But there was one circumstance which blasted all these promising appearances, and bereaved Mary of that general favor which her agreeable manners and judicious deportment gave her just reason to expect. She was still a papist; and though she published, soon after her arrival, a proclamation enjoining every one to submit to the established religion, the preachers and their adherents could neither be reconciled to a person polluted with so great an abomination, nor lay aside their jealousies of her future conduct. It was with great difficulty she could obtain permission for saying mass in her own chapel; and had not the people apprehended that, if she had here met with a refusal, she would instantly have returned to France, the zealots never would have granted her even that small indulgence. The cry was, “Shall we suffer that idol to be again erected within the realm?”
The whole life of Mary was, from the demeanor of these men, filled with bitterness and sorrow. The rustic apostle John Knox scruples not, in his history, to inform us that he once treated her with such severity that she lost all command of temper, and dissolved in tears before him; yet, so far from being moved with youth and beauty, and royal dignity reduced to that condition, he persevered in his insolent reproofs; and when he relates this incident, he discovers a visible pride and satisfaction in his own conduct. The pulpits had become mere scenes of railing against the vices of the court; among which were always noted, as the principal, feasting, finery, dancing, balls, and whoredom, their necessary attendant. Some ornaments which the ladies at that time wore upon their petticoats, excited mightily the indignation of the preachers; and they affirmed that such vanity would provoke God’s vengeance, not only against these foolish women but against the whole realm.
Mary, whose age, condition, and education invited her to liberty and cheerfulness, was curbed in all amusements by the absurd severity of these reformers; and she found, every moment, reason to regret her leaving that country from whose manners she had, in her early youth, received the first impressions. Her two uncles, the Duke of Aumale and the Grand Prior, with the other French nobility, soon took leave of her; the Marquis of Elbeuf remained some time longer; but after his departure she was left to the society of her own subjects—men unacquainted with the pleasures of conversation, ignorant of arts and civility, and corrupted beyond their usual rusticity by a dismal fanaticism, which rendered them incapable of all humanity or improvement. Though Mary had made no attempt to restore the ancient religion, her popery was a sufficient crime; though her behavior was hitherto irreproachable, and her manners sweet and engaging, her gayety and ease were interpreted as signs of dissolute vanity; and to the harsh and preposterous usage which this princess met with may in part be ascribed those errors of her subsequent conduct, which seemed so little of a piece with the general tenor of her character.
Mary was a woman of great accomplishments both of body and mind, natural as well as acquired, but unfortunate in her life, and during one period very unhappy in her conduct. The beauties of her person and graces of her air combined to make her the most amiable of women; and the charms of her address and conversation aided the impression which her lovely figure made on the hearts of all beholders. Ambitious and active in her temper, yet inclined to cheerfulness and society; of a lofty spirit, constant and even vehement in her purpose, yet polite, and gentle, and affable in her demeanor, she seemed to partake only so much of the male virtues as to render her estimable, without relinquishing those soft graces which compose the proper ornament of her sex.
In order to form a just idea of her character, we must set aside one part of her conduct, while she abandoned herself to the guidance of a profligate man, and must consider these faults, whether we admit them to be imprudences or crimes, as the result of an inexplicable though not uncommon inconstancy in the human mind, of the frailty of our nature, of the violence of passion, and of the influence which situations, and sometimes momentary incidents, have on persons whose principles are not thoroughly confirmed by experience and reflection. Enraged by the ungrateful conduct of her husband, seduced by the treacherous counsels of one in whom she reposed confidence, transported by the violence of her own temper, which never lay sufficiently under the guidance of discretion, she was betrayed into actions which may with some difficulty be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must in some parts wear the aspect of severe satire and invective.
Her numerous misfortunes, the solitude of her long and tedious captivity, and the persecutions to which she had been exposed on account of her religion, had wrought her up to a degree of bigotry during her later years; and such were the prevalent spirit and principles of the age, that it is the less wonder if her zeal, her resentment, and her interest uniting, induced her to give consent to a design which conspirators, actuated only by the first of these motives, had formed against the life of Elizabeth.
JOHN PYM.
By JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Born 1584, died in 1643. Leader of the House of Commons in its contest with Charles I, he was the most able and indefatigable opponent of royal usurpation, and the most active agent in the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. From a pamphlet written just before his death, when war in the field had begun between king and people, it seems doubtful whether he would not in the end have resisted the usurpation of power by Cromwell and the Independents, and supported the king as the least of two evils.]
If Strafford embodied the spirit of tyranny, John Pym, the leader of the Commons from the first meeting of the new houses at Westminster, stands out for all after time as the embodiment of law. A Somersetshire gentleman of good birth and competent fortune, he entered on public life in the Parliament of 1614, and was imprisoned for his patriotism at its close. He had been a leading member in that of 1620, and one of the “twelve ambassadors” for whom James ordered chairs to be set at Whitehall. Of the band of patriots with whom he had stood side by side in the constitutional struggle against the earlier despotism of Charles he was almost the sole survivor. Coke had died of old age; Cotton’s heart was broken by oppression; Eliot had perished in the tower; Wentworth had apostatized. Pym alone remained, resolute, patient as of old; and as the sense of his greatness grew silently during the eleven years of deepening misrule, the hope and faith of better things clung almost passionately to the man, who never doubted of the final triumph of freedom and the law. At their close, Clarendon tells us, in words all the more notable for their bitter tone of hate, “he was the most popular man, and the most able to do hurt, that has lived at any time.”
He had shown he knew how to wait, and when waiting was over he showed he knew how to act. On the eve of the Long Parliament he rode through England to quicken the electors to a sense of the crisis which had come at last; and on the assembling of the Commons, he took his place not merely as member for Tavistock but as their acknowledged head. Few of the country gentlemen, indeed, who formed the bulk of the members, had sat in any previous House; and of the few, none represented in so eminent a way the parliamentary tradition on which the coming struggle was to turn. Pym’s eloquence, inferior in boldness and originality to that of Eliot or Wentworth, was better suited by its massive and logical force to convince and guide a great party; and it was backed by a calmness of temper, a dexterity and order in the management of public business, and a practical power of shaping the course of debate, which gave a form and method to parliamentary proceedings such as they had never had before. Valuable, however, as these qualities were, it was a yet higher quality which raised Pym into the greatest, as he was the first, of parliamentary leaders.