LETTER VI.

CONFISCATION OF THE MONASTERIES. BASE AND CRUEL MEANS OF DOING THIS. THE SACKING AND DEFACING OF THE COUNTRY. BREAKING UP THE TOMB OF ALFRED. MORE WIVES DIVORCED AND KILLED. DEATH OF THE MISCREANT CROMWELL. DEATH OF THE TYRANT HIMSELF.

Kensington, 30th April, 1825.

MY FRIENDS,

165. AT the close of the foregoing Letter, we saw the beginning only of the devastation of England. In the present letter, we shall see its horrible progress as far as there was time for that progress during the reign of the remorseless tyrant Henry VIII. We have seen in what manner was obtained the first Act for the suppression of Monasteries: that is to say, in reality, for robbing the proprietors of estates, and also the poor and the stranger. But I must give a more full and particular account of the Act of Parlia ment itself before I proceed to the deeds committed in consequence of it.

166. The Act was passed in the year 1 536, and in the 27th year of the King's reign. The preamble of the Act contains the reasons for its enactments; and as this Act really began the ruin and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; as it was the first step taken, in legal form, for robbing the people under pretence of reforming their religion; as it was the precedent on which the future plunderers proceeded, until they had com pletely impoverished the country; as it was the first of that series of deeds of rapine, by which this formerly well-fed and well-clothed people have, in the end, been reduced to rags and to a worse than gaol- allowance of food, I will insert its lying and villanous preamble at full length. Englishmen in general suppose, that there were always poor-laws and paupers in England. They ought to remember, that, for nine hundred years, under the Catholic religion, there were neither. Then ought, when they hear the fat parson cry "No-popery," to answer him by the cry of "No-pauperism." They ought, above all things,to endeavour to ascertain, how it came to pass, that this land of roast beef was changed, all of a sadden, into a land of dry bread, or of oatmeal por ridge. Let them attend, then, to the base and hypocritical pretences that they will find in the following preamble to this atrocious act of pillage.

167. "Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal and abominable living is dayly used and committed commonly in such little and small Abbeys, Priories and other Religious Houses of Monks, Canons and Nuns, where the Congregation of such Religious Persons is under the Number of twelve Persons, whereby the Governors of such Religious Houses, and their Convent, spoyle, destroye, consume and utterly waste, as well their Churches, Monasteries, Priories, principal Farms, Granges, Lands, Tenements and Hereditaments, as the Ornaments of their Churches, and their Goods and Chattels, to the high Displeasure of Almighty God, Slander of good Religion, and to the great Infamy of the King's Highness and the Realm, if Redress should not be had thereof. And albeit that many continual Visitations hath been heretofore had, by the Space of two hundred years and more, for an honest and charitable Reformation of such unthrifty, carnal and abominable Living, yet neverthelesse little or none Amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious Living shamelessly increaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed Custom so rooted and infected, that a great Multitude of the Religious Persons in such small Houses do rather choose to rove abroad in Apostacy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good Religion; so that without such small Houses be utterly suppressed, and the Religious Persons therein committed to great and honourable Monasteries of Religion in this Realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously for Reformation of their Lives, the same else be no redress nor Reformation in that Behalf. In Consideration whereof, the King's most Royal Majesty, being supreme Head on Earth , under God, of the Church of England, dayly studying and devising the Increase, Advancement and Exaltation of true Doctrine and Virtue in the said Church, to the only Glory and Honour of God, and the total extirping and Destruction of Vice and Sin, having Knowledge that the Premises be true, as well as the Accompts of his late Visitations, as by sundry credible Informations, considering also that divers and great solemn Monasteries of this Realm wherein (Thanks be to God) Religion is right well kept and observed, be destitute of such full Number of Religious Persons as they ought and may keep, hath thought good that a plain Declaration should be made of the Premises, as well to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving Subjects the Commons, in this present Parlia ment assembled: Whereupon the said Lords and Commons, by a great Deliberation, finally be resolved, that it is and shall he much more to the Pleasure of Almighty God, and for the Honour of this his Realm, that the Possessions of such small Religious houses, now being spent, spoiled and wasted for Increase and Maintenance of sin, should be used and committed to better uses, and the unthrifty Religious Persons, so spending the same, to be compelled to reform their lives."

168. This preamble was followed by enactments, giving the whole of the property to the King, his heir and assigns, to do and use therewith according to their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm." Besides the lands and houses and stock, this tyrannical Act gave him the household goods and the gold, silver, jewels, and every other thing belonging to these Monasteries. Here was a breach of Magna Charta in the first place; a robbery of the monks and nuns in the next place; and, in the third place, a robbery of the indigents, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. The parties robbed, even the actual possessors of the property, were never heard in their defence; there was no charge against any particular convent; the charges were loose and general, and levelled against all convents, whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum. This alone was sufficient to show that the charges were false; for, who will believe that the alleged wickedness extended to all whose revenues did not exceed a certain sum, and that, when those revenues got above that point, the wickedness stopped? It is clear, that the reason for stopping at that point was, that there was yet something to be clone with the nobles and gentry, before a seizure of the great Monasteries could be safely attempted. The weak were first attacked, but means were very soon found for attacking and sacking the remainder.

169. The moment the tyrant got possession of this class of the Church estates, he began to grant them away to his "assigns" as the Act calls them. Great promises had been held out, that the King, when in possession of these estates, would never more want taxes from the people; and it is possible, that he thought. that he should be able to do without taxes; but, he soon found, that he was not destined to keep the plunder to himself; and that, in short, he must make a sudden stop, if not actually undo all that he had done, unless he divided the spoil with others, who instantly poured in upon him for their share, and they so beset him, that he had not a moment's peace. They knew that he had good things; they had taken care to enable him to have "assigns;" and they, as they intended from the first, would give him no rest, until he, "to the pleasure of Almighty God and to the honour and profit of the realm," made them those "assigns."

170. Before four years had passed over his head, he found himself as poor as if had never confiscated a single convent, so sharp-set were the pious reformers, and so eager to "please Almighty God." When complaining to CROMWELL of the rapacity of the applicants for grants, he exclaimed, "By our Lady, the cormorants, when they have got the garbage, will devour the dish." CROMWELL reminded him, that there was much more yet to come, "Tut, man," said the King, "my whole realm would not stanch. their maws." However, he attempted this, very soon after; by a seizure of the larger Monasteries.

171. We have seen, in paragraph 167, that the Parliament. when they enabled him to confiscate the smaller Monasteries, declared, that, in the "great and solemn Monasteries, (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept and observed.." It seemed, therefore to be a work of some difficulty to discover (in so short a time after this declaration was made) reasons for the confiscation of these larger Monasteries. But tyranny stands in need of no reasons and, in this Case, no reasons were alleged. CROMWELL and his myrmidons beset the heads of these great establishments; they threatened, they promised, they lied, and they bullied. By means the most base that Can be conceived, they obtained from some few what they called a "voluntary surrender." However, where these unjust and sanguinary men met with sturdy opposition, they resorted to false accusation, and procured the murder of the parties, under pretence of their having committed high treason. It was under this infamous pretence that the tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the Abbot of the famous Abbey of GLASTONBURY, whose body was mangled by the executioner, and whose head and limbs were hung up on what is called the torre, which overlooks the abbey. So that the surrender, wherever it did take place, was precisely of the nature of those " voluntary surrenders " which men make of their purses, when the robber's pistol is at their temple, or his blood-stained knife at their throat.

172. After all, however, even to obtain a pretence of voluntary surrender was a work too troublesome for CROMWELL and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow for the cormorants who waited for the plunder. Without more ceremony, therefore, an Act was passed (31 Hen. VIII. chap. 13,) giving all these "surrendered" Monasteries to the King, his heirs and assigns, and also ALL OTHER MONASTERIES; and all hospitals and colleges into the bargain! It is useless to Waste our time in uttering exclamations, or inventing curses on the memory of the monsters, who thus made a general sacking of this then fine, rich and beautiful country, which, until now, had been, for nine hundred years, the happiest country, and the greatest country too, that Europe had ever seen.

173. The carcass being thus laid prostrate, the rapacious vultures, who had assisted in the work, flew on it, and began to tear it in pieces. The people, here and there, rose in insurrection against the tyrant's satellites; but, deprived of their natural leaders, who had, for the most part, placed themselves on the side of tyranny and plunder, what were the mere common people to do? HUME affects to pity the ignorance of the people (as our stock-jobbing writers now affect to pity the ignorance of the country people in Spain) in showing their attachment to the monks. Gross ignorance, to be sure, to prefer easy landlords, leases for life, hospitality and plenty!; "gross ignorance and superstition" to prefer these to grinding rack-rents, buying small beer at Bishops' palaces, and living on parish pay. We shall see, shortly, how soon horrid misery followed these tyrannical proceedings; but we must trace CROMWELL and his ruffians in their work of confiscating, plundering, pillaging and devastating.

1 74. Tyrants have often committed robberies on their people; but, in all Cases but this, in England at least, there was always something of legal process observed. In this case there was no such thing. The base Parliament, who were to share, and who did most largely share, in the plunder, had given not only the lands and houses to the tyrant, or, rather, had taken them to themselves; but had disposed, in the same short way, of all the moveable goods, stock on farms, crops, and which was of more consequence, of the gold, silver, and jewels. Let the reader judge of the ransackings that now took place. The poorest of the convents had some images, vases, and other things, of gold or silver. Many of them possessed a great deal in this way. The altars of their churches were generally enriched with the precious metals, if not with costly jewels; and, which is not to be overlooked, the people, in those days, were honest enough to suffer all these things to remain in their places, without a standing army and without police officers.

175. Never, in all probability, since the world began, was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of CROMWELL entered the convents; they tore down the altars to get away the gold and silver; ransacked the chests and drawers of the monks and nuns; tore off the covers of books that were ornamented with the precious metals. These books were all in manuscript. Single books had taken, in many cases, half a long life-time to compose and to copy out fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which together had taken ages upon ages and had cost immense sums of money, were scattered abroad by these hellish ruffians, when they had robbed the covers of their rich ornaments. The ready money, in the convents, down to the last shilling, was seized. in short, the most rapacious and unfeeling soldiery never. in town delivered up to be sacked, proceeded with greediness, shamelessness and brutality to be at all compared with those of these heroes of the Protestant Reformation; and this, observe, towards persons, women as well as men, who had committed no crime known to the laws, who had had no crime regularly laid to their charge, Who had had no hearing in their defence, a large part of whom had, within a year, been declared, by this same Parliament, to lead most godly and useful lives, the whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them by the great Charter as much as the Kings crown was to him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit of the poor as well as for that of these plundered possessors themselves,

176. The tyrant was, of course, the great pocketter of this species of plunder. CROMWELL carried or sent it to him in parcels, twenty ounces of gold at one time, fifty ounces at another; now a parcel of precious stones of one sort, then a parcel of another, HUME, whose main object is to blacken the Catholic religion, takes every possible occasion for saying something or other in praise of its destroyers. He could not, he was too cunning, to ascribe justice or humanity to a monster whose very name signifies injustice and cruelty. He, therefore, speaks of his high spirit, his magnificence and generosity. It was a high-spirited, magnificent and generous King, to be sure, who sat in his palace, in London, to receive with his own hands the gold, silver, jewels, and pieces of money, of which his unoffending subjects had been robbed by ruffians sent by himself to commit the robbery. One of these items runs in these words:-- "ITEM, Delivered unto the King's royal Majesty, the same day, of the same stuffe, foure chalices of golde, with foure patens of golde to the same; and a spoon of golde, weighing altogether an hundred and six ounces." "Received: HENRY REX."

177. There are high-spirit, magnificence, and generosity! Amongst the stock of this "generous prince's" pawnbroker's shop; or, rather, his store-house of stolen goods, were images of all sorts, candlesticks, sockets, cruets, cups, pixes, goblets, basons, spoons, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, finger-rings, ear-rings, pieces of money of all values, even down to shillings, bits of gold and silver torn from the covers of books, or cut and beaten out of the altars. In cases where the wood-work, either of altars, crosses, or images, was inlaid with precious metal, the wood was frequently burnt to get at the metal. Even the Jew-thieves of the present day are not more expert in their trade than the myrmidons of CROMWELL were. And, with these facts before us; these facts, undenied and undeniable; with these facts before us, must we not be the most profound hypocrites that the world ever saw; must we not be the precise country of that which Englishmen have always been thought to be, if we still affect to believe, that the destruction of the shrines of our forefathers arose from motives of conscience?

178. The parcel of plunder, mentioned in the last paragraph but one, brought into this royal PEACHUM, was equal in value to about eight thousand pounds of money of the present day; and that parcel was, perhaps, not a hundredth part of what he received in this way. Then, who is to suppose that the plunderers did not keep a large share to themselves? Did subaltern plunderers ever give in just accounts? It is manifest that, from, this specimen, the whole amount of the goods of which the Convents were plundered must have been enormous. The reforming gentry ransacked the Cathedral Churches, as well as the Convents and their Churches. Whatever pile contained the greatest quantity of the "the same stuffe," seemed to be the object of their most keen rapacity. Therefore, it is by no means surprising, that they directed, at a very early stage of their pious and honest progress, their hasty steps towards Canterbury, which, above all other places, had been dipped in the "manifest synne" of possessing rich altars, tombs, gold and silver images, together with "manifestely synneful" diamonds and other precious stones. The whole of this city, famed as the cradle of English Christianity, was prize; and the "Reformation" people hastened to it with that alacrity, and that noise of anticipated enjoyment which we observe in the crows and magpies, when flying to the spot where a horse or an ox has accidentally met with its death.

179. But there were, at Canterbury, two objects by which the "Reformation" birds of prey were particularly attracted; namely, the monastery of Saint AUSTIN and the tomb of THOMAS À BECKET. The former of these renowned men, to whose preaching and whose long life of incessant and most disinterested labour England owed the establishment of Christianity in the land, had, for eight or nine centuries, been regarded as the Apostle of England. His shrine was in the monastery dedicated to him; and as it was, in all respects, a work of great magnificence, it offered a plenteous booty to the plunderers, who, if they could have got at the tomb of Jesus Christ himself, and had found it equally rich, would, beyond all question, have torn it to pieces. But, rich as this prize was, there was a greater in the shrine of Thomas à Becket, in the Cathedral Church. BECKET, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry II., who resisted that king, when the latter was manifestly preparing to rob the Church, and to enslave and pillage the people, had been held in the highest veneration all over Christendom for more than three hundred years, when the Reformation plunderers assailed his tomb; but especially was his name venerated in England, where the people looked upon him as a martyr to their liberties as well as their religion, he having been barbarously murdered by ruffians sent from the King, and for no other cause than that he persevered in resisting an attempt to violate the Great Charter. Pilgrimages were continually made to his tomb; offerings incessantly poured into it; churches and hospitals and other establishments of piety and charity were dedicated to him, as, for instance, the church of St. Thomas, in the City of London, the Monastery of Sende, in Surrey, the Hospital of St. Thomas, in the Borough of Southwark, and things of this sort, in great numbers, all over the country. The offerings at his shrine had made it exceedingly rich and magnificent. A king of France had given to it a diamond, supposed to be the most valuable then in Europe. HUME, never losing sight of the double object of maligning the Catholic religion and degrading the English nation, ascribes this sort of half-adoration of BECKET to the craft of the priests and to the folly and superstition of the people. He is vexed to death to have to relate, that more than a hundred thousand pilgrims to BECKET's shrine have been assembled at one time in Canterbury. Indeed! why, then, there must have been some people living in England, even in those old times; and those people must have had some wealth too; though, according to the whole tenor of the lying book, which the Scotch call our history, this was, at the time I am now speaking of, a poor, beggarly, scarcely-inhabited country. The City of Canterbury does not now contain men, women, and children, all counted and well-puffed out, more than twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty souls! Poor souls! How could they find lodging and entertainment for a hundred thousand grown persons! And this, too, observe, at one corner of the Island. None but persons of some substance could have performed such a journey. Here is a fact that just slips out sideways, which is of itself much more than enough to make us reflect and inquire before we swallow what the Scotch philosophers are now presenting to us on the subjects of national wealth and population. And, then, as to the craft and superstition which HUME says produced this concourse of pilgrims. Just as if either were necessary to produce unbounded veneration for the name of a man, of whom it was undeniably true, that he had sacrificed his life, and that, too, in the most signal manner, for the rights and liberties and religion of his country. Was it "folly and superstition," or was it wisdom and gratitude and real piety to show, by overt acts, veneration for such a man? The bloody tyrant, who had sent MORE and FISHER to the block, and who, of course, hated the name of BECKET, caused his ashes to be dug up and scattered in the air, and forbade the future insertion of his name in the CALENDAR. We do not, therefore, find it in the Calendar in the Common Prayer Book; but, and it is a most curious fact, we find it in Moore's ALMANACK; in that almanack it is for this very year, 1825; and thus, in spite of the ruthless tyrant, and in spite of all the liars of the "Reformation," the English nation has always continued to be just and grateful to the memory of this celebrated man.

180. But, to return to the Reformation robbers; here was a prize! This tomb of BECKET was of wood, most exquisitely wrought, inlaid abundantly with the precious metals, and thickly set with precious stones of all sorts. Here was an object for "Reformation" piety to fix its godly eyes upon! Were such a shrine to be found in one of our churches now, how the swaddlers would cry out for another "Reformation"! The gold, silver, and jewels, filled two chests, each of which required six or eight men of that day (when the labourers used to have plenty of meat) to move them to the door of the Cathedral! How the eyes of HUME's "high-minded, magnificent and generous prince" must have glistened when the chests were opened! They vied, I dare say, with the diamonds themselves. No robbers, of which we have ever had an account, equalled these robbers in rapacity, in profligacy, and in insolence. But, where is the wonder? The tyrant's proclamations had now the force of laws; he had bribed the people's natural leaders to his side; his will was law; and that will constantly sought plunder and blood.

181. The Monasteries were now plundered, sacked, gutted; for, this last is the proper word whereby to describe the deed. As some comfort, and to encourage us to endure the horrid relation, we may here bear in mind, that we shall, by-and-by see the base ruffian, CROMWELL, after being the chief instrument in the plunder, laying his miscreant head on the block; but, to seize the estates and to pillage the churches and apartments of the monasteries was not all. The noble buildings, raised in the view of lasting for countless ages; the beautiful gardens; these ornaments of the country must not be suffered to stand, for, they continually reminded the people of the rapacity and cruelty of their tyrant and his fellow-plunderers and partakers in the plunder. How the property in the estates was disposed of we shall see further on; but, the buildings must come down. To go to work in the usual way would have been a labour without end; so that, in most instances, GUNPOWDER was resorted to; and thus, in a few hours, the most magnificent structures, which it had required ages upon ages to bring to perfection, were made heaps of ruins, pretty much such as many of them remain even unto this day. In many cases, those who got the estates were bound to destroy the buildings, or to knock them partly down, so that the people should, at once, be deprived of all hope of seeing a revival of what they had lost, and in order to give them encouragement to take leases under the new owners.

182. The whole country was, thus, disfigured; it had the appearance of a land recently invaded by the most brutal barbarians: and this appearance, if we look well into it, it has even to this day. Nothing has ever yet come to supply the place of what was then destroyed. This is the view for us to take of the matter, it is not a mere matter of religion; but a matter of rights, liberties, real wealth, happiness and national greatness. If all these have been strengthened, or augmented, by the "REFORMATION," even. then we must not approve of the horrible means; but, if they have all been weakened, or lessened, by that "Reformation," what an outrageous abuse of words is it to call the event by that name! And, if I do not prove, that this latter has been the case; if I do not prove, clear as the daylight, that, before the "Reformation," England was greater, more wealthy, more moral, and more happy, than she has ever been since; if I do not make this appear as clearly as any fact ever was made to appear, I will be content to pass, for the rest of my life, for a vain pretender.

183. If I look at the county of Surrey, in which I myself was born, and behold the devastation of that county, I am filled with indignation against the ruffian devastators. Surrey has very little of natural wealth in it. A very considerable part of it is mere heath-land. Its present comparative opulence is a creature of the fictitious system of funding. Yet this county was, from one end of it to the other, ornamented and benefited by the establishments which grew out of the Catholic Church. At BERMONDSEY there was an Abbey; at St. MARY OVERY there was a Priory, and this convent founded that very St. Thomas's Hospital which now exists in Southwark. This Hospital also was seized by the ruffians, but the building was afterwards given to the City of London. At NEWINGTON there was an Hospital, and, after its revenues were seized, the master obtained a licence to beg! At MERTON there was a Priory. Then, going across to the Sussex side, there was another Priory at REIGATE, Coming again near the Thames, and more to the West, there was a Priory at SHENE. Still more to the West, there was an Abbey at CHERTSEY. At TANDRIGE there was a Priory. Near GUILDFORD, at SENDE, there was a Priory. And, at the lower end of the county, at WAVERLEY, in the parish of Farnham, was an Abbey. To these belonged cells and chapels at a distance from the convents themselves: so that it would have been a work of some difficulty for a man so to place himself, even in this poor heathy county, at six miles distance from a place where the door of hospitality was always open to the poor, to the aged, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. Can any man, now, place himself, in that whole county, within any number of miles of any such door? No; nor in any other county. All is wholly changed, and all is changed for the worse. There is now no hospitality in England. Words have changed their meaning. We now give entertainment to those who entertain us in return. We entertain people because we like them personally; and, very seldom, because they stand in need of entertainment. An hospital, in those days, meant a place of free entertainment; and not a place merely for the lame, the sick and the blind; and the very sound of the words "Old English Hospitality," ought to raise a blush on every Protestant cheek. But, besides this hospitality exercised invariably in the Monasteries, the weight of their example was great with all the opulent classes of the community; and thus, to be generous and kind was the character of the nation at large: a niggardly, a base, a money-loving disposition could not be in fashion, when those institutions to which all men looked with reverence, set an example which condemned such a disposition.

