so is a boa constrictor, though few would conceive it a privilege to be held in the firm embraces of that paragon of tenacity towards those with whose fate it happens to twine itself. She had a certain vigour of mind, just as a tiger has a certain vigour of spring, a parallel the force of which her victims very frequently experienced.
The loss of Calais was, perhaps, one of the most important events of Mary's reign! and it is said to have had such an effect upon her, that she declared, when she died the word Calais would be found engraved upon her heart: though we are quite sure, that if the word had been found at all, it would not have presented itself as an engraving, but as a lithograph. For two hundred years the town had been in the possession of the English, and it was through a miserable economy in cutting down the garrison during the winter months, and trying to work the thing at a reduced expense, that the whole concern fell into the power of the enemy. This paltry system proved, of course, unprofitable in the end; for when the Duke of Guise made his attack, those points that required two or three stout fellows to defend them, were left to the fatal imbecility of "a man and a boy,"—a couple never yet known to heartily co-operate. It is the unhappy blunder of a man and a boy being left to pull together as unsympathetically as an elephant and an ass, that has impeded the progress of so many of our public works; and it was, unquestionably, the trial of the "man and boy" system at Calais during the winter months, that, in the early part of 1558, caused the loss of the city. The English had been in the habit of trusting during the cold weather to the snow, and the overflowing of the marshes, to keep out the French; but the Duke of Guise was not afraid of getting his feet wet, and besides, as he wittily observed, "I can always rely on the strength of my pumps to keep the water out." He ultimately made a resolute splash, and, though often up to his middle in mud, he drove the English clean out of the citadel.
It may be worth while to mention, that Mary's reign was the first in which friendly relations with Russia were established, through some English traders who found themselves, or rather lost themselves, at Archangel, in the course of a wild-goose search for a north-east passage. The Czar, after asking them what they were doing there, and telling them they had come fearfully out of their way, received them very kindly; but it does not seem that any north-east passage, beyond the old court which used to lead from Holbora Hill to Clerkenwell, was at that time discovered.
Few, if any, salutary laws were passed in her reign, though a bad one was repealed, which had ruined the wool trade, by prohibiting any one from making wool who had not served seven years' apprenticeship. There was of course a great cry and very little wool in consequence of this absurd enactment, which was so decidedly impolitic that we can give Mary very little credit for having done away with it.