Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. Lucy Aikin

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      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."

      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 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."

      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 birth, she judged it unnecessary to employ any of those arts of popularity to which her disposition was naturally adverse, for conciliating to herself or her destined spouse the good will of her subjects. After many delays which severely tried her temper, the arrival of the prince of Spain at Southampton was announced to the expecting queen, who went as far as Winchester to meet him, in which city Gardiner blessed their nuptials on July the 27th, 1554.

      The royal pair passed in state through London a few days after, and the city exhibited by command the outward tokens of rejoicing customary in that age. Bonfires were kindled in the open places, tables spread in the streets at which all passers-by might freely regale themselves with liquor: every parish sent forth its procession singing Te Deum; the fine cross in Cheapside was beautified and newly gilt, and pageants were set up in the principal streets. But there was little gladness of heart among the people; and one of these festal devices gave occasion to a manifestation of the dispositions of the court respecting religion, which filled the citizens with grief and horror. A large picture had been hung over the conduit in Gracechurch street representing the nine Worthies, and among them king Henry VIII. made his appearance, according to former draughts of him, holding in his hand a book on which was inscribed "Verbum Dei." This accompaniment gave so much offence, that Gardiner sent for the painter; and after chiding him severely, ordered that a pair of gloves should be substituted for the bible.

      Religion had already been restored to the state in which it remained at the death of Henry; but this was by no means sufficient to satisfy the conscience of the queen, which required the entire restoration in all its parts, of the ancient church-establishment. It had been, in fact, one of the first acts of her reign to forward to Rome a respectful embassy which conveyed to the sovereign pontiff her recognition of the supremacy of the holy see, and a petition that he would be pleased to invest with the character of his legate for England Cardinal Pole,—that earnest champion of her own legitimacy and the church's unity, who had been for so many years the object of her father's bitterest animosity.

      Mary's precipitate zeal had received some check in this instance from the worldly policy of the emperor Charles V., who, either entertaining some jealousy of the influence of Pole with the queen, or at least СКАЧАТЬ