184. And, if I am asked why the thirteen monks of WAVERLEY, for instance, should have had 196l. l3s. 1d. a year to spend, making about four thousand pounds a year of the money of the present day, I may answer by asking, why they should not have had it? And I may go on, and ask, why any body should have any property at all? Ay, but, they never worked; they did nothing to increase the nation's store! Let us see how this is. They possessed the lands of WAVERLEY, a few hundred acres of very poor land with a mill, and, perhaps, about twenty acres of very indifferent meadow-land, on one part of which, sheltered by a semicircle of sand-hills, their Abbey stood, the river Wey (about twenty feet wide) running close by the outer wall of the convent. Besides this, they possessed the impropriated tithes of the parish of Farnham, and a pond or two on the commons adjoining. This estate in land belongs to a Mr. THOMPSON, who lives on the spot, and the estate in tithes to a Mr. HALSEY, who lives at a distance from the parish. Now, without any disparagement to these gentlemen, did not the monks work as much as they do? Did not their revenue go to augment the nation's store as much as the rents of Mr. THOMPSON, or the tithes of Mr. HALSEY? Ay, and which is of vast importance, the poor of the parish of Farnham, having this Monastery to apply to, and having for their neighbour a Bishop of Winchester, who did not sell small beer out of his palace, stood in no need of poor-rates, and had never heard the horrid word pauper pronounced. Come, my townsmen of Farnham, you, who, as well as I, have, when we were boys, climbed the ivy-covered ruins of this venerable Abbey (the first of its order in England); you, who, as well as I have, when looking at those walls, which have outlived the memory of the devastators but not the malice of those who still taste time sweets of the devastation; you, who, as well as I, have many times wondered what an abbey was, and how and why this one came to be devastated; you shall be judge in this matter, You know what poor-rates are and you know what church-rates are. Very well, then, there were no poor-rates nor church-rates as long as Waverley Abbey existed and as long as Bishops had no wives. This is a fact wholly undeniable. There was no need of either. The Church shared its property with the poor and the stranger, and left the people at large to possess their own earnings. And, as to matters of faith and worship, look at that immense heap of earth round the church, where your parents and my parents, amid where our progenitors, for twelve hundred years, lie buried; then bear in mind, that, for nine hundred years out of the twelve, they were all of the faith and worship of the monks of Waverley; and, with that thought in your mind, find, if you can, the heart to say, that the monks of Waverley, by whose hospitality your fathers and my fathers were, for so many ages, preserved from bearing the hateful name of pauper, taught an idolatrous and damnable religion.

185. That which took place in Surrey, took place in every other county, only to a greater extent in proportion to the greater wealth and resources of the spot. Defacing followed closely upon the heels of confiscation and plunder. If buildings could have been murdered, the tyrant and his plunderers would have made short work of it. As it was, they did all they could: they knocked down, they blowed up, they annihilated as far as they could. Nothing, indeed, short of diabolical malice was to be expected from such men; but, there were two Abbeys in England, which one might have hoped, that even these monsters would spare; that which contained the tomb of ST. AUSTIN and that which had been founded by, and contained the remains of, ALFRED We have seen how they rifled the tomb of ST. AUSTIN at Canterbury. They tore down the church and the Abbey, and with the materials built a menagerie for wild beasts, and a palace for the tyrant himself. The tomb of ALFRED was in an Abbey, at Winchester, founded by that king himself. The Abbey and its estates were given by the tyrant to WRIOTHESLEY, who was afterwards made Earl of Southampton, and who got a pretty good share of the confiscations in Hampshire. One almost sickens at the thought of a man capable of a deed like the destruction of this Abbey. Where is there one amongst us, who has read anything at all, who has not read of the fame of ALFRED? What book can we open, even for our boyish days, that does not sound his praise? Poets, moralists, divines, historians, philosophers, lawyers, legislators, not only of our own country, but of all Europe, have cited him, and still cite him, as a model of virtue, piety, wisdom, valour, and Patriotism; as possessing every excellence, without a single fault. He, in spite of difficulties such as no other human being on record ever encountered, cleared his harassed and half- barbarized country of horde after horde of cruel invaders, who, at one time, had wholly subdued it, and compelled him, in order to escape destruction, to resort to the habit and the life of a herdsman. From this state of depression he, during a not long life, raised himself and his people to the highest point of happiness and of fame. He fought, with his armies and fleets, more than fifty battles against the enemies of England. He taught his people by his example as well as by his precepts, to be sober, industrious, brave, and just. He promoted learning in all the sciences; he planted the University of Oxford; to him, and not to a late Scotch lawyer, belongs "Trial by Jury "; Blackstone calls him. the founder of Common Law; the counties, the hundreds, the tithings, the courts of justice, were the work of ALFRED; he, in fact, was the founder of all those rights, liberties and laws, which made England to he what England has been, which gave her a character above that of all other nations, which made her rich and great and happy beyond all her neighbours, and which still give her whatever she possesses of that pre-eminence. if there be a name under heaven, to which Englishmen ought to bow with reverence approaching towards adoration, it is the name of ALFRED. And we are not unjust and ungrateful in this respect, at any rate; for, whether Catholics or Protestants, where is there an Englishman to be found, who would not gladly make a pilgrimage of a thousand miles to take off his hat at the tomb of this maker of the English name? Alas! that tomb is nowhere to be found. The barbarians spared not even that. It was in the Abbey before-mentioned, called HYDE ABBEY, which had been founded by ALFRED himself, and intended as the place of his burial. Besides the remains of ALFRED, this Abbey contained those of ST. GRIMBALD, the Benedictine monk, whom ALFRED brought into England to begin the teaching at Oxford. But, what cared the plunderers for remains of public benefactors? The Abbey was knocked down, or blowed up: the tombs were demolished; the very lead of the coffins was sold; and, which fills one with more indignation than all the rest, the estates were so disposed of as to make the loan-makers, the BARINGS, at this day, the successors of ALFRED the Great!

186. WRIOTHESLEY got the manors of MICHELDEVER and STRATTON, which, by marriage, came into the hands of the family of RUSSELL, and, from that family, about thirty years ago, they were bought by the BARINGS, and are now in possession of Sir THOMAS BARING. It is curious to observe how this Protestant "Reformation" has worked. if it had not been, there would have been no paupers at Micheldever and Stratton; but, then the Russells would not have had the estates, and they could not have sold them to the Barings; ay, but then there would have been, too, no national debt, as well as no paupers, and there would have been no loan-makers to buy the estates of the Russells. Besides this, there would have been no bridewell erected upon the precise spot where the abbey-church stood; no tread-mill, perhaps, Over the very place where the ashes of ALFRED lay; and, what is more, there would have been no need of bridewell or tread-mill. It is related of ALFRED, that he made his people so honest, that he could hang bracelets up by the way side, without danger of their being touched. Alas! that the descendants of that same people should need a tread- mill! Ay, but, in the days of ALFRED there were no paupers; no miserable creatures compelled to labour from month's end to month's end without seeing meat; no thousands upon thousands made thieves by that hunger, which acknowledges no law, human or divine.

187. Thus, then, was the country devastated, sacked and defaced; and I should now proceed to give an account of the commencement of that poverty and degradation, which were, as I have pledged myself to show, the consequences of this devastation; and which I shall show, not by bare assertion, nor from what are called "histories of England;" but, from Acts of Parliament, and from other sources, which every one can refer to, and the correctness of which is beyond all dispute. But, before we come to this important matter, we must see the end of the ruffian "Vicegerent," and also the end of the tyrant himself, who was, during the events that we have been speaking of, going on marrying and divorcing, or killing, his wives; but, whose career, was, after all, not very long.

188. After the death of JANE SEYMOUR, who was the mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of all the tyrant's wives who had the good luck to die a queen, and to die in her bed; after her death, which took place in 1537, he was nearly two years hunting up another wife. None, certainly, but some very gross and unfeeling woman could be expected to have, voluntarily, anything to do with a man, whose hands were continually steeped in blood. In 1539 he found, however, a mate in ANNE, the sister of the Duke of Cleves. When she arrived in England he expressed his dislike of her person; but he found it prudent to marry her. In 1540, about six or seven months after the marriage, he was divorced from her, not daring, in this case, to set his myrmidons to work to bring her to the block. There was no lawful pretence for the divorce. The husband did not like his wife: that was all: and this was alleged, too, as the ground of the divorce. CRANMER, who had divorced him from two wives before, put his irons into the fire again for this occasion; and produced, in a little time, as neat a piece of work as ever had come from the shop of the famous "Reformation." Thus the King and Queen were single people again; but, the former had another young and handsome wife in his eye. This lady's name was CATHERINE HOWARD, a niece of the Duke of NORFOLK. This Duke, as well as most of the old nobility, hated CROMWELL; and now was an opportunity of inflicting vengeance on him. CROMWELL had been the chief cause of the King's marriage with ANNE of Cleves; but, the fact is, his plundering talent was no longer wanted, and it was convenient to the tyrant to get rid of him.

189. CROMWELL had obtained enormous wealth, from his several offices, as well as from the plunder of the church and the poor. He had got about thirty of the estates belonging to the monasteries; his house, or rather palace, was gorged with the fruits of the sacking; he had been made Earl of Essex; he had precedence of every one but the King; and he, in fact, represented the King in the Parliament, where he introduced and defended all his confiscating and murdering laws. He had been barbarous beyond all description towards the unfortunate and unoffending monks and nuns; without such an instrument the plunder never could have been effected: but, he was no longer wanted; the ruffian had already lived too long; the very walls of the devastated convents seemed to call for public vengeance on his head. On the morning of the 10th of June, 1540, he was all-powerful: in the evening of the same day he was in prison as a traitor. He lay in prison only a few days before he had to experience the benefit of his own way of administering justice. He had, as we have seen in the last Number, invented a way of bringing people to the block, or the gallows, without giving them any form of trial; without giving them even a hearing; but merely by passing a law to put them to death. This was what this abominable wretch had brought about in the case of the Countess of SALISBURY; and this was what was now to fall on his own head. He lived only about forty-eight days after his arrest; not half long enough to enable him to enumerate, barely to enumerate, the robberies and murders committed under his orders. His time seems, however, to have been spent, not in praying to God to forgive him for these robberies and murders, but in praying to the tyrant to spare his life. Perhaps, of all the mean and dastardly wretches that ever died, this was the most mean and dastardly. He, who had been the most insolent and cruel of ruffians, when he had power, was now the most disgustingly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed no crime against the King; though charged with heresy and treason, he was no more a heretic than the King was; and, as to the charge of treason, there was not a shadow of foundation for it. But, he was just as guilty of treason as the abbots of Reading, Colchester, and Glastonbury, all of whom, and many more, he had been the chief instrument in putting to death. He put them to death in order to get possession of their property; and, I dare say, to get at his property, to get the plunder back from him, was one of the motives for bringing him to the block. This very ruffian had superintended the digging up of the ashes of THOMAS À BECKET, and scattering them in the air; and now, the people who had witnessed that, had to witness the letting of the blood out of his dirty body, to run upon the pavement, to be licked up by hogs or dogs. The cowardly creature seems to have had, from the moment of his arrest, no thought about any thing but saving his life. He wrote repeatedly to the King, in hope of getting pardoned: but, all to no purpose: he had done what was wanted of him; the work of plunder was nearly over; he had, too, got a large share of the plunder, which it was not convenient to leave in his hands; and, therefore, upon true "Reformation" principles, it was time to take away his life. He, in his letters to the King, most vehemently protested his innocence. Ay; no doubt of that: but, he was not more innocent than were the butchered abbots and monks; he was not more innocent than any one out of those thousands upon thousands, whom he had quartered, hanged, burned, or plundered; and, amongst all those thousands upon thousands, there never was seen one, female or male, so complete a dastard as him self. In these letters to the tyrant, he fawned on him in the most disgusting manner; compared his smiles and frowns to those of God; besought him to suffer him "to kiss his balmy hand once more, that the fragrance thereof might make him fit for heaven"! The base creature deserved his death, if it had only been for writing these letters. Fox, the "Martyr" man, calls this CROMWELL the "valiant soldier of the Reformation." Yes, there have been few soldiers to understand sacking better: he was full of valour on foraging parties; and when he had to rifle monks and nuns and to rob altars: a brave fellow when he had to stretch monks and nuns on the rack, to make them confess treasonable words or thoughts; but when death began to stare him in the face, he was, assuredly, the most cowardly caitiff that ever died. it is hardly necessary to say, that this man is a great favourite of HUME, who deeply laments CROMWELL's fate, though he has not a word of compassion to bestow upon all the thousands that had been murdered or ruined by him. He, as well as other historians, quotes from the conclusion of one of CROMWELL's letters to the King, these abject expressions: "I, a most woful prisoner, am ready to submit to death, when it shall please God and your Majesty; and yet the frail flesh incites me to call on your grace for mercy and pardon of mine offences. -- Written at the Tower with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your Highness's most miserable prisoner and poor slave, THOMAS CROMWELL -- Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy!" This is the language of Fox's "valiant soldier." Fox meant valiant, not in the field, or on the scaffold, but in the convent, pulling the rings from women's fingers, and tearing the gold clasps from books: that was the Protestant valour of the "Reformation." HUME says, that "CROMWELL deserved a better fate." Never was fate more just or more appropriate. He had been the willing, the officious, the zealous, the eager agent in the execution of all the tyrannical, sacrilegious, and bloody deeds of his master; and had, amongst other things, been the very man who first suggested the condemning of people to death without trial. What could be more just than that he should die in the same way? Not a tear was shed at his death, which produced on the spectators an effect such as is produced when the foulest of murderers expiate their crimes on the gallows.

190. During the seven years that the tyrant himself survived this his cruel and dastardly Vicegerent, he was beset with disappointments, vexations and torments of all sorts. He discovered, at the end of a few months, that his new Queen had been, and still was, much such another as ANNE BOLEYN. He with very little ceremony, sent her to the block, together with a whole posse of her relations, lovers, and cronies. He raged and foamed like a wild beast, passed laws most bloody to protect himself against lewdness and infidelity in his future wives, and got, for his pains, the ridicule of the nation and of all Europe. He, for the last time, took another wife; but, this time, none would face his laws but a widow; and she very narrowly escaped the fate of the rest. He, for some years before he died, became, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an unwieldy and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by means of mechanical inventions. But, still he retained all the ferocity and bloody- mindedness of his former days. The principal business of his life was the ordering of accusations, executions, and confiscations. When on his death-bed, every one was afraid to intimate his danger to him, lest death to the intimater should be the consequence; and he died before he was well aware of his condition, leaving more than one death-warrant unsigned for want of time!

191. Thus expired, in the year 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the thirty-eighth of his reign, the most unjust, hard- hearted, meanest and most sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whether Christian or Heathen. That England, which he found in peace, unity, plenty and happiness, he left torn by factions and schisms, her people wandering about in beggary and misery. He laid the foundations of immorality, dishonesty and pauperism, all which produced an abundant harvest in the reigns of his unhappy, barren, mischievous and miserable children, with whom, at the end of a few years, his house and his name were extinguished for ever. How he disposed of the plunder of the church and the poor; how his successors completed that work of confiscation which he had carried on so long; how the nation sunk in point of character and of wealth; how pauperism first arose in England; and how were sown the seeds of that system of which we now behold the effects in the impoverishment and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland; all these will be shown in the next Letter and shown, I trust, in a manner which will leave, in the mind of every man of sense, no doubt, that, of all the scourges that ever afflicted this country, none is to be put in comparison with the Protestant "Reformation."

LETTER VII.

EDWARD VI. CROWNED. PERJURY OF THE EXECUTORS OF HENRY VIII. NEW CHURCH "BY LAW ESTABLISHED," ROBBERY OF THE CHURCHES, INSURRECTIONS OF THE PEOPLE. TREASONS OF CRANMER AND HIS ASSOCIATES, DEATH OF THE KING.

Kensington, 31st May, l825.

My FRIENDS,

192. HAVING, in the preceding Letters, shown, that the thing, impudently called the "REFORMATION," was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood, I intended to show, in the present Letter, how the main body of the people were, by these doings, impoverished and degraded up to this time; that is to say, I intended to trace the impoverishment and degradation down to the end of the reign of the bloody tyrant, Henry VIII. But, upon reviewing the matter, I think it best first to go through the whole of my account of the plunderings, persecutions and murderings of the "Reformation" people; and, when we have seen all the robberies and barbarities that they committed under the hypocritical Pretence of religious zeal; or, rather, when we have seen such of those robberies and barbarities as we can find room for; then I shall conclude with showing how enormously the nation lost by the change; and, how that change made the main body of the people poor and wretched and degraded. By pursuing this plan, I shall, in one concluding Letter, give, or, at least, endeavour to give, a clear and satisfactory history of this impoverishment. I shall take the present Protestant labourer, with his cold potatoes and water, and show him how his Catholic forefathers lived; and if those cold potatoes and water, if this poorer than pig-diet, have not quite taken away all the natural qualities of English blood, I shall make him execrate the plunderers and hypocrites by whom was produced that change, which has finally led to his present misery. and to nine- tenths of that mass of corruption and crime, public and private, which now threaten to uproot society itself.

193. In pursuance of this plan and in conformity with my promise to conclude my little work in Ten Numbers, I shall distribute my matter thus: in Number VIII (the. present), the deeds and events of the reign of Edward VI. In Number VIII those of the reign of Queen Mary. In number IX, those of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and, in Number X, the facts and arguments to establish my main point; namely, that the thing, impudently called the "Reformation," impoverished and degraded the main body of the people. In the course of the first three of these Numbers, I shall not touch, except incidentally, upon the impoverishing and degrading effects of the change; but, shall reserve these for the last number, when, having witnessed the horrid means, we will take an undivided view of the consequences. tracing those consequences down to the present day.

194. In paragraph 190 we had the satisfaction to see the savage tyrant expire at a premature old age, with body swelled and bursting from luxury, and with a mind torn by contending passions. One of his last acts was a will, by which he made his infant son his immediate successor, with remainder, in case he died without issue, to his daughter Mary first, and then, in default of issue again, to his daughter ELIZABETH; though, observe, both the daughters still stood bastardized by Act of Parliament, and, though the latter was born of ANNE BOLEYN while the King's first wife the mother of MARY, was alive.

195. To carry this will into execution and to govern the kingdom, until Edward, who was then ten years of age. should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen executors appointed, amongst whom was SEYMOUR, Earl of Hertford, and the "honest CRANMER." These sixteen worthies began by taking, in the most solemn manner, an oath to stand to and maintain the last will of their master. Their second act was to break that oath by making HERTFORD, who was a brother of JANE SEYMOUR, the King's mother, protector, though the will gave equal powers to all the executors. Their next step was to give new peerages to some of themselves. The fourth, to award to the new peers grants of the public money. The fifth was to lay aside, at the Coronation, the ancient English custom of asking the people if they were willing to have and obey the King. The sixth was "to attend at a solemn high mass." And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the total subversion of all that remained of the Catholic religion in England, and for the effecting of all that Old Harry had left uneffected in the way of plunder.

196. The Monasteries were gone; the cream had been taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk of church-altars, chanteries, and guilds. Old Harry would, doubtless, if he had lived much longer, have plundered these; but, he had not done it, and he could not do it without openly becoming Protestant, which, for the reasons stated in paragraph 101, he would not do. But HERTFORD and his fifteen brother worthies had in their way no such obstacle as the ruffian King had had. The church-altars, the chanteries, and the guilds contained something valuable; and they longed to be at it. The power of the POPE was gotten rid of; the country had been sacked; the poor had been despoiled; but, still there were some pickings left. The piety of ages had made every church, however small, contain some gold and silver appertaining to the altar. The altars, in the parish churches, and, generally, in the cathedrals, had been left, as yet, untouched; for, though the wife-killer had abjured the POPE, whose power he had taken to himself, he still professed to be of the Catholic faith, and he maintained the mass and the sacraments and creeds with fire and fagot. Therefore he had left the church-altars unplundered. But, they contained gold, silver, and other valuables, and the worthies saw these with longing eyes and itching fingers.

197. To seize them, however, there required a pretext, and what pretext could there be short of declaring, at once, that the Catholic religion was false and wicked, and, of course, that there ought to be no altars, and, of course, no gold and silver things appertaining to them! The sixteen worthies, with HERTFORD at their head, and with CRANMER amongst them, had had the King crowned as a Catholic: he, as well as they, had taken the oaths as Catholics; they had sworn to uphold that religion; they had taken him. to a high mass after his coronation; but, the altars had good things about them; there was plunder remaining; and to get at this remaining plunder, the Catholic religion must be wholly put down. There were, doubtless, some fanatics; some who imagined that the religion of nine hundred years standing ought not to be changed; some who had not plunder and plunder only in view; but, it is impossible for any man of common sense, of unperverted mind, to look at the history of this transaction, at this open avowal of Protestantism, at this change from the religion of England to that of a part of Germany, without being convinced that the principal authors of it had plunder and plunder only in view.

198. The old tyrant died in 1547; and by the end of 1549, CRANMER, who had tied so many Protestants to the stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly completed a system of Protestant worship. He first prepared a. book of homilies and a catechism, in order to pave the way. Next came a law to allow the clergy to have wives; and then, when all things had been prepared, came the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments. GARDINER, who was Bishop of Winchester, reproached CRANMER with his duplicity; reminded him of the zeal with which he had upheld the Catholic worship under the late King, and would have made him hang himself, or cut his throat, if he had had the slightest remains of shame in him.

199. This new system did not, however, go far enough for the fanatics; and there instantly appeared arrayed against it whole tribes of new lights on the continent. So that CRANMER, cunning as he was, soon found that he had undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put forth, upon this occasion, were disgustingly ridiculous, coming, as they did, in the name of a King only ten years of age, and expressed in words so solemnly pompous and so full of arrogance. However, the chief object was the plunder; and to get at this nothing was spared. There were other things to attract the grasp; but, it will be unnecessary to dwell very particularly on any thing but the altars and the churches. This was the real "Reformation reign "; for, it was a reign of robbery and hypocrisy without any thing to be compared with them; any thing in any country or in any age. Religion, conscience, was always the pretext; but in one way or another, robbery, plunder was always the end. The People, once so united and so happy, became divided into innumerable sects, no man knowing hardly what to believe; and, indeed, no one knowing what it was lawful for him to say; for it soon became impossible for the common people to know what was heresy and what was not heresy.

200. That prince of hypocrites, CRANMER, who, during the reign of Henry, had condemned people to the flames for not believing in transubstantiation, was now ready to condemn them for believing in it. We have seen, that LUTHER was the beginner of the work of "Reformation "; but, he was soon followed by further reformers on the continent. These had made many attempts to propagate their doctrines in England; but, old Henry had kept them down. Now, however, when the churches were to he robbed of what remained in them, and when, to have a pretext for that robbery, was necessary to make a complete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which became one great scene of religious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer Book; others proposed alterations in it; others were for abolishing it altogether and there now began that division, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present day. CRANMER employed a part of the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, or, rather, impious, adventurers, who sided with him, and who chose the best market for their doctrines. England was over-run by these foreign traders in religion; and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to foreigners, but to foreigners of the most base and infamous character and description. CRANMER could not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the work that he had in hand. The Protector Hertford, whom we must now call SOMERSET (the child king having made him Duke of SOMERSET), was the greatest of all "reformers" that had yet appeared in the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest and most audacious of all the plunderers that this famous Reformation has produced, save and except old Harry himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship was necessary to his projects of plunder; and, therefore, he was a great encourager of these greedy and villainous foreigners. Perhaps the world has never, in any age, seen a nest of such atrocious miscreants as LUTHER, ZUINGLIUS, CALVIN, BEZA, and the rest of the distinguished reformers of the Catholic religion. Every one of them was notorious for the most scandalous vices, even according to the full confession of his own followers. They agreed in nothing but in the doctrine, that good works were useless; and their lives proved the sincerity of their teaching; for there was not a man of them whose acts did not merit a halter.

