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The duke of Suffolk was tried, condemned, and executed soon after; and would have met with more compassion, had not his temerity been the cause of his daughter’s untimely end. Lord Thomas Gray lost his life for the same crime. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried in Guildhall; but there appearing no satisfactory evidence against him, he was able, by making an admirable defence, to obtain a verdict of the jury in his favor. The queen was so enraged at this disappointment, that, instead of releasing him as the law required, she recommitted him to the Tower, and kept him in close confinement during some time. But her resentment stopped not here: the jury, being summoned before the council, were all sent to prison, and afterwards fined, some of them a thousand pounds, others two thousand apiece.[**] This violence proved fatal to several; among others to Sir John Throgmorton, brother to Sir Nicholas, who was condemned on no better evidence, than had formerly been rejected. The queen filled the Tower and all the prisons with nobility and gentry, whom their interest with the nation, rather than any appearance of guilt, had made the objects of her suspicion; and finding that she was universally hated, she determined to disable the people from resistance, by ordering general musters, and directing the commissioners to seize their arms, and lay them up in forts and castles.[***]

* Heylin, p. 167. Fox, vol iii. p. 36, 37. Holingshed, p.
1099.

** Fox, vol. iii. p. 99. Stowe, p. 624. Baker, p. 320.
Holingshed, p. 1104, 1121. Strype, vol. iii. p. 120. Dp. de
Noailles, vol. iii. p. 173.

*** Dp. de Noailles, vol. iii p. 98.

Though the government labored under so general an odium, the queen’s authority had received such an increase from the suppression of Wiat’s rebellion, that the ministry hoped to find a compliant disposition in the new parliament which was summoned to assemble. The emperor also, in order to facilitate the same end, had borrowed no less a sum than four hundred thousand crowns, which he had sent over to England to be distributed in bribes and pensions among the members: a pernicious practice, of which there had not hitherto been any instance in England. And not to give the public any alarm with regard to the church lands, the queen, notwithstanding her bigotry, resumed her title of supreme head of the church, which she had dropped three months before. Gardiner, the chancellor, opened the session by a speech; in which he asserted the queen’s hereditary title to the crown; maintained her right of choosing a husband for herself; observed how proper a use she had made of that right, by giving the preference to an old ally, descended from the house of Burgundy; and remarked the failure of Henry VIII.‘s posterity, of whom there now remained none but the queen and the lady Elizabeth. He added, that, in order to obviate the inconveniencies which might arise from different pretenders, it was necessary to invest the queen, by law, with a power of disposing of the crown, and of appointing her successor: a power, he said, which was not to be thought unprecedented in England, since it had formerly been conferred on Henry VIII.[*]

* Dpches de Noailles.

The parliament was much disposed to gratify the queen in all her desires; but when the liberty, independency, and very being of the nation were in such visible danger, they could not by any means be brought to compliance. They knew both the inveterate hatred which she bore to the lady Elizabeth, and her devoted attachment to the house of Austria: they were acquainted with her extreme bigotry, which would lead her to postpone all considerations of justice or national interest to the establishment of the Catholic religion: they remarked, that Gardiner had carefully avoided in his speech the giving to Elizabeth the appellation of the queen’s sister; and they thence concluded that a design was formed of excluding her as illegitimate: they expected that Mary, if invested with such a power as she required, would make a will in her husband’s favor, and thereby render England forever a province to the Spanish monarchy; and they were the more alarmed with these projects, as they heard that Philip’s descent from the house of Lancaster was carefully insisted on, and that he was publicly represented as the true and only heir by right of inheritance.

The parliament, therefore, aware of their danger, were determined to keep at a distance from the precipice which lay before them. They could not avoid ratifying the articles of marriage,[*] which were drawn very favorable for England; but they declined the passing of any such law as the chancellor pointed out to them: they would not so much as declare it treason to imagine or attempt the death of the queen’s husband while she was alive; and a bill introduced for that purpose was laid aside after the first reading. The more effectually to cut off Philip’s hopes of possessing any authority in England, they passed a law in which they declared, “that her majesty, as their only queen, should solely, and as a sole queen, enjoy the crown and sovereignty of her realms, with all the preminences, dignities, and rights thereto belonging, in as large and ample a manner after her marriage as before, without any title or claim accruing to the prince of Spain, either as tenant by courtesy of the realm, or by any other means.”[**]

A law passed in this parliament for rerecting the bishopric of Durham, which had been dissolved by the last parliament of Edward.[***] The queen had already, by an exertion of her power, put Tonstal in possession of that see: but though it was usual at that time for the crown to assume authority which might seem entirely legislative, it was always deemed more safe and satisfactory to procure the sanction of parliament. Bills were introduced for suppressing heterodox opinions contained in books, and for reviving the law of the six articles, together with those against the Lollards, and against heresy and erroneous preaching; but none of these laws could pass the two houses: a proof that the parliament had reserves even in their concessions with regard to religion; about which they seem to have been less scrupulous. The queen, therefore, finding that they would not serve all her purposes, finished the session by dissolving them.

* I Mar. Parl. 2, cap. 2.

** I Mar. Parl. 2. cap. 1.

*** I Mar. Parl. 2, cap. 3.

Mary’s thoughts were now entirely employed about receiving Don Philip, whose arrival she hourly expected. This princess, who had lived so many years in a very reserved and private manner, without any prospect or hopes of a husband, was so smitten with affection for her young consort, whom she had never seen, that she waited with the utmost impatience for the completion of the marriage; and every obstacle was to her a source of anxiety and discontent.[*] She complained of Philip’s delays as affected; and she could not conceal her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of Lord Effingham, had been fitted out to convoy Philip from Spain, where he then resided; but the admiral informing her that the discontents ran very high among the seamen, and that it was not safe for Philip to intrust himself in their hands, she gave orders to dismiss them.[***] She then dreaded lest the French fleet, being masters of the sea, might intercept her husband; and every rumor of danger, every blast of wind, threw her into panics and convulsions. Her health, and even her understanding, were visibly hurt by this extreme impatience; and she was struck with a new apprehension lest her person, impaired by time and blasted by sickness, should prove disagreeable to her future consort. Her glass discovered to her how haggard she was become; and when she remarked the decay of her beauty, she knew not whether she ought more to desire or apprehend the arrival of Philip.[****]