Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author'sspelling has been maintained.
Accessibility: Expansions of abbreviations have been provided using the <abbr> tag, and changes in language are marked.Speech rendering will be improved if voices for the following languages are available: En, Fr, It, La, Es.
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
HISTORY
THE PUBLISHERS OF EVERYMAN'S
LIBRARY WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND
FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST
OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED
VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER
THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS:
TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY * CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS * ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE
IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH,
FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP, AND
LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP.
London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
"CONSIDER
HISTORY
WITH THE
BEGINNINGS OF
IT STRETCHING
DIMLY INTO THE
REMOTE TIME; EMERGING
DARKLY
OUT OF THE
MYSTERIOUS
ETERNITY:
THE TRUE EPIC
POEM AND UNIVERSAL
DIVINE
SCRIPTURE...."
CARLYLE
LONDON: PUBLISHED
by J. M. DENT & SONS LTD
AND IN NEW YORK
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO
The memory of no English sovereign has been so execrated as that ofMary Tudor. For generations after her death her name, with its horridepithet clinging round it like the shirt of Nessus, was a bugbear inthousands of Protestant homes. It is true that nearly 300 persons wereburnt at the stake in her short reign. But she herself was moreinclined to mercy than almost any of her predecessors on the throne.Stubbs speaks of her father's "holocausts" of victims. The persecutionof Papists under Edward was not less rigorous than that of Protestantsunder Mary. When her record is compared with that of Philip of Spain,with his Council of Blood in the Netherlands, or of Charles IX. inFrance, she appears as an apostle of toleration. Why, then, has hermemory been covered through centuries with scorn and obloquy?
Froude will have it that it was due to a national detestation of thecrimes which were committed in the name of religion. Those who take amore detached view of history can find little evidence to support theassumption. The nation as a whole seemed to acquiesce in thepersecution. The government was weak, there was no standing army, andMary, like all the Tudors, rested her authority on popular sanction.Plots against her were few, and they were all easily suppressed.Parliament met regularly. It was not the submissive parliament ofHenry VIII. It thwarted some of Mary's dearest projects. For some timeit offered opposition to, if it did not actively resist, the Spanishmarriage. It was inexorably opposed to the restitution of churchproperty. It refused to alter the successio