PETO APPOINTED LEGATE.

397

3

The way out of the difficulty which Pole had suggested. found favour with the Pope. On June 14th, in a consistory, he appointed the Franciscan, William Peto (Petow),1 as Cardinal and legate for England. Peto, by his ecclesiastical attitude under Henry VIII., had brought upon himself the anger of that monarch, and had been living for a considerable time as an exile in Rome, but had now returned again to his convent at Greenwich. At the same time as he appointed Peto, Paul IV. sent a brief to Pole recalling him to Rome.2 Peto's appointment was an unfortunate one in every respcct, and Carne, when Cardinal Carafa informed him of it, answered with considerable indignation, that Peto was a worn-out old man, incapable of any further work, and of no use for the post of legate. Peto himself refused the Cardinal's hat, as well as the dignity of legate, as being too great a burden for him.1 Mary caused the messenger with the briefs for Pole and Peto to be detained at Calais. In common with Philip, she had again renewed her request at the end of May that the Pope would leave Pole in his office,5 and now she wrote again. If, she said, the Pope had not listened to her before, she hoped that he would do so now, and that they would forgive her in Rome if she thought that she knew best who was qualified for the government of the kingdom."

Paul IV., however, would not give way, although Peto wrote himself to the Pope, saying that he could not show himself in the streets of London without being mocked at. Paul

1 Acta Consistoria in RAYNALDUS, 1557, n. 43. Letter to the English bishops of June 20, 1557, in which Peto's appointment is communicated to them, ibid. n. 44. The brief to Philip and Mary of the same date in TURNBULL, n. 637; see also MASSARelli, 311 and CARDELLA, IV., 369 seq.

2 Navagero on June 18, 1557, in BROWN, VI., 2, n. 937.

3

They have made un legno " a Cardinal. To the Pope Carne said, Peto is un vecchio rebambito." ibid.

4 Navagero in August, 1557, ibid n. 981.

5 Navagero on June 18, 1557, ibid. n. 938.

• Navagero on August 5, 1557, in BROWN, VI., 2, n. 981.

7 Instructions for Stella of January 10, 1558, ibid. VI., 3, n. 1135.

IV. further insisted that Pole should come to Rome, for the affair had, in the meantime, taken quite another turn. The old accusation of heresy was again being renewed against Pole, and there could be no further question of his being legate.1 Besides this, Pole had himself applied to the queen that the messenger with Peto's appointment should be allowed to cross the Channel, and he no longer exercised his functions as legate, although he was urged to do so.2

The war with France was in the meantime drawing to an end. The great victory of St. Quentin (August 10, 1557) was followed, on January 8th, 1558, by the severe blow of the loss of Calais. The place was important as a market for English commerce, and it had a still greater importance in the eyes of the English people, as it was the last trophy from the glorious Anglo-French wars of the fast disappearing middle ages. Very great therefore was the dismay of the people and the sorrow of the queen at the news of the loss of the fortress; it not only damaged the esteem in which Mary was held, but it also told upon the religion which she protected.. "Since the loss of Calais," wrote Count Feria to Philip,3 "there are not more than a third of the people at church that one formerly saw there."

Calais was the last grief in Mary's life. She had been ill for a long time, and at the beginning of November, her condition became hopeless. On the 6th she sent her jewels to Elizabeth with the request that she would keep up the old religion, and take over the debts of the queen.4 On the morning of the 17th, while a priest was saying Mass before her, she ended her sorrowful life. Cardinal Pole only survived her a few hours; in March he was completely broken down, so that

1 See supra p. 292.

2

Navagero on September 7, 1557, in BROWN, VI., 2, n.

1024.

3 London, February 2, 1558, in KERVYN DE LETTENHOVE, Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l'Angleterre, I., 130.