201. The consequences to the morals of the people were such as were naturally to be expected. All historians agree, that vice of all sorts and crime of every kind was never so great and so numerous before. This was confessed by the teachers themselves; and yet the Protestants have extolled this reign as the reign of conscience and religion! it was so manifest that the change was a bad one, that men could hot have proceeded in it from error. Its mischiefs were all manifest before the death of the old tyrant; that death afforded an opportunity for returning into the right path but, there was plunder remaining, and the plunderers went on. The "reformation" was not the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of error, of ambition; but of a love of plunder. This was its great animating principle in this it began, and in this it proceeded till there was nothing left for it to work on.

202. The old tyrant had, in certain cases, enabled his minions to rob the bishoprics; but, now, there was a grant! sweep at them. The PROTECTOR took the lead, and his example was followed by others. They took so much from one, so much from another, and some they wholly suppressed, as that of Westminster, and took their estates to themselves. There were many chanteries (private property to all intents and purposes); free chapels, also private property; alms- houses; hospitals; guilds, or fraternities, the property of which was as much private property as the funds of any Friendly Society now are. All these became lawful plunder. And yet there are men, who pretend, that what is now possessed by the Established Church is of so sacred a nature as not to be touched by Act of Parliament This was the reign in which this our present Established Church was founded; for, though the fabric was overset by MARY, it was raised again by ELIZABETH, Now it was that it was made, it was made, and the new worship along with it, by Acts of Parliament, and it now seems to be high time, that, by similar Acts, it should be unmade, it had its very birth in division, disunion, discord; and its life has been worthy of its birth. The property it possesses was taken, nominally, from the Catholic Church; but, in reality, from that Church, and also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent and the stranger. The pretext for making it was, that it would cause an union of sentiment amongst the people; that it would compose all dissensions. The truth, the obvious truth, that there could be but one true religion, was acknowledged and loudly proclaimed; and, it was not to be denied, that there were already twenty, the teachers of every one of which declared that all the others were false; and, of course, that they were, at the very least, no better than no religion at all. Indeed, this is the language of common sense; though it is now so fashionable to disclaim the doctrine of exclusive salvation. I ask the Unitarian parson, or prater, for instance, why he takes upon him that office; why he does not go and follow some trade, or why he does not work in the fields? His answer is, that he is more usefully employed in teaching. If I ask, of what use his teaching is, he tells me, he must tell me, that his teaching is necessary to the salvation of souls. Well, say I, but, why not leave that business to the Established Church, to which the people all pay tithes? Oh, no! says he; I cannot do that, because the Church does not teach the true religion. Well, say I; but true or false, if it serve for salvation, what signifies it? Here I have him penned up in. a corner. He is compelled to confess., that he is a fellow wanting to lead an easy life by pandering to the passions or whims of conceited persons; or, to insist, that his sort of belief and teaching are absolutely necessary to salvation: as he will not confess the former, he is obliged to insist on the latter; and here, after all his railing against the intolerance of the Catholics, he maintains the doctrine of exclusive salvation.

203. Two true religions, two true creeds, differing from each other, contradicting each other, present us with an impossibility. What, then, are we to think of twenty or forty creeds, each differing from all the rest? If deism, or atheism, he something not only wicked in itself, but so mischievous in its effects as to call, in case of the public profession of it, for imprisonment for years and years; if this be the case what are we to think of laws, the same laws, too, which inflict that cruel punishment, tolerating and encouraging a multiplicity of creeds, all but one of which must he false? A code of laws acknowledging and tolerating but one religion is consistent in punishing the deist and the atheist; but if it acknowledge or tolerate more than one, it acknowledges or tolerates one false one; and let divines say, whether a false religion is not as had as deism or atheism? Besides, is it just to punish the deist or the atheist for not believing in the Christian religion at all, when he sees the laws tolerate so many religions, all but one of which must be false? What is the natural effect of men seeing constantly before their eyes a score or two of different sects, all calling themselves Christians, all tolerated by the law, and each openly declaring that all the rest are false? The natural, the necessary effect is., that many men will believe that none of them have truth on their side; and, of course, that the thing is false altogether, and invented solely for the benefit of those who teach it, and who dispute about it.

204. The law should acknowledge and tolerate but one religion: or it should know nothing at all about the matter. The Catholic code was consistent. It said, that there was but one true religion; and it punished as offenders those who dared openly to profess any opinion contrary to that religion. Whether that were the true religion or not, we have not now to inquire; but, while its long continuance, and in so many nations too, was a strong presumptive proof of its good moral effects upon the people, the disagreement amongst the Protestants was, and is, a presumptive proof, not less strong, of its truth. If, as I observed upon a former occasion, there be forty persons, who, and whose fathers, for countless generations, have, up to this day, entertained a certain belief; and, if thirty-nine of these say, at last, that this belief is erroneous, we may naturally enough suppose, or, at least, we may think it possible, that the truth, so long hidden, is, though late, come to light. But, if the thirty-nine begin, aye, and instantly begin, to entertain, instead of the one old belief, thirty-nine new beliefs, each differing from all the other thirty-eight, must we not, in common justice, decide, that the old belief must have been the true one? What; shall we hear these thirty-nine protestors against the ancient faith each protesting against all the other thirty-eight, and still believe that their joint protest was just? Thirty-eight of them must now be in error; this must be: and are we still to believe in the correctness of their former decision; and that, too, relating to the same identical matter? If, in a trial, relating to the dimensions of a piece of land, which had been proved to have always been, time without mind, taken for twenty acres, there were one surveyor to swear it contained twenty acres, and each of thirty-nine other surveyors to swear to each of the other number of acres, between one and forty, what judge and jury would hesitate a moment in crediting him who swore to the twenty, and in wholly rejecting the testimony of all the rest?

205. Thus the argument would stand, on the supposition that thirty- nine parts out of forty of all Christendom had protested; but, there were not, and there are not, even unto this day, two parts out of fifty. So that here we have thirty-nine persons breaking off from about two thousand, protesting against the faith which the whole, and their fathers, have held; we have each of these thirty-nine instantly protesting that all the other thirty-eight have protested upon false grounds; and yet we are to believe, that their joint protest against the faith of the two thousand, who are backed by all antiquity, was wise and just! Is this the way in which we decide in other cases? Did honest men, and men not blinded by passion, or by some base motive, ever decide thus before? Besides, if the Catholic faith were so false as it is by some pretended to he, how comes it not to have been extirpated before now? When, indeed, the POPE had very great power; when even kings were compelled to bend to him, it might he said, and pretty fairly said, that no one dared to use the weapons of reason against the Catholic faith. But, we have seen the POPE a prisoner in a foreign land; we have seen him almost with out food and raiment; and we have seen the press of more than half the world at liberty to treat him and his faith as it pleased to treat them. But have we not seen the Protestant sects at work for three hundred years to destroy the Catholic faith? Do we not see, at the end of those three hundred years, that that faith is still the reigning faith of Christendom? Nay, do we not see that it is gaining ground at this very moment, even in this kingdom itself, where a Protestant hierarchy receives eight millions sterling a year, and where Catholics arc still rigidly excluded from all honour and power, and, in some cases, from all political and civil rights, under a constitution founded by their Catholic ancestors? Can it be, then, that this faith is false? Can it he that this worship is idolatrous? Can it be that it was necessary to abolish them in England, as far as law could do it? Can it be that it was for our good, our honour, to sack our country, to violate all the rights of property, to deluge the country with blood, in order to change our religion?

206. But, in returning, now, to the works of the plunderers, we ought to remark, that, in discussions of this sort, it is a common, but a very great error, to keep our eyes so exclusively fixed on mere matters of religion. The Catholic Church included in it a great deal more than the business of teaching religion and of practising worship and administering sacraments. It had a great deal to do with the temporal concerns of the people. It provided, and amply provided, for all the wants of the poor and distressed, It received back, in many instances, what the miser and extortioner had taken unfairly, and applied it to works of beneficence. It contained a great body of land proprietors, whose revenues were distributed, in various ways, amongst the people at large, upon terms always singularly advantageous to the latter. It was a great and powerful estate, independent both of the aristocracy and the crown, and naturally siding with the people. But, above all things, it was a provider for the poor and a keeper of hospitality. By its charity, and by its benevolence towards its tenants and dependants, it mitigated the rigour of proprietorship, and held society together by the ties of religion rather than by the trammels and terrors of the law. It was the great cause of that description of tenants called life-holders, who formed a most important link in the chain of society, coming after the proprietors in fee, and before the tenant at will, participating, in some degree, of the proprietorship of the estate, and yet, not whom without dependence on the proprietor. This race of persons, formerly so numerous in England, has, by degrees, become almost wholly extinct, their place having been supplied by a comparatively few rack-renters, and by swarms of miserable paupers. The Catholic Church held the lending of money for interest, or gain, to be directly in the face of the Gospel. It considered all such gain as usurious, and, of course, criminal. It taught the making of loans without interest; and thus it prevented the greedy-minded from amassing wealth in that way in which wealth is most easily amassed. Usury amongst Christians was wholly unknown, until the wife-killing tyrant had laid his hands on the property of the Church and the poor. The principles of the Catholic Church all partook of generosity; it was their great characteristic, as selfishness is the characteristic of that Church which was established in its stead.

207. The plunder which remained after the seizure of the monasteries was comparatively small; but, still, the very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings of the harvest of plunder, were something; and these were not suffered to remain. The plunder of the churches, parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all sorts of antics played in those churches. CALVIN had got an influence opposed to that of CRANMER; so that there was almost open war amongst these Protestants, which party should have the teaching of the people. After due preparation in this way, the robbery was set about in due form. Every church altar had, as I have before observed, more or less of gold and silver. A part consisted of images, a part of censers, candlesticks, and other things used in the celebration of the mass. The mass was, therefore, abolished, and there was no longer to be an altar, but a table in its stead. The fanatical part of the reformers amused themselves with quarrelling about the part of the church where the table was to stand; about the shape of it, and whether the head of it was to be placed to the North, the East, the West, or the South; and whether the people were to stand, kneel, or sit at it! The plunderers, however, thought about other things; they thought about the value of the images, censers, and the like.

208. To reconcile the people to these innovations the plunderers had a Bible contrived for the purpose, which Bible was a perversion of the original text wherever it was found to be necessary. Of all the acts of this hypocritical and plundering reign, this was, perhaps, the basest. In it we see the true character of the heroes of the "Protestant Reformation"; and the poor and miserable labourers of England, who now live upon potatoes and water, feel the consequences of the deeds of the infamous times of which I am speaking. Every preparation being made, the robbery began, and a general plunder of churches took place by royal and parliamentary authority! The robbers took away every thing valuable, even down to the vestments of the priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of before, and, for the honour of human nature, let us hope that it will never be heard of again. It seems that England was really become a den of thieves, and of thieves, too, of the lowest and most despicable character.

209. The Protector, SOMERSET, did not forget himself. Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics, he needed a palace in London. For the purpose of building this palace, which was erected in the Strand, London, and which was called "SOMERSET-HOUSE," as the place is called to this day, he took from three bishops their town- houses; he pulled these down, together with a parish church, in order to get a suitable spot for the erection. The materials of these demolished buildings being insufficient for his purpose, he pulled down a part of the buildings appertaining to the then cathedral of St. Paul; the church of St. John, near Smithfield; Barking Chapel, near the Tower; the college church of St. Martin-le-Grand; St. Ewen's church, Newgate; and the parish church of St. Nicholas. He, besides these, ordered the pulling down of the parish church of Saint Margaret, Westminster; but, says Dr. HEYLIN, "the workmen had no sooner advanced their scaffolds, when the parishioners gathered together in great multitudes, with bows and arrows, and staves and clubs; which so terrified the workmen that they ran away in great amazement, and never could be brought again upon that employment." Thus arose SOMERSET-HOUSE, the present grand seat of the power of fiscal grasping. It was first erected literally with the ruins of churches, and it now serves, under its old name, as the place from which issue the mandates to us to give up the fruit of our earnings to pay the interest of a DEBT, which is one of the evident and great consequences of the " Protestant Reformation," without which that DEBT never could have existed.

210. I am, in the last Number, to give an account of the impoverishment and degradation that these and former Protestant proceedings produced amongst the people at large; but I must here notice, that the people heartily detested these Protestant tyrants and their acts; General discontent prevailed, and this, in some cases, broke out into open insurrection. It is curious enough to observe the excuses that HUME, in giving an account of these times, attempts to make for the plunderers and their "reformation." It was his constant aim to blacken the Catholic institutions, and particularly the character and conduct of the Catholic clergy. Yet he could not pass over these discontents and risings of the people; and as there must have been a cause for these, he is under the necessity of ascribing them to the badness of the change, or to find out some other cause. He, therefore, goes to work in a very elaborate manner to make his readers believe, that the people were in error as to the tendency of the change. He says, that "scarce any institution can be imagined less favourable, in the main, to the interests of mankind," than that of the Catholic; yet, says he, "as it was followed by many good effects, which had ceased with the suppression of the monasteries, that suppression was very much regretted by the people." He then proceeds to describe the many benefits of the monastic institutions; says that the monks always residing on their estates caused a diffusion of good constantly around them; that, "not having equal motives to avarice with other men, they were the best and most indulgent landlords;" that, when the church lands became private property, the rents were raised, the money spent at a distance from the estates, and the tenants exposed to the rapacity of stewards; that whole estates were laid waste; that the tenants were expelled; and that even the cottagers were deprived of the commons on which they formerly fed their cattle; that a great decay of the people, as well as a diminution of former plenty, was remarked in the kingdom; that, at the same time, the coin had been debased by Henry, and was now further debased; that the good coin was hoarded or exported: that the common people were thus robbed of part of their wages; that complaints were heard in every part of the kingdom."

211. Well; was not this change a bad one, then? And what are the excuses which are offered for it by this calumniator of the Catholic institutions? Why, he says, that "their hospitality and charity gave encouragement to idleness, and prevented the increase of public wealth;" and that "as it was by an addition alone of toil, that the people were able to live, this increase of industry was, at last, the effect of the PRESENT SITUATION, an effect very beneficial to society." What does he mean by the "present situation"? The situation of the country, I suppose, at the time when he wrote; and, though the "reformation" had not then produced pauperism and misery and DEBT and taxes equal to the present, it was on the way to do it. But what does he mean by "public riches"? The Catholic institutions "provided against the pressure of want amongst the people"; but prevented the increase of "public riches"! What, again I ask, is the meaning of the words, "public riches"? What is, or ought to be, the end of all government and of every institution? Why, the happiness of the people. But this man sees, like ADAM SMITH, and indeed, like almost every Scotch writer, to have a notion, that there may be great public good, though producing individual misery. They seem always to regard the people as so many cattle, working for an indescribable something that they call "the "public." The question with them, is, not whether the people, for whose good all government is instituted, be well off, or wretched; but, whether, the "public" gain, or lose, money or money's worth. I am able to show, and I shall show, that England was a greater country before the "reformation" than since; that it was greater positively and relatively; that its real wealth was greater. But, what we have, at present, to observe, is, that thus far, at any rate, the reformation had produced general misery amongst the common people; and that, accordingly, complaints were heard from one end of the kingdom to the other.

212. The Book of Common Prayer was to put an end to all dissensions; but, its promulgation and the consequent robbery of the churches, were followed by open insurrection, in many of the counties, by battles, and executions by martial law. The whole kingdom was in commotion; but, particularly to the great honour of those counties, in Devonshire and Norfolk. In the former county the insurgents were superior in force to the hired troops, and had besieged Exeter. Lord RUSSELL was sent against them, and, at last, reinforced by GERMAN TROOPS, he defeated them, executed many by martial law, and most gallantly hanged a priest on the top of the tower of his church! This, I suppose, Mr. BROUGHAM reckons amongst those services of the family of Russell, which, he tells us, England can never repay! In Norfolk the insurrection was still more formidable; but was finally suppressed by the aid of FOREIGN TROOPS, and was also followed by the most barbarous executions. The people of Devonshire complained of the alterations in religion; that, as Dr. HEYLIN (a Protestant divine) expresses it, "that the freeborn commonalty was oppressed by a small number of gentry, who glutted themselves with pleasures, while the poor commons, wasted by daily labour, like pack-horses, live in extreme slavery; and that holy rites, established by their fathers, were abolished, and a new form of religion obtruded"; and they demanded, that the mass and a part of the monasteries should be restored, and that priests should not be allowed to marry. Similar were the complaints and the demands every where else. But, CRANMER's Prayer Book and the Church "by law established," backed by foreign bayonets, finally triumphed, at least for the present, and during the remainder of this hypocritical, base, corrupt, and tyrannical reign.

213. Thus arose the Protestant Church, as by law established. Here we see its origin. Thus it was that it commenced its career. How different, alas! from the commencement of that Church of England, which arose under St. AUSTIN at Canterbury, which had been cherished so carefully by ALFRED the Great, and, under the wings of which the people of England had, for nine hundred years, seen their country the greatest in the world, and had them selves lived in ease and plenty and real freedom, superior to those of all other nations!

214. SOMERSET, who had brought his own brother to the block in 1549, chiefly because he had opposed himself to his usurpations (though both were plunderers), was, not long after the commission of the above cruelties on the people, destined to come to that block himself. DUDLEY, Earl of Warwick, who was his rival in baseness and injustice, and his superior in talent, had out-intrigued him in the Council; and, at last, he brought him to that end which he so well merited. On what grounds this was done is wholly uninteresting. It was a set of most wicked men circumventing, and, if necessary, destroying each other; but, it is worthy of remark, that, amongst the crimes alleged against this great culprit, was, his having brought foreign troops into the kingdom! This was, to be sure, rather ungrateful in the pious reformers; for, it was those troops that established for them their new religion. But, it was good to see them putting their leader to death, actually cutting off his head, for having caused their projects to succeed. It was, in plain words, a dispute about the plunder. Somerset had got more than his brother- plunderers deemed his share. He was building a palace for himself; and if each plunderer could have had a palace, it would have been peace amongst them; but, as this could not be, the rest called him a "traitor," and as the king, the Protestant St. Edward, had signed the death-warrant of one uncle at the instigation of another uncle, he now signed the death-warrant of that other, the "Saint" himself being, even now, only fifteen years of age!

215. WARWICK, who was now become Protector, was made Duke of Northumberland, and got granted to him the immense estates of that ancient house, which had fallen into the hands of the crown. This was, if possible, a more zealous Protestant than the last Protector; that is to say, still more profligate, rapacious, and cruel. The work of plundering the church went on, until there remained scarcely anything worthy of the name of clergy. Many parishes were, in all parts of the kingdom, united in one, and having but one priest amongst them. But, indeed, there were hardly any persons left worthy of the name of clergy. All the good and all the learned had either been killed, starved to death, banished, or had gone out of the country; and those who remained were, during this reign of mean plunders so stripped of their incomes, so pared down, that the parochial clergy worked as carpenters, smiths, masons, and were not unfrequently menial servants in gentlemen's houses. So that this Church of England "as by law (and German troops) established," became the scorn, not only of the people of England, but of all the nations of Europe.

216. The king, who was a poor sickly lad; seems to have had no distinctive characteristic except that of hatred to the Catholics and their religion, in which hatred CRANMER and others had brought him up. His life was not likely to be long, and NORTHUMBERLAND, who was now his keeper, conceived the project of getting the crown into his own family, a project quite worthy of a hero of the "Reformation." In order to carry this project into effect, he married one of his sons, Lord GUILFORD DUDLEY, to Lady JANE GREY, who next after MARY and ELIZABETH and MARY Queen of Scotland, was heiress to the throne. Having done this, he got Edward to make a will, settling the crown on this Lady Jane to the exclusion of his two sisters. The advocates of the "Reformation," who, of course, praise this boy-king, in whose reign the new church was invented , tell us long stories about the way in which NORTHUMBERLAND persuaded "Saint Edward" to do this act of injustice; but, in all probability, there is not a word of truth in the story. However, what they say is this: that Lady JANE was a sincere Protestant; that the young king knew this; and that his anxiety for the security of the Protestant religion induced him to consent to NORTHUMBERLAND's proposition.

217. The settlement met with great difficulty when it came to be laid before the lawyers, who, some how or other, always contrived to keep their heads out of the halter. Even Old Harry's Judges used, when hard pressed, to refer him to the Parliament for the committing of violations of law. The Judges, the Lord Chancellor, the Secretaries of State, the Privy Council; all were afraid to put their names to this transfer of the crown. The thing was, however, at last accomplished, and with the signature of CRANMER to it, though he, as one of the late king's executor's, and the first upon that list, had sworn in the most solemn manner, to maintain his will, according to which will, the two sisters, in case of no issue by the brother, were to succeed that brother on the throne. Thus, in addition to his fourth act of notorious perjury, this maker of the Common Book of Prayer became clearly guilty of high treason. He now, at last, in spite of all his craft, had woven his own halter, and that, too, beyond all doubt, for the purpose of preserving his bishopric. The Princess MARY was next heir to the throne. He had divorced her mother; he had been the principal agent in that unjust and most wicked transaction; and, besides, he knew that MARY was immoveably a Catholic, and that, of course, her accession must be the death of his office and his church. Therefore he now committed the greatest crime known to the laws, and that, too, from the basest of motives.

