[The Ecclesiastical History ii. 2296, Ed. 1570].
Now then after these so great afflictions falling upon this realm from the first beginning of Queen Mary's reign, wherein so many men, women, and children were burned; many imprisoned, and in prisons starved, divers exiled, some spoiled of goods and possessions, a great number driven from house and home, so many weeping eyes, so many sobbing hearts, so many children made fatherless, so many fathers bereft of their wives and children, so many vexed in conscience, and divers against conscience constrained to recant, and, in conclusion, never a good man in all the realm but suffered something during all the time of this bloody persecution. After all this, I say, now we are come at length, the LORD be praised! to the 17th day of November, which day, as it brought to the persecuted members of Christ rest from their careful mourning, so it easeth me somewhat likewise of my laborious writing; by the death, I mean, of Queen Mary. Who, being long sick before, upon the said 17th day of November, 1558, about three or four a clock in the morning, yielded her life to nature, and her kingdom to Queen Elizabeth, her sister.
As touching the manner of whose death, some say that she died of a tympany [dropsy]; some, by her much sighing before her death, supposed she died of thought and sorrow. Whereupon her Council seeing her sighing, and desirous to know the cause, to the end they might minister the more ready consolation unto her, feared, as they said, that "She took that thought for the King's Majesty her husband, which was gone from her."
To whom she answering again, "Indeed," said she, "that may be one cause; but that is not the greatest wound that pierceth my oppressed mind!" but what that was, she would not express to them.
Albeit, afterwards, she opened the matter more plainly to Master Ryse and Mistress Clarentius [p. [140]] (if it be true that they told me, which heard it of Master Ryse himself); who (then being most familiar with her, and most bold about her) told her that "They feared she took thought for King Philip's departing from her."
"Not that only," said she, "but when I am dead and opened; you shall find Calais lying in my heart," &c.
And here an end of Queen Mary and her persecution. Of which Queen, this truly, may be affirmed, and left in story for a perpetual Memorial or Epitaph, for all Kings and Queens that shall succeed her, to be noted, that before her, never was read in story of any King or Queen in England, since the time of King Lucius, under whom, in time of peace, by hanging, heading, burning, and prisoning, so much Christian blood, so many Englishmen's lives were spilled within this realm, as under the said Queen Mary, for the space of four years, was to be seen; and I beseech the LORD may never be seen hereafter.