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Mary had long been in a declining state of health; and having mistaken her dropsy for a pregnancy, she had made use of an improper regimen, and her malady daily augmented. Every reflection now tormented her. The consciousness of being hated by her subjects, the prospect of Elizabeth’s succession, apprehensions of the danger to which the Catholic religion stood exposed, dejection for the loss of Calais, concern for the ill state of her affairs, and, above all, anxiety for the absence of her husband, who, she knew, intended soon to depart for Spain, and to settle there during the remainder of his life,—all these melancholy reflections preyed upon her mind, and threw her into a lingering fever, of which she died, after a short and unfortunate reign of five years four months and eleven days.

It is not necessary to employ many words in drawing the character of this princess. She possessed few qualities either estimable or amiable; and her person was as little engaging as her behavior and address. Obstinacy, bigotry, violence, cruelty, malignity, revenge, tyranny; every circumstance of her character took a tincture from her bad temper and narrow understanding. And amidst that complication of vices which entered into her composition, we shall scarcely find any virtue but sincerity; a quality which she seems to have maintained throughout her whole life; except in the beginning of her reign, when the necessity of her affairs obliged her to make some promises to the Protestants, which she certainly never intended to perform. But in these cases a weak, bigoted woman, under the government of priests, easily finds casuistry sufficient to justify to herself the violation of a promise. She appears, also, as well as her father, to have been susceptible of some attachments of friendship; and that without the caprice and inconstancy which were so remarkable in the conduct of that monarch. To which we may add, that in many circumstances of her life she gave indications of resolution and vigor of mind, a quality which seems to have been inherent in her family.

Cardinal Pole had long been sickly from an intermitting fever; and he died the same day with the queen, about sixteen hours after her. The benign character of this prelate, the modesty and humanity of his deportment, made him be universally beloved; insomuch that in a nation where the most furious persecution was carried on, and where the most violent religious factions prevailed, entire justice, even by most of the reformers, has been done to his merit. The haughty pontiff, Paul IV., had entertained some prejudices against him; and when England declared war against Henry, the ally of that pope, he seized the opportunity of revenge; and revoking Pole’s legatine commission, appointed in his room Cardinal Peyto, an Observantine friar, and confessor to the queen. But Mary would never permit the new legate to act upon the commission; and Paul was afterwards obliged to restore Cardinal Pole to his authority.

There occur few general remarks, besides what have already been made in the course of our narration, with regard to the general state of the kingdom during this reign. The naval power of England was then so inconsiderable, that fourteen thousand pounds being ordered to be applied to the fleet, both for repairing and victualling it, it was computed that ten thousand pounds a year would afterwards answer all necessary charges.[*]

* Burnet, vol. iii. p. 259.

The arbitrary proceedings of the queen above mentioned, joined to many monopolies granted by this princess, as well as by her father, checked the growth of commerce; and so much the more, as all other princes in Europe either were not permitted, or did not find it necessary, to proceed in so tyrannical a manner. Acts of parliament, both in the last reign and in the beginning of the present, had laid the same impositions on the merchants of the still-yard as on other aliens; yet the queen, immediately after her marriage, complied with the solicitations of the emperor, and by her prerogative suspended those laws.[*] Nobody in that age pretended to question this exercise of prerogative. The historians are entirely silent with regard to it; and it is only by the collection of public papers that it is handed down to us.

An absurd law had been made in the preceding reign, by which every one was prohibited from making cloth unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years. The law was repealed in the first year of the queen; and this plain reason given, that it had occasioned the decay of the woollen manufacture, and had ruined several towns.[**] It is strange that Edward’s law should have been revived during the reign of Elizabeth; and still more strange that it should still subsist.

A passage to Archangel had been discovered by the English during the last reign; and a beneficial trade with Muscovy had been established. A solemn embassy was sent by the czar to Queen Mary. The ambassadors were shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland; but being hospitably entertained there, they proceeded on the journey, and were received at London with great pomp and solemnity.[***] This seems to have been the first intercourse which that empire had with any of the western potentates of Europe.

A law was passed in this reign,[****] by which the number of horses, arms and furniture, was fixed which each person, according to the extent of his property, should be provided with for the defence of the kingdom. A man of a thousand pounds a year, for instance, was obliged to maintain at his own charge six horses fit for demi-lances, of which three at least to be furnished with sufficient harness, steel saddles, and weapons proper for the demi-lances; and ten horses fit for light horsemen, with furniture and weapons proper for them: he was obliged to have forty corselets furnished; fifty almain revets, or, instead of them, forty coats of plate, corse, etc. or brigandines furnished; forty pikes, thirty long bows, thirty sheafs of arrows, thirty steel caps or skulls, twenty black bills or halberts, twenty harquebuts, and twenty morions or sallets. We may remark that a man of a thousand marks of stock was rated equal to one of two hundred pounds a year; a proof that few or none at that time lived on their stock in money, and that great profits were made by the merchants in the course of trade. There is no class above a thousand pounds a year.

* Rymer, vol. xv. p. 364.

** 1 Mar. Parl. 2, cap, 7.

*** Holingshed, p. 732. Heylin, p. 71.

**** 4 and 5 Phil. and Mar. cap. 2.

We pay form a notion of the little progress made in arts and refinement about this time, from one circumstance; a man of no less rank than the comptroller of Edward VI.‘s household paid only thirty shillings a year of our present money for his house in Channel Row;[*] yet labor and provisons, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the nastiness, and dirt, and slovenly habits among the people. “The floors,” says he, “are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every thing that is nasty.”[**]

Holingshed, who lived in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, gives a very curious account of the plain, or rather rude way of living of the preceding generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in considerable towns; the fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke sought its way out at the roof, or door, or windows: the houses were nothing but watling plastered over with clay; the people slept on straw pallets, and had a good round log under their head for a pillow; and almost all the furniture and utensils were of wood.[***] 22