plimentary, "it was sufficiently ambiguous as to the essentials," he proceeded to Milan, and, crossing the Tyrol, took the road past Munich and Heidelberg towards Flanders. Four months were occupied by this splendid progress; and, as the heir of the great Emperor rode slowly along, each village sent out its inhabitants to gaze, and each town and city reverently opened its gates, and welcomed him with thunders of artillery, with humblest addresses, and not unfrequently with silver goblets brimful of golden ducats. These last were received by Philip himself with gracious condescension. The reply to the addresses the taciturn prince delegated to the Duke of Alva, who, already high in favor, rode beside him. At length the gorgeous procession entered Flanders; and, as it drew near Brussels, the eager crowds rushed forth, greeting their future ruler with wild enthusiasm, and amid the roaring of cannon, the merry peals of myriad bells, and the shouts of heartiest welcome, Philip, with Alva at his bridle-rein, entered the festive city. Philip and Alva in Brussels! What would have been the greeting, could a prophet voice have foretold the unimaginable miseries these two should inflict on its inhabitants! The meeting between the father and son was affectionate; it was nearly seven years since they had met, and Charles, ambitious and grasping as he was, was not deficient in natural affection. "He must have been pleased with the alteration which time had wrought in Philip's appearance," Mr. Prescott remarks, and we subjoin his full-length portrait: "He was now twenty-one years of age, and was distinguished by a comeliness of person, remarked upon by more than one who had access to his presence. That report is confirmed by the portraits of him, from the pencil of Titian, taken before the freshness of youth had faded into the sallow hue of disease, and when care and anxiety had not yet given a sombre, perhaps sullen expression to his features. He had a fair, and even delicate complexion. His hair and beard were of a light yellow; his eyes blue, with the eyebrows somewhat too close together. His nose thin and aquiline. The principal blemish in his countenance was his thick Austrian lip; his lower jaw protruded even more than his father's. To his father, indeed, he bore a great resemblance in his lineaments, though those of Philip were of a less intellectual cast. In stature he was somewhat below the middle height, with a slight, symmetrical figure, and well-made limbs. He was attentive to his dress, which was rich and elegant, but without any affectation of ornament. His demeanor was grave, with that ceremonious observance which marked the old Castilian, and which may be thought the natural result of Philip's slow and phlegmatic temperament." But Philip, although resembling his father in some points, both in person and character, was, in many essential respects, widely different. Charles was far more Fleming than Spaniard; Philip far more Spaniard than Fleming-indeed, altogether Spanish in tastes and feeling. The free and frank deportment of the emperor, which, despite of his tyrannical measures, rendered him so popular with his Flemish and German subjects, contrasted strangely in their eyes with the cold, formal demeanor of his son. The love of athletic sports which Charles in his youth displayed, his taste for gorgeous ceremonial and a splendid court, even his love of good cheer-the potted capon and eel-pasties, for which he endured a penance far more severe than hair shirt or scourge could inflict-and his deep potations-the mighty goblet, containing a full quart of Rhenish, drained at a single draught, as Roger Ascham, who witnessed this feat of imperial excess, so wonderingly recordsall these endeared him to the wealthy, pomp-loving, luxurious burghers of Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp, who could scarcely comprehend, far less admire, the prince who, although but just past twenty, rigidly adhered to one system of diet, who seldom took part in the tourney, scarcely ever hunted, but preferred to pass his hours in the privacy of his own apartment, in company with a favorite few, but talking of nothing and thinking of nothing but Spain. But however distasteful to Philip, he was compelled, in conformity with his father's will, to take part in the festivities in his honor; and in the great square of Brussels, opposite the palace, and arrayed in unaccustomed splendor of cloth of gold and violet velvet, he ran the first course against Count Mansfeldt, and received a brillant ruby as the prize. There is a mournful interest in the details of this tournament, so graphically and spiritedly described by Mr. Prescott. Count Hoorne, among the challengers, and the gallant Count Egmont, with lance in