Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. Lucy Aikin

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СКАЧАТЬ -vol i- in the stories told of persons of suspicious appearance lurking about the walls of the palace, who sought to gain admittance for the purpose of taking away her life, the exact vigilance of her keeper, by which all access was barred, might more deserve her thanks than her reproaches.

      During the period that the princess was thus industriously secluded from conversation with any but the few attendants who had been allowed to remain about her person, her correspondence was not less watchfully restricted. We are told, that when, after urgent application to the council, she had at length been permitted to write to the queen, Beddingfield looked over her as she wrote, took the paper into his own keeping when she paused, and brought it back to her when she chose to resume her task.

      Yet could not his utmost precaution entirely cut off her communications with the large and zealous party who rested upon her all their hopes of better times for themselves or for the country. Through the medium of a visitor to one of her ladies, she received the satisfactory assurance that none of the prisoners for Wyat's business had been brought to utter any thing by which she could be endangered. Perhaps it was with immediate reference to this intelligence that she wrote with a diamond on her window the homely but expressive distich,

      "Much suspected by me

       Nothing proved can be,

       Quoth Elizabeth prisoner."

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      But these secret intelligencers were not always fortunate enough to escape detection, of which the consequences were rendered very grievous through the arbitrary severity of Mary's government, and the peculiar malice exercised by Gardiner against the adherents of the princess.

      Sir John Harrington, son to the gentleman of the same name formerly mentioned as a follower of admiral Seymour, thus, in his Brief View of the Church, sums up the character of this celebrated bishop of Winchester, with reference to this part of his conduct.

      "Lastly, the plots he laid to entrap the lady Elizabeth, and his terrible hard usage of all her followers, I cannot yet scarce think of with charity, nor write of with patience. My father, for only carrying a letter to the lady Elizabeth, and professing to wish her well, he kept in the Tower twelve months, and made him spend a thousand pounds ere he could be free of that trouble. My mother, that then served the lady Elizabeth, he caused to be sequestered from her as an heretic, insomuch that her own father durst not take her into his house, but she was glad to sojourn with one Mr. Topcliff; so as I may say in some sort, this bishop persecuted me before I was born."

      In the twelfth month of his imprisonment, this unfortunate Harrington, having previously sent to the bishop many letters and petitions for liberty without effect, had the courage to address to him a "Sonnet," which his son has cited as "no ill verse for those unrefined times;" a modest commendation of lines so−179- -vol i- spirited, which the taste of the more modern reader, however fastidious, need not hesitate to confirm.

      To Bishop Gardiner.

       1.

       "At least withdraw your cruelty,

       Or force the time to work your will;

       It is too much extremity

       To keep me pent in prison still,

       Free from all fault, void of all cause,

       Without all right, against all laws.

       How can you do more cruel spite

       Than proffer wrong and promise right?

       Nor can accuse, nor will acquight.

       2.

       Eleven months past and longer space

       I have abode your dev'lish drifts,

       While you have sought both man and place,

       And set your snares, with all your shifts,

       The faultless foot to wrap in wile

       With any guilt, by any guile:

       And now you see that will not be,

       How can you thus for shame agree

       To keep him bound you should set free?

       3.

       Your chance was once as mine is now,

       To keep this hold against your will,

       And then you sware you well know how,

       Though now you swerve, I know how ill.

       But thus this world his course doth pass,

       The priest forgets a clerk he was,

       And you that have cried justice still,

       And now have justice at your will,

       Wrest justice wrong against all skill.

       4.

       But why do I thus coldly plain

       As if it were my cause alone?

       When cause doth each man so constrain

       As England through hath cause to moan,

       To see your bloody search of such

       As all the earth can no way touch.

       And better were that all your kind

       Like hounds in hell with shame were shrined,

       Than you add might unto your mind.

       5.

       But as the stone that strikes the wall

       Sometimes bounds back on th' hurler's head,

       So your foul fetch, to your foul fall

       May turn, and 'noy the breast that bred.

       And then, such measure as you gave

       Of right and justice look to have,

       If good or ill, if short or long;

       If false or true, if right or wrong;

       And thus, till then, I end my song."

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      Such were the trials and sufferings which exercised the fortitude of Elizabeth and her faithful followers during her deplorable abode at Woodstock. Mary, meanwhile, was rapt in fond anticipations of the felicity of her married life with a prince for whom, on the sight of his picture, she is said to have conceived the most violent passion. The more strongly her people expressed their aversion and dread of the Spanish match, the more vehemently did she show herself bent on its conclusion; and having succeeded in suppressing by force the formidable rebellion to which the first report of such an union had given−181- -vol i- birth, she judged it unnecessary to employ any of those arts of popularity to which her disposition was СКАЧАТЬ