er,
hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in the
blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine
devotion. It was a most singular contrast, Mary, the Queen of England and
Mary the wife of Philip. Small, lean and sickly, painfully near-sighted,
yet with an eye of fierceness and fire; her face wrinkled by the hands of
care and evil passions still more than by Time, with a big man's voice,
whose harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her
tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the
lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many
languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too,
in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of
tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent
absences from England--she almost awakens compassion and causes a
momentary oblivion of her identity.

Her subjects, already half maddened by religious persecution, were
exasperated still further by the pecuniary burthens which she imposed
upon them to supply the King's exigencies, and she unhesitatingly
confronted their frenzy, in the hope of winning a smile from him. When at
last her chronic maladies had assumed the memorable form which caused
Philip and Mary to unite in a letter to Cardinal Pole, announcing not the
expected but the actual birth of a prince, but judiciously leaving the
date in blank, the momentary satisfaction and delusion of the Queen was
unbounded. The false intelligence was transmitted every where. Great were
the joy and the festivities in the Netherlands, where people were so
easily made to rejoice and keep holiday for any thing. "The Regent, being
in Antwerp," wrote Sir Thomas Gresham to the lords of council, "did cause
the great bell to rings to give all men to understand that the news was
trewe. The Queene's highness here merchants caused all our Inglishe ships
to shoote off with such joy and triumph, as by men's arts and pollicey
coulde be devised--and the Regent sent our Inglishe maroners one hundred
crownes to drynke." If bell-ringing and cannon-firing could have given
England a Spanish sovereign, the devoutly-wished consummation would have
been reached. When the futility of the royal hopes could no longer be
concealed, Philip left the country, never to return till his war with
France made him require troops, subsidies, and a declaratio