THE HISTORY OF MARY L, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.* THE learned

and painstaking work of Miss Stone is a con• tribution of permanent value to historical literature. She writes, it is true, as an avowed advocate of the cause of Queen Mary, her object being, she says, to obtain a reversal of a prejudiced historical judgment. But she does not forget the historian in the advocate. Her success in the latter capacity is largely due to a studied moderation of tone and phrase. She is aware that Mary Tudor cannot be made an attractive character like Mary of Scotland, and she makes no attempt to invest her with the qualities of the heroine of romance. Her plea on behalf of the unhappy Queen is that she was placed in circumstances too hard for her, and tried beyond the possibili- ties of average human endurance. She was equally unfor- tunate in her friends and in her enemies. The great personal faults of her sister were largely neutralised by the wisdom and fidelity of her counsellors ; but Mary was for the most part as unfortunate in those who stood by her as in those who opposed her. To Mary the Queen many will hesitate

• The History of Mary L, Owen. of England, as found in the .embilic Recoraf , Hupp:itches of Jozhassadoes, in Ortfinal Privet* rAtt4ra. and other Contmwers'Y Docionents. Sy J. IL Stone. loados; 6auris sa4co. 044 .

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to give even the faint praise awarded by Miss Stone ; but Miss Stone's facts and pleadings will go fan to extenuate the errors of the persecuted and desolate woman. There are few more pathetic figures in history than the well-

intentioned, narrow-minded ruler who is called to rule in days of transition. The frivolous and superficial may ride on

the wave and neither do nor suffer much evil ; those gifted with hope, and above all with imagination, may help to create a new and happier epoch ; but woe to the narrow-minded and well-intentioned who can only fall back on the fatal weapon of reaction pure and simple. The successor of Henry VIII. and of Edward VI. had to be an ecclesiastical trimmer, if the land was not to be deluged with blood. Mary's virtues as well as her limitations made it impossible for her to play the part which her sister played with such success, if not always to her personal credit. As Miss Stone says, England needed a spirit touched with the inspiration of the new age to direct the rest- less activities of a nation already beginning to be permeated with the Renaissance. Miss Stone thus describes the chitracter of the woman called to the task of governing England in a great religious crisis :—

" There was no element of romance in her character ; her mental endowments were essentially of a practical nature, and she lacked almost entirely the gifts necessary to adapt them to a changing world. Nearly all her life long the times were out of joint, and she knew no other way to set them right but that of uncompromising opposition. But she possessed in an eminent degree the virtues of her limitations ; her whole conduct was moulded on examples which she had been taught to reverence as her conscience, and consistent to a fault, she saw little evil in the old order, little good in the new. Ardently affectionate, a loyal friend and bountiful mistress, she was keenly sensitive to every act of fidelity."

Besides her inherent defects of character, an additional reason made it almost impossible for Mary to act as an im- partial arbiter between the adherents of the faiths which divided the people of her realm. She had suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of some of the leading representatives of the new doctrines. Miss Stone truly says of her that alone of the Tudors she remembered benefits and showed gratitude to benefactors ; but she had likewise a long memory for wrongs. To find parallels for her wrongs one must go back to some of the hapless heroines of Greek tragedy, for her own kin were her worst foes. Her life opened under splendid auspices. Her father called her his "Pearl," and surrounded her with outward splendours. She received an excellent education, learning to read Cicero, Seneca, St. Jerome, and Aquinas ; and she appear) to have had a better claim to her reputation for learning than most Royal personages. She was affianced first to the Dauphin of France, and afterwards to Charles V., Emperor of Germany. When she reached the age of sixteen, being a thoughtful, serious girl, she was informed that she was no longer Princess of Wales nor heir to the crown, but the illegitimate daughter of the Monarch, and that her only

place was one of sufferance in the train of the Lady Eliza- beth. Modern historians have given us a new reading of the character of Mary's father. Bluff Harry, who changed and got rid of his wives whenever he had a mind to, and asked no one's leave, has been transformed into the crafty master of casuistry who took infinite pains to discover or invent legal and religious sanctions for whatever wickedness his heart

prompted him to commit. The controversy regarding his character recalls a. conversation in Guy Mannering between the Edinburgh lawyer Pleydell and Colonel Mannering. The former expresses some compassion for the fraudulent lawyer Glossin when he and his confederate, Dirk Hatteraick, are handed over to justice. Colonel Mannering retorts that the ruffian smuggler is, in his opinion, the better man of the two. To us, we confess, the new Henry VIII. of the historical investigator is a more hateful personage than the Blue Beard of tradition.

