Queen Mary and her People. I. HOW MARY RESTORED THE CATHOLIC RELIGION. THE reign of Queen Mary has become a proverb and a byword in England. The very children are taught to call her "bloody" Queen Mary. They are told that she was a morose and merciless tyrant, feared and hated by her people; a bigoted Papist, who put her Protestant subjects to death on account of their religion-peaceable and pious souls, who desired only to serve God according to their conscience. I remember most distinctly the sort of picture that was presented to my boyish imagination of this melancholy time. A dull heavy gloom overspreading the nation, enlivened only by the red fires of Smithfield, and the shrieks of the tortured victims; the priests looking on with fiendish satisfaction, or feeding the flames with copies of the Bible. Dark scowling faces going about the streets; neighbours talking moodily in whispers; sports and pastimes banished from the land; good men trembling with fear, the bad exulting in the gratification of their revengeful passions; the people ever ready to rise in rebellion, but kept down by the iron hand of despotic power; true lovers of the Gospel forced to be present at an idolatrous worship, and to act the part of Catholics while Protestants at heart. Such is the picture which my mind recalls, and over all appears the sorrowful face of Queen Mary, as it looked in the woodcut which adorned the "history" of her reign. Now this picture I have discovered to be false. I am not saying that the reign of Queen Mary was not, for many reasons, an unhappy one: of this I will tell you more by and by. But I think I can make it very clear to you that it was neither the queen nor her religion that made it so. A few words will explain how matters stood with respect to religion when Mary came to the throne. Henry VIII. had separated himself from the Pope, who, as the successor of the Apostle Peter, was the supreme governor of the Church of Christ throughout the world, and had made himself head of the Church in England in the Pope's place. Thus he set up what is called the royal supremacy in this country. Henry had done this because the Pope had refused to divorce him from his lawful wife Queen Catherine, the mother of Mary, and to allow him to marry Anne Boleyn, one of the ladies of her court. This Anne Boleyn was the mother of Elizabeth (who after Mary was queen of England); and as Elizabeth was born while Catherine lived, she was consequently illegitimate. Henry VIII. was succeeded by his son Edward, who was a child when his father died. Edward, or rather those who had the control over him, went further than Henry, and changed the doctrines of the Church, introducing Protestant opinions in their stead. Mary came next, and both restored the old Catholic religion and re-united the Church of England with the See of Rome. How she did this I am about to shew you. Understand, however, that I am not concerned to prove, for the honour of the Catholic religion, that Mary was a good queen. Many Catholic sovereigns have led wicked lives and done many cruel actions. Mary, therefore, might have been all that her enemies say of her, and yet the Catholic religion be the only true one. But the question is, Was she so? Was she cruel and revengeful, and was it her religion that made her so? And if not, what shall we think of the popular cry, which is used as if it were a good argument against the Catholic religion? "Remember bloody Mary and the Smithfield fires!" As a matter of fact, then, I am prepared to shew you that Mary was a favourite with her people, and that the restoration of the Catholic religion, far from being forced upon the nation, was joyfully welcomed by it. I am prepared also to shew you, that the bloody executions that marked the latter portion of her reign cannot in justice be charged upon the Catholic Church. In the present tract I shall fulfil the first half of my promise. I shall shew you, by an appeal to facts collected from Protestant writers, how Mary was really regarded by her people, and how the Catholic religion was re-established in her reign. Protestant writers have recorded these facts; but influenced by prejudice, or still less worthy motives, have falsely coloured or artfully distorted them. They wrote to flatter Protestant sovereigns, or to please Protestant readers; and for some time they had it all their own way. But of late other Protestant writers have looked into the subject, and have treated it with more honesty and justice. They have given not only the facts, but the true meaning of those facts. Unhappily there are persons who would try to keep this knowledge from you, and therefore it is that I have undertaken to present it to you in this plain way. To perform my task effectually, I must give you a short sketch of the chief events of Queen Mary's reign, in the order in which they happened, and will begin at the beginning. King Henry VIII. had settled the crown on his infant son Edward; and on the prince's dying without children, it was to go to his eldest daughter Mary, and next in order to her sister Elizabeth. All this had been confirmed by act of Parliament, and so was part and parcel of the law of the land. He had also appointed sixteen executors, among whom was Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, to direct the affairs of the kingdom until the young prince was old enough to govern for himself. All the executors took solemn oath to stand to and maintain this the last will and testament of their master, and immediately afterwards broke their oath by making one of their number Protector of the realm; for, by the terms of the will and testament, all had been given equal powers. will prepare you for what followed. This When King Edward VI. lay on his death-bed, a plot was formed to exclude Mary and Elizabeth from the throne, and the dying youth was induced to transfer the crown from his sisters to his cousin, the Lady Jane Grey, who was married to the son of the Duke of Northumberland, the then Protector of the kingdom. At the head of the con |