218. The king having made this settlement, and being kept wholly in the hands of Northumberland, who had placed his creatures about him, would naturally, as was said at the time, not live long! In short he died on the 6th of July, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age, and the seventh of his reign, expiring on the same day of the year that his savage father had brought Sir THOMAS MORE to the block. These were seven of the most miserable and most inglorious years that England had ever known. Fanaticism and roguery, hypocrisy and plunder, divided the country between them. The people were wretched beyond all description; from the plenty of Catholic times, they had been reduced to general beggary; and, then, in order to repress this beggary, laws the most ferocious were passed to prevent even starving creatures from asking alms. Abroad, as well as at home, the nation sunk in the eyes of the world. The town of Boulogne, in France, which had been won by Catholic Englishmen, the base Protestant rulers now, from sheer cowardice, surrendered; and from one end of Europe to the other, were heard jeering and scoffing at this formerly great and lofty nation. HUME, who finds goodness in every one who was hostile to the Catholic institutions, says, "All English historians dwell with pleasure on the excellences of this young king, whom the flattering promises of hope, joined to many real virtues, had made an object of the most tender affections of the public. He possessed mildness of disposition, a capacity to learn and to judge, and attachment to equity and justice." Of his mildness we have, I suppose, a proof in his assenting to the burning of several Protestants, who did not protest in his way; in his signing of the death-warrants of his two uncles; and in his wish to bring his sister MARY to trial for not conforming to what she deemed blasphemy, and from doing which he was deterred only by the menaces of the Emperor her cousin. So much for his mildness. As for his justice, who can doubt of that, who thinks of his will to disinherit his two sisters, even after the judges had unanimously declared to him, that it was contrary to law? The "tender affection" that the people had for him was, doubtless, evinced, by their rising in insurrection against his ordinances from one end of the kingdom to the other, and by their demanding the restoration of that religion, which all his acts tended wholly to extirpate. But, besides these internal proofs of the falsehood of HUME's description, Dr. HEYLIN, who is, at least, one of "all the English historians," and one, too, whom HUME himself refers to no less than twenty-four times in the part of his history relating to this very reign, does not "dwell with pleasure on the excellences of this young prince," of whom he, in the 4th Paragraph of his preface, speaks thus: "King EDWARD, whose death I cannot reckon for an infelicity to the Church of England; for, being ill principled in himself, and easily inclined to embrace such counsels as were offered him, it is not to be thought but that the rest of the bishoprics (before sufficiently impoverished) would have followed that of Durham, and the poor church be left as destitute as when she came into the world in her natural nakedness." Aye, but this was his great merit in the eyes of HUME. He should have said so then, and should have left his good character of the tyrant in the egg to rest on his own opinion; and not have said, that "all English historians dwelt with pleasure on his excellences,"

219. The settlement of the crown had been kept a secret from the people, and so was the death of the King for three whole days. In the meanwhile NORTHUMBERLAND seeing the death of the young "Saint" approaching, had, in conjunction, observe, with CRANMER and the rest of his council, ordered the two princesses to come near to London, under pretence that they might be at hand to comfort their brother; but with the real design of putting them into prison the moment the breath should be out of his body. Traitors, foul conspirators, villains of all descriptions, have this in common, that they, when necessary to their own interest, are always ready to betray each other. Thus it happened here; for the Earl of ARUNDEL, who was one of the council, and who went with Dudley and others, on the tenth of July, to kneel before Lady Jane as Queen, had, in the night of the sixth, sent a secret messenger to MARY, who was no farther off than Hoddesden, informing her of the death of her brother, and of the whole of the plot against her. Thus warned, she set off on horseback, accompanied only by a few servants, to Kinninghall in Norfolk, whence she proceeded to Framlingham, in Suffolk, and thence issued her commands to the council to proclaim her as. their sovereign, hinting at, but not positively accusing them with, their treasonable designs. They had, on the day before, proclaimed Lady JANE to be Queen! They had taken all sorts of precautions to ensure their success: army, fleet, treasure, all the powers of government were in their hands. They, therefore, returned her a most insolent answer, and commanded her to submit, as a dutiful subject, to the lawful Queen, at the bottom of which command CRANMER's name stood first.

220. Honesty and sincerity exult to contemplate the misgivings, which, in a few hours afterwards, seized this band of almost unparalleled villains. The nobility and gentry had instantly flocked to the standard of Mary; and the people, even in London, who were most infected with the pestiferous principles of the foreign miscreants that had been brought from the continent to teach them the new religion, had native honesty enough left to make them disapprove of this last and most daring of robberies. RIDLEY, the Protestant Bishop of London, preached at St. Paul's, to the Lord Mayor and a numerous assemblage, for the purpose of persuading them to take part against Mary; but, it was seen, that he preached in vain. Northumberland himself marched from London on the 13th of July, to attack the Queen. But, in a few days, she was surrounded by twenty or thirty thousand. men, all volunteers in her cause, and refusing pay. Before Northumberland reached Bury St. Edmunds, he began to despair; he marched to Cambridge, and wrote to his brother conspirators for reinforcements. Amongst these, dismay first, and then perfidy, began to appear. In a few days, these men, who had been so audacious, and who had sworn solemnly to uphold the cause of Queen Jane, sent Northumberland an order to disband his army, while they themselves proclaimed Queen Mary, amidst the unbounded applause of the people.

221. The master-plotter had disbanded his army, or, rather, it had deserted him, before the order of the council reached him. This was the age of "reformation" and of baseness. Seeing himself abandoned, he, by the advice of Dr. SANDS, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, who, only four days before, had preached against Mary, went to the market place of Cambridge, and proclaimed her Queen, tossing, says STOWE, "his cap into the air, in token of his joy and satisfaction." In a few hours afterwards he was arrested by the Queen's order, and that, too, by his brother conspirator, the Earl of Arundel, who had been one of the very first to kneel before Lady Jane! No reign, no age, no country, ever witnessed rapacity, hypocrisy, meanness, baseness, perfidy such as England witnessed in those, who were the destroyers of the Catholic, and the founders of the Protestant, Church. This DUDLEY, who had for years been a plunderer of the Church; who had been a promoter of every ruffian- like measure against those who adhered to the religion of his fathers; who had caused a transfer of the crown because, as he alleged, the accession of Mary would endanger the Protestant religion; this very man, when he came to receive justice on the block, confessed his belief in the Catholic faith; and, which is more, exhorted the nation to return to it He, according to Dr. HEYLIN (a Protestant mind), exhorted them "To stand to the religion of their ancestors, rejecting that of later date, which had occasioned all the misery of the foregoing thirty years; and that, if they desired to present their souls unspotted, before God, and were truly affected to their country, they should expel the preachers of the reformed religion. For himself," he said, "being blinded by ambition, he made a rack of his conscience, by temporizing, and so acknowledged the justice of his sentence." Fox, author of the lying "Book of Martyrs," of whose lies we shall see more by-and-by, asserts that DUDLEY made this confession in consequence of a promise of pardon. But, when he came on the scaffold, he knew that he was not to be pardoned; and besides, he himself expressly declared the contrary at his execution; and told the people, that he had not been moved by any one to make it, and had not done it from any hope of saving his life. However, we have yet to see CRANMER himself recant, and to see the whole band of Protestant plunderers on their knees before the POPE's legates confessing their sins of heresy and sacrilege, and receiving absolution for their offences!

222. Thus ended this reign of "reformation," plunder, wretchedness, and disgrace. Three times the form of the new worship was changed, and yet those who adhered to the old worship, or who went beyond the new worship, were punished with the utmost severity. The nation became every day more and more despised abroad, and more and more distracted and miserable at home. The Church, "as by law established," arose, and was enforced under two protectors, or chief ministers, both of whom deservedly suffered death as traitors. Its principal author was a man who had sent both Protestants and Catholics to the stake; who had burnt people for adhering to the POPE, others for not believing in transubstantiation, others for believing in it, and who now burnt others for disbelieving in it for reasons different from his own; a man, who now openly professed to disbelieve in that, for not believing in which he had burnt many of his fellow-creatures, and who, after this, most solemnly declared, that his own belief was that of these very persons! As this Church, by "law established," advanced, all the remains of Christian charity vanished before it. The indigent, whom the Catholic Church had so tenderly gathered under her wings, were now, merely for asking alms, branded with red-hot irons and made slaves, though no provision was made to prevent them from perishing from hunger and cold; and England, so long famed as the land of hospitality, generosity, ease, plenty, and security to person and property, became, under a Protestant Church, a scene of repulsive selfishness, of pack-horse toil, of pinching want, and of rapacity and plunder and tyranny that made the very names of law and justice a mockery.

LETTER VIII.

MARY'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. HER MILD AND BENEVOLENT LAWS. THE NATION RECONCILED TO THE CHURCH. THE QUEEN'S GREAT GENEROSITY AND PIETY. HER MARRIAGE WITH PHILIP. FOX'S "MARTYRS,"

Kensington, 30th June, 1825.

MY FRIENDS,

223. We are now entering upon that reign, the punishments inflicted during which have furnished such a handle to the calumniators of the Catholic Church, who have left no art untried to exaggerate those punishments in the first place, and, in the second place, to ascribe them to the Catholic religion, keeping out of sight, all the while, the thousand times greater mass of cruelty occasioned by Protestants in this kingdom. Of all cruelties I disapprove. I disapprove also of all corporal and pecuniary punishments on the score of religion. Far be it from me, therefore, to defend all the punishments inflicted, on this score, in the reign of Queen MARY; but, it will be my duty to show, first, that the mass of punishment then inflicted on this account, has been monstrously exaggerated; second, that the circumstances under which they were inflicted found more apology for the severity than the circumstances under which the Protestant punishments were inflicted; thirdly, that they were in amount as a single grain of wheat is to a whole bushel, compared with the mass of punishments under the Protestant Church, "as by law established;" lastly, that, be they what they might, it is a base perversion of reason to ascribe them to the principles of the Catholic religion; and that, as to the Queen herself, she was one of the most virtuous of human. beings, and was rendered miserable, not by her own disposition or misdeeds, but by the misfortune and misery entailed on her by her two immediate predecessors, who had uprooted the institutions of the country, who had plunged the kingdom into confusion, and who had left no choice but that of making severe examples, or, of being an encourager of, and a participator in, heresy, plunder, and sacrilege. Her reign our deceivers have taught us to call the reign of "BLOODY QUEEN MARY"; while they have taught us to call that of her sister, the "GOLDEN DAYS OF GOOD QUEEN BESS." They have taken good care never to tell us, that, for every drop of blood that Mary shed, Elizabeth shed a pint; that the former gave up every fragment of the plunder of which the deeds of her predecessors had put her in possession, and that the latter resumed this plunder again, and took from the poor every pittance which had, by oversight, been left them; that the former never changed her religion, and that the latter changed from Catholic to Protestant, then to Catholic again, and then back again to Protestant; that the former punished people for departing from that religion in which she and they and their fathers had been born, and to which she had always adhered; and that the latter punished people for not departing from the religion of her and their fathers, and which religion, too, she herself professed and openly lived in even at the time of her coronation. Yet, we have been taught to call the former "bloody" and the latter "good"! How have we been deceived! And is it not time, then, that this deception, so injurious to our Catholic fellow-subjects and so debasing to ourselves, should cease? It is, perhaps, too much to hope, that I shall be able to make it cease; but, towards accomplishing this great and most desirable object, I shall do something, at any rate, by a plain and true account of the principal transactions of the reign of Mary.

224. The Queen, who, as we have seen in paragraph 219, was in Framlingham, in Suffolk, immediately set off for London, where, having been greeted on the road with the strongest demonstrations of joy at her accession, she arrived on the 31st of July, 1553. As she approached London the throngs thickened; Elizabeth, who had kept cautiously silent while the issue was uncertain, went out to meet he, and the two sisters, riding on horseback, entered the city, the houses being decorated, the streets strewed with flowers, and the people dressed in their gayest clothes. She was crowned soon afterwards, in the most splendid manner, and after the Catholic ritual, by GARDINER, who had, as we have seen, opposed CRANMER's new Church, and whom she found a prisoner in the Tower, he having been deprived of his Bishopric of Winchester; but whom we are to see one of the great actors in restoring the Catholic religion. The joy of the people was boundless. It was a coronation of greater splendour and more universal joy than ever had before been witnessed. This is agreed on all hands. And this fact gives the lie to HUME, who would have us believe that the people did not like the Queen's principles. This fact has reason on its side as well as historical authority; for, was it not natural that the people, who, only three years before, had actually risen in insurrection in all parts of the kingdom against the new church, and its authors, should be half mad with joy at the accession of a Queen, who they were sure would put down that church, and put down those who had quelled them by the aid of German troops?

225. Mary began her reign by acts the most just and beneficent. Generously disregarding herself, her ease and her means of splendour, she abolished the debased currency, which her father had introduced and her brother had made still baser; she paid the debts due by the crown; and she largely remitted taxes at the same time. But that which she had most at heart, was, the restoration of that religion, under the influence of which the kingdom had been so happy and so great for so many ages, and since the abolition of which it had known nothing but discord, disgrace, and misery. There were in her way great obstacles; for, though the pernicious principles of the German and Dutch and Swiss reformers had not, even yet, made much progress amongst the people, except in London, which was the grand scene of the operations of those hungry and fanatical adventurers, there were the plunderers to deal with, and these plunderers had power. It is easy to imagine, which, in deed, was the undoubted fact, that the English people, who had risen in insurrection, in all parts of the kingdom, against CRANMER's new church; who had demanded the restoration of the mass and of part, at least, of the monasteries, and who had been silenced only by German bayonets, and halters and gibbets following martial law; it is easy to imagine, that this same people would, in only three years afterwards, hail with joy indescribable, the prospect of seeing the new church put down, and the ancient one restored, and that, too, under a Queen, on whose constancy and piety and integrity they could so firmly rely. But, the plunder had been so immense, the plunderers were so numerous, they were so powerful, and there were so few men of family of any account who had not participated, in one way or another, in deeds hostile to the Catholic Church, that the enterprise of the Queen was full of difficulty. As to CRANMER's Church, "by law established," that was easily disposed of. The gold and silver and cups and candlesticks and other things, of which the altar-robbers of young "Saint Edward's" reign had despoiled the churches, could not, indeed, be restored; but, the altars themselves could, and speedily were; and the tables which had been put in their stead, and the married priests along with them, were soon seen no longer to offend the eyes of the people. It is curious to observe, how tender-hearted HUME is upon this subject. He says, "Could any notion of law, justice, or reason, be attended to, where superstition predominates, the priests would never have been expelled for their past marriages, which, at that time, were permitted by the laws of the kingdom." I wonder why it never occurred to him to observe, that monks and nuns ought not, then, to have been expelled! Were not their institutions "permitted by the laws of the kingdom"? Aye, and had been permitted by those laws for nine hundred years, and guaranteed too by Magna Charta. He applauds the expelling of them; but this "new thing," though only of three years and a half standing, and though "established" under a boy-king, who was under two protectors, each of whom was justly beheaded for high treason, and under a council who were all conspirators against the lawful sovereign; these married priests, the most of whom had, like LUTHER, CRANMER, KNOX, HOOPER, and other great "Reformers," broken their vows of celibacy, and were, of course, perjurers; no law was to be repealed, however contrary to public good such law might be, if the repeal injured the interests of such men as these! The Queen had, however, too much justice to think thus, and these apostates were expelled, to the great joy of the people, many of whom had been sabred by German troops, because they demanded, amongst other things, that priests might not be permitted to marry. The Catholic bishops, who had been turned out by CRANMER, were restored, and his new bishops were, of course, turned out. CRANMER himself was, in a short time, deprived of his ill-gotten see, and was in prison, and most justly, as a traitor. The mass was, in all parts of the country, once more celebrated, the people were no longer burnt with red-hot irons, and made slaves merely for asking alms, and they began to hope, that England would be England again, and that hospitality and charity would return.

226. But there were the plunderers to deal with! And, now, we are about to witness a scene, which, were not its existence so well attested, must pass for the wildest of romance. What? That Parliament, who had declared CRANMER's divorce of Catherine to be lawful, and who had enacted that Mary was a bastard, acknowledge that same Mary to be the lawful heir to the throne! That Parliament which had abolished the Catholic worship and created the Protestant worship, on the ground that the former was idolatrous and damnable, and the latter agreeable to the will of God, abolish the latter and restore the former! What? Do these things? And that, too, without any force; without being compelled to do them? No: not exactly so: for it had the people to fear, a vast majority of whom were cordially with the Queen as far as related to these matters, respecting which it is surprising what dispatch was made. The late King died only in July, and before the end of the next November, all the work of CRANMER, as to the divorce as well as to the worship, was completely overset, and that, too, by Acts of the very Parliament who had confirmed the one and "established" the other. The first of these Acts declared, that Henry and Catherine had been lawfully married, and it laid all the blame upon CRANMER by name! The second Act called the Protestant Church, "as by law established," a "new thing imagined by a few singular opinions," though the Parliament when it established it, asserted it to have come from the "Holy Ghost." What was now said of it was true enough: but it might have been added, established by German bayonets. The great inventor, CRANMER, who was, at last, in a fair way of receiving the just reward of his numerous misdeeds, could only hear of the overthrow of his work; for, having, though clearly as guilty of high treason as DUDLEY himself, been, as yet, only confined to his palace at Lambeth, and hearing that mass had been celebrated in his Cathedral Church at Canterbury, he put forth a most inflammatory and abusive declaration, (which, mind, he afterwards recanted) for which declaration, as well as for his treason, he was committed to the Tower, where he lay at the time when these Acts were passed. But, the new church required no law to abolish it. It was, in fact, abolished by the general feeling of the nation; and, as we shall see in the next Number, it required rivers of blood to re- establish it in the reign of Elizabeth. HUME, following Fox, the "Martyr"-man, complains bitterly of "the court" for its "contempt of the laws, in celebrating, "before the two Houses, at the opening of the Parliament a mass of Latin, with all the ancient rites and ceremonies, though abolished by Act of Parliament!" Abolished! Why, so had CROMWELL and his canting crew abolished the kingly government by Act of Parliament, and by the bayonet; and yet this did not induce Charles to wait for a repeal before he called himself king. Nor did the bringers over of the "deliverer," WILLIAM, wait for an Act of Parliament to authorize them to introduce the said "deliverer." The "new thing" fell of itself. It had been forced upon the people and they hated it.

227. But, when the question came, whether the Parliament should restore the PAPAL SUPREMACY, the plunder was at stake; for, to take the Church property was sacrilege, and, if the POPE regained his power in the kingdom, he might insist on restitution. The greater part of this property had been seized on eighteen years before. In many cases it bad been divided and sub-divided; in many, the original grantees were dead. The common people, too, had, in many cases, become dependent on the new proprietors: and, besides, they could not so easily trace the connexion between their faith and that supremacy, as they could between their faith and the mass and the sacraments. The Queen, therefore, though she most anxiously wished to avoid giving, in any way whatever, her sanction to the plunder, was reduced to the necessity of risking a civil war for the POPE's supremacy; to leave her kingdom unreconciled to the Church; and to keep to herself the title of Head of the Church, to her so hateful; or to make a compromise with the plunderers. She was induced to prefer the latter; though it is by no means certain that civil war would not have been better for the country, even if it had ended in the triumph of the plunderers, which, in all human probability, it would not. But, observe in how forlorn a state, as to this question, she was placed. There was scarcely a nobleman, or gentleman of any note, in her kingdom, who had not, in one way or another, soiled his hands with the plunder. The Catholic bishops, all but FISHER, had assented to the abolition of the POPE's supremacy. Bishop GARDINER, who was now her High Chancellor, was one of these, though he had been deprived of his bishopric and imprisoned in the Tower, because he opposed CRANMER's further projects. These Catholic bishops, and GARDINER especially, must naturally wish to get over this matter as quietly as possible; for, how was he to advise the Queen to risk a civil war for the restoration of that, the abolition of which he had so fully assented to, and so strenuously supported? And how was she to do any thing without councillors of some sort?

228. Nevertheless the Queen, whose zeal was equal to her sincerity, was bent on the restoration; and, therefore, a compromise with the plunderers was adopted. Now, then, it was fully proved to all the world, and now this plundered nation, who had been reduced to the greatest misery by what had been impudently called the "Reformation," saw as clearly as they saw the light of day, that all those who had abetted the "Reformation;" that all the railings against the POPE; that all the accusations against the monks and nuns; that all the pretences of abuses in the Catholic Church; that all the confiscations, sackings, and bloodshed; that all these, from first to last, had proceeded from the love of plunder; for, now, the two Houses of Parliament, who had, only about three or four years before, established CRANMER's Church, and declared it to be "the work of the Holy Ghost;" now these pious "Reformation" men, having first made a firm bargain to keep the plunder, confessed (to use the words even of HUME) "that they had been guilty of a most horrible defection from the true Church; professed their sincere repentance for their past transgressions; and declared their resolution to repeal all laws enacted in prejudice of the POPE's authority"! Are the people of England aware of this? No: not one man out of fifty thousand. These, let it be remembered, were the men who made the Protestant religion in England!

229. But this is a matter of too much importance to be dismissed without the mention of some particulars. The Queen had not about her one single man of any eminence, who had not, in some degree, departed from the straight path, during one or the other, or both, of the two last reigns. But there was Cardinal POLE, of whom, and of the butchery of whose aged and brave mother, we have seen an account in paragraph 115. He still remained on the Continent; but now he could with safety return to his native country, on which the fame of his talents and virtues reflected so much honour. The Cardinal was appointed by the POPE to be his Legate, or representative, in England. The Queen had been married on the 25th of July, 1554, to PHILIP, Prince of Spain, son and heir of the Emperor CHARLES V., of which marriage I shall speak more fully by-and-by.

230. In November, the same year, a Parliament was called, and was opened with a most splendid procession of the two Houses, closed by the King and Queen, the first on horseback, the last in a litter, dressed in robes of purple. Their first act was a repeal of the attainder of POLE, passed in the reign of the cruel Henry VIII. While, this was going on, many noblemen, and gentlemen had gone to Brussels, to conduct POLE to England; and it is worth observing, that amongst these was that Sir WILLIAM CECIL who was afterwards so bitter and cruel an enemy of the Catholics and their religion, in the reign of ELIZABETH. POLE was received at Dover with every demonstration of public joy and exultation; and, before he reached Gravesend, where he took water for Westminster, the gentlemen of the country had flocked to his train, to the number of nearly two thousand horsemen. Here is a fact, which, amongst thousands of others, shows what the populousness and opulence of England then were.

231. On the 29th of November the two Houses petitioned the King and Queen. In this petition they expressed their deep regret at having been guilty of defection from the Church; and prayed their Majesties, who had not participated in the sin, to intercede with the Holy Father, the POPE, for their forgiveness, and for their re-admission into the fold of Christ. The next day, the Queen being seated on the throne, having the King on her left, and POLE, the POPE's Legate, on her right, the Lord High Chancellor, Bishop GARDINER, read the petition; the King and Queen then spoke to POLE, and he, at the close of a long speech, gave, in the name of the POPE, to the two Houses and to the whole nation, absolution in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, at which words the members of the two Houses, being on their knees, made the hall resound with AMEN!

232. Thus was England once more a Catholic country. She was restored to the "fold of Christ"; but the fold had been plundered of its hospitality and charity; and the plunderers, before they pronounced the "Amen," had taken care that the plunder should not be restored. The POPE had hesitated to consent to this; Cardinal POLE, who was a man full of justice, had hesitated still longer; but, as we have seen before, GARDINER, who was now the Queen's prime minister, and, indeed, all her council, were for the compromise; and therefore, these "Amen" people, while they confessed that they had sinned by that defection, in virtue of which defection, and of that alone, they got the property of the Church and the poor; while they prayed for absolution for that sin; while they rose from their knees to join the Queen in singing TE DEUM in thanksgiving for that absolution; while they were doing these things, they enacted, that all the holders of Church property should keep it, and that any person who should attempt to molest or disturb them therein should be deemed guilty of præmunire, and be punished accordingly!

233. It, doubtless, went to the heart of the Queen to assent to this act, which was the very worst deed of her whole reign, the monstrously exaggerated fires of Smithfield not excepted. We have seen how she was situated as to her councillors, and particularly as to GARDINER, who, besides being a most zealous and active minister, was a man of the greatest talents. We have seen, that there was scarcely a man of any note, who had not, first or last, partook of the plunder; but still, great as her difficulty certainly was, she would have done better to follow the dictates of her own mind, insisting upon doing what was right, and leaving the consequences to God, as she had so nobly done, when CRANMER. and the rest of the base council of Edward VI., commanded her to desist from hearing mass and most cruelly took her chaplains from her.

