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CHAPTER XIX.

USURPATION OF THE LADY JANE GREY- ACCESSION OF MARY-EXECUTION OF THE LADY JANE - RESTORATION OF POPERY

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PERSECUTION-JOHN ROG

ERS-LAWRENCE SAUNDERS-LATIMER-CRANMER - DEATH OF MARY-ACCESSION OF ELIZABETHREFORMATION ESTABLISHED. 1552-1559.

NORTHUMBERLAND, whose ambition was not satisfied with the power he had already enjoyed, formed a plan by which he hoped to maintain his authority yet longer. Having married his fourth son, Lord Guilford Dudley, to the Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the younger sister of Henry VIII. he prevailed upon Edward, who dreaded the effects of his sister Mary's hatred of the Reformers, to make a will and appoint the Lady Jane his successor. Accordingly, after the decease of the king, Jane, then only sixteen years of age, and contrary to her own wish, was proclaimed queen.

The lovely usurper, whose reluctance to ascend the throne had been overcome chiefly by the earnest entreaties of her father, the Duke of Suffolk, maintained her dangerous elevation only nine days. Northumberland was almost universally detested; the right of Mary to the crown was undisputed, and the rapacity of the pre

tended friends of the Reformation, during the last reign, had rendered the people quite indifferent in regard to religious affairs. With these circumstances operating in her favor, Mary found it easy to defeat her enemies and recover her rightful authority. She entered London supported by the whole nation, and was acknowledged by all as the lawful sovereign of the realm.

To enlist the Reformers on her side, Mary had promised not to alter the religion as established by her brother. This promise was soon broken. The Queen, whose disposition inclined her to cruelty, was bigoted in her attachment to popery, and violent in her hatred of the new opinions; and indeed the injustice she had reIceived at the hands of the Protestants would have excited the indignation of a far more merciful temper than she possessed. To them she attributed the dishonor of her mother, the danger to which she herself had been exposed during the reign of her father, and the vexations she had endured from her brother's anxiety to change her faith.

Hardly, therefore, had the queen mounted the throne, before she showed it to be her determination to restore the Catholic religion. She granted a pardon to those prelates who had been confined or removed from office, on account of

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their opposition to the Reformation. Gardiner and the infamous Bonner were admitted to seats in the council. All ministers were forbidden to preach, except such as received the royal permission, which was carefully confined to popish priests. The foreign Protestants, many of whom had settled in England in the time of Edward, were expelled from the kingdom. The marriages of the clergy were declared illegal. A Latin mass was performed at the opening of Parliament. And to crown the work, the Pope was secretly informed of the queen's earnest desire to be reconciled to the Roman see.

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These changes gave great offence to a large portion of the people; and when in addition to them it was known that the queen intended to marry Philip, the eldest son of Charles V., step which threatened to bring England under the control of that monarch, the general discontent broke out in open rebellion. The insurrection was soon put down; but Mary made use of it as an excuse for the destruction of all whom she feared as rivals or dreaded for their virtues.

The most eminent among the victims were the Duke of Suffolk, who had been weak enough to lend some countenance to the rebels, Lord Dudley, and his wife the Lady Jane Grey. The account of the execution of these nobles belongs

to the civil history of this period; but we cannot forbear pausing to notice the firmness with which the last met her sentence.

There are few characters in history so deserving of affectionate respect as that of the Lady Jane Grey. Young, beautiful, learned, religious, the unhappy instrument of her ambitious relatives, she was now called upon by the inexorable Mary to prepare for death. The summons was received with composure, for it announced the approach of that hour of release from trouble to which she had long been looking forward. With calmness and clearness of mind she defended her creed against the arguments of the priest, sent to convert her to the Catholic faith. In a letter to her father," she expressed her sense of her sin in assuming the royal dignity, though he knew unwillingly she was drawn into it.” “She rejoiced," she continued, "at her approaching end, since nothing could be to her more welcome than to be delivered from that valley of misery, into that heavenly throne to which she hoped to be advanced." To her sister she sent the Greek Testament, which had been her daily companion, extolling most earnestly its inestimable value, and exhorting her to read and obey its instructions.

On the day of her execution her husband desired to take leave of her. This request she

declined, as to comply with it would only increase their grief, and they would soon meet, as she trusted, never to be again separated. She even had the firmness to gaze upon his headless body, as it was brought back, after his execution, to the Tower to be buried. On the scaffold the Lady Jane confessed that her usurpation of the crown was unlawful, that she had also too much neglected the word of God, and loved too much herself and the world. Then, "having desired the people's prayers, she knelt down and repeated the fifty-first Psalm; then she undressed herself, stretched out her head on the block and cried, Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and so her head was cut off."

Mary, finding that she had increased her power and terrified her subjects into submission, by suppressing the rebellion and by the executions which followed, was now resolved to carry into effect her other plans. In 1554 she married Philip, and in the same year measures were adopted publicly to reconcile her kingdom to the Romish church. This latter act was performed by the Pope's legate, Cardinal Pole.

Pole, a man of mild and amiable temper, was a kinsman of Henry VIII. and a great favorite with that monarch, till he ventured to oppose his divorce from Catherine. This drew upon him the displeasure of the king, and he left

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