imperilled had the Queen thought more of English interests and less of
the needs of her Spanish husband.

{p.x} The odium in which Mary's memory was held was turned to account
by the friends of the new religion. Early in the next reign there
appeared one of the most remarkable books ever written--Foxe's _Book
of Martyrs_. The authenticity of its narrative has been impugned by
Lingard and other Catholic historians; Froude bears testimony to its
trustworthiness wherever it can be tested, except when it deals with
purely hearsay evidence. When Foxe's narrative of the horrible
Guernsey case was challenged by a Catholic controversialist in the
reign of Elizabeth, the matter was inquired into, and the account was
found to be absolutely true. No one will be found, however, in these
days to assert that a book, written by an avowed partisan, in an
uncritical age, recording transactions of which from the very nature
of things he could have had no personal knowledge, was not too highly
coloured in parts and in others absolutely untrustworthy. Few books,
nevertheless, have exercised a more abiding influence on the course of
our national life. Its simplicity, its directness, its poignant style,
and its dramatic power combined to make it an English classic. If it
loaded Bonner and Gardiner with shame and hatred, it fixed for three
centuries the popular estimate of Mary Tudor. Froude used it with
extraordinary skill. His relation of the death of a young Protestant
martyr, an apprentice from Essex, taken as it is almost bodily from
Foxe, must thrill even yet the least emotional of his readers. The
permanence of Mary's hideous title and her abiding unpopularity are
more due to the compelling power of a work of genius than to any
outstanding demerits, as judged by contemporary standards, in the
Catholic Queen.

Instead of being condemned to eternal infamy, poor Mary Tudor might
well have expected a juster as well as a more charitable verdict from
posterity. From her girlhood to her grave her story was tragic in its
sadness. When she was in the first bloom of maidenhood, she was taken
by her father to hold her Court of the Welsh Marches at Ludlow in
1525. The title of Princess of Wales was not conferred upon her, but
she was surrounded by all the pomps and emblems of sovereignty. The
Court was the Princess's Court, as it had been Prince Henry's Court in
her father's youth. Three years later she was degraded from her high
estate, and dep