234. However, she was resolved to keep none of the plunder herself. Old HARRY, as "Head of the Church," had taken to himself the tenths and first fruits; that is to say, the tenth part of the annual worth of each church benefice and the first whole year's income of each, These had, of course, been kept by King Edward. Then there were some of the Church estates, some of the hospitals, and other things, and these amounting to a large sum altogether, that still belonged to the crown; and of which the Queen was, of course, the possessor. In November, 1555, she gave up to the Church the tenths, and first fruits; which, together with the tithes, which her two immediate predecessors had seized on and kept, were worth about 63,000l. a year in money of that day, and were equal to about a million a year of the present money! Have we ever heard of any other sovereign doing the like? "Good Queen Bess" we shall find taking them back again to herself; and, though we shall find Queen ANNE giving them up to the Church, we are to bear in mind, that, in Mary's days, the Crown and its officers, ambassadors, judges, pensioners, and all employed by it, were supported out of the landed estate of the Crown itself, the remains of which estate we now see in the pitiful rest of "Crown- lands." Taxes were never, in those days, called for, but for wars, and other really national purposes; and Mary was Queen two years and a half, before she imposed upon her people a single farthing of tax in any shape whatever! So that this act of surrendering the tenths and first fruits was the effect of her generosity and piety; and of hers alone too; for it was done against the remonstrances of her council, and it was not without great opposition that the bill passed in parliaments where it was naturally feared that this just act of the Queen would awaken the people's hatred of the plunderers. But the Queen persevered, saying, that she would be "Defender of the Faith" in reality, and not merely in name. This was the woman, whom we have been taught to call "the Bloody Queen Mary"!

235. The Queen did not stop here, but proceeded to restore all the Church and Abbey lands, which were in her possession, being, whatever might be the consequence to her, firmly resolved not to be a possessor of the plunder. Having called some members of her council together, she declared her resolution to them, and bade them prepare an account of those lands and possessions, that she might know what measures to adopt for the putting of her intention in execution. Her intention was to apply the revenues, as nearly as possible, to their ancient purposes. She began with Westminster Abbey, which had, in the year 610, been the site of a church immediately after the introduction of Christianity by St. AUSTIN, which church had been destroyed by the Danes, and, in 958, restored by King Edgar and St. Dunstan, who placed twelve Benedictine monks in it: and which became, under Edward the Confessor, in 1049, a noble and richly endowed abbey, which when plundered and suppressed by Henry, had revenues to the amount of 3,977l. a year of good old rent, in money of that day, and, therefore, equal to about eighty thousand pounds a year of money of this day! Little of this, however, remained, in all probability, to the Queen, the estates having, in great part, been parcelled out amongst the plunderers of the two last reigns. But, whatever there remained to her she restored; and Westminster Abbey once more saw a convent of Benedictine monks within its walls. She next restored the Friary at Greenwich, to which had belonged friars PEYTO and ELSTOW, whom we have seen, in paragraphs 81 and 82, so nobly pleading, before the tyrant's face, the cause of her injured mother, for which they had felt the fury of that ferocious tyrant. She re-established the Black-Friars in London. She restored the Nunnery at Sion near Brentford, on the spot where Sion-House now stands. At Sheen she restored the Priory. She restored and liberally endowed the Hospital of St. John, Smithfield. She re-established the Hospital in the Savoy, for the benefit of the poor, and allotted to it a suitable yearly revenue out of her own purse; and, as her example would naturally have great effect, it is, as Dr. HEYLIN (a Protestant, and a great enemy of her memory,) observes, "hard to say how far the nobility and gentry might have done the like, if the Queen had lived some few years longer."

236. These acts were so laudable, so unequivocally good, so clearly the effect of justice, generosity and charity, in the Queen, that, coming before us, as they do, in company with great zeal for the Catholic religion, we are naturally curious to hear what remarks they bring from the unfeeling and malignant HUME. Of her own free will, and even against the wish of very powerful men, she gave up, in this way, a yearly revenue of probably not less than a million and a half of pounds of our present money. And for what? Because she held it unjustly; because it was plunder; because it had been taken to the Crown in violation of Magna Charta and all the laws and usages of the realm; because she hoped to be able to make a beginning in the restoring of that hospitality and charity which her predecessors had banished from the land; and because her conscience, as she herself declared, forbade her to retain these ill-gotten possessions, valuing, as she did (she told her council) , "her conscience more than ten kingdoms." Was there ever a more praiseworthy act? And were there ever motives more excellent? Yet HUME, who exults in the act in which the plunderers insisted on, to secure their plunder, calls this noble act of the Queen an "impudent" one, and ascribes it solely to the influence of the new POPE, who, he tells us, told her ambassadors, that the English would never have the doors of Paradise opened to them unless the whole of the church property was restored. How false this is, in spite of HUME's authorities, is clear from this undeniable fact; namely, that she gave the Tenths and First Fruits to the Bishops and Priests of the Church in England, and not to the POPE, to whom they were formerly paid. This, therefore, is a malignant misrepresentation. Then again, he says, that the POPE's remonstrances on this score, had "little influence "with the nation." With the plunderers, he means; for, he has been obliged to confess, that, in all parts of the country, the people, in Edward's reign, demanded a restoration of a part of the monasteries; and, is it not clear, then, that they must have greatly rejoiced to see their sovereign make a beginning in that restoration? But, it was his business to lessen, as much as possible, the merit of these generous and pious acts of this basely calumniated Queen.

237. Events soon proved to this just and good, but singularly unfortunate, Queen, that she would have done better to risk a civil war against the plunderers than assent to the Act of Parliament by which was secured to them the quiet possession of their plunder. Her generous example had no effect upon them; but on the contrary, made them dislike her, because it exposed them to odium, presenting a contrast with their own conduct, so much to their disadvantage. From this cause, more than from any other, arose those troubles, which harassed her during the remainder of' her short reign.

238. She had not been many months!on the throne before a rebellion was raised against her, instigated by the "Reformation" preachers, who had bawled in favour of Lady JANE GREY, but who now discovered, amongst other things, that it was contrary to God's word to be governed by a woman. The fighting rebels were defeated, and the leaders executed, and, at the same time, the Lady Jane herself, who had been convicted of high treason, who had been kept in prison, but whose life had hitherto been spared, and would evidently still have been spared, if it had not manifestly tended to keep alive the hopes of the traitors and disaffected. And, as this Queen has been called "the bloody," is another instance to be found of so much lenity shown towards one, who had been guilty of treason to the extent of actually proclaiming herself the sovereign? There was another rebellion afterwards, which was quelled in like manner, and was followed by the execution of the principal traitors, who had been abetted by a Protestant faction in France, if not by the Government of that country, which was bitterly hostile towards the Queen on account of her marriage with Philip, the Prince of Spain, which marriage became a great subject of invective and false accusation with the Protestants and disaffected of all sorts.

239. The Parliament, almost immediately after her accession, advised her to marry; but not to marry a foreigner. How strangely our taste is changed! The English had always a deep-rooted prejudice against foreigners, till, for pure love of the Protestant religion, they looked out for, and soon felt the sweets of one who began the work of funding, and of making national debts! The Queen, how ever, after great deliberation, determined to marry Philip, who was son and heir to the Emperor Charles V., and who, though a widower, and having children by his first wife, was still much younger than the Queen, who was now (in July, 1554) in the 39th year of her age, while Philip was only 27. Philip arrived at Southampton in July, 1554, escorted by the combined fleets of England, Spain, and the Netherlands; and on the 25th of that month the marriage took place in the Cathedral of Winchester, the ceremony being performed by GARDINER, who was the bishop of the see, and being attended by great numbers of nobles from all parts of Christendom. To show how little reliance is to be placed on HUME, I will here notice, that he says the marriage took place at Westminster, and to this adds many facts equally false. His account of the whole of this transaction is a mere romance, made up from Protestant writers, even whose accounts he has shamefully distorted to the prejudice of the views and character of the Queen.

240. As things then stood, sound and evident good to England dictated this match. Leaving out ELIZABETH, the next heir to the throne was Mary Queen of Scots, and she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France; so that England might fall to the lot of the French King; and, as to Elizabeth, even supposing her to survive the Queen, she now stood bastardized by two Acts of Parliament; for the Act which had just been passed, declaring Catherine to be the lawful wife of her father, made her mother (what, indeed, CRANMER had declared her) an adulteress in law, as she was in fact. Besides, if France and Scotland were evidently likely to become the patrimony of one and the same Prince, it was necessary that England should take steps for strengthening herself also in the way of preparation. Such was the policy that dictated this celebrated match, which the historical calumniators of Mary have attributed to the worst and most low and disgusting of motives; in which, however, they have only followed the example of the malignant traitors of the times we are referring to, it being only to be lamented that they were not then alive to share in their fate.

241. Nothing ever was, nothing could he more to the honour of England than every part of this transaction; yet did it form the pretences of the traitors of that day, who, for the obvious reasons mentioned in the last paragraph, were constantly encouraged and abetted by France, and as constantly urged on by the disciples of CRANMER and his crew of German and Dutch teachers. When the rebels had, at one time, previous to Mary's marriage, advanced even to London, she went to the Guildhall, where she told the citizens, that, if she thought the marriage were injurious to her people, or to the honour of the state, she would not assent to it; and that, if it should not appear to the Parliament to be for the benefit of the whole kingdom, she would never marry at all. "Wherefore," said she, "stand fast against these rebels, your enemies and mine; fear them not; for I assure ye, that I fear them nothing at all." Thus she left them, leaving the Hall resounding with their acclamations.

242. When the marriage articles appeared, it was shown that, on this occasion, as on all others, the Queen had kept her word most religiously: for even HUME is obliged to confess, that these articles were "as favourable as possible for the interest and security and even the grandeur of England." What more was wanted, then? And if, as HUME says was the case, "these articles gave no satisfaction to the nation," all that we can say, is, that the nation was very unreasonable and ungrateful. This is, however, a great falsehood; for, what HUME here ascribes to the whole nation, he ought to have confined to the plunderers and the fanatics, whom, throughout his romance of this reign, he always calls the nation. The articles quoted from RYMER by HUME himself, were, that, though Philip should have the title of King, the administration should be wholly in the Queen; that no foreigner should hold any office in the kingdom; that no change should be made in the English laws, customs, and privileges; that sixty thousand pounds a year (a million of our present money) should be settled on the Queen as her jointure to be paid by Spain if she outlived him; that the male issue of this marriage should inherit together with England, both Burgundy and the low Countries; and that, if Don Carlos, Philip's son by his former marriage, should die leaving no issue, the Queen's issue, whether male or female, should inherit Spain, Sicily, Milan, and all the other dominions of Philip. Just before the marriage ceremony was performed, an envoy from the Emperor, Philip's father, delivered to the English Chancellor, a deed resigning to his son the kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan, the Emperor thinking it beneath the dignity of the Queen of England to marry one that was not a king.

243. What transaction was ever more honourable to a nation than this transaction was to England? What queen, what sovereign, ever took more care of the glory of a people? Yet the fact appears to be, that there was some jealousy in the nation at large, as to this foreign connection; and, I am not one of those who are disposed to censure this jealousy. But, can I have the conscience to commend, or, even to abstain from censuring, this jealousy in our Catholic forefathers, without feeling as a Protestant, my cheeks burn with shame at what has taken place in Protestant times, and even in my own time! When another Mary, a Protestant Mary, was brought to the throne, did the Parliament take care to keep the administration wholly in her, and to give her husband the mere title of king? Did they take care then that no foreigners should hold offices in England? Oh, no! That foreign, that Dutch husband, had the administration vested in him; and he brought over whole crowds of foreigners, put them into the highest offices, gave them the highest titles, and heaped upon them large parcels of what was left of the Crown estate, descending to that Crown, in part at least, from the days of ALFRED himself! And this transaction is called "glorious"; and that, too, by the very men, who talk of the "inglorious" reign of Mary! What, then, are sense and truth never to reign in England? Are we to be duped unto all generations?

244. And, if we come down to our own dear Protestant days, do we find the Prince of SAXE COBURG the heir to mighty dominions? Did he bring into the country, as Philip did, twenty-nine chests of bullion, leading to the Tower twenty-two carts and ninety-nine pack horses? Do we find him settling on his wife's issue great states and kingdoms? Do we find his father making him a king, on the eve of the marriage, because a person of lower title would be beneath a Queen of England? Do we find him giving his bride, as a bridal present, jewels to the amount of half a million of our money? Do we find him settling on the Princess Charlotte a jointure of a million sterling a year, if she should outlive him? No; but (and come and boast of it, you shameless revilers of this Catholic Queen!) we find our Protestant parliament settling ON HIM fifty thousand pounds a year, to come out of taxes raised on us, if he should outlive her; which sum we now duly and truly pay in full tale, and shall possibly have to pay it for forty years yet to come! How we feel ourselves shrink, when we thus compare our conduct with that of our Catholic forefathers!

245. In my relation, I have not adhered to the exact chronological order, which would have too much broken my matter into detached parcels , but, I should here observe, that the marriage was previous to the reconciliation with the POPE, and also previous to the Queen's generous restoration of the property, which she held of the Church and the poor. It was also previous to those dreadful punishments which she inflicted upon heretics, of which punishments I am now about to speak, and which, though monstrously exaggerated by the lying Fox and others, though a mere nothing compared with those inflicted afterwards on Catholics by Elizabeth, and though hardly to be called cruel, when set in comparison with the rivers of Catholic blood that have flowed in Ireland, were, nevertheless, such as to be deeply deplored by every one, and by nobody more than the Catholics, whose religion, though these punishments were by no means caused by its principles, has been reproached as the cause, and the sole cause, of the whole of them.

246. We have seen, in paragraph 200 and 201, what a Babel of opinions and of religions had been introduced by CRANMER and his crew; and we have also seen, that immoralitv, that vice of all sorts, that enmity and strife incessant, had been the consequence. Besides this, it was so natural that the Queen should desire to put down all these sects, and that she should be so anxious on the subject, that we are not at all surprised that, if she saw all other means ineffectual for the purpose, she should resort to means of the utmost severity that the laws of the land allowed of, for the accomplishment of that purpose. The traitors and the leading rebels of her reign were all, or affected to be, of the new sects. Though small in number, they made up for that disadvantage by their indefatigable malignity; by their incessant efforts to trouble the state, and indeed, to destroy the Queen herself. But I am for rejecting all apologies for her, founded on provocations given to her: and also for rejecting all apologies founded on the disposition and influence of her councillors; for, if she had been opposed to the burning of heretics, that burning would, certainly, never have taken place. That burning is fairly to be ascribed to her; but, as even the malignant HUME gives her credit for sincerity, is it not just to conclude, that her motive was to put an end to the propagation, amongst her people, of errors which she deemed destructive of their souls, and the permission of the propagation of which she deemed destructive of her own? And, there is this much to be said in defence of her motive, at any rate, that these new lights, into however many sects they might be divided, all agreed in teaching the abominable doctrine of salvation by faith alone, without regard to works.

24 7. As a preliminary to the punishment of heretics there was an Act of Parliament passed in December, 1554 (a year and a half after the Queen came to the throne) , to restore the ancient statutes, relative to heresy. These statutes were first passed against the LOLLARDS in the reigns of RICHARD II. and HENRY IV. And they provided, that heretics, who were obstinate, should be burnt. These statutes were altered in the reign of HENRY VIII., in order that he might get the property of heretics; and, in that of EDWARD, they were repealed. Not out of mercy, however; but because heresy was, according to those statutes, to promulgate opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith; and this did, of course, not suit the state of things under the new church, "as by law established." Therefore, it was then held, that heresy was punishable by common law, and, that, in case of obstinacy, heretics might be burnt; and, accordingly, many were punished and some burnt, in that reign, by process at common law; and these were, too, Protestants dissenting from CRANMER's Church, who himself condemned them to the flames. Now, however, the Catholic religion being again the religion of the country, it was thought necessary to return to ancient statutes; which, accordingly, were re- enacted. That which had been the law, during seven reigns, comprising nearly two centuries, and some of which reigns had been amongst the most glorious and most happy that England had ever known, one of the Kings having won the title of King of France and another of them having actually been crowned at Paris; that which had been the law for so long a period was now the law again: so that here was nothing new, at any rate. And, observe, though these statutes were again repealed, when ELIZABETH's policy induced her to be a Protestant, she enacted others to supply their place, and that both she and her successor, JAMES I., burnt heretics; though they had, as we shall see, a much more expeditious and less noisy way of putting out of the world those who still had the constancy to adhere to the religion of their fathers.

248. The laws, being passed, were not likely to remain a dead letter. They were put in execution chiefly in consequence of condemnations, in the spiritual court, by BONNER, Bishop of London. The punishment was inflicted in the usual manner; dragging to the place of execution, and then burning to death, the sufferer being tied to a stake, in the midst of a pile of fagots, which, when set on fire, consumed him. Bishop GARDINER, the Chancellor, has been, by Protestant writers, charged with being the adviser of this measure. I can find no ground for this charge, while all agree that POLE, who was now become Archbishop of Canterbury, in the place of CRANMER, disapproved of it. It is also undeniable, that a Spanish friar, the confessor of Philip, preaching before the Queen, expressed his disapprobation of it. Now, as the Queen was much more likely to be influenced, if at all, by POLE, and especially by PHILIP, than by GARDINER, the fair presumption is, that it was her own measure. And, as to BONNER, on whom so much blame has been thrown on this account, he had, indeed, been most cruelly used by CRANMER and his Protestants; but, there was the Council continually accusing all the Bishops (and he more than any of the rest) of being too slow in the performance of this part of their duty. Indeed, it is manifest, that, in this respect, the Council spoke the then almost universal sentiment; for though the French ceased not to hatch rebellions against the Queen, none of the grounds of the rebels ever were, that she punished heretics. Their complaints related almost solely to the connexion with Spain; and never to the "flames of Smithfield," though we of latter times have been made to believe, that nothing else was thought of; but, the fact is, the persons put to death were chiefly of very infamous character, many of them foreigners, almost the whole of them residing in London, and called, in derision by the people at large, the "London Gospellers." Doubtless, out of two hundred and seventy-seven persons (the number stated by HUME on authority of Fox) who were thus punished, some may have been real martyrs to their opinions, and have been sincere and virtuous persons; but, in this number of 277, many were convicted felons, some clearly traitors, as RIDLEY and CRANMER. These must be taken from the number, and we may; surely, take such as were alive when Fox first published his book, and who expressly begged to decline the honour of being enrolled amongst his "Martyrs." As a proof of Fox's total disregard of truth, there was, in the next reign, a Protestant parson, as Anthony Wood (a Protestant) tells us, who, in a sermon, related, on authority of Fox, that a Catholic of the name of GRIMWOOD had been, as Fox said, a great enemy of the Gospellers, had been "punished by a judgment of God," and that his "bowels fell out of his body." GRIMWOOD was not only alive at the time when the sermon was preached, but happened to be present in the church to hear it; and he brought an action of defamation against the preacher! Another instance of Fox's falseness relates to the death of Bishop GARDINER. Fox and BURNET, and other vile calumniators of the acts and actors in Queen Mary's reign, say, that GARDINER, on the day of the execution of LATIMER and RIDLEY, kept dinner waiting till the news of their suffering should arrive, and that the Duke of Norfolk, who was to dine with him, expressed great chagrin at the delay; that, when the news came, "transported with joy," they sat down to table, where GARDINER was suddenly seized with the disury, and died, in horrible torments, in a fortnight after wards. Now, LATIMER. and RIDLEY were put to death on the 16th of October; and COLLIER, in his Ecclesiastical History, p. 386, states, that GARDINER opened the Parliament on the 21st of October; that he attended in Parliament twice afterwards; that he died on the 12th of November, of the gout, and not of disury; and that, as to the Duke of Norfolk, he had been dead a year when this event took place! What a hypocrite, then, must that man he, who pretends to believe in this Fox! Yet, this infamous book has, by the arts of the plunderers and their descendants, been circulated to a boundless extent amongst the people of England, who have been taught to look upon all the thieves, felons, and traitors, whom Fox calls "Martyrs," as sufferers resembling St. Stephen, St. Peter, and St. Paul!

249. The real truth about these "Martyrs," is, that they were, generally, a set of most wicked wretches, who sought to destroy the Queen and her Government, and under the pretence of conscience and superior piety, to obtain the means of again preying upon the people. No mild means could reclaim them: those means had been tried: the Queen had to employ vigorous means, or, to suffer her people to continue to be torn by the religious factions, created, not by her, but by her two immediate predecessors, who had been aided and abetted by many of those who now were punished, and who were worthy of ten thousand deaths each, if ten thousand deaths could have been endured. They were, without a single exception, apostates, perjurers, or plunderers; and, the greater part of them had also been guilty of flagrant high treason against Mary herself, who had spared their lives; but whose lenity they had requited by every effort within their power to overset her authority and the Government. To make particular mention of all the ruffians that perished upon this occasion, would be a task as irksome as it would be useless; but, there were amongst them, three of CRANMER's Bishops and himself! For, now, justice, at last, overtook this most mischievous of all villains, who had justly to go to the same stake that he had unjustly caused so many others to be tied to; the three others were HOOPER, LATIMER, and RIDLEY, each of whom was, indeed, inferior in villany to CRANMER, but to few other men that have ever existed.

250. HOOPER was a MONK; he broke his vow of celibacy and married a Flandrican; be, being the ready tool of the Protector Somerset, whom he greatly aided in his plunder of the churches, got two Bishoprics, though he himself had written against pluralities; he was a co- operator in all the monstrous cruelties inflicted on the people, during the reign of Edward, and was particularly active in recommending the use of German troops to bend the necks of the English to the Protestant yoke. LATIMER began his career, not only as a Catholic priest, but as a most furious assailant of the Reformation religion. By this he obtained from Henry VIII. the Bishopric of Worcester. He next changed his opinions; but he did not give up his Catholic Bishopric! Being suspected, he made abjuration of Protestantism; he thus kept his Bishopric for twenty years, while he inwardly reprobated the principles of the Church, and which Bishopric he held in virtue of an oath to oppose, to the utmost of his power, all dissenters from the Catholic Church; in the reigns of Henry and Edward he sent to the stake Catholics and Protestants for holding opinions, which he himself had before held openly, or that he held secretly at the time of his so sending them. Lastly, he was a chief both in the hands of the tyrannical Protector SOMERSET in that black and unnatural act of bringing his brother Lord THOMAS SOMERSET, to the block, RIDLEY had been a Catholic bishop in the reign of Henry VIII., when he sent to the stake Catholics who denied the King's supremacy, and Protestants, who denied transubstantiation. In Edward's reign he was a Protestant bishop, and denied transubstantiation himself; and then he sent to the stake Protestants who differed from the creed of CRANMER. He, in Edward's reign, got the Bishopric of London by a most roguish agreement to transfer the greater part of its possessions to the rapacious ministers and courtiers of that day. Lastly, he was guilty of high treason against the Queen, in openly (as we have seen in paragraph 220), and from the pulpit, exhorting the people to stand by the usurper Lady JANE; and thus endeavouring to produce civil war and the death of his sovereign, in order that he might, by treason, be enabled to keep that bishopric which he had obtained by simony, including perjury.

