[707] In his Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary; see also the transcript in Appendix H of the present volume.
CHAPTER XVII.
VERITAS TEMPORIS FILIA.
We live in an age of criticism. Epithets will no longer serve in lieu of evidence, and we are called upon to revise the hasty judgments of past centuries, and to reconsider their verdicts. The verdict passed on Mary I. has hitherto been founded on the one-sided testimony of her enemies, and on their showing, the world has taken for granted that she was at the best a gloomy, narrow-minded bigot, whose life was utterly unproductive of good to England. Her very trials and sorrows have led the most indulgent to conclude, that she must in consequence have been of a melancholy disposition, and to find in her misfortunes an excuse for the moroseness which in their opinion, rendered her the most unattractive personality in our history. Moroseness is a fit accompaniment to cruelty and thirst for blood; and thus, by easy stages, it has been possible to imagine her gloating over the executions for religion’s sake, which disgraced her reign as they did those of her predecessors and successors, down to the time of Charles II.
Such, however, has not been the picture presented to us in the course of our study of the State papers, dealing with her life and reign, and “all history,” said the learned Dr. Samuel Johnson, “so far as it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance”.[708] We have seen her, as represented in the secret despatches of ambassadors, in her own private letters, in those of Cardinal Pole, in the narratives of her contemporaries, in the brief chronicles of her time, in the occasional admissions of her enemies; we have seen her as a girl, a woman, a queen, in a dozen different lights, and we have found an image, the very reverse of that which for three centuries has been held up to the world’s execration.
That Mary was not in advance of her contemporaries should scarcely be a reproach. What wonder even, if she looked to the past for inspiration, from amidst the chaos of new opinions, that seemed to her productive only of rebellion, licence and impiety! She could remember the time, when order reigned in Church and State, and when peace resulted from obedience to civil and ecclesiastical authority. With the change had begun all her miseries. Cromwell and Cranmer, the apostles of the new regime, had played her father’s game of tyranny and rapine, and their followers had made havoc of her own projects of peace and prosperity. Had the new religionists been mere harmless, loyal, quiet folk, the fires of Smithfield had never been lighted.[709] Hence, it was inevitable that all novelty should be regarded by her with suspicion, as synonymous with evil, and she died in the fruitless attempt to resist the inflowing tide. She was wanting neither in intelligence nor devotion to her people; what she lacked was the touch of genius to discern the actual trend of the new, restless ideas, that made her kingdom into a battle-field, and inspiration and tact, to guide them into peaceful channels. Absorbed in the inherited notions of an ideal good, she missed much of the practical good that lay within her grasp, and had she been less conscientious, she might have been a greater Queen.
It is not possible to exonerate her completely, in the matter of her formal condemnation of her mother’s marriage, although she was therein herself the victim, her only valid excuse being, that the Emperor had caught her in the toils of his diplomatic sophistry, and had blinded her judgment with the glamour of his arguments.
Her character, therefore, was not without some inconsistencies—and indeed of whom can the reverse be declared? Those who have extolled her more than virile courage, as it was exhibited in her early trials, during her persecution by Edward’s Council, in her manner of meeting Northumberland’s conspiracy, in her dealing with Wyatt’s rebellion, and on many smaller occasions, have generally overlooked the feminine weakness, with which she almost always yielded when her affections intervened. Thus, after having braved Henry’s anger, and stoutly maintained her mother’s rights and her own, fearless of the axe that hung by a thread over her, she gave in, when Katharine was beyond the reach of harm, from a, to us, almost incomprehensible longing for her father’s love, and in her childlike confidence that the Emperor could not lead her astray. She had taken up a logical attitude with reference to Elizabeth, which was the complement of the disgust, with which she regarded Elizabeth’s mother; but this attitude was at once abandoned when Anne Boleyn’s disgrace involved the child in the same ignominy and ruin. Mary had but just regained a certain amount of consideration for her own position, but she did not hesitate generously to risk all, by calling Henry’s attention to the neglected child, once her own triumphant rival. “My sister Elizabeth is in good health,” she ventured to write to the inhuman tyrant, “and such a child toward, as I doubt not your highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming.” The Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary are eloquent of her generosity towards “the Lady Elizabeth’s grace,” and until Elizabeth forfeited her esteem by making common cause with her enemies, there was no diminution of cordiality on the part of the Queen towards her sister. She married Philip of Spain in spite of all opposition, in the first place for the sake of the realm, and in the hope of issue, and gave him a passionate devotion. In most of these things Mary was a true woman, no heroine, but tender and human to a fault. Of her learning and accomplishments, much has been said in the course of this history. Her contemporaries have been warm in praise of the high order of her intellect, of her knowledge of ancient and modern languages, of her musical talents, of her skill in dancing. Her translation of the Paraphrases of Erasmus proves that her reputation for scholarship proceeded from no mere courtier-like flattery. And the same may be said of the general terms of praise in which foreign envoys wrote of her to their governments. Their communications being altogether secret, and often written in cipher, could have been penned with no ulterior views of pleasing Mary or her friends. Until within a year of her death, there is no allusion in their despatches to any despondency on her part. She felt her husband’s absence acutely, and it may have been that his indifference to her hastened her death; but contrary to what David Hume and his followers would have us believe, it is clear that no spirit of settled bitterness brooded over any portion, even the saddest, of her life. Nothing is more evident in her story, as it is told in the State Papers, than that to the end, her disposition was to hope against hope, to believe that her prayers would be answered, to trust that good would come out of evil; and not one despairing word is recorded as ever having passed her lips.[710]