e attack in a more indirect and covert manner. Accordingly, the
articles of the marriage treaty between Mary and the prince of Spain,
artfully drawn with great seeming advantage to England, had no sooner
received the assent of the two houses, than he proposed a law for
conferring upon the queen the same power enjoyed by her father; that of
naming a successor. But neither could this be obtained from a house of
commons attached for the most part to the protestant cause and the
person of the rightful heir, and justly apprehensive of the extinction
of their few remaining privileges under the yoke of a detested foreign
tyrant. Nobody doubted that it was the purpose of the queen, in default
of immediate issue of her own, to bequeath the crown to her husband,
whose descent from a daughter of John of Gaunt had been already much
insisted on by his adherents. The bill was therefore thrown out; and the
alarm excited by its introduction had caused the house to pass several
spirited resolutions, one of which declared that her majesty should
reign as a sole queen without any participation of her authority, while
the rest guarded in various points against the anticipated encroachments
of Philip, when Mary thought good to put a stop to the further
discussion of the subject by a prorogation of parliament.

After these manifold disappointments, the court party was compelled to
give up, with whatever reluctance, its deep-laid plots against the
unoffending princess. Her own prudence had protected her life; and the
independent spirit of a house of commons conscious of speaking the sense
of the nation guarantied her succession. One only resource remained to
Gardiner and his faction:--they judged that a long-continued absence,
while it gradually loosened her hold upon the affections of the people,
would afford many facilities for injuring or supplanting her; and it was
determined soon to provide for her a kind of honorable banishment.

The confinement of the princess in the Tower had purposely been rendered
as irksome and comfortless as possible. It was not till after a month's
close imprisonment, by which her health had suffered severely, that she
obtained, after many difficulties, permission to walk in the royal
apartments; and this under the constant inspection of the constable of
the Tower and the lord-chamberlain, with the attendance of three of the
queen's women; the windows also being shut, and she not permitted to
look out at them. Af