251. A pretty trio of Protestant "Saints," quite worthy, however, of "SAINT" MARTIN LUTHER, who says, in his own work, that it was by the arguments of the Devil (who, he says, frequently ate, drank, and slept with him) that he was induced to turn Protestant: three worthy followers of that LUTHER, who is, by his disciple MELANCTHON, called "a brutal man, void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew than a Christian:" three followers altogether worthy of this great founder of that Protestantism, which has split the world into contending sects: but, black as these are, they bleach the moment CRANMER appears in his true colours. But, alas! where is the pen, or tongue, to give us those colours! Of the 65 years that he lived, and of the 35 years of his manhood, 29 years were spent in the commission of a series of acts, which, for wickedness in their nature and for mischief in their consequences, are absolutely without any thing approaching to a parallel in the annals of human infamy. Being a fellow of a college at Cambridge, and having, of course, made an engagement (as the fellows do to this day), not to marry while he was a fellow, he married secretly, and still enjoyed his fellowship. While a married man he became at priest, and took the oath of celibacy; and, going to Germany, he married another wife, the daughter of a Protestant "saint;" so that he had now two wives at one time, though his oath bound him to have no wife at all. He, as Archbishop, enforced the law of celibacy, while he himself secretly kept his German frow in the palace at Canterbury, having, as we have seen in paragraph 104, imported her in a chest. He, as ecclesiastical judge, divorced Henry VIII. from three wives, the grounds of his decision in two of the cases being directly the contrary of those which he himself had laid down when he declared the marriages to be valid; and, in the case of ANNE BOLEYN, he, as ecclesiastical judge, pronounced, that Anne had never been the King's wife; while, as a member of the House of Peers, he voted for her death, as having been an adulteress, and, thereby, guilty of treason to. her husband. As Archbishop under Henry (which office he entered upon with a premeditated false oath on his lips) he sent men and women to the stake because they were not Catholics, and he sent Catholics to the stake, because they would not acknowledge the King's supremacy, and thereby perjure themselves as he had so often done. Become openly a Protestant, in Edward's reign, and openly professing those very principles, for the professing of which he had burnt others, he now burnt his fellow-Protestants, because their grounds for protesting were different from his. As executor for the will of his old master, Henry, which gave the crown (after Edward) to his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, he conspired with others to rob those two daughters of their right, and to give the Crown to Lady JANE, that Queen of nine days, whom he, with others, ordered to be proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding his many monstrous crimes, merely to the palace of Lambeth, he, in requital of the Queen's lenity, plotted with traitors in the pay of France to overset her government. Brought, at last, to trial and to condemnation as a heretic, he professed himself ready to recant. He was respited for six weeks, during which time he signed six different forms of recantation, each more ample than the former. He declared that the Protestant religion was false; that the Catholic religion was the only true one; that he now believed in all the doctrines of the Catholic Church; that he had been a horrid blasphemer against the sacrament; that he was unworthy of forgiveness; that he prayed the People, the Queen and the POPE, to have pity on, and to pray for his wretched soul; and that he had made and signed this declaration without fear, and without hope of favour, and for the discharge of his con science, and as a warning to others. It was a question in the Queen's council, whether he should be pardoned, as other recanters had been; but it was resolved, that his crimes were so enormous that it would be unjust to let him escape; to which might have been added, that it could have done the Catholic Church no honour to see reconciled to it a wretch covered with robberies, perjuries, treasons and bloodshed. Brought, therefore, to the public reading of his recantation, on his way to the stake; seeing the pile ready, now finding that he must die, and carrying in his breast all his malignity undiminished, he recanted his recantation, thrust into the fire the hand that had signed it, and thus expired, protesting against that very religion in which, only nine hours before, he had called God to witness that he firmly believed!

252. And Mary is to be called the "Bloody", because she put to death monsters of iniquity like this! It is, surely, time to do justice to the memory of this calumniated Queen; and not to do it by halves, I must, contrary to my intention, employ part of the next Number in giving the remainder of her history.

LETTER IX.

MARY AT WAR WITH FRANCE. THE CAPTURE OF CALAIS BY THE FRENCH. THE DEATH OF QUEEN MARY. ACCESSION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. HER CRUEL AND BLOODY LAWS RELATIVE TO RELIGION. HER PERFIDY WITH REGARD TO FRANCE. THE DISGRACE SHE BROUGHT UPON HER GOVERNMENT AND THE COUNTRY BY THIS PERFIDY. HER BASE AND PERPETUAL SURRENDER OF CALA1S.

Kensington, 31st July, 1825..

MY FRIENDS,

253. I NOW, before I proceed to the "Reformation" works in the reign of ELIZABETH, must conclude the reign of MARY. "Few and full of sorrow" were the days of her power. She had innumerable difficulties to struggle with, a most inveterate and wicked faction continually plotting against her, and the state of her health, owing partly to her weak frame, and partly to the anxieties of her whole life, rendered her life so uncertain, that the unprincipled plunderers, though they had again become Catholics, were continually casting an eye towards her successor, who, though she was now a Catholic, was pretty sure to become Protestant whenever she came to the throne, because it was impossible that the POPE should ever acknowledge her legitimacy.

254. In the year 1557, the Queen was at war with France, on account of the endeavours of that Court to excite rebellion against her in England. Her husband, PHILIP, whose father, the Emperor, had now retired to a convent, leaving his son to supply his place, and possess all his dominions, was also at war with France, the scene of which war was the Netherlands and the North of France. An English army had joined PHILIP, who penetrated into France, and gained a great and important victory over the French. But a French army, under the Duke of GUISE, took advantage of the naked state of Calais, to possess itself of that important town, which had been in possession of the English for more than two hundred years. It was not Calais alone that England held; but the whole country round for many miles, including Guisnesse, Fanim, Ardres, and other places, together with the whole territory called the county of Oye. EDWARD III. had taken Calais after a siege of nearly a year. It had always been regarded as very valuable for the purposes of trade; it was deemed a great monument of glory to England, and it was a thorn continually rankling in the side of France. Dr. HEYLIN tells us, that Monsieur de CORDES, a nobleman who lived in the reign of Louis XI., used to say "that he would be content to lie seven years in hell upon "condition that this town were regained from the English."

255. The Queen felt this blow most severely, it hastened that death which overtook her a few months after wards: and, when her end approached, she told her attendants, that, "if they opened her body, they would find Calais at the bottom of her heart." This great misfortune was owing to the neglect, if not perfidy, of her councillors, joined to the dread of Philip to see Calais and its dependencies in the hands of MARY's successor. Doctor HEYLIN (a Protestant, mind) tells us, that Philip, seeing that danger might arise to Calais, advised the Queen of it, and "freely offered his assistance for the defence of it; but, that the English council, over-wisely jealous of Philip, neglected both his advice and proffer." They left the place with only five hundred men in it; and that they did this intentionally it is hardly possible to doubt. Still, however, if the Queen had lived but a little longer, Calais would have been restored. The war was not yet over. In 1558, Philip and the King of France began negotiations for peace; and one of the conditions of Philip (who was the most powerful, and who had beaten the French) was, that Calais should be restored to England; and this condition would unquestionably have been adhered to by Philip; but, in the midst of these. negotiations, Mary died!

256, Thus, then, it is to the "Reformation," which had caused the loss of Boulogne, in the plundering and cowardly reign of Edward VI., that we, even to this day, owe, that we have to lament, the loss of Calais, which was, at last, irretrievably lost by the selfishness and perfidy of Elizabeth. While all historians agree, that the loss of Calais preyed most severely upon the Queen, and hastened her death; while they all do this great honour to her memory, none of them attempt to say, that the loss of Boulogue had even the smallest effect on the spirits of her "Reformation" brother! He was too busy in pulling down altars and in confiscating the property of Guilds and Fraternities to think much about national honour; or, perhaps, though he, while he was pulling down altars, still called himself "Defender of the Faith," he might think, that territory and glory, won by Catholics, ought not to be retained by Protestants. Be this as it may, we have seen a loss to England much greater than that of Calais; we have seen the half of a continent cut off from the crown of England, and seen it become a most formidable rival on the seas; and we have never heard, that it preyed much upon the spirits of the sovereign, in whose reign the loss took place.

257. With the loss of Calais at the bottom of her heart, and with a well-grounded fear that her successor would undo, as to religion, all that she had done, the unfortunate Mary expired on the 17th of November, 1558, in the forty-second year of her age, and in the sixth year of her reign, leaving to her sister and successor the example of fidelity, sincerity, patience, resignation, generosity, gratitude, and purity in thought, word and deed; an example, however, which, in every particular, that sister and successor took special care not to follow. As to those punishments, which have served as the ground for all the abuse heaped on the memory of this Queen, what were they other than punishments inflicted on offenders against the religion of the country? The "fires of Smithfield" have a horrid sound; but, to say nothing about the burnings of Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James I., is it more pleasant to have one's bowels ripped out, while the body is alive (as was Elizabeth's favourite way), than to be burnt? Protestants have even exceeded Catholics in the work of punishing offenders of this sort. And, they have punished, too, with less reason on their side. The Catholics have one faith; the Protestants have fifty faiths: and yet, each sect, whenever it gets uppermost, punishes, in some way or other, the rest as offenders. Even at this very time, there are, according to a return, recently laid before the House of Commons, no less than fifty-seven persons, who have, within a few years, suffered imprisonment and other punishments added to it, as offenders against religion; and this, too, at a time, when men are permitted openly to deny the divinity of Christ, and others openly to preach in their synagogues, that there never was any Christ at all. A man sees the laws tolerate twenty sorts of Christians (as they all call themselves), each condemning all the rest to eternal flames; and, if, in consequence of this, he be led to express his belief, that they are all wrong, and that the thing they are disputing about is altogether something unreal, he may be punished with six years (or his whole life) of imprisonment in a loathsome gaol! Let us think of these things, when we are talking of the "bloody Queen Mary." The punishments now-a-days proceed from the maxim that "Christianity is part and parcel of the law of the land." When did it begin? Before, or since, the "Reformation"? And, who, amongst all these sects, which, it would seem, this law tolerates; which of them is to tell us; from which of them are we to learn, what Christianity is?

258. As to the mass of suffering, supposing the whole of the 277 persons, who suffered in the reign of Mary, to have suffered solely for the sake of religion instead of having been, like CRANMER and RIDLEY, traitors and felons as well as offenders on the score of religion; let us suppose the whole 277 to have suffered for offences against religion, did the mass of suffering surpass the mass of suffering; on this same account, during the reign of the late King? And, unless Smithfield and burning have any peculiar agony, any thing worse than death, to impart, did Smithfield ever witness so great a mass of suffering as the Old Bailey has witnessed, on account of offences against that purely Protestant invention, bank notes? Perhaps this invention, expressly intended to keep out Popery, has cost ten times, if not ten times ten times, the blood that was shed in the reign of her, whom we still have the injustice, or the folly, to call the "bloody Queen Mary," all whose excellent qualities, all whose exalted virtues, all her piety, charity, generosity, sacred adherence to her faith and her word, all her gratitude, and even those feelings of anxiety for the greatness and honour of England, which feelings hastened her to the grave: all these, in which she was never equalled by any sovereign that sat on the English throne, ALFRED alone excepted, whose religion she sought to re-establish for ever; all these are to pass for nothing, and we are to call her the "bloody Mary," because it suits the views of those who fatten on the spoils of that Church which never suffered Englishmen to bear the odious and debasing name of pauper.

ELIZABETH.

259. To the pauper and ripping-up reign we now come. This is the reign of "good Queen Bess." We shall, in a short time, see how good she was. The Act of Parliament, which is still in force, relative to the poor and poor-rates, was passed in the 43rd year of this reign; but, that was not the only act of the kind: there were eleven acts passed before that, in consequence of the poverty and misery, into which the "Reformation" had plunged the people. However, it is the last Number of my work which is to contain the history of the rise and progress of English pauperism, from the beginning of the "Reformation" down to the present time. At present I have to relate what took place with regard to the affairs of religion.

260. ELIZABETH, during the reign of her brother, had been a Protestant, and during the reign of her sister, a Catholic. At the time of her sister's death, she not only went to mass publicly; but, she had a Catholic chapel in her house, and also a confessor. These appearances had not, however, deceived her sister, who, to the very last, doubted her sincerity. On her death bed, honest and sincere Mary required from her a frank avowal of her opinions as to religion. Elizabeth, in answer, prayed God that the earth might open and swallow her, if she were not a true Roman Catholic She made the same declaration to the Duke of Feria, the Spanish envoy, whom she so completely deceived, that he wrote to Philip, that the accession of Elizabeth would make no alteration in matters of religion, in England. In spite of all this, it was not long before she began ripping up the bowels of her unhappy subjects, because they were Roman Catholics.

261. She was a bastard by law. The marriage of her mother had been, by law, which yet remained unrepealed, declared to be null and void from the beginning. Her accession having been, in the usual way, notified to foreign powers, that is, that "she had succeeded to the throne by hereditary right and the consent of the nation," the POPE answered, that he did not understand the hereditary right of a person not born in lawful wedlock So that he, of course, could not acknowledge her hereditary right. This was, of itself, a pretty strong inducement for a lady of so flexible a conscience as she had, to resolve to be a Protestant. But, there was another and even a stronger motive. Mary, Queen of Scotland, who had married the Dauphin of France, claimed the crown of England, as the nearest legitimate descendant of Henry VII. So that Elizabeth ran a manifest risk of losing the crown unless she became a Protestant, and crammed CRANMER's creed down the throats of her people. If she remained a Catholic, she must yield submission to the decrees from Rome: the POPE could have made it a duty with her people to abandon her; or, at the very least, he could have greatly embarrassed her. In short, she saw clearly, that, if her people remained Catholics, she could never reign in perfect safety. She knew that she had no hereditary right; she knew that the law ascribed her birth to adultery. She never could think of reigning quietly over a people the head of whose Church refused to acknowledge her right to the crown. And resolving to wear that crown, she resolved, cost what ruin or blood it might, to compel her people to abandon that very religion, her belief in which she had, a few months before, declared, by praying to "God that the earth might open and swallow her alive, if she were not a true Roman Catholic."

262. The POPE's answer was honest; but it was impolitic, and most unfortunate it was for the English and Irish people, who had now to prepare for sufferings such as they had never known before. The situation of things was extremely favourable to the Protestants. Mary, the Queen of Scots, the real lawful heir to the throne, was, as we have seen, married to the Dauphin of France. If Elizabeth were set aside, or, if she died without issue before Mary, England must become an appendage of France. The loss of Calais and of Boulogne had mortified the nation enough; but, for England herself to he to transferred France, was what no Englishman could think of with patience. So that she became strong from the dread that the people had of the consequences of her being put down. It was the betrothing of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin, which induced Mary, Queen of England, to marry PHILIP, and thereby to secure an ally for England in case of Scotland becoming a dependance of France. How much more pressing was the danger now, when the Queen of Scots was actually married to the Dauphin (the heir apparent to the French throne), and when if she were permitted to possess the crown of England, England, in case of her having a son, must become a province of France!

263. This state of things was, therefore, most unfortunate for the Catholics. It made many, very many, of themselves cool in opposition to the change which the new Queen soon showed her determination to effect; for, how ever faithful as to their religion, they were Englishmen, and abhorred the thought of being the underlings of Frenchmen. They might hate the Queen for her apostacy and tyranny; but still they could not but desire that England should remain an independent state; and to keep her such, the upholding of Elizabeth seemed absolutely necessary. Those who eulogize Henry IV. of France, who became a Catholic expressly and avowedly for the purpose of possessing and keeping the throne of that country, cannot very consistently blame Elizabeth for becoming a Protestant for an exactly similar reason. I do not attempt to justify either of them; but I must confess, that, if any thing would have induced me to uphold Elizabeth, it would have been, that she, as far as human foresight could go, was an instrument necessary to preserve England from subjection to France; and, beyond all doubt, this was the main reason for which, at the outset at least, she was upheld by many of the eminent and powerful men of that day.

264. But if we admit that she was justified in thus consulting her preservation as a Queen, and the nation's independence, at the expense of religious considerations; if we admit that she had a right to give a preference to Protestants, and to use all gentle means for the totally changing of the religion of her people; if we admit this, and that is admitting a great deal more than justice demands of as, who can refrain from being filled with horror at the barbarity which she so unsparingly exercised for the accomplishment of her purpose?

265. The intention to change the religion of the country became, in a short time, so manifest, that all the Bishops but one refused to crown her. She at last found one to do it; but even he would not consent to do the thing without her conformity to the Catholic ritual. Very soon, however, a series of acts were passed, which, by degrees, put down the Catholic worship, and re-introduced the Protestant; and she found the plunderers and possessors of plunder just as ready to conform to her ecclesiastical sway, as they had been to receive absolution from Cardinal Pole, in the last reign. CRANMER's book of Common Prayer, which had been ascribed by the Parliament to the suggestions of the "Holy Ghost," had been altered and amended even in Edward's reign. It was now revived, and altered and amended again; and still it was ascribed to the "dictates of the Holy Ghost"!

266. If these Acts of Parliament had stopped here, they would certainly have been bad and disgraceful enough. But such a change was not to be effected without blood. This Queen was resolved to reign: the blood of her people she deemed necessary to her own safety; and she never scrupled to make it flow. She looked upon the Catholic religion as her mortal enemy; and, cost what it might, she was resolved to destroy it, if she could, the means being, by her, those which best answered her end.

267. With this view, statutes the most bloody were passed. All persons were compelled to take the oath of supremacy, on pain of death. To take the oath of supremacy; that is to say, to acknowledge the Queen's supremacy in spiritual matters, was to renounce the POPE and the Catholic religion; or, in other words, to become an apostate. Thus was a very large part of her people at once condemned to death for adhering to the religion of their fathers; and moreover, for adhering to that very religion, in which she had openly lived till she became Queen, and to her firm belief in which she had sworn at her coronation!

268. Besides this act of monstrous barbarity, it was made high treason in a priest to say mass; it was made high treason in a priest to come into the kingdom from abroad; it was made high treason to harbour or to relieve a priest. And, on these grounds, and others of a like nature, hundreds upon hundreds were butchered in the most inhuman manner, being first hung up, then cut down alive, their bowels then ripped up, and their bodies chopped into quarters: and this, I again beg you, sensible and just Englishmen, to observe, only because the unfortunate persons were too virtuous and sincere to apostatize from that faith which this Queen herself had, at her coronation, in her coronation oath, solemnly sworn to adhere to and defend!

269. Having pulled down the altars, set up the tables; having ousted the Catholic priests and worship, and put in their stead a set of hungry, beggarly creatures, the very scum of the earth, with Cranmer's prayer-book amended in their hands; having done this, she compelled her Catholic subjects to attend in the churches under enormous penalties, which rose, at last, to death itself, in case of perseverance in refusal! Thus were all the good, all the sincere, all the conscientious people in the kingdom incessantly harassed, ruined by enormous fines, brought to the gallows, or compelled to flee from their native country. Thus was this Protestant religion watered with the tears and the blood of the people of England. Talk of Catholic persecution and cruelty! Where are you to find persecution and cruelty like this, inflicted by Catholic princes? Elizabeth put, in one way or another, more Catholics to death in one year, for not becoming apostates to the religion which she had sworn to be hers, and to be the only true one, than Mary put to death in her whole reign for having apostatized from the religion of her and their fathers, and to which religion she herself had always adhered. Yet, the former is called, or has been called, "good Queen Bess," and the latter "bloody Queen Mary." Even the horrid MASSACRE of ST. BARTHOLOMEW was nothing, when fairly compared with the butcheries and other cruelties of the reign of this Protestant Queen of England; yes, a mere nothing; and yet she put on mourning upon that occasion, and had the consummate hypocrisy to affect horror at the cruelties that the King of France had committed.

270. This massacre took place at Paris, in the year 1572, and in the 14th year of Elizabeth's reign; and, as it belongs to the history of that day, as it was, in fact, in part, produced by her own incessant and most mischievous intrigues, and as it has been made a great handle of in the work of calumniating the Catholics, even to this day, it is necessary that I give a true account of it, and that I go back to those civil wars in France which she occasioned, and in which she took so large a part, and which finally lost Calais and its territory to England. The "Reformation," which LUTHER said he was taught by the Devil, had found its way into France so early as in the year 1530, or thereabouts. The "reformers" there were called HUGUENOTS. For a long while they were of little consequence; but they, at last, in the reign of Charles IX., became formidable to the government by being taken hold of by those ambitious and rebellious leaders CONDÉ and COLIGNI. The faction, of which these two were the chiefs, wanted to have the governing of France during the minority of Charles, who came to the throne in the year 1561, at ten years of age. His mother, the Queen Dowager, gave the preference to the Duke of Guise and his party. The disappointed nobles, Condé and Coligni, needed no better motive for becoming most zealous Protestants, the Guises being zealous in the Catholic cause! Hence arose an open rebellion on the part of the former, fomented by the Queen of England, who seemed to think, that she never could be safe as long as there were Catholic prince, priest, or people left upon the face of the earth; and who never stuck at means, if they were but calculated to effect her end. She was herself an apostate; she wanted to annihilate that from which she had apostatized; and, by her endeavours to effect her purpose, she made her people bleed at every pore, and made no scruple upon any occasion, to sacrifice the national honour.

271. At her coming to the throne, she found the country at war with France, and Calais in its hands, that fortress and territory having, as we have seen in paragraph 254, been taken by a French army under the Duke of Guise. She almost immediately made peace with France, and that, too, without getting CALAIS back, as she might have done, if she had not preferred her own private interest to the interest and honour of England. The negotiations for peace (England, Spain, and France being the parties) were carried on at Cateau Cambresis, in France. All was soon settled with regard to Spain and France; but PHILIP (Mary's husband, remember), faithful to his engagements, refused to sign the treaty, until the new Queen of England should be satisfied with regard to Calais; and he even offered to Continue the war for six years, unless Calais were restored, provided Elizabeth would bind herself not to make a separate peace during that period. She declined this generous offer; she had begun to rip up her subjects, and was afraid of war; and she, therefore, clandestinely entered into negotiations with France, and it was agreed that the latter should keep Calais for eight years, or pay to England 500,000 crowns! Never was there a baser act than this treaty, on the part of England. But this was not all; for the treaty further stipulated, that if France committed any act of aggression against England during the eight years, or if England committed any act of aggression against France, during that time, the treaty should be void, and that the former should lose the right of retaining, and the latter the claim to the restoration, of this valuable town and territory.

272. This treaty was concluded in 1559, and it was a treaty not only of friendship, but of alliance between the parties. But, before three years out of the eight had passed away, "good Queen Bess," out of pure hatred and fear of the Catholics; from a pure desire to make her tyrannical sway secure; from the sole desire of being still able to fine, imprison, and rip up her unfortunate subjects, forfeited all claim to the restoration of Calais, and that too, by a breach of treaty more flagrant and more base than, perhaps, had ever before been witnessed in the world..

