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An application being made for a subsidy during two years, and for two fifteenths, the latter was refused by the commons; and many members said, that while the crown was thus despoiling itself of its revenue, it was in vain to bestow riches upon it. The parliament rejected a bill for obliging the exiles to return under certain penalties, and another for incapacitating such as were remiss in the prosecution of heresy from being justices of peace. The queen, finding the intractable humor of the commons, thought proper to dissolve the parliament.

The spirit of opposition which began to prevail in parliament was the more likely to be vexatious to Mary, as she was otherwise in very bad humor on account of her husband’s absence, who, tired of her importunate love and jealousy, and finding his authority extremely limited in England, had laid hold of the first opportunity to leave her, and had gone over last summer to the emperor in Flanders. The indifference and neglect of Philip, added to the disappointment in her imagined pregnancy, threw her into deep melancholy; and she gave vent to her spleen by daily enforcing the persecutions against the Protestants, and even by expressions of rage against all her subjects; by whom she knew herself to be hated, and whose opposition, in refusing an entire compliance with Philip was the cause, she believed, why he had alienated his affections from her, and afforded her so little of his company.[*]

* Dpches de Noailles, vol. v. p. 370, 562.

The less return her love met with, the more it increased; and she passed most of her time in solitude, where she gave vent to her passion, either in tears, or in writing fond epistles to Philip, who seldom returned her any answer, and scarcely deigned to pretend any sentiment of love or even of gratitude towards her. The chief part of government to which she attended, was the extorting of money from her people, in order to satisfy his demands; and as the parliament had granted her but a scanty supply, she had recourse to expedients very violent and irregular. She levied a loan of sixty thousand pounds upon a thousand persons, of whose compliance, either on account of their riches or their affections to her, she held herself best assured: but that sum not sufficing, she exacted a general loan on every one who possessed twenty pounds a year. This imposition lay heavy on the gentry, who were obliged, many of them, to retrench their expenses and dismiss their servants, in order to enable them to comply with her demands: and as these servants, accustomed to idleness, and having no means of subsistence, commonly betook themselves to theft and robbery, the queen published a proclamation, by which she obliged their former masters to take them back to their service. She levied sixty thousand marks on seven thousand yeomen who had not contributed to the former loan; and she exacted thirty-six thousand pounds more from the merchants. In order to engage some Londoners to comply more willingly with her multiplied extortions, she passed an edict prohibiting for four months the exporting of any English cloths or kerseys to the Netherlands; an expedient which procured a good market for such as had already sent any quantity of cloth thither. Her rapaciousness engaged her to give endless disturbance and interruption to commerce. The English company settled in Antwerp having refused her a loan of forty thousand pounds, she dissembled her resentment till she found that they had bought and shipped great quantities of cloth for Antwerp fair, which was approaching: she then laid an embargo on the ships, and obliged the merchants to grant her a loan of the forty thousand pounds at first demanded, to engage for the payment of twenty thousand pounds more at a limited time, and to submit to an arbitrary imposition of twenty shillings on each piece. Some time after, she was informed that the Italian merchants had shipped above forty thousand pieces of cloth for the Levant, for which they were to pay her a crown a piece, the usual imposition: she struck a bargain with the merchant adventurers in London; prohibited the foreigners from making any exportation; and received from the English merchants, in consideration of this iniquity, the sum of fifty thousand pounds, and an imposition of four crowns on each piece of cloth which they should export. She attempted to borrow great sums abroad; but her credit was so low, that though she offered fourteen per cent to the city of Antwerp for a loan of thirty thousand pounds, she could not obtain it till she compelled the city of London to be surety for her.[*] All these violent expedients were employed while she herself was in profound peace with all the world, and had visibly no occasion for money but to supply the demands of a husband who gave attention only to his own convenience, and showed himself entirely indifferent about her interests.

* Godwin, p. 359. Cowper’s Chronicle. Burnet, vol. ii. p.
359. Carte, p. 330, 333, 337, 341. Strype’s Memor vol. iii.
p. 428, 558. Annals vol. i. p. 15.

Philip was now become master of all the wealth of the new world, and of the richest and most extensive dominions in Europe, by the voluntary resignation of the emperor Charles V.; who, though still in the vigor of his age, had taken a disgust to the world, and was determined to seek, in the tranquillity of retreat, for that happiness which he had in vain pursued amidst the tumults of war and the restless projects of ambition. He summoned the states of the Low Countries and seating himself on the throne for the last time, explained to his subjects the reasons of his resignation, absolved them from all oaths of allegiance, and, devolving his authority on Philip, told him, that his paternal tenderness made him weep when he reflected on the burden which he imposed upon him.[*] He inculcated on him the great and only duty of a prince, the study of his people’s happiness; and represented how much preferable it was to govern by affection, rather than by fear, the nations subjected to his dominion. The cool reflections of age now discovered to him the emptiness of his former pursuits; and he found that the vain schemes of extending his empire had been the source of endless opposition and disappointment, and kept himself, his neighbors, and his subjects, in perpetual inquietude, and had frustrated the sole end of government, the felicity of the nations committed to his care; an object which meets with less opposition, and which, if steadily pursued, can alone convey a lasting and solid satisfaction.

* Thuan. lib. xvi. c. 20.

1556.

A few months after, he resigned to Philip his other dominions; and embarking on board a fleet, sailed to Spain, and took his journey to St. Just, a monastery in Estremadura, which, being situated in a happy climate, and amidst the greatest beauties of nature, he had chosen for the place of his retreat. When he arrived at Burgos, he found, by the thinness of his court, and the negligent attendance of the Spanish grandees, that he was no longer emperor; and though this observation might convince him still more of the vanity of the world, and make him more heartily despise what he had renounced, he sighed to find that all former adulation and obeisance had been paid to his fortune, not to his person. With better reason was he struck with the ingratitude of his son Philip, who obliged him to wait a long time for the payment of the small pension which he had reserved, and this disappointment in his domestic enjoyments gave him a sensible concern. He pursued, however, his resolution with inflexible constancy; and shutting himself up in his retreat, he exerted such self-command, that he restrained even his curiosity from any inquiry concerning the transactions of the world which he had entirely abandoned. The fencing against the pains and infirmities under which he labored occupied a great part of his time; and during the intervals he employed his leisure, either in examining the controversies of theology, with which his age had been so much agitated, and which he had hitherto considered only in a political light, or in imitating the works of renowned artists, particularly in mechanics, of which he had always been a great admirer and encourager. He is said to have here discovered a propensity to the new doctrines, and to have frequently dropped hints of this unexpected alteration in his sentiments. Having amused himself with the construction of clocks and watches, he thence remarked, how impracticable the object was in which he had so much employed himself during his grandeur; and how impossible that he, who never could frame two machines that would go exactly alike, could ever be able to make all mankind concur in the same belief and opinion. He survived his retreat two years.