Hereford, for refusing to kneel on the elevation of the host at the queen's coronation, and for other heresies, were committed to prison. Ferrar of St. David's, Bird of Exeter, and Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, were all imprisoned for marriage or other offences. Yet as long as the queen maintained the supremacy of the Church, and was not closely connected with the Spanish Court, her native goodness of heart withheld her from the commission of any such cruelties as disgraced the after years of her reign. On the contrary, she often manifested much sympathy with the sufferings of the ejected clergy, and a fact recorded by Fox, who had to narrate her subsequent severities, shows that she was capable of real magnanimity. Dr. Edward Sandys had been thrown into prison for a daring attack on the queen's title to the throne, and on her religion; yet at the intercession of one of the ladies of the bed-chamber, she ordered him to be set at liberty. She was not, however, disposed to pass over the offences of Cranmer, who had been so terrible an enemy to her mother. On the 13th of October he was brought to trial in Guildhall, on a charge of treason, together with Lady Jane Grey, her husband lord Guildford Dudley, and Lord Ambrose Dudley, his brother. They were all condemned to death as traitors, and a bill of attainder was passed through Parliament against them. Lady Jane's sentence was to be beheaded or burnt at the queen's pleasure, which was then the law of England in all cases were women committed high treason, or petty treason by the murder of their husbands. The fate of Lady Jane, who pleaded guilty, and exhibited the most mild and amiable demeanour on the occasion, excited deep sympathy, and crowds followed her as she was reconducted to the Tower, weeping and lamenting her hard fate. It was well understood, however, that the queen had no intention of carrying the sentence into effect against any of the prisoners; but she deemed it a means of keeping quiet her partisans to hold them in prison under sentence of death. She gave orders that they should receive every indulgence consistent with their security, and Lady Jane was permitted to walk in the queen's garden at the Tower, and even on Tower Hill. The subject which created the greatest difficulty to this Parliament was that of the queen's marriage. At the commencement of the session the Commons had voted an address to the queen, praying her to marry, to secure the succession to the throne, but imploring her to select her husband from amongst her subjects, and not from any foreign princely family. This was suggested by a very prevalent fear that her partiality, from connections of affinity and religion, for the Spanish family, might lead her to favour the ambitious views of the emperor, and take a husband from his house, thus making this country a province of Spain, and introduce here the despotic and persecuting spirit which prevailed there. Mary had, indeed, shown a decided preference for Courtenay, the young Earl of Devon. He was a remarkably handsome man, but having been a prisoner in the Tower from the time of the execution of his father, the Marquis of Exeter—in the tenth year of his own age—till the accession of Mary, when he was above thirty, he had naturally remained ill-instructed, and acquired low habits in his Tower life. Mary had taken great pains to form his manners, and kept him near her own person, electing his mother as her most confidential friend. But Courtenay was incorrigible. He gave a loose rein to his love of vulgar pleasures, frequented the most debased society, and soon thoroughly disgusted the queen. The French and Venetian ambassadors, who were anxious by all means to prevent a Spanish alliance, used every endeavour to induce Courtenay to conduct himself so as to secure the high honour of such a match, but it was in vain, and Mary soon began to give out that it was not befitting her to marry a subject, though to her intimate friends she candidly avowed that the dissolute character of Courtenay was the real cause of her looking abroad.
When Courtenay had lost all chance of securing the queen's hand, the indefatigable Noailles, the French ambassador, endeavoured to turn the scale in favour of the queen's celebrated kinsman, Cardinal Pole. Mary had sent Pole an earnest and immediate invitation to come over to England, and the public, ready to catch at any straw which afforded the least hope of escaping the Spanish match, fell readily into the anticipation that he was the man. Pole had not taken priest's orders, or if he had, dispensation might have been obtained; he was already fifty-three years of age, and become irrevocably addicted to the love of study and seclusion. No idea of marrying the Queen of England ever seems to have entered his head. He was living in a beautiful monastery at Magguzzano, on the Lake of Guarda, and all worldly ambition appeared to have quitted him. But on the news of his cousin's elevation to the throne, the daughter of that Catherine whose most zealous and eloquent champion he had been, and of that faith which he clung to at the expense of the highest promotion in England, he showed himself ready to abandon his repose, and to devote himself to the re-establishment of his beloved Church in his native land. He gladly accepted the office of Papal legate in England, and set out on his journey.
But there was another and more powerful person watching every highway in Europe which pointed towards England, who had designs of his own which he was already labouring diligently to accomplish in that quarter—and who was no other than the Emperor Charles V. Greatly alarmed at the journey of Cardinal Pole towards England, Charles lost no time in preventing his arrival there. He dreaded lest Mary had some old attachment for the cardinal, as she had been chiefly educated by his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, whom Henry VIII. so barbarously beheaded. Charles used his influence with the Pope to obtain his recall. He dispatched Mendoza to stop him in Germany, and alarm him with the representation of the danger of a Papal legate appearing in England till the religious changes were completely effected. Pole halted in his progress, and returned to Dillinghen on the Danube, where he awaited further instructions from the Pope. These were to suspend his journey for the present.
Meantime, Noailles, the French ambassador, was equally active in preventing the designs of Charles. He intrigued with the leaders of the Protestant party, holding midnight conferences with them in his own house, and now advised them to defend themselves from the menaced Spanish despotism by force of arms, promising them the aid of France. Pole, on the other hand, though he could