rest, supporting Philip; and Alva sitting among the judges, while the emperor, beneath the gorgeous canopy of crimson and gold, his sisters, the regent, and the dowager-queen of France, on either hand, occupied almost | Metz, at length began to meditate that the very spot where, on that sad morning abdication which ere long was to startle twenty years after, the tolling bells, the Europe. Ere this step had been arranged black scaffold, and the headsman drew to--probably ere it was definitely decided gether a greater, but heart-broken crowd, upon-death, which, if it so often extinto witness the execution of those two gal- guishes ambitious hopes, so often, on the lant nobles, while Alva, drunk with blood, other hand, awakens or aids them, offered but with thirst yet unsatiated, watched a new prize to the still grasping emperor. behind the lattice the fall of their gory Young Edward of England had died, and heads. Mary, the cruelly-used daughter of Catharine of Arragon, the persecuted sister of the Protestant boy-king, the desolate princess, on whose behalf, and for the free exercise of whose faith, Charles, as her nearest maternal relative, had repeatedly interfered, was now actually queen, and unwedded! What a prize for his still widower son! The history of Philip of Spain now links itself with that of England; and in entering upon it we shall refer to English affairs more largely than Mr. Prescott has done, since scarcely any portion of our annals requires so much to be re-written as those of the reign of Mary. A residence of more than two years in Flanders, if insufficient to reconcile Philip to the habits of his Flemish subjects, was an amply sufficient space of time for Charles to initiate his son into that science of government which he understood so well. Every day Philip passed some time in his father's cabinet conversing on public affairs, or in attending the sittings of the council of state; and it is probable that Charles "found his son an apt and docile scholar." One thing was still wanting to his father's wishes; that in addition to the crown of Spain, the diadem of the Germanic empire should be secured to his son; and earnest was Charles with his Few kings' daughters, from their very brother Ferdinand to induce him to waive cradle up to womanhood, have been the his prospective claim in favor of his nephew. object of so many marriage treaties as But Ferdinand was unyielding; while to Mary Tudor. Giustinian has told us how the suggestion that Philip might at least Bonnivet placed the diminutive ring on become king of the Romans, the plea that the little child's finger as she stood on her this was in the gift of the electors was urg- mother's knee, thus betrothing her to the ed-a plea unanswerable, and at once fatal Dauphin, then a babe in his nurse's arms. to the claims of Philip of Spain; for, as (B. Q., No. XLII., page 462.) But the Sorriano remarks, while his manners had peace thus solemnly ratified between Henbeen "little pleasing to the Italians, and ry and Francis was ere long broken, and positively displeasing to the Flemings, then Charles V. sought a closer alliance they were altogether odious to the Ger- with his cousin, still the heir-presumptive mans." A kind of compromise was at of the English crown, although then but length entered into between the two broth- six years old, and by the treaty of Winders, and Philip prepared for his departure. sor stipulated that at the age of twelve He had now accomplished the object of she should be sent to Spain to complete his visit in regard to his Flemish subjects; her education. This treaty is very importbut even then "the symptoms of alienation ant, for we find that it was there stipulatbetween the future sovereign and his peo-ed that Mary should be brought up in the ple, which was afterwards to widen into a permanent and irreparable breach, might be discovered," and when Philip again visited Flanders, there was little of that wild enthusiasm which hailed his first appearance. It was with no reluctant feelings, therefore, that Philip returned to Spain. In July, 1551, he re-landed at Barcelona, proceeding to Valladolid, and there quietly resumed the duties of the regency during the next three years; while his father, humiliated by his flight from Innspruck, and the disastrous results of the siege of habits, the language, even the costume of Spain. "And who is so well qualified to instruct her in all this as the queen, her mother?" said Henry.