You remember I mentioned Bishop Latimer among the good men who were Protestants. He had come to be a very old man in Mary’s reign; but she would not spare him, but sent him with another bishop, a friend of his, as good and learned as himself, named Ridley, to Oxford, where they were burned together, only because they were Protestants.
At last Mary determined to order the death of the wise and good Archbishop Cranmer. He had always been very gentle and rather fearful, and he wrote to Mary, and tried by every means to get her to allow him to live. They made him hope to be spared if he would give up his religion, and promise to be a Papist. As soon as he had been so weak as to do this, she ordered him to be burned at Oxford. When he was taken to be tied to the stake, he stretched out his right hand that it might burn first, because it had written through fear what he did not mean. He took off all his clothes but his shirt, and with a very cheerful countenance he began to praise God aloud, and to pray for pardon for the faults he might have committed during a long life. His patience in bearing the torment of burning, and his courage in dying, made all the people love him as much as it made them hate the queen and Bonner.
Nothing did well in this cruel queen’s reign. She went to war with France to please her husband the king of Spain, and in that war the French took Calais from the English, who had kept it ever since Edward the Third’s reign.[2]
Queen Mary died the same year in which she lost Calais, after being queen only five years.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Little Arthur should look back, and read the story of the taking of Calais, and of the good Eustace de St. Pierre.
CHAPTER XLIV.
ELIZABETH.—1558 to 1603.
How Queen Elizabeth allowed the people to be Protestants; how they learned many useful things from foreigners who had been persecuted in their own country; how Mary Queen of Scots was driven from her kingdom, and was imprisoned, and at last beheaded by Elizabeth.
Queen Elizabeth’s reign was so very long, and there are so many things in it to tell you about, that I am sure we must have three chapters about her, and you will find both good and bad in them; but after all you will think that her being queen was a very good thing for England.
When Queen Mary died, Elizabeth was at Hatfield, where she stayed a little while, till some of the great and wise men belonging to the country went to her to advise her what she had best do for the good of England, and how she should begin. At the end of a week she went to London.