London he eulogizes, as one of the noblest capitals in Europe, containing, with its suburbs, about a hundred and eighty thousand souls.[50] The great lords, as in France and Germany, passed most of their time on their estates in the country.
The kingdom was strong enough, if united, to defy any invasion from abroad. Yet its navy was small, having dwindled, from neglect and an ill-judged economy, to not more than forty vessels of war. But the mercantile[{32}] marine could furnish two thousand more, which, at a short notice, could be well equipped and got ready for sea. The army was particularly strong in artillery, and provided with all the munitions of war. The weapon chiefly in repute was the bow, to which the English people were trained from early youth. In their cavalry they were most defective. Horses were abundant, but wanted bottom. They were, for the most part, light, weak, and grass-fed.[51] The nation was, above all, to be envied for the lightness of the public burdens. There were no taxes on wine, beer, salt, cloth, nor, indeed, on any of the articles that in other countries furnished the greatest sources of revenue.[52] The whole revenue did not usually exceed two hundred thousand pounds. Parliaments were rarely summoned, except to save the king trouble or to afford a cloak to his designs. No one ventured to resist the royal will; servile the members came there, and servile they remained.[53]—An Englishman of the nineteenth century may smile at the contrast presented by some of these remarks to the condition of the nation at the present day; though in the item of taxation the contrast may be rather fitted to provoke a sigh.
The portrait of Queen Mary is given by the Venetian minister, with a coloring somewhat different from that in which she is commonly depicted by English historians. She was about thirty-six years of age at the time of her accession. In stature, she was of rather less than the middle size,—not large, as was the case with both her father and mother,—and exceedingly well made. "The portraits of her," says Micheli, "show that in her youth she must have been not only good-looking, but even handsome;—though her countenance, when he saw her, exhibited traces of early trouble and disease."[54] But whatever she had lost in personal attractions was fully made up by those of the mind. She was quick of apprehension, and, like her younger sister, Elizabeth, was mistress of several languages, three of which, the French, Spanish, and Latin, she could speak; the last with fluency.[55] But in these accomplishments she was surpassed by her sister, who knew the Greek well, [{33}]and could speak Italian with ease and elegance. Mary, however, both spoke and wrote her own language in a plain, straightforward manner, that forms a contrast to the ambiguous phrase and cold conceits in which Elizabeth usually conveyed, or rather concealed, her sentiments.
CHARACTER OF MARY.
Mary had the misfortune to labour under a chronic infirmity, which confined her for weeks, and indeed months, of every year to her chamber, and which, with her domestic troubles, gave her an air of melancholy, that in later years settled into a repulsive austerity. The tones of her voice were masculine, says the Venetian, and her eyes inspired a feeling, not merely of reverence, but of fear, wherever she turned them. Her spirit he adds, was lofty and magnanimous, never discomposed by danger, showing in all things a blood truly royal.[56]
Her piety, he continues, and her patience under affliction, cannot be too greatly admired. Sustained, as she was, by a lively faith and conscious innocence, he compares her to a light which the fierce winds have no power to extinguish, but which still shines on with increasing lustre.[57] She waited her time, and was plainly reserved by Providence for a great destiny.—We are reading the language of the loyal Catholic, grateful for the services which Mary had rendered to the faith.
Yet it would be uncharitable not to believe that Mary was devout, and most earnest in her devotion. The daughter of Katharine of Aragon, the granddaughter of Isabella of Castile, could hardly have been otherwise. The women of that royal line were uniformly conspicuous for their piety, though this was too often tinctured with bigotry. In Mary, bigotry degenerated into fanaticism, and fanaticism into the spirit of persecution. The worst evils are probably those that have flowed from fanaticism. Yet the amount of the mischief does not necessarily furnish us with the measure of guilt in the author of it. The introduction of the Inquisition into Spain must be mainly charged on Isabella. Yet the student of her reign will not refuse to this great queen the praise of tenderness of conscience and a sincere desire to do the right. Unhappily, the faith in which she, as well as her royal granddaughter, was nurtured, taught her to place her conscience in the keeping of ministers less scrupulous than herself; and on those ministers may fairly rest much of the responsibility of measures on which they only were deemed competent to determine.
Mary's sincerity in her religious professions was placed beyond a doubt by the readiness with which she submitted to the sacrifice of her personal interests whenever the interests of religion seemed to demand it. She burned her translation of a portion of Erasmus, prepared with great labor, at the suggestion of her confessor. An author will readily estimate the value of such a sacrifice. One more important, and intelligible to all, was the resolute manner in which she persisted in restoring the Church property which had been confiscated[{34}] to the use of the crown. "The crown is too much impoverished to admit of it," remonstrated her ministers. "I would rather lose ten crowns," replied the high-minded queen, "than place my soul in peril."[58]
Yet it cannot be denied, that Mary had inherited, in full measure, some of the sterner qualities of her father, and that she was wanting in that sympathy for human suffering which is so graceful in a woman. After a rebellion, the reprisals were terrible. London was converted into a charnel-house; and the squares and principal streets were garnished with the unsightly trophies of the heads and limbs of numerous victims who had fallen by the hand of the executioner.[59] This was in accordance with the spirit of the age. But the execution of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey—the young, the beautiful, and the good—leaves a blot on the fame of Mary, which finds no parallel but in the treatment of the ill-fated queen of Scots by Elizabeth.
Mary's treatment of Elizabeth has formed another subject of reproach, though the grounds of it are not sufficiently made out; and, at all events, many circumstances may be alleged in extenuation of her conduct. She had seen her mother, the noble-minded Katharine, exposed to the most cruel indignities, and compelled to surrender her bed and her throne to an artful rival, the mother of Elizabeth. She had heard herself declared illegitimate, and her right to the succession set aside in favor of her younger sister. Even after her intrepid conduct had secured to her the crown, she was still haunted by the same gloomy apparition. Elizabeth's pretensions were constantly brought before the public; and Mary might well be alarmed by the disclosure of conspiracy after conspiracy, the object of which, it was rumored, was to seat her sister on the throne. As she advanced in years, Mary had the further mortification of seeing her rival gain on those affections of the people which had grown cool to her. Was it wonderful that she should regard her sister, under these circumstances, with feelings of distrust and aversion? That she did so regard her is asserted by the Venetian minister; and it is plain that, during the first years of Mary's reign, Elizabeth's life hung upon a thread. Yet Mary had strength of principle sufficient to resist the importunities of Charles the Fifth and his ambassador, to take the life of Elizabeth, as a thing indispensable to her own safety and that of Philip. Although her sister was shown to be privy, though not openly accessory, to the grand rebellion under Wyatt, Mary would not constrain the law from its course to do her violence. This was something, under the existing circumstances, in an age so unscrupulous. After this storm had passed over, Mary, whatever restraint she imposed on her real feelings, treated Elizabeth, for the most part, with a show of kindness, though her name still continued to be mingled, whether with or without cause, with more than one treasonable plot.[60] Mary's last act—perhaps the only one in which she openly resisted the will of her husband—was to refuse to compel her sister to accept the hand of Philibert of Savoy. Yet this act would have relieved her of the presence of her rival; and by it Elizabeth would have forfeited her independent possession of the crown,—perhaps the possession of it altogether. It may be doubted whether Elizabeth, under similar circumstances, would have shown the like tenderness to the interests of her successor.[{35}]