4 Christophe d'Assonville to Philip, Westminster, November 7, 1558, ibid. 277.

MARY'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

399 Feria wrote to King Philip that he was practically a dead man.1

Mary was perhaps the best of the English queens; she was not only one of the most highly educated women of her time— she understood five languages and had an excellent knowledge of Latin literature-but she displayed, in addition to a spotless purity of life, a remarkable kindness of heart. She loved to go incognita with the ladies of her court to visit the hovels of the poor, and make inquiries about their wants and help them whenever it was in her power.2

As she was the best, she was also one of the most unfortunate princesses who occupied the throne of England. Apart from the early years of her childhood, her life was nothing but a chain of sorrow and anguish, which prematurely undermined her bodily strength. As a young growing girl she was obliged to witness the repudiation of a loved mother and the criminal passion of a father. In the reign of Edward she suffered persecution at the hands of her brother, and after she had ascended the throne, contrary to all expectation, she saw herself abandoned by a husband whom she adored, and entangled in a web of plots by her half-sister, and her life threatened by the very conspirators whose lives she had spared. Her popularity disappeared more and more, her ardent hopes of an heir to the throne were not realized, and even in that field to which all her thoughts and actions were directed, she was involved in disputes with the Pope, whose honour she had defended at the cost of great sacrifices, and died filled with the fear that in a few years the whole of her life's work would once again be broken in pieces. She has been condemned, even

1"Es un hombre muerto" (ibid. 153). Pole was buried in Canterbury Cathedral (see BONELLI, Il sepolcro del card. Polo : Rassegna d'Arte, 1907). The pontifical ring which Pole received at the reconciliation of England with Rome was to be seen in 1910 at the exhibition in connection with the Congress of English Catholics at Leeds. The news of the deaths of Mary and Pole reached Rome on December 10, 1558; see MASSARELLI, 328.

2* H. CLINTON, Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, ed. by Estcourt and Stevenson, London, 1887, 64 seq.

"

after her death, in the accounts of biassed historians, to come down to posterity as a bloody" memory. In spite of all this, however, Mary's life was not lived in vain. She has exercised a far-reaching influence on the religious life of England. Before her day, the position of Catholics was neither definite nor clear; they let themselves be driven further and further, and had come at last into a state of schism and heresy, almost without having discovered it. The events of Mary's reign brought about a complete change in this respect. After her reign the Catholic Church in England can point to martyrs and confessors in great numbers. Mary also exercised an influence outside the Catholic Church; if Elizabeth simply did not dare to establish Calvinism in England, and if the Protestantism of the present day still bears a character which in many respects accords with Catholic ideas, Mary is the person to whom this is to a great extent to be attributed, for it was she who put a stop to the gradual disappearance of Catholic thought and Catholic feeling in England.

CHAPTER XV.

ACCESSION Of Elizabeth AND THE Establishment of the ENGLISH STATE CHURCH.--LAST DAYS OF PAUL IV.

IMMEDIATELY after the death of Mary, Archbishop Heath of York, as chancellor of England, announced the news to the Upper House, and, in accordance with the statute of the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., spoke of his daughter Elizabeth as the rightful heir to the throne. She was acknowledged as such without opposition. The joy with which the English people greeted the new sovereign was all the greater, as none of them would hear of the accession of Mary Stuart, the wife of the French Dauphin, and the grand-daughter of the eldest sister of Henry VIII. In view of the danger lest England should come under Franco-Scottish influence, even Catholics overlooked the fact that Elizabeth was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and held a very doubtful position as far as her religion was concerned.

Her education had been entirely conducted on those lines, yet her Protestantism did not stand the test under Mary. The princess had, as Knox reproached her later on, denied her religion, and had bowed down before that which she had been taught to regard as the worship of idols.1 Although Elizabeth had, after some slight opposition, professed to be a zealous Catholic,2 during the whole of Mary's reign, hardly anyone believed in the sincerity of her conversion. The Venetian ambassador, Michiel, bears witness in his account of the year 1557, that people considered Elizabeth to be a hypocrite, who

1 Cf. STRYPE, Annals, I., 2.

2 She even went so far as to gain an indulgence published by the Pope in September, 1555; see MACHYN, Diary (Camden Society, London, 1848), 94.

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