ent, he accompanied the herald and himself cried out Mary's
name.[160] These English nobles have boundless ambition, they grasp
with bold hand at the highest prizes: but they have no inner power of
resistance, as against the course of events and public opinion they
have no will of their own. However the duke might behave, he could not
save either his freedom or his life. Soon afterwards Mary entered
London amid the joyous shouts of the people. She was still united as
closely as possible with her sister Elizabeth: they appeared together
hand in hand. Jane Grey remained as a prisoner in the Tower, which she
had entered as Queen. Never did the natural right of succession, as it
was established by the testator of the inheritance and the Parliament,
obtain a greater triumph.

After the succession was decided, the great questions of government
came into the foreground, above all the question what position Mary
should take up with regard to religious matters.

Among the Protestants the opinion prevailed that it could not yet be
known whether she would not let religion remain in the state in which
she found it. Towns where the Protestant feeling was strongest
joyfully attached themselves to her in this expectation.

Her cousin, the Emperor Charles, who justly regarded her accession as
a victory, and who from the first moment exercised the greatest
influence on her resolutions, advised her before all things to
moderate her Catholic zeal. She should reflect that many of the lords
by whom she was now supported, a part of the Privy Council, and the
people of London, were Protestants, and guard against estranging them.
She should at once call a Parliament to show that she meant to rule in
the accustomed manner, and take care that the Northern counties, as
well as Cornwall, where men still held the most firmly to Catholicism,
were represented in it.

This good advice was not without influence on the Queen. In a tumult
which arose two days after her arrival in the city, she had the Lord
Mayor summoned in order to tell him that she would force no man's
conscience, she hoped that the people would through good instruction
come back to the religion which she herself professed with full
conviction. When she repeated this soon after in a proclamation, she
added that these things must shortly be ordered by common consent. But
of what kind this order would be, there could be already no doubt
after these words: she desired a change, but in