* Charles, well acquainted with the inveterate nationality of his aunt, willingly ac *For if her father shuld seke a maistresse for hir to frame hir after the maner of Spayne, and of whom she myghte take example of vertue, he shulde not fynde in all Xtendome a more mete than she now of this house of Spayne, and who for th' affection she hathe, the quene's grace, her mother, who is comen berith to the emperer will norish her, and bringe her up, as may hereafter be to his most contentacion."Letter of the Ambassador's, July 8th, Cotton MSS. quiesced, and thus the princess royal of began to form his plans, should the preEngland was educated as an alien in her mature death of the young king open the own land! Up to the year 1525, this succession to Mary. At length, in July, engagement was still considered binding; 1553, Edward died-from natural causes and an emerald ring, in token of constancy, there is little doubt, for most important to was presented by the grave ambassadors the maturing the projects of Northumberto Charles, as a love-token from the little land would a few months, even a few days, princess, which he as gravely received, have been. The story of the joy that saying "he wolde weare it for hir sayke." pervaded England when Lady Jane Grey But Charles was now twenty-six years of was proclaimed queen must be dismissed age, and, naturally enough, his subjects as a palpable falsehood. The poor girl, desired to see him married without delay, whose father was as despised as her rather than wait some years longer for his mother, "the proud lady of Bradgate,” English cousin; so only two months later was hated, who was raised to a fifteen he wrote to the king and cardinal request- days' royalty by that most detested of ing their assent to his marriage with an- all the parvenu nobles of that age, other first cousin of more suitable age, Dudley, the upstart assumer of the proud Isabella of Portugal, who became, as we title of the Percies -the murderer have seen, mother of Philip II. Ere long not the less so because "in course of Henry and Francis again made peace, and law"-of Somerset, the king's uncle, then Francis, now a widower, obligingly and who was well known to sway the young offered either himself or his second son. king as a mere puppet-it was impossible After many negotiations, the subject was that his daughter-in-law could ever have dropped, and during the subsequent years been the object of the people's choice, even the divorce of Catharine fully occupied had not the king's two sisters been living. Henry's mind, while, cast out from court But, then, can we believe that Mary's acfavor and disgracefully branded with ille- cession was hailed with rejoicings? Congitimacy, few European princes would be temporary testimony, Protestant as well as likely to seek alliance with the portionless Catholic, assures us it was so; and when "Lady Mary." Soon after Catharine's we remember how much reason the peodeath, however, we find Charles again in-ple had to dread a disputed successionterfering on behalf of his cousin, and pro-how their fathers had suffered from that posing a marriage with his nephew the Infante of Portugal; but ere the arrangements were completed, Francis again came forward with a renewed offer of his second son. Soon after there were proposals from the Duke of Cleves, and then from the Duke of Urbino, both at the suggestion of Charles, who dreaded above all a French alliance, and to these a third was subsequently added, from Duke Philip of Bavaria. The latter visited England and presented Mary with a diamond cross; but all these negotiations, like the former ones, were broken off. On the death of her father, with the exception of a proposal from the Marquess of Brandenburgh, Mary was allowed to remain in quiet obscurity, the emperor no longer proposing alliances, but keeping close watch over her interests, and, on the occasion of Edward's council arresting her chaplains for performing mass, directing his ambassador to threaten war unless her religious tenets were respected. This was in 1551, and as Edward was then a sickly youth, it is not improbable that Charles, far-sighted as he had always shown himself, very cause in the wars of the Roses-how they themselves had suffered from the feuds of rival nobles-we can well believe that they would be content with any ruler who would set them free from the unbearable tyranny of the Somersets and Northumberlands of that day. We must remember, too, that among the Catholic nobility and their followers-then a large majority-the accession of the Catholic princess, who, through such cruel persecution, had stood firm to her faith, was indeed a triumph. Thus we think it will be found that Mary, notwithstanding her foreign habits, and the slight impression which, notwithstanding her wrongs, she had made upon the people, was yet welcomed by them. They had yet to learn how devoted she was to Spain, and how willing to lay their liberties at the feet of a foreign despot. Edward died on the 6th of July; and however Northumberland might plot to