273. CONDÉ and COLIGNI, with their Huguenots, had stirred up a formidable civil war in France. "Good Queen Bess's" ambassador at that Court stimulated and assisted the rebels to the utmost of his power. At last, VIDAME, an agent of Condé and Coligni, came, secretly, over to England to negotiate for military, naval and pecuniary assistance. They succeeded with "good Bess," who, wholly disregarding the solemn treaties by which she was bound to Charles IX., King of France, entered into a formal treaty with the French rebels to send them an army and money, for the purpose of carrying on war against their sovereign, of whom she was an ally, having bound herself, in that character, by a solemn oath on the Evangelists! By this treaty she engaged to furnish men, ships, and money; and the traitors, on their part, engaged to put HAVRE DE GRACE at once into her hands, as a pledge, not only for the repayment of the money to be advanced, but for the restoration of Calais! This infamous compact richly deserved the consequences that attended it.

274. The French ambassador in London, when he found that an intercourse was going on between the Queen and the agents of the rebels, went to CECIL, the Secretary of State, carrying the treaty of Cateau Cambresis in his hand, and demanded, agreeably to the stipulations of that treaty, that the agents of the rebels should be delivered up as traitors to their sovereign; and he warned the English government, that any act of aggression on its part, would annihilate its claim to the recovery of Calais at the end of the eight years. But "good Bess" had caused the civil wars in France; she had, by her bribes, and other underhand means, stirred them up, and she believed that the success of the French rebels was necessary to her own security on her throne of doubtful right; and, as she hoped to get Calais in this perfidious way, she saw nothing but gain in the perfidy.

275. The rebels were in possession of DIEPPE, ROUEN, HAVRE DE GRACE, and had extended their power over a considerable part of Normandy. They at once put HAVRE and DIEPPE into the hands of the English. So infamous and treacherous a proceeding roused the Catholics of France, who now became ashamed of that inactivity, which had suffered a sect, less than a hundredth part of the population, to sell their country under the blasphemous plea of a love of the Gospel. "Good Bess," with her usual mixture of hypocrisy and effrontery, sent her proclamations into Normandy, declaring, that she meant no hostility against her "good brother" the King of France; but merely to protect his Protestant subjects against the tyranny of the House of Guise; and that her "good brother" ought to be grateful to her for the assistance she was lending! This cool and hypocritical insolence added fury to the flame. All France could but recollect, that it was the skilful, the gallant, the patriotic Duke of Guise, who had, only five years before, ejected the English from Calais, their last hold in France; and they now saw these "sons of the Gospel," as they had the audacity to call themselves, bring those same English back again, and put two French seaports into their hands at once! Are we to wonder at the inextinguishable hatred of the people of France against this traitorous sect? Are we to wonder, that they felt a desire to extirpate the whole of so infamous a race, who had already sold their country to the utmost of their power?

276. The French nobility, from every province and corner of France, flew to the aid of their sovereign, whose army was commanded by the Constable, Montmorency, with the Duke of Guise under him. Condé was at the head of the rebel army, having Coligni as a sort of partner in the concern, and having been joined by the English troops under the Earl of Warwick, nephew of "good Bess's" paramour, DUDLEY, of whom the Protestant clergymen, Heylin and Witaker, will tell us more than enough by-and-by. The first movement of the French against this combined mass of hypocrisy, audacity, perfidy and treason, was the besieging of ROUEN, into which Sir Edward Poinings, who had preceded Warwick, had thrown an English reinforcement to assist the faithful "sons of the Gospel." In order to encourage the French, the Queen- Mother (Catherine de Medici), her son the young King, Charles (now twelve years of age), and the King of Navarre, were present at the siege. The latter was mortally wounded in the attack; but the Catholics finally took the town by assault, and put the whole of the garrison to the sword, including the English reinforcement sent by "good Queen Bess."

277. In the meanwhile the brother of Coligni had, by the money of "good Bess," collected together a body of German mercenary Gospellers, and had got them to ORLEANS, which was then the main hold of the Huguenots; while "good Bess," in order to act her part faithfully, ordered public prayers, during three whole days to implore God's blessing "upon her cause and the cause of the Gospel." Thus reinforced by another body of foreigners brought into their country, the base traitors, Condé and Coligni, first made a feint on the side of Paris; but, finding themselves too weak on that side, they took their way towards Normandy, in the hope of their having the aid of the English forces. But, the Catholics, still under Montmorency, followed the traitors, overtook them at DREUX, compelled them to fight, took Condé himself prisoner, and, though Montmorency was taken prisoner by the rebels, the Duke of Guise took the chief command, and drove the rebel Coligni and his army before him; and this, too, observe, in spite of "good Bess's" three whole days of prayers.

278. Nevertheless, Coligni kept the field, and pillaged Normandy pretty severely. "Good Bess" sent him some money, and offered to be bound for more, if he could get any merchants (that is, Jews) to lend it him; but, she sent him no troops; those, under the Earl of Warwick, being kept safe and sound in the strong fortress of Havre de Grace, which place honest and "good Bess" intended to keep, let things go which way they might, which honest intention we shall, however, find defeated in the end. Coligni and his ruffians and German mercenary Gospellers cruelly plundered the Normans as far as they could extend their arms. The Catholics, now under the Duke of Guise, laid siege to Orleans. While this siege was going on, one POLTROT, a Huguenot, in the pay of Coligni, went, under the guise of being a deserter from that inveterate rebel chief, and entered into the service of the army under the Duke of Guise. In a short time this miscreant found the means to assassinate that gallant nobleman and distinguished patriot, instigated, and, indeed, employed for the express purpose by Coligni, and urged on by BEZA, the "famous preacher," as HUME calls him, but really one of the most infamous of all the "reforming" preachers, and, perhaps, second to none but LUTHER himself. This atrocious deed met, afterwards, with retaliation in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, when on Coligni's mangled body there might have been placarded the name of POLTROT. This wretch had been paid by Coligni, and the money had come from honest and sincere "good Queen Bess," whom we shall hereafter find plainly accused by Witaker (a clergyman of the Church of England) of plotting the assassination of her own cousin, and finding no man in her kingdom base enough to perform the deed.

279. This foul deed seems to have made Condé ashamed of his infamous associate and followers. Ambition had made him a rebel; but he had sense of honour enough left to make him shudder at the thought of being the leader of assassins: and he, with one drop of true blood in him, could not think without horror of such a man as the Duke of Guise, who had rendered such inestimable services to France, being swept from existence by so base a miscreant -- as that whom his late colleague had hired and paid for that purpose. If the son of the Duke of Guise could have destroyed Coligni and his whole crew, he would have been justified in so doing. And vet, the world has been stunned with the Protestant cries of horror at the death of this same Coligni and a small part of his followers!

280. Condé now sought to get rid of his miscreant associates by proposing, in February 1563, a pacification, and tendering his submission to his sovereign on condition of an act of oblivion. Coligni was included in the amnesty. The King granted to the Huguenots permission to practice their worship in one town in every bailiwick; and thus were all matters settled between the King and his rebellious subjects. Sad tidings for "good Queen Bess," who, as Witaker well observes, continually sought her safety in the divisions and misery of others. Condé, in his treaty with her, had stipulated not to conclude any peace without her consent; but, had she a right to complain of a want of good faith? She, who had broken her treaty and her oath with Charles IX., and who, in defiance of both, had entered into a treaty with rebels, in open arms against their King?

281. The French King, wishing to get her troops quietly out of Havre de Grace, and finding that she now pretended to hold it as a pledge for the surrender of Calais, at the end of the eight years, offered to renew the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, by which Calais was to be restored to England in 1567. But, she rejected this fair and reasonable proposal. She had got Havre; no matter how; and she said, that "a bird in hand was worth two in the bush," snapping her fingers at the same time, and, as was the common practice with her upon such occasions, confirming her resolution with a thundering oath, so becoming in a "Virgin Queen." Finding, however, that all parties in France were now united for the expulsion of the English, she reluctantly gave way. She authorised her ambassadors to present a new project of treaty; but, by this time, the French army, under Montmorency, Condé, "good Bess's" late friend and ally being serving in the army, was on its way to regain Havre by force of arms, the King of France being well convinced, that treaties with "good Betsy" were things perfectly vain.

282. Still, it was not a trifling thing to take Havre out of the hands of the English. A great deal of taxes had been imposed upon this nation (to say nothing of the "prayers" in order to ensure the possession of this place. The Earl of Warwick, instead of sending troops to assist Bess's allies, had kept his army at Havre; had, with six thousand soldiers and seven hundred pioneers, rendered the place "impregnable;" had, as soon as he heard that the rebellion was at an end, expelled all the French people from Havre, to their utter ruin, and in direct breach of Bess's treaty with Condé and Coligni. But, in spite of all this, Montmorency was, at the end of a short time, ready to enter the place by assault, having made his breaches in preparation. The Queen-Mother and the King were present in the camp where they had the indescribable pleasure to see "good Queen Bess's" general humbly propose to surrender the place to its rightful sovereign, without any mention of Calais and its territory, and on no condition whatever, but that of being permitted to return to England with the miserable remnant of his army; and England, after all the treasure and blood expended to gratify the malignity of "good Bess," and after all the just imputations of perfidy that she had brought upon it, had to receive that remnant, that ratification of disgrace, greater than it had to support from the day when glorious Alfred finally expelled the Danes. And, yet, this woman is called, or has been called, "good Queen Bess," and her perfidious and butchering reign has been called glorious!

283. Great as the mortifications of "good Bess" now were, and great as were the misfortunes of the country, brought upon it by these her proceedings of hitherto unheard-of hypocrisy and breach of faith, we have, as yet, seen the full measure of neither the one nor the other. For, "glorious and good Bess" had now to sue for peace, and with that King, with whose rebel subjects she had so recently co-operated. Her ambassadors, going with due passports, were arrested and imprisoned. She stamped and swore, but she swallowed the affront, and took the regular steps to cause them to be received at the French court, who, on their part, treated her pressing applications with a contemptuous sneer, and suffered many months to pass away, before they would listen to any terms of peace. SMITH was one of her envoys, and the other was that same THROCKMORTON, who had been her ambassador at Paris, and who had been her agent in stirring up Condé and Coligni to their rebellion. The former was imprisoned at Melun, and the latter at Saint Germain's. Smith was released upon her application; but Throckmorton was detained, and was made use of for the following curious, and, to "good Bess," most humiliating purpose. The treaty of Cateau Cambresis, which stipulated for the restoration of Calais in eight years, or the forfeiture of 500,000 crowns by the French, contained a stipulation, that four French noblemen should be held by "good Bess" as hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty on the part of France. "Good Bess," by her aiding of the French rebels, had broken this treaty, had lost all just claim to Calais, and ought to have released the hostages; but, as "good Bess" very seldom did what she ought to; as she might, almost every day of her mischievous life, have, with perfect truth, repeated that part of the Prayer-Book "amended," which says, "we have done I those things which we ought not to do, and have left undone those things which we ought to do;" so, this "good" woman had kept the hostages, though she had forfeited all just claim to that for the fulfilment of which they had been put into her hands. Now, however, the French had got a "bird in hand" too. They had got Throckrnorton, their old enemy, and he had got a large quantity of "good "Bess's" horrible secrets locked up in his breast! So that, after long discussions, during which Throckmorton gave very significant signs of his determination not to end his days in prison without taking revenge, of some sort, on his merciless employer, the "good" woman agreed to exchange the four French noblemen for him; and, as a quarter of a loaf was better than no bread, to take 125,000 crowns for the relinquishment of Calais to France in perpetuity!

284. Thus, then, it was "good Queen Bess," after all, glorious and Protestant Bess, that plucked this jewel from the English crown! Nor was this the only signal consequence of her unhallowed and unprincipled treaty and intrigues with the French rebels. The plague, which had got into the garrison of Havre de Grace, and which had left Warwick with only about two thousand out of his seven thousand men; this dreadful disease was brought by that miserable remnant of infected beings, to England, where HUME himself allows, that it "swept off great multitudes, especially in London, where above twenty thousand persons died of it in one year"! Thus was the nation heavily taxed, afflicted with war, afflicted with pestilence; thus were thousands upon thousands of English people destroyed, or ruined, or rendered miserable, merely to gratify this proud and malignant woman, who thought that she could never be safe until all the world joined in her flagrant apostacy. Thus, and merely for this same reason, was Calais surrendered for ever; Calais, the proudest possession of England; Calais, one of the two keys to the Northern Seas; Calais, that had been won by our Catholic forefathers two hundred years before; Calais, which they would have no more thought of yielding to France, than they would have thought of yielding Dover; Calais, the bare idea of a possibility of losing which had broken the heart of the honest, the virtuous, the patriotic and most calumniated Mary!

285. It is surprising what baseness HUME discovers in treating of the whole of this important series of transactions; how he glosses over all the breaches of faith and of oath, on the part of the "good Bess"; how he lets pass without censure the flagrant and malignant treason of the rebels; and even how he insinuates apologies for them; how he skips by the rare fidelity of Philip to his engagements; how he praises the black-hearted Coligni, while he almost censures Condé for seeking peace after the assassination of the Duke of Guise; how he wholly suppresses the deep humiliations of England in the case of Smith and Throckmorton; how he makes the last bill of sale 200,000 instead of the fourth part of 500,000; how he passes over the loss of Calais for ever, as nothing in "good Bess," though he had made the temporary loss of it everything in Mary; but, above all the rest, how he constantly aims his malignity at that skilful, brave, faithful, and patriotic noble man, the Duke of Guise, while he extols Condé as long as he was a rebel and a traitor, engaged in selling his country; and how he lauds the inveterate and treacherous Coligni to the last hour of that traitor's life.

286. Is there any man, who does not see the vast importance of Calais and its territory? Is there any man who does not see how desirable it would be to us to have it now? Is there an Englishman who does not lament the loss of it? And is it not clear as the sun at noon-day, that it was lost for ever by "good Bess's" perfidy in joining the rebels of France? If, when those rebels were formidable to their sovereign, she had pressed him to restore Calais at once, and to take an equivalent for such anticipated restoration, is it not obvious, that he would have consented, rather than risk her displeasure at such a moment? And what is the apology that HUME makes for her conduct in joining the rebels? "Elizabeth, besides the general and essential interest of supporting the Protestants, and opposing the rapid progress of her enemy, the Duke of Guise" (how was he her enemy?) "had other motives which engaged her to accept this proposal. When she concluded the peace at Cateau Cambresis, she had good reason to foresee, that France would never voluntarily fulfil the article with regard to the restitution of Calais; and many subsequent incidents tended to confirm this suspicion. Considerable sums of money had been laid out on the fortifications; long leases had been granted of the lands; and many inhabitants had been encouraged to build and settle there, by assurances that Calais would never be restored to the English. The Queen, therefore, very wisely concluded, that, could she get possession of Havre, a place which commanded the mouth of the Seine, and was of much greater importance than Calais, she should easily constrain the French to execute the treaty, and should have the glory of restoring to the crown that ancient possession, which was so much the favourite of the nation."

287. Away, then, goes, at once,. all her professions of desire to defend the "cause of the Gospel;" she is a hypocrite the most profound at once; she breaks faith with the King of France and with the rebels too. But, if she really foresaw that the French would not voluntarily fulfil the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, why did she conclude it, when Philip was ready to aid her in compelling France to restore Calais at once? And, as to the "subsequent incidents," which had confirmed her suspicions, why should not the French government repair the fortifications, and why should they not give "assurances that the territory would never be restored to the English," seeing that she had bargained for the perpetual surrender of 500,000 crowns? The French meant, doubtless, to pay the money at the end of the eight years. They never, after she had rejected the offer of Philip, intended to give up Calais: that every body knew, and no body better than "good Bess:" she had hostages for the payment of the money; and she held those hostages after she had received Havre from the rebels as a security for the payment of that money! She had, she thought, two birds in the hand; but, though she "concluded very wisely," both birds escaped; she outwitted and overreached herself; and the nation has, to this day, to lament the consequences of her selfishness, bad faith, and atrocious perfidy.

288. I should now proceed to follow "good Bess" and her worthy friend Coligni down to the date of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which was a sort of wholesale of the same work that "good Bess" carried on in detail: but, I have filled my paper; and I now see, that it will be impossible for me to do any thing like justice to my subject with out stretching my little work further than I intended.

LETTER X.

MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW. TAIL-PIECE TO IT. A MAN'S HAND CUT OFF FOR THWARTING BESS IN HER LOVE-SICK FIT. HER FAVOURITES AND MINISTERS. HISTORY AND MURDER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND.

Kensington, August 31st, 1825.

MY FRIENDS,

289. THOUGH the massacre of St. BARTHOLOMEW took place in France, yet, it has formed so fertile a source of calumny against the religion of our fathers; it has served as a pretence with Protestant historians to justify, or palliate, so many atrocities on the part of their divers sects; and the Queen of England and her Ministers had so great a hand in first producing it, and then in punishing Catholics under pretence of avenging it, that it is necessary for me to give an account of it.

29O. We have seen, in the paragraphs from 273 to 281, the treacherous works of Coligni, and in paragraph 278, we have seen that this pretended Saint basely caused that gallant and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Guise; to be assassinated. But, in assassinating this nobleman, the wretch did not take off the whole of his family. There was a SON left to avenge that father, and the just vengeance of this son the treacherous Coligni had yet to feel. We have seen, that peace had taken place between the French King and his rebellious subjects; but, Coligni had all along discovered that his treacherous designs only slept. The King was making a progress through the kingdom about four years after the pacification; a plot was formed by Coligni and his associates to kill or seize him; but by riding fourteen hours, without getting off his horse, and without food or drink, he escaped, and got safe to Paris. Another civil war soon broke out, followed by another pacification; but, such had been the barbarities committed on both sides, that there could be, and was, no real forgiveness. The Protestants had been full as sanguinary as the Catholics; and, which has been remarked even by their own historians, their conduct was frequently, not to say uniformly, characterised by plundering and by hypocrisy and perfidy, unknown to their enemies.

291. During this pacification, Coligni had, by the deepest dissimulation, endeavoured to worm himself into favour with the young King, and upon the occasion of a marriage between the King's sister and the young King of Navarre (afterwards the famous Henry IV.), Coligni, who, Condé being now dead, was become the chief of his sect, came to Paris, with a company of his Protestant adherents, to partake in the celebration, and that, too, at the King's invitation. After he had been there a day or two, some one shot at him, in the street, with a blunderbuss, and wounded him in two or three places, but not dangerously. His partisans ascribed this to the young Duke of Guise, though no proof has ever been produced in support of the assertion. They, however, got about their leaders and threatened revenge, as was very natural. Taking this for the ground of their justification, the Court resolved to anticipate the blow; and, on Sunday, the 24th of August, 1572, it being St. BARTHOLOMEW's day, they put their design in execution. There was great difficulty in prevailing upon the young King to give his consent; but, at last, by the representations and entreaties of his mother, those of the Duke of Anjou, his brother, and those of the Duke of Guise, he was prevailed upon. The dreadful orders were given; at the appointed moment the signal was made; the Duke of Guise with a band of followers rushed to and broke open the house of Coligni, whose dead body was soon thrown out of the window into the street. The people of Paris, who mortally hated the Protestants, and who could not have forgotten Coligni's having put the English in possession of Dieppe and Havre; who could not have forgotten, that, while the old enemy of France was thus again brought into the country by Coligni and his Protestants, this same traitor and his sect had basely assassinated that brave nobleman, the late Duke of Guise, who had driven the English from their last hold, Calais, and who had been assassinated at the very moment when he was endeavouring to drive this old enemy from Havre, into which this Coligni and his sect had brought that enemy: the people of Paris could not but remember these things, and remembering them they could not but hold Coligni and his sect in detestation indescribable. Besides this, there were few of them some one or more of whose relations had not perished, or suffered in some way or other, from the plunderings, or butcheries, of these marauding and murdering Calvinists, whose creed taught them, that good works were unavailing, and that no deeds, however base or bloody, could bar their way to salvation. These "Protestants," as they were called, bore no more resemblance to Protestants of the present day, than the wasp bears a resemblance to the bee. That name then was, and it was justly, synonymous with banditti; that is, robber and murderer; and the persons bearing it had been, by becoming the willing tool of every ambitious rebel, a greater scourge to France than foreign war, pestilence and famine united.

292. Considering these things, and, taking into view, that the people, always ready to suspect even beyond the limits of reason, heard the cry of "Treason" on all sides, is it any wonder that they fell upon the followers of Coligni, and that they spared none of the sect that they were able to destroy? When we consider these things, and especially when, we see the son of the assassinated Duke of Guise lead the way, is it not a most monstrous violation of truth to ascribe this massacre to the principles of the Catholic religion? With equal justice might we ascribe the act of BELLINGHAM (who sent for his Church Prayer-book the moment he was lodged in Newgate) to the principles of the Church of England. No one has ever been base and impudent enough to do this; why, then, are there men so base and impudent as to ascribe this French massacre to Catholic principles?

293. The massacre at Paris very far exceeded the wishes of the court; and, orders were instantly despatched to the great towns in the provinces to prevent similar scenes. Such scenes took place, however, in several places; but, though, by some Protestant writers, the whole number of persons killed, has been made to amount to 100,000, an account, published in 1582, and made up from accounts collected from the ministers in the different towns, made the number, for all France, amount to only 786 persons!

Dr. LINGARD (Note T. Vol. V.), with his usual fairness, says, "if we double this number, we shall not be far from the real amount." The Protestant writers began at 100,000; then fell to 70,000; then to 30,000; then to 20,000; then to 15,000; and, at last, to 10,000! All in round numbers! One of them, in an hour of great indiscretion, ventured upon obtaining returns of names from the ministers themselves; and, then, out came the 786 persons in the whole!