Not content with having deprived his daughter of her rights and of her rank, he insisted that she should make a formal declaration in writing that he had done all things well. She was required to sign the following statement :—" The

marriage between his Majesty and my mother the late Princess Dowager was by God's law and man's law incestuous and unlawful." As long as her mother lived Mary resolutely refused to abjure her rights, or to acknowledge Anne Boleyn as Queen of England. Her firmness well-nigh brought her to the scaffold; and Chapys, the Imperial Ambassador, was so

alarmed for her safety that he made plans to have her secretly conveyed out of the kingdom. After her mother's death and the death of Anne Boleyn she was induced to sign by Cromwell, who professed to be, and probably was, her friend. He assured her that if she refused, he would abandon her cause as "the most ungrateful, unnatural, and most obstinate person living, both to God and your most dear and benign father." She signed, apparently less from fear than from a genuine desire to be reconciled to her father, for whom, strangely enough, she retained much affection. During her brother's reign she was likewise subjected to persecution, of a less dangerous but of an annoying character, for it alienated her from a brother whom she had fondly 13ved. She was summoned before his Council and rated by her brother for having Mass in her household, which he said he could not permit. The threats of the Emperor, however, compelled the Council of the young King to desist, and Mary was permitted to worship in peace.

When Mary ascended the throne she had a great oppor- tunity. She was personally popular, for the nation had always espoused her cause and that of her mother. It was heartily tired of the unscrupulous group which had ruled and plundered under Edward VI., and a considerable portion of the population had little love for the brand - new Protestantism which had been forced upon it. Mary began her reign well. The conspiracy which was formed to place Lady Jane Grey upon the throne was easily crushed, and Mary treated the miserable conspirators with marked leniency. Only three paid the penalty of their crimes with their lives. Lady Jane and her husband were spared at the special desire of the Queen. It was the Spanish match and the subsequent formal reconciliation with Rome that ruined the fair prospects of her reign. The people of England, although attached to much of the old order, were vehemently opposed to foreign domination in any form ; and a Spanish King was as unpopular as a Roman Pope. It was rumours of the Spanish match and what it would mean for England that created the dangerous rising under Wyatt, which was repressed with great difficulty. Mary's mood changed. She became convinced that the Emperor had spoken wisely when he blamed her former leniency as not sufficiently tempered with justice. Lady Jane Grey and her husband were sent to the scaffold and a number of the insurgent ringleaders, although, considering the times, the severities practised were not unusual.

The deepest stains on Mary's memory come from the fires of Smithfield. But even in this matter her evil fortune pur- sued her. The story of her persecutions of Protestants was told by Foxe, a writer of unrivalled popular power, but as regardless of truth as the martyrologists of the Roman Church. It is undoubted, however, that men and women suffered for their faith under Mary. Miss Stone places their number at two hundred, although some of these were likewise guilty of treasonable practices. The Emperor, who had vast experi- ence in dealing with religious factions, advised that all should be dealt with as traitors, and not as heretics. The only defence that Miss Stone makes for Mary is that she obeyed the teaching of her Church, a teaching which was endorsed in theory and in practice by the Protestant Reformers, by Grimmer and Latimer as well as by Calvin and Melancthon. Mary's letters to her Council on the subject betray no vindictive feeling, but neither do they exhibit any compassion for the victims. She probably sent heretics to the stake with less compunction than traitors, for she looked upon heresy as the original source of all disorder and rebellion. Human life was lightly thought of in those days; adherence to certain dogmas was considered of far more importance than judgment or mercy. This reproach strikes not only Mary, however, but all her contemporaries.

Yet when all is said and done and all excuses are made, the fact remains that Mary did send a great number not only of innocent but of good and saintly men and women to the flames for their faith and opinions, and not for their acts.