ary
yielded; but at length, harassed and worn down with useless regrets and
repinings, her mental sufferings are supposed to have shortened her
days. She died miserably a few years after her marriage, and thus the
Spanish match turned out to be a very unfortunate match indeed.

CHAPTER V.

ELIZABETH IN THE TOWER.

1554-1555

Elizabeth's position.--Legitimacy of Mary and Elizabeth's birth.--Mary
and Elizabeth's differences.--Courteney's long imprisonment.--Mary's
attentions to Courteney.--Courteney's attentions to Elizabeth.--Mary's
plan to get Elizabeth in her power.--Elizabeth's wariness.--Wyatt
accuses Elizabeth.--Her seizure.--Elizabeth borne in a litter.--She is
examined and released.--Elizabeth again arrested.--Her letter to
Mary.--Situation of the Tower.--The Traitors' Gate.--Elizabeth conveyed
to the Tower.--She is landed at the Traitors' Gate.--Elizabeth's
reception at the Tower.--Her unwillingness to enter.--Elizabeth's
indignation and grief.--She is closely imprisoned.--Elizabeth in the
garden.--The little child and the flowers.--Elizabeth greatly
alarmed.--Her removal from the Tower.--Elizabeth's fears.--Mary's
designs.--Elizabeth taken to Richmond.--Mary's plan for
marrying her.--Elizabeth's journey to Woodstock.--Christmas
festivities.--Elizabeth persists in her innocence.--The torch-light
visit.--Reconciliation between Elizabeth and Mary.--Elizabeth's release.

The imprisonment of Queen Elizabeth in the Tower, which was briefly
alluded to in the last chapter, deserves a more full narration than was
possible to give to it there. She had retired from court some time
before the difficulties about the Spanish match arose. It is true that
she took sides with Mary in the contest with Northumberland and the
friends of Jane Grey, and she shared her royal sister's triumph in the
pomp and parade of the coronation; but, after all, she and Mary could
not possibly be very good friends. The marriages of their respective
mothers could not both have been valid. Henry the Eighth was so
impatient that he could not wait for a divorce from Catharine before he
married Anne Boleyn. The only way to make the latter marriage legal,
therefore, was to consider the former one null and void _from the
beginning_, and if the former one was not thus null and void, the latter
must be so. If Henry had waited for a divorce, then both marriages might
have been valid, each for the time of its own continuance, and both the
princ