MARY I

A SHORT HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN BY JAMES MUNRO, M..A.

Published By Oliver and Boyd Ltd. c.1920

On 6th July 1553 Edward died; and on the 10th , Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen. But the people were disgusted by Northumberland's selfish policy, and even the Council itself, which had abetted his plans, deserted him as soon as it became apparent that the feeling of the country was against him. Within ten days from the proclamation of Queen Jane, Northumberland himself recognised that his attempt had failed. He therefore proclaimed Mary, and submitted to arrest. A month later he was tried and condemned to death. MARY AND CATHOLICISM In the beginning of 1554, Mary's proposal to marry the Catholic king of Spain led to a serious rising. It was the men of Kent who were most stirred at this time by hate of Spain. Led by the Member of Parliament, Sir Thomas Wyatt, they marched to London, Mary's supporters allowed them to reach the town without much opposition, and then cut off their retreat and surrounded them. Wyatt surrendered in order to avoid bloodshed; but the rising served as an excuse for the execution, not only of scores of those who were concerned, but also of innocent persons such as Lady Jane Grey and her husband.

Mary's reign was even shorter than Edward's. She was an earnest, but narrow Roman Catholic; and she married Philip II of Spain, the son of the Emperor Charles V. The interest of her reign centres in her attempts to induce the English people to submit to the Roman Catholic Church, and to help her husband in promoting the interests of Spain.

The queen's marriage took place in July 1554. In November, Parliament was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church. Henry VIII 's laws against the Pope were repealed, and the old heresy laws revived; but it was seen that it would be unwise to try to take back the monastic lands and other Church goods which had been confiscated and granted to private persons.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
MARY STEWART was born in 1542, and was Queen of Scots almost from her birth. From 1548 to 1561 she was brought up in France. In her absence, the great struggle between French and English influences was fought out in Scotland.
The leading parts were played at first by the queens mother, Mary of Lorraine, and Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, on the French - Catholic side; and by Matthew Stewart , Earl of Lennox, on the English side. Lennox married the daughter of Margaret Tudor and her, second husband, the Earl of Angus. Their son was Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who later married Queen Mary .

Between the two parties there wavered James Hamilton, the second Earl of Arran, who had the next claim to the Scots throne after Queen Mary and her family. At the crisis he took the side of England; and he sought to marry his son at one time to Elizabeth of England, and at another time to Mary of Scotland.

ENGLISH INVASIONS.
ARRAN, who was the first regent, made a treaty with England for the marriage of Mary to Henry VIII 's son, Edward. But the infant queen was carried off from Arran's keeping by the French party, and, in order to retain his position as regent, he submitted to their wishes. The treaty with England was broken off, a close connection was renewed with France, and some Protestants were burned as heretics.

Henry VIII was furious at this disappointment. He sent the Earl of Hertford with a fleet to burn Edin-burgh and the surrounding villages; and this work was thoroughly carried out in May 1544. In the next year some barons of the English Border tried to repeat this success, but, after they had burned Melrose, they were cut off and routed at Ancrum, near Jedburgh. The French now sent troops to help their allies to retaliate, but the invasion of England which followed lasted only four days. Its most important result was to bring Hertford north again with a great army. In September 1545 he burned two hundred and fifty towns and villages, and ruined the famous abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, Coldingham, and Roxburgh.

In 1546 the English made a plot for the murder of one of their chief enemies - Cardinal Beaton. But the Protestant party in Scotland had been rendered desperate by the burning of their most eloquent leader, George Wishart, before the Cardinal's castle at St. Andrews in March; and they forestalled Henry's plot by slaying Beaton at St Andrews in May. The murderers were then besieged in the castle, where they received aid from England; but in 1547 the French sent a fleet which compelled the garrison to surrender. Among those who had joined the party in the castle was a preacher called John Knox, who became the most famous of the Scots Reformers. Knox and the others were taken to France, and either imprisoned or sent to the galleys.
Henry VIII died in 1547, but Hertford continued his policy. He made a third raid into Scotland with an army and a fleet, and defeated the Scots at Pinkie (on the shore of the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh) in 1547.

The ravages of Hertford did not frighten the Scots into submission. Mary, a child of five, was sent to France to be educated and to marry the Dauphin: when she next saw Scotland she was eighteen years old, and a widow. French troops were again sent to aid the Scots, and gradually the English garrisons were driven out. When England and France made peace in 1550, the English were required to withdraw from Scotland.

FRENCH RULE IN SCOTLAND.
The weakness of England under Hertford and Warwick and under the Catholic Queen Mary gave the French party in Scotland a great opportunity, and in 1554 MARY OF LORRAINE was able to oust Arran from the regency. Her daughter was the destined Queen of France, and her brothers, Francis, Duke of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, expected to control the policy of France. Mary ruled Scotland with French ministers and French soldiers and in the interests of France, because those interests seemed to be the interests of her own family, the Guises.

From 1553 to 1558 Mary Tudor was ruling England in the interests of Spain. Spain was hostile to France, and so, the closer England was drawn to Spain, the more Mary of Lorraine tried to keep Scotland apart from England. But she made the mistake of displaying too openly the control of France over the government. As time went on, the Scots nobles resented this more and more, and, when France and England went to war, the Scots, in spite of the regent's wishes, would do very little to help their old ally.

In November 1558 Mary Tudor died ,and England ceased to be connected with Spain, but it did not become friendly to France. The French, and especially the Guise Family claimed that Elizabeth, as the daughter of Anne Boleyn (whom Henry VIII had married while his first wife was still alive), had no right to the throne of England, and that the true heir was the grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor and James IV - that is, Mary Stewart, the Queen of Scotland and prospective Queen of France. The interests of Mary of Lorraine and her family were as hostile to those of Elizabeth as they could possibly be. Therefore, as Elizabeth relied on the support of the English Protestants, the Guises had to adopt a strong Catholic policy and strike at England through a Catholic Scotland.

