POEM AND UNIVERSAL DIVINE
SCRIPTURE...."

CARLYLE

THE REIGN _of_ MARY TUDOR
_by_
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

LONDON: PUBLISHED
by J. M. DENT & SONS Ltd
AND IN NEW YORK
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO

{p.vii} INTRODUCTION

The memory of no English sovereign has been so execrated as that of
Mary Tudor. For generations after her death her name, with its horrid
epithet clinging round it like the shirt of Nessus, was a bugbear in
thousands of Protestant homes. It is true that nearly 300 persons were
burnt at the stake in her short reign. But she herself was more
inclined to mercy than almost any of her predecessors on the throne.
Stubbs speaks of her father's "holocausts" of victims. The persecution
of Papists under Edward was not less rigorous than that of Protestants
under Mary. When her record is compared with that of Philip of Spain,
with his Council of Blood in the Netherlands, or of Charles IX. in
France, she appears as an apostle of toleration. Why, then, has her
memory been covered through centuries with scorn and obloquy?

Froude will have it that it was due to a national detestation of the
crimes which were committed in the name of religion. Those who take a
more detached view of history can find little evidence to support the
assumption. The nation as a whole seemed to acquiesce in the
persecution. The government was weak, there was no standing army, and
Mary, like all the Tudors, rested her authority on popular sanction.
Plots against her were few, and they were all easily suppressed.
Parliament met regularly. It was not the submissive parliament of
Henry VIII. It thwarted some of Mary's dearest projects. For some time
it offered opposition to, if it did not actively resist, the Spanish
marriage. It was inexorably opposed to the restitution of church
property. It refused to alter the succession to the Crown as Mary
wished. But it never remonstrated against the persecution of
Protestants. It cheerfully revived the old acts for the burning of
Lollard heretics. Froude suggests that Englishmen were aghast at the
use to which they were afterwards put. But though parliament after
parliament was summoned after the Smithfield fires had been lit, there
was no sign of disapproval or of condemn