keep his death secret, we find the wary emperor so quickly apprised of it, that in a letter dated from Brussels only five days afterwards, he gives his first directions to it. his ambassador. In his second, dated the 22d, he bids him hint to the queen that the time had come when it was desirable that she should marry, and that his advice and aid would always be heartily at her service. Charles was not the man to allow a good opportunity to pass by, for the sake of etiquette. Upon this hint, doubtless, the ambassador enlarged, although as yet the suitor was not indicated. Many writers have pointed out Courtenay, the young and handsome Earl of Devonshire, who had just been released from his long captivity in the Tower, as the probable object of Mary's choice; and that there was some ground for this belief another letter from the emperor in August seems to prove. In this there was an especial message to Renard, then in London, to approach the subject of Courtenay with the greatest caution, lest he should fix the attention of the queen more strongly upon We are not inclined to believe, with Mr. Prescott, in the "frivolous disposition" of this young man. The prisoner, who beguiled his long captivity with literature and music, and in the accomplishment so unusual in that age, painting, could not have deserved so slighting an epithet. Whether Mary ever felt partiality toward him is very questionable, but that he speedily became no common favorite with the people is certain; and hence, doubtless, the hostility with which he was viewed by the emissaries of Spain. Renard, who seems to have merited his name, without further delay proposed Philip, and in his letter tells us that the queen took the proposal so merrily, that "she laughed not once, but several times, and gave me a significant look, showing that the offer was very agreeable to her, and giving me also to know that she neither sought nor desired an English marriage." This is most important. In a subsequent conversation, she begged Renard to assure the Emperor that she was ready to obey, and please him, as though he were her father, but requesting him to open the subject to her council himself. The emperor was now secure of success, but he went to work warily; and in the subsequent letters we have ample proof how distasteful he well knew this alliance would prove to the nation, for we find him urging the necessity of secrecy, and especially that Mary should beware of advising with her council before her final decision. Soon after Mary's coronation, which took place on the 1st of October, the new Parliament, after having pronounced the marriage of her father and mother valid, proceeded to petition her to marry for the good of the realm, but besought her to choose "a noble of English birth, and not a foreigner to reign over them." This evidently points at Courtenay, who, as great-grandson of Edward IV., as well as third cousin to the queen, had a contingent claim in point of birth to the crown. This seems to have awakened Renard's anxieties, which, however, were soon allayed by the queen informing him that she was apprised of Gardiner's intrigues, and those of the French ambassador, adding in a tone worthy of her father: "But I will be a match for them." Soon after, she took Renard at midnight into her oratory, and kneeling before the host, having repeated the hymn Veni Creator, she solemnly pledged herself to take no other for her husband than the Prince of Spain. About a fortnight later her faithful Commons, in due form and with due humility, knelt in the royal presence to offer their petition, when she answered them, that from God she held her crown, and that to him alone she should look for counsel in so important a matter, adding the gratuitous falsehood, that she had not yet made up her mind to marry, but that she would take it into consideration. "The Commons, who had rarely the courage to withstand the frown of their Tudor prince," says Mr. Prescott, "professed themselves contented, and from this moment opposition ceased from that quarter." The case was, that had Mary's parliament been as stern and unyielding as the Long Parlia ment itself, it could have done nothing more until the queen had made public her intentions. Rumors of the queen's projected marriage, however, rapidly spread among the people. In the passing notices of the day, we find that several men were set on the pillory for "haynous words agenst the quen's majesty ;" that a strict watch was kept upon the city; and that Elizabeth, who had been denied her just place at court, and who in consequence had requested permission to retire to Ashbridge, was placed under the surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope and Sir John Gage, ostensibly as officers of her