pretence of loyalty deceived no one, and Northumberland was arrested and put to death for treason. Lady Jane Grey and her husband were thrown into prison, there to await Mary’s decision. Cranmer who had consented to the plot against Mary was also imprisoned.
Mary was now Queen, with the consent of nearly all her subjects. For many years her life had been a bitter one. Her mother had been divorced and she herself disgraced by Act of Parliament. She had been kept under constant watch during Edward’s reign, because it was known that she loved her mother’s people, the Spaniards, and her mother’s religion. She thus, true to her Spanish nature, came to hate her mother’s enemies, and the enemies of her mother’s faith. The bitterness due to ill-treatment was aggravated by ill-health, neglect, and a temper naturally harsh. At her accession she was thirty-seven years of age, small of feature and stature, with dark eyes full of fire, and a harsh man-like voice. Like all the Tudors, she was brave and self-willed to a fault.
5. Wyat’s Rebellion.—Her first acts were to restore the Roman Catholic religion and form of worship, and throw into prison the Protestant bishops. She released Gardiner and Bonner, and made the first her Chancellor, and the second, Bishop of London. Most of the people were pleased to have the old form of worship restored, but not so anxious to have the Pope’s authority over England brought back. However, she induced Parliament to allow Cardinal Pole, her cousin, to go to Westminster where, in the name of the Pope, he pardoned the nation through its representatives in Parliament, for its heresies in the two previous reigns. Parliament was willing to accept the Pope’s pardon; but, when a demand was made for a restoration of Church property, the members, many of whom had been enriched out of its spoils, promptly declared they would not give up the Church lands held by them. Mary herself did what she could to restore the property taken from the Church by the Crown.
Mary was anxious to strengthen the Roman Catholic cause in England by the aid of Spain. Partly because she had this end in view, and partly because she loved her cousin Philip, son of Charles V., and now king of Spain, she listened eagerly to a proposal to marry him. When it was rumoured that Mary was going to
