it might be said without a
husband,--she was alone in the world, more to be commiserated than the
meanest subject in her dominions. She has had little commiseration,
however, from Protestant writers, who paint her in the odious colors of
a fanatic. This has been compensated, it may be thought, by the Roman
Catholic historians, who have invested the English queen with all the
glories of the saint and the martyr. Experience may convince us that
public acts do not always furnish a safe criterion of private
character,--especially when these acts are connected with religion. In
the Catholic Church the individual might seem to be relieved, in some
measure, of his moral responsibility, by the system of discipline which
intrusts his conscience to the keeping of his spiritual advisers. If the
lights of the present day allow no man to plead so humiliating an
apology, this was not the case in the first half of the sixteenth
century,--the age of Mary,--when the Reformation had not yet diffused
that spirit of independence in religious speculation, which, in some
degree at least, has now found its way to the darkest corner of
Christendom.

[Sidenote: PHILIP'S PREPARATIONS.]

A larger examination of contemporary documents, especially of the
queen's own correspondence, justifies the inference, that, with all the
infirmities of a temper soured by disease, and by the difficulties of
her position, she possessed many of the good qualities of her
illustrious progenitors, Katharine of Aragon and Isabella of Castile;
the same conjugal tenderness and devotion, the same courage in times of
danger, the same earnest desire, misguided as she was, to do her
duty,--and, unfortunately, the same bigotry. It was, indeed, most
unfortunate, in Mary's case, as in that of the Catholic queen, that this
bigotry, from their position as independent sovereigns, should have been
attended with such fatal consequences as have left an indelible blot on
the history of their reigns.[190]

On his return to Brussels, Philip busied himself with preparations for
the campaign. He employed the remittances from Spain to subsidize a
large body of German mercenaries. Germany was the country which
furnished, at this time, more soldiers of fortune than any other; men
who served indifferently under the banner that would pay them best. They
were not exclusively made up of infantry, like the Swiss, but, besides
pikemen,--_lanzknechts_,--they maintained a stout array of cavalry