household, but in reality as spies. Nor were these precautions premature; for even then a splendid embassy, headed by Count Egmont, was | minute on this part of his subject, for "the about to leave Brussels, charged with the accounts given in every English history of solemn offer of Philip's hand to Mary; this period," to which he refers the reader, while jewels and ducats were liberally dis- are both contradictory and apocryphal. pensed among the more tractable of her The chief insurrection was that under Sir council. The embassy landed in Kent, Thomas Wyatt, a leader to whom justice where the handsome Egmont, being mis- has never yet been done. A Kentish taken for Philip, received so rude a wel- knight, a man of education and property, come that, fearing a journey by land, he belonging "to the old religion" too, little reëmbarked, and sailed up the Thames, cause had he to throw away fortune and arriving at Tower Wharf on the 2d of life on a wild scheme to overturn the comJanuary. But the hatred which had ex-monweal. But he well knew "the proud hibited itself in Kent was equally display- Spaniard," having frequently been sent ed in London, where, as a contemporary on embassies to Spain; and he seems really states, "as the retinew and harbengers to have felt it but the duty of a gallant came ryding through London, the boyes Englishman to resist what was not the pelted at them with snowballs, so hateful less truly a foreign invasion, because it was was the syghte of their coming in to in the guise of a marriage treaty. That them." When we remember the mire this feeling was general is proved by the and stones of the old London highways, fact, that the London trainbands sent to we may easily imagine that this snowball- oppose him actually joined his standard, ing was no mere pleasant pastime. and that when with more than four thousand men he entered Southwark, "they were suffered peaceably to come, wythout repulse, or eny stroke stryken; yet ther was many men of the contry in the innes, raised and brought thyder by the Lorde William (Howard), to have gon agenste the saide Wyatt, but they all joined themselves to the saide Kentish rebels, taking their parts, and the saide inhabitantes most willingly with their best entertayned them." The same writer states, that on Wyatt's entering Southwark, he made proclamation "that his comyng was only to resyst the comyng in of the Spanish king." Egmont, after being banqueted by Gardiner, proceeded, gladly enough, we doubt not, to Hampton Court, and tendered his proposals of marriage. These Mary received with mingled reserve and courtesy. Perhaps, as hitherto all the courting had been done by the father, she thought it was time for the son at least to take some part. It seems, however, to have been agreed that no time should be lost; so ere letter or token was received from her future husband, the marriage treaty was prepared. This was drawn up with great care, under the chancellor's direction. "This instrument," as Mr. Prescott remarks, was certainly worded with a care that reflected credit on the sagacity of its framers." But what security had the English nation that all these stipulations would be observed? As one of the speakers in Parliament is said to have asked: "If the bond be broken, who is there to sue the bond ?" No wonder, therefore, that this marriage treaty, unexceptionable as it was in its provisions, was received by the people with rage and opposition, such as never had been witnessed since the wars of the Roses. Not only were placards affixed to every public building, and scurrilous ballads against the Spaniards sung in the streets, and children in their play pretending to hang the Spanish prince, but in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, in Devonshire and in Kent, insurrections broke out simultaneously. We wish Mr. Prescott had been more There was a fine chivalrous spirit in this unfortunate leader. His placing his name in the front of his cap, when proclamation was made that whoever took him should have "a cl. in money ;" and especially in his retiring from a position so strong, and affording such facilities for retreat as Southwark, because, when the lieutenant of the Tower directed the great ordnance against the bridge foot and St. Mary Overies, the women cried to him, "Sir, we are like to be utterlie undone all, and destroyed for your sake, and, therefore, for the love of God take pytie on us.” “He stayed awhyle," says the diarist-probably an eye-witness-" and then sayd these, or mochelike words: 'I praie you, my friends, content yourselves a lyttel, and I will soon ease you of this myschefe, for God forbid that ye or the least child here shulde be hurt or killed in my behalfe.' And so in most speedie manner marched awaye." |