parade of
guards and keepers; no doors were closed, no locks were turned upon her;
and though her place of residence was still prescribed, and could not,
apparently, be changed by her at pleasure, she was treated in all
respects as at home and mistress of her actions.

Sir Thomas Pope was a man of worth and a gentleman; and such were the
tenderness and discretion with which he exercised the delicate trust
reposed in him, that the princess must soon have learned to regard him
in the light of a real friend. It is not a little remarkable at the same
time, that the person selected by Mary to receive so distinguished a
proof of her confidence, should have made his first appearance in public
life as the active assistant of Cromwel in the great work of the
destruction of monasteries; and that from grants of abbey lands, which
the queen esteemed it sacrilege to touch, he had derived the whole of
that wealth of which he was now employing a considerable portion in the
foundation of Trinity college Oxford.

But sir Thomas Pope, even in the execution of the arbitrary and
rapacious mandates of Henry, had been advantageously distinguished
amongst his colleagues by the qualities of mildness and integrity; and
the circumstance of his having obtained a seat at the council-board of
Mary from the very commencement of her reign, proves him to have
acquired some peculiar merits in her eyes. Certain it is, however, that
a furious zeal, whether real or pretended, for the Romish faith, was not
amongst his courtly arts; for though strictly enjoined to watch over the
due performance and attendance of mass in the family of the princess, he
connived at her retaining about her person many servants who were
earnest protestants.

This circumstance unfortunately reached the vigilant ears of Gardiner;
and it was to a last expiring effort of his indefatigable malice that
Elizabeth owed the mortification of seeing two gentlemen from the queen
arrive at Lamer, a house in Hertfordshire which she then occupied, who
carried away her favorite Mrs. Ashley and three of her maids of honor,
and lodged them in the Tower.

Isabella Markham, afterwards the wife of that sir John Harrington whose
sufferings in the princess's service have been already adverted to, was
doubtless one of these unfortunate ladies. Elizabeth, highly to her
honor, never dismissed from remembrance the claims of such as had been
faithful to her in her adversity; she distinguished this wort