Mary of Lorraine began to try to put down Protestantism in Scotland. But the Protestants had now gained the support of a " national" party, which hated to see Frenchmen holding high positions in Scot-land and directing its government in the interests of foreigners - the Guises. This party very naturally came to look to England for aid.

TRIUMPH OF PROTESTANT PARTY.
AS early as December 1557 the Protestant leaders, known as "the Lords of the Congregation," had signed a " bond " or covenant" to stand by one another. In the summer of 1559 both sides took up arms.
Elizabeth's adviser, William Cecil, was able to induce her to help the Scots Protestants. In January 1560 an English fleet appeared in the Firth of Forth, white, on the other hand, storms delayed the reinforcements which were despatched from France. An English army advanced to join the Scots in besieging Leith, which had become the French headquarters, and an English fleet commanded the Firth against any reinforcements which France might send. Mary of Lorraine died in June: and four weeks later a treaty was made at Edinburgh, which provided that Scotland was to be freed from French officials and soldiers, and that until the Queen's return the country should be governed by a committee of twelve, seven appointed by Mary and five by the Scots Parliament.

This victory for Protestantism and for the unity of Great Britain and its freedom from foreign control was made secure by the death of the King of France in December. Mary and the Guises lost their power in Protestant and national Scotland, which was inclined already to criticise and distrust her.
The Scots Parliament in 1560 abolished the Pope's authority in the country, and approved the twenty-five articles of belief of the national Church of Scotland. The questions of the endowment and of the government of the new Church were still unsettled when Mary landed at Leith in August

PERSECUTION OF PROTESTANTS
Mary thought that Englishmen might be forced to be Catholics if stubborn Protestants were imprisoned and put to death. In less than four years, 1555-8, three hundred Protestants were burned - most of them in the south-east of England. The most famous martyrs were three who suffered at Oxford Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester (who were burned in October 1555), and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (burned in March 1556). In prison Cranmer was induced to recant his opinions ; but before his execution he expressed his sorrow for this weakness, and at the stake he behaved with courage equal to that of any of the other martyrs. Cranmer's greatest service to England was the com-position of the Book of Common Prayer, which has influenced the thoughts and feelings of twelve generations of Englishmen.

The persecution did not tend to make the people look with favour upon Roman Catholicism. Nor did the sacrifice of England's interests to those of Spain make Philip a greater favourite with the people. England was dragged into war with France in a quarrel in which she had no real interest; and Calais, the last English possession in France, was lost in 1558.
Mary saw the disappointment of all her aims for the good of her family, her faith, and her people. Her great desire had been to have a son to continue her policy and to keep England Catholic; but in November 1558 she died childless.

THE MIDDLE WAVE.
The religious revolution of the sixteenth century led to civil wars in almost all the states of Western Europe. In England, after the extremes of the two preceding reigns, Elizabeth attempted to effect a compromise. She had little sympathy with the advanced Protestants; but, on the other hand, the Pope had never allowed the marriage of Henry VIII to her mother, Anne Boleyn ; and good Catholics doubted whether Elizabeth could have any right to the Crown. She therefore tried to win the support of moderate men on both sides by finding a " middle way," keeping many of the usages , but not recognising the headship of the Pope. Rome, of course, could not be content with this, and in the end Elizabeth found herself regarded as the champion of Protestantism in Europe. She gave help to the Protestants of Scotland, of France and of the Spanish Netherlands.
By the Act of Supremacy in 1559 the queen was to be supreme in Church matters as well as in those of the State, while the Act of Uniformity of the same year prescribed the use of a Prayer Book based on that of 1552.

ST BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY.
In FRANCE there was a party, known as the " Huguenots," which wished to establish Protestantism, or, at least, to have it tolerated, and to check the growing power of Spain. The opposing Catholic party, led by the Guises, the brothers of Mary of Lorraine, wished to make England Catholic under their niece, Mary Stewart ; they desired also to be friendly with Spain, and to persecute the Protestants at home.

The civil wars between the Catholic Government and the Huguenots began in 1562, and were renewed at intervals until near the end of the century. In 1572 the Catholic party managed to induce the king (Charles IX) to order the assassination of the Protestants on the 24th of August - St. Bartholomew's Day. This might have proved a very serious blunder, for England and France had been coming to be more friendly, and the English Protestants were naturally enraged at the massacre. But Spain was so powerful and so intensely Catholic that Elizabeth could not afford to break with France.
In 1598 Henry of Navarre, who had succeeded to the French throne, issued the " Edict of Nantes," giving toleration to the Huguenots.

SPAIN AND THE DUTCH.
Philip II of SPAIN, who had been the husband of Mary Tudor, was also ruler of the Netherlands; and there a large proportion of the people were Protestants. Philip was determined to put down heresy at all costs, but the persecution under the Duke of Alva only stirred up rebellion, and the war proved too much for Spain. In 1579 the seven northern provinces formed the "Union of Utrecht," and in 1581 they definitely cast off their allegiance to Spain. This was the beginning of the Dutch Republic, properly styled the " United Provinces," but more frequently called by the name of the most important province, Holland. In 1584 the Dutch leader, William of Orange, was murdered. The Dutch continued bravely to fight for their freedom, and England and France afforded some help from time to time. At the close of Elizabeth's reign Spain was still attempting to subdue the Dutch, with ever-lessening hope of success.