them as liberally as her means enabled her. Gladly would she have restored them aU to the Church, '• but it was feared that violent commotions would ensue if that course were adopted;" and the papal legate, while he "reluctantly assented" to the arrangement as pro- posed by the Convocation, " that the present titles to monasteries and Church lands should not be disturbed," " admonished those who held those lands of the guilt of sacrilege, and reminded them of the doom of Belshaz- zar" (!). See Monasticism. Froude, whom the Ro- manists are so eager to prove guilty of unfitness as a historian, has been one of the most lenient commenta- tors on the conduct of Mary of England towards her people. He holds that, " To the time of her accession she had lived a blameless and, in many respects, a noble life ; and few men or women have lived less capable of doing knowingly a wrong thing." He adds that her trials and disappointments, "it can hardly be doubted, affected her sanity," and ascribes the guilt chiefiy to Gardiner, and measurably to Pole. Unless it be on the point of insanity, we are inclined to hold IMary respon- sible for the persecutions of her reign, believing, with Ranke, that " whatever is done in the name of a prince, with his will and by his authority, decides his reputa- tion in historj'." In her domestic Ufe Mary was wretch- ed. Philip, whom she loved with a morbid passion, proved a sour, selfish, and heartless husband; at once a bigot and a brute. No children followed their union; and exasperation and loneliness, working upon a temper naturally obstinate and sidlen, without doubt rendered her more compliant to the sanguinary policy of the re- actionary bishops. Fortunately for England, her reign was brief. She died — after suffering much and long from dropsy and nervous debility — Nov. 17, 1558. Her successor on the throne was her sister Elizabeth, who not only undid -all the work she had accomplished, but finally and successfully established Protestantism as the faith of the nation. See Elizabeth.
Queen Mary's literarj' productions, thougli of but mi- nor interest at present, deserve mention here because of the peculiar bearing they have on her early histor}\ She is said to have been a superior Latin scholar, and was commended by Erasmus. " Scripsit bene Latinas epistolas," says he. Towards the end of her father's reign, at the earnest solicitation of queen Catharine Parr, she undertook to translate Erasmus's Paraphrase on the Gosj)el of St. John, but being cast into sickness, as Udall relates, partly by overmuch stuxly in this ^vork, after she had made some progress therein, she left the rest to be done by Dr. Mallet, her chaplain. This translation is printed in the first volume of Erasmvs's Paraj^hrase upon the New Testament (London, 1548, folio). The " Preface" was written by Udall, the famous master of Eton School, and addressed to the queen dowager. Af- ter her accession to the throne a proclamation was issued callmg in and suppressing this very book, and all others that liad any tendency towards furthering the Refor- mation. An ingenious writer is of opinion that the sick- ness which came upon her while she was translating St. John was all affected; "for," says he, "she would not so easily have been cast into sickness had she been empWed on the legends of St. Teresa or St. Catharine of Sienna." Strype (iii, 468) has preserved three pray- ers or meditations of hers : the first, Against the A ssaults of Vice ; the second, A Meditation touching A drersiti/ ; the third, A Prayer to he read at the Hour of Death, In Y OS.' s Acts and Monu7nents are printed eight of her letters to king EdAvard and the lords of the council on her nonconformity, and on the imprisonment of her chaplain. Dr. Mallet. In the SyUoge fpistolurum are several more of her letters, extremely curious: one on her delicacy in never having written but to three men, one of affection for her sister, one after the death of Anne Boleyn, and one, very remarkable, of Cromwell to her. In Haynes's State Papers arc two in Spanish, to the emperor Charles V. There is also a French letter, printed by Strj'pe (iii, 318) from the Cotton Library,
MARY STUART
849
MARY STUART
in answer to a haughty mandate from Philip, when he j to the Highlanders. Scotland had thus far remained
true to the cause of Kome : a scion of the house of Guise (duke Claude) was on the throne, and the Keformation, though progressing in the adjoining country, had not yet been suffered to make much of an impression on the Scots. But the new doctrine had found an entrance at least. Indeed, the regent Arran was himself favorable to the Keformers, and in Parliament, as early as 1542, an act had been passed declaring it lawful for all to read the Scriptures in their native language. It was clear, therefore, that though Komanism had hitherto sustained its supremacy, its power was tottering. At this critical juncture of affairs France came forward and offered assistance to the IJomish party. The cause of the Church must be upheld at all hazards. The resiilt was the establishment of two camps. " The friends of the Reformation," says Kussell (Hist, of ike Ch. of Scot- land [Lond. 1834, 2 vols. 18mo], i, 181), " supported those counsels which had for their object the union of the British crowns ; while the Eoraanists very naturally clung to that alliance which, aided by the personal in- fluence of the queen-mother, promised to strengthen the foundations of their establishment, already somewhat shaken by the popular tempest." Had Arran been a person of indomitable will and stability of purpose the cause of the Keformers might now have been fir:;;ly es- tablished, but he was '• a weak and fickle man, liable at all times to be wrought upon and biased by tliose of greater decision and energy of character," and his op- ponent, the wily cardinal, had obtained the ascendancy, and not only neutralized Arran's opposition, but actually brought him to approve and further the great master- scheme of the cardinal to give the young queen in mar- riage to the dauphin of France. In consonance with a treaty for this purpose, Mary was sent to France in 1548, to be educated in that coinitry.