294. A number truly horrible to think of; but a number not half so great as that of those English Catholics whom "good Queen Bess" had, even at this time (the 14th year of her reign), caused to be ripped up, racked till the bones came out of their sockets, or caused to be dispatched, or to die, in prison, or in exile; and this, too, observe, not for rebellions, treasons, robberies and assassinations, like those of Coligni and his followers; but, simply and solely for adhering to the religion of their and her fathers, which religion she had openly practised for years, and to which religion she had most solemnly sworn that she sincerely belonged! The annals of hypocrisy conjoined with impudence afford nothing to equal her behaviour upon the occasion of the St. BARTHOLOMEW. She was daily racking people nearly to death to get secrets from them; she was daily ripping the bowels out of women as well as men for saying, or hearing, that mass, for the celebration of which the churches of England had been erected; she was daily mutilating, racking, and butchering her own innocent and conscientious subjects; and yet, she and her profligate courtwomen, when the French ambassador came with the King of France's explanation of the cause of the massacre, received him in deep mourning, and with all the marks of disapprobation. But, when she remonstrated with her "good "brother," the King of France, and added her hope that he would be indulgent to his Protestant subjects, her hypocrisy carried her a little too far; for the Queen-Mother, in her answer to "good Bess," observed, that, as to this matter, her son could not take a safer guide than his "good sister of England"; and that, while, like her, he forced no man's conscience; like her he was resolved to suffer no man to practise any religion but that which he himself practised. The French Queen-Mother was still short of "good Betsy's" mark; for she not only punished the practice of all religion but her own, she, moreover, punished people for not practising her religion; though she herself was a notorious apostate, and that, too, from motives as notoriously selfish. '

295. But, there is a tail-piece, which most admirably elucidates "good Betsy's" sincerity upon this memorable occasion, and also that same quality in her which induced her to profess that she wished to live and die a virgin Queen. The Parliament and her Ministers, anxious for an undisputed succession, and anxious also to keep out the Scotch branch of the royal family. urged her, several times, to marry. She always rejected their advice. Her "virgin" propensity led her to prefer that sort of intercourse with men, which I need not more particularly allude to. Her amours with LEICESTER, of whom we shall see enough by-and-by, were open and notorious, and have been most amply detailed by many Protestant historians, some of whom have been clergymen of the Church of England; it is, moreover, well known, that these amours became the subject of a play, acted in the reign of Charles II. She was now, at the time of St. Bartholomew, in the, 39th year of her age; and she was, as she long had been, leading with Leicester the life that I have alluded to. Ten years afterwards, whether from the advanced age of Leicester, or from some other cause, the "virgin" propensity seemed, all of a sudden, to quit "good Betsy"; she became bent on wedlock; and, being now forty-nine years of age, there was, to be sure, no time to be lost in providing an hereditary successor to her throne. She had in the 13th year of her reign, assented to an Act that was passed, which secured the crown to her "natural issue," by which any bastard that she might have by any body, became heir to the throne; and it was, by the, same Act, made high treason to deny that such issue was heir to it. This Act, which is still in the Statute-Book, 13 Eliz. chap. 1. s. 2., is a proof of the most hardened profligacy that ever was witnessed in woman, and it is surprising, that such a mark of apparent national abjectness and infamy should have been suffered to remain in black and white to this day. However, at forty-nine "good Betsy" resolved to lead a married life; and, as her savage father, whom she so much resembled, always looked out for a young wife, so "good virgin Betsy" looked out for a young husband; and, in order to convince the world of the sincerity of her horror at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, who should she fix on as a companion for life, who should she want to take to her arms, but the Duke of ANJOU, brother of Charles IX., and one of the perpetrators of those bloody deeds, on account of which she and the court ladies, all of her own stamp, had gone into mourning! The Duke was not handsome; but, he had what the French call la beauté da diable: he was young: only 28 years of age; and her old paramour LEICESTER, was now fifty! Betsy, though well stricken in years herself, had still a "colt's tooth." Her Ministers and the nation, who saw all the dangers of such a match to the independence of their country, protested against it most vehemently, and finally deterred her from it; but, a gentleman of Lincoln's inn, who had written and published a pamphlet against the marriage, was prosecuted, and had his right hand chopped off for this public-spirited effort in assisting to save England from the ruin about to be brought upon it for the mere gratification of the appetite of a gross, libidinous, nasty, shameless old woman. It was said of her monster of a father, who began the "Reformation," that "he spared no man in his anger, and no woman in his lust:" the very same, in substance, with a little change of the terms, might be said of this his monster of a daughter, who completed that "Reformation;" and, something approaching to the same degree of wickedness might be justly ascribed to almost every one who acted a conspicuous part in bringing about that, to England, impoverishing and degrading event.

296. Before we come to the three other great transactions of the long reign of this wicked woman, her foul murder of MARY STUART, Queen of Scotland; her war with Spain; and her scourging of Ireland, which unhappy country still bears the marks of her scorpion lash; before we come to these, it will be necessary to make ourselves acquainted with the names and characters of some of her principal advisers and co-operators; because, unless we do this, we shall hardly be able to comprehend many things, which we ought, nevertheless, to carry along clearly in our minds.

297. LEICESTER was her favourite, both in council and in the field. Doctor HEYLIN (History of the Reformation. Elizabeth, p. 168) describes him in these words: "Sir ROBERT DUDLEY, the second son of the Duke of Northumberland" (the odious traitor executed in the last reign), "she made, soon after she came to the throne, Lord Denbeigh and Earl of LEICESTER, having before made him her Master of Horse, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and a Knight of the Garter; and she now gave him the fair manor of Denbeigh, with more gentlemen owing suit and service to it than any other in England in the hands of a subject, adding even to this the goodly castle and manor of Kenilworth. Advanced to this height, he engrossed unto himself the disposing of all offices in court and state, and of all preferments in the church, proving in fine so unappeasable in his malice, and so insatiable in his lusts, so sacrilegious in his rapines, so false in promises, and so treacherous in point of trust, and finally so destructive of the lives and properties of particular persons, that his little finger lay far heavier on the English subjects, than the loins of all the favourites of the two last Kings." And, mind, those "two Kings" were the plundering and confiscating Henry VIII. and Edward VI.! "And, that his monstrous vices might either be connived at, or not complained of, he cloaks them with a seeming zeal for true religion, and made himself the head of the Puritan faction, who spared no pains in setting forth his praises; nor was he wanting to caress them after such manner as he found most agreeable to these holy hypocrites, using no other language in his speech and letters than the Scripture phrase, in which he was as dexterous as if he had received the same inspirations as the sacred penmen." We must bear in mind, that this character is drawn by a Doctor of the Church of England (Betsy's own Church), in a work, dedicated by permission to King Charles II. She, beyond all doubt, meaned to marry Leicester, who had, as all the world believed, murdered his own wife to make way for the match. She was prevented from marrying him by the reports from her ambassadors of what was said about this odious proceeding in foreign courts, and also by the remonstrances of her other ministers. HIGGONS, an historian of distinguished talent and veracity, states distinctly, that Leicester murdered his first wife for the purpose of marrying the Queen. He afterwards married, secretly, a second wife, and when she, upon his wanting to marry a third, refused to be divorced, he poisoned her; at least so said a publication, called Leicester's Republic, put forth in 1568. Yet, after all these things, this man, or, rather, this monster, continued to possess all his power and his emoluments, and all his favour with "the virgin Queen," to the last day of his life, which ended in 1588, after thirty years of plundering and oppressing the people of England. This was a " reformer" of religion, truly worthy of being enrolled with Henry VIII., Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, and "good Queen Bess."

298. Sir WILLIAM CECIL was her next man. He was her Secretary of State; but, she afterwards made him a lord, under the title of Burleigh, and also made him Lord Treasurer. He had been a Protestant in the reign of Edward the Sixth, when he was Secretary, first under the Protector SOMERSET, who, when Dudley overpowered him, was abandoned by CECIL, who took to the latter, and was the very man that drew up the treasonable instrument, by which Edward, on his death- bed, disinherited his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Pardoned for his treason by MARY, he became a most zealous Catholic, and was, amongst others, a volunteer to go over to Brussels to conduct Cardinal POLE to England. But, the wind having changed, he became Protestant again, and Secretary of State to "good Betsy," who never cared anything about the character or principles of those she employed, so that they did but answer her selfish ends. This CECIL, who was a man of extraordinary abilities, and of still greater prudence and cunning, was the chief prop of her throne for nearly forty of the forty-three years of her reign. He died in 1598, in the 77th year of his age; and, if success in unprincipled artifice; if fertility in cunning devices; if the obtaining of one's end without any regard to the means; if, in this pursuit, sincerity be to be set at nought, and truth, law, justice, and mercy, be to be trampled under foot; if, so that you succeed in your end, apostacy, forgery, perjury, and the shedding of innocent blood be to be thought nothing of, this CECIL was certainly the greatest statesman that ever lived. Above all others he was confided in by the Queen, who, when he grew old, and feeble in his limbs, used to make him sit in her presence, saying, in her accustomed masculine and emphatical style: "I have you, not for your weak legs, but for your strong head."

299. FRANCIS WALSINGHAM became Secretary of State after Cecil; but, he had been employed by the Queen almost from the beginning of her reign. He had been her ambassador at several courts, had negotiated many treaties, was an exceedingly prudent and cunning man, and wholly destitute of all care about means, so that he carried his end. He was said to have fifty-three agents and eighteen real spies in foreign courts. He was a most bitter and inflexible persecutor of the Catholics; but, before his death, which took place in 1590, he had to feel himself a little of that tyranny and ingratitude, and that want of mercy, which he had so long mainly assisted to make so many innocent persons feel.

300. PAULET ST. JOHN, Marquis of Winchester. This was not a statesman. He, like many more, was a backer-on. He presided at trials; and did other such-like work, These are unworthy of particular notice here, and PAULET is named merely as a specimen of the character and conduct of the makers and supporters of the famous "Reformation" This PAULET (the first noble of the family) was, at his outset, Steward to the Bishop of Winchester, in the time of Bishop Fox, in the reign of Henry VII. He was, by old brutal Harry VIII., made Treasurer of the King's household, and, zealously entering into all the views of that famous "Defender of the Faith," he was made Lord St. John. He was one of those famous executors, who were to carry into effect the will of Henry VIII. Though Harry had enjoined on these men to maintain his sort of half Catholic religion, PAULET now, in the reign of Edward, became a zealous Protestant, and continued to enjoy all his offices and emoluments, besides getting some new grants from the further spoils of the church and poor. Seeing that Dudley was about to supplant Somerset, which he finally did, Paulet joined Dudley, and actually presided at the trial and passed sentence of death on Somerset, "whose very name," says DR. MILNER, "had, a little more than two years before, "caused him to tremble." Dudley made him, first Earl of Wiltshire and then Marquis of Winchester, and gave him the palace of the Bishop of Winchester at Bishop's Waltham, together with other spoils of that Bishopric, When MARY came, which was almost directly afterwards, he became once more a Catholic, and continued to hold and enjoy all his offices and emoluments. Not only a Catholic, but a most furious Catholic, and the most active and vigorous of all the persecutors of those very Protestants, with whom he had made it his boast to join in communion only about two years before! We have heard a great deal about the cruelties of the "bloody Bishop BONNER"; but, nobody ever tells us, that this Marquis of Winchester, as President of the Council, repeatedly reprimanded Bonner, in very severe terms, for want of zeal and diligence in sending Protestants to the stake! Fox says, that "of the Council, the most active in these prosecutions was the Marquis of Winchester," But, now, Mary being dead, and Elizabeth being resolved to extirpate the Catholics, PAULET instantly became a Protestant again, a most cruel persecutor of the Catholics, president on several commissions for condemning them to death, and he was in such high favour with "good Bess," that she said, were he not so very old as he was, she would prefer him, as a husband, to any man in her dominions. He died in the 13th year of her reign, at the age of 97, having kept in place luring the reigns of five sovereigns, and having made four changes in his religion to correspond with the changes made by four out of the five. A French historian says, that Paulet being asked, how he had been able to get through so many storms not only unhurt, but rising all the while, answered, "En étant un saule, et non pas un chêne": "by being a willow, and not an oak." Our present Prime Minister, who, in 1822, while collections were making for the starving Irish, ascribed the distresses of the country to a surplus of food, seems also to be of this willow kind; for, with the exception of about fifteen months, he has been in place ever since he was a man. He was under Pitt the first time; Pitt went out, but he stuck in with Addington; Addington went out, but he stuck in again with Pitt a second time; he was pushed quite out by the "Whigs"; but in he came again with the Duke of Portland; he stuck in with Percival; and, at last, he got to the top, where he will remain for his natural life, unless the paper-money storm should tear even "willows" up by the roots. What this Bible-Saint would have done, if there had been a change of religion at every change of ministry, I shall not pretend to say.

301. Such were the tools with which "good Bess" had to work; and we have now to see in what manner they all worked with regard to MARY STUART, the celebrated and unfortunate Queen of the Scotch. Without going into her history, it is impossible to make it clearly appear how Betsy was able to establish the Protestant religion in England in spite of the people of England; for it was, in fact, in spite of almost the whole of the people of all ranks and degrees. She actually butchered, that is to say, ripped up the bellies of some hundreds of them; she put many and many hundreds of them to the rack; she killed, in various ways, many thousands; and she reduced to absolute beggary as many as made the population of one of the smaller counties of England; to say nothing, at present, of that great slaughter-house, Ireland. It is impossible for us to see how she came to be able to do this; how she came to be able to get the Parliament to do the many monstrous things that they did; how they, without any force, indeed, came to do such barefaced things, as to provide that any bastard that she might have should inherit the throne, and to make it high treason to deny that such bastard was rightful heir to the throne. It is impossible to account for her being able to exist in England after that act of indelible infamy, the murder of Mary Stuart. It is impossible for us to see these things in their causes, unless we make ourselves acquainted with the history of Mary, and thereby show how the English were influenced at this most interesting period, the transactions of which were so decisive as to the fate of the Catholic religion in England.

302. MARY STUART, born in 1542 (nine years after the birth of Elizabeth), was daughter of James V. King of Scotland, and of Mary of Lorraine, sister of that brave and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Guise, who, as we have seen, was so basely murdered by the vile traitor Coligni. Mary Stuart's father died when she was only eight days old; so that she became the reigning Queen of Scotland while in the cradle. Her father (James V.) was the son of James IV. and Margaret, the eldest sister of the old savage Henry VIII. This "Defender of the Faith" wished Mary Stuart to be betrothed to his son Edward, and by that means to add Scotland to the dominions of England. The family of Guise were too deep for the old "Defender." Mary Stuart (a Regency having been settled in Scotland) was taken to France, where she had her education, and. where her heart seemed to remain all her life. The French, in order to secure Scotland to themselves, as a constant ally against England, got Mary to be betrothed to Francis, Dauphin of France, son and successor of Henry II. King of France. She, at the age of seventeen years, was married to him, who was two years younger than herself, in 1 558, the very year that Elizabeth mounted the throne of England.

303. That very thing now took place which old Harry had been so much afraid of, and which, indeed, had been the dread of his councillors and his people. Edward was dead, Queen Mary was dead, and as Elizabeth was a bastard, both in law and in fact, Mary Stuart was the heiress to the throne of England; and she was now the wife of the immediate heir to the King of France. Nothing could be so fortunate for Elizabeth. The nation had no choice but one: to take her and uphold her; or, to become a great province of France. If Elizabeth had died at this time, or had died before her sister Mary, England must have become degraded thus; or, it must have created a new dynasty, or become a republic. Therefore it was, that all men, whether Catholics or Protestants, were for the placing and supporting of Elizabeth on the throne; and for setting aside Mary Stuart, though unquestionably she was the lawful heiress to the crown of England..

304. As if purposely to add to the weight of this motive, of itself weighty enough, Henry II, King of France, died in eight months after Elizabeth's accession; so that Mary Stuart was now, 1559, Queen Consort of France, Queen of Scotland, and called herself Queen of England; she and her husband bore the arms of England along with those of France and Scotland; and the POPE had refused to acknowledge the right of Elizabeth to the English throne. Thus, as old Harry had foreseen, when he made his will setting aside the Scotch branch of his family, was England actually transferred to the dominion of France, unless the nation set at nought the decision of the POPE, and supported Elizabeth.

305. This was the real cause of Elizabeth's success in her work of extirpating the Catholic religion. According to the decision of the head of the Catholic Church, Elizabeth was an usurper; if she were an usurper, she ought to be set aside; if she were set aside, Mary Stuart and the King of France became Queen and King of England; if they became Queen and King of England, England became a mere province, ruled by Scotchmen and Frenchmen, the bare idea of which was quite sufficient to put every drop of English blood in motion. All men, therefore, of all ranks in life, whether Protestants or Catholics, were for Elizabeth. To preserve her life became an object dear to all her people; and, though her cruelties did, in one or two instances, arm Catholics against her life, as a body, they were as loyal to her as her Protestant subjects; and, even when her knife was approaching their bowels, they, without a single exception, declared her to be their lawful Queen. Therefore, though the decision of the POPE was perfectly honest and just in itself, that decision was, in its obvious and inevitable consequences, rendered, by a combination of circumstances, so hostile to the greatness, the laws, the liberties, and the laudable pride of Englishmen, that they were reduced to the absolute necessity of setting his decision at nought, or, of surrendering their very name as a nation, But, observe, by- the-bye, this dilemma and all the dangers and sufferings that it produced, arose entirely out of the "Reformation." Had the savage old Harry listened to Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, there would have been no obstacle to the marrying of his son with Mary Stuart; and, besides, he would have had no children, whose legitimacy could have been disputed, and, in all human probability, several children to be, in lawful succession, heirs to the throne of England.

306. Here we have the great, and, indeed, the only cause, of Elizabeth's success in rooting out the Catholic religion. Her people were, ninety-nine hundredths of them, Catholics. They had shown this clearly at the accession of her sister Mary. Elizabeth was as great a tyrant as ever lived; she was the most cruel of women; her disgusting amours were notorious; yet, she was the most popular sovereign that had ever reigned since the days of Alfred; and we have thousands of proofs, that her people, of all ranks and degrees, felt a most anxious interest in everything affecting her life or her health. Effects like this do not come from ordinary causes. Her treatment of great masses of her people, her almost unparalleled cruelties, her flagrant falsehoods, her haughtiness, her insolence and her lewd life, were naturally calculated to make her detested, and to make her people pray for any thing that might rid them of her. But, they saw nothing but her between them and subjection to foreigners, a thing which they had always most laudably held in the greatest abhorrence. Hence it was, that the Parliament, when they could not prevail upon her to marry, passed an Act to make any bastard (" natural issue") of hers lawful heir to the throne. -- WITAKER (a clergyman of the Church of England) calls this a most infamous act. It was, in itself, an infamous act; but, that abjectness in the nation, which it now, at first sight, appears to denote, disappears, when we consider well what I have stated above. To be preserved from Mary Stuart, from the mastership of the Scotch and the French, was, at that time, the great object of anxiety with the English nation. HUME, whose head always runs upon something hostile to the Catholic religion, ascribes Elizabeth's popularity to the dislike that her people had to what he calls the "Romish superstition." WITAKER ascribes the extirpation of the Catholic religion to the choice of her people, and not to her. The Catholic writers ascribe it to her cruelties; and they are right so far; but, they do not, as I have endeavoured to do, show how it came to pass that those numerous and unparalleled cruelties came to be perpetrated with impunity, to her and her Ministers. The question with the nation was, in short, the Protestant religion, Elizabeth, and independence; or, the Catholic religion, Mary Stuart, and subjection to foreigners. They decided for the former, and hence all the calamities, and the final tragical end of the latter lady.

307. MARY STUART was, in the year 1559, as we have seen in paragraph 303, on the highest pinnacle of earthly glory, Queen Consort of France, Queen regnant of Scotland, Queen, in lawful right, of England, and was, besides, deemed one of the most beautiful women in the whole world. Never was fall like that of this Queen. Her husband, Francis II., died seventeen months after his accession, and was succeeded by Charles IX., then not more than three years old. Her husband's mother, CATHERINE DE MEDICI, soon convinced her, that to be any thing, she must return to Scotland. To Scotland she returned with a heavy heart, anticipating very little quiet in a country which was plunged in all the horrors of the "Reformation" even more deeply than England had been. Her long minority, together with her absence from her dominions, had given rise to contending factions of nobles who alternately triumphed over each other, and who kept the country in a state of almost incessant civil war, accompanied with deeds of perfidy and ferocity, of which there is scarcely any parallel to be found in history, ancient or modern. Added to this was the work of the new Saints, who had carried the work of "Reformation" much further than in England. The famous JOHN KNOX, an apostate monk, whom Dr. Johnson calls the "Ruffian of the Reformation," was leader of the "holy hypocrites" (as Dr. Heylin calls them) in Scotland. Mary, who had been bred a Catholic, and who had almost been deified in the court of France, was not likely to lead a happy life amongst people like these.

308. All this, however, Elizabeth and her Ministers and (for let us have no disguise) the English people, saw with great and ungenerous satisfaction. There was, for the present, at least, an end to the danger from the union of Scotland with France. But, Mary Stuart might marry again. There were the powerful family of Guise, her near relations; and she was still a formidable person, especially to Elizabeth. If Mary had been a man, Betsy would certainly have married her; but here was a difficulty too great even for Cecil to overcome. The English Queen soon began to stir up factions and rebellions against her cousin; and, indeed, by her intrigues with the religious factions and with the aspiring nobles, became, in a short time, with the aid of her money (a drug of infallible effect with the Scotch reformers), more the real ruler of Scotland than poor Mary was. She had, for the greater part of her whole reign, always a band of one faction or the other at, or about, her court. Her object was to keep Mary from possessing any real power, and to destroy her, if by any means short of detectable murder, she could effect that purpose.

309. In 1565, about three years after the return of Mary to Scotland, she was married to Henry Stuart, Earl of DARNLEY, her cousin, in which she over-reached the Queen of England, who, fearing that a visible heir to her own throne (as it actually happened) might come from this marriage, took desperate measures to prevent it; but, those measures came too late. Darnley, though young and handsome, proved to be a very foolish and disagreeable husband, and he was a Protestant into the bargain. She soon treated him with great contempt, suffered him to have no real authority, and, in fact, as good as banished him from her court and disowned him. Darnley sought revenge. He ascribed his ill-treatment to Mary's being under the advice and control of her Catholic favourites, and particularly to the advice of Rizzio, a foreigner, her private secretary. Several malcontent "reformed" nobles joined with Darnley in agreeing to assist him in the assassinating of Rizzio, taking a bond from him to protect them against evil consequences. Mary was sitting at supper with some ladies of her court, Rizzio and other servants being in waiting, when the conspirators rushed in. Darnley went to the back of the Queen's chair; Rizzio, seeing their object, ran to the Queen for protection; she, who was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, endeavoured by entreaties and screams, to save his life. The ruffians stabbed him at her feet, and then dragged him out and covered his body with wounds.

310. This black and bloody transaction, for which not one of the assistants of Darnley was ever punished, was, in all probability, the cause, the chief cause, of the just, though illegal killing of Darnley himself. The next year after the murder of Rizzio, 1567, Mary having, in the meanwhile, brought forth a son (afterwards our James I., of half POPE and half Puritanical memory), Darnley was taken ill at Glasgow. The Queen went to visit him, treated him with great kindness, and, when he became better in health, brought him back to Edinburgh; but, for the sake of better air, lodged him in a house, at some distance from other houses, out of the town, where she visited him daily, and where, in a room immediately under his, she slept every night. But, on the night of the 10th of February (1567), she having notified it to him, slept at her palace, having promised to be present at the marriage of two of the attendants of her court, which marriage took place, and at which she was present: on this very night, the King's lodging-house was blown up by powder, and his dead body cast into an adjoining piece of ground! If the powder had given this base and bloody man time for thought, he would, perhaps, have reflected on the stabs he had given Rizzio in spite of the screams of a swooning and pregnant wife.

311. Now it was that the great and life-long calamities of this unfortunate Queen began. She had been repeatedly insulted and even imprisoned by the different factions, who, aided and abetted by the English Queen, alternately oppressed both her and her people; but, she was now to lead the life and die the death of a malefactor. It has been proved beyond all doubt, that the Earl of BOTHWEL, with other associates, bound in a "bloody bond," murdered Darnley. This was openly alleged, and, in placards about the streets, it was averred that Mary was in the plot. No positive proof has ever been produced to make good this charge; but, the subsequent conduct of the Queen was of a nature very suspicious. I shall simply state such facts as are admitted on all hands; namely, that Bothwel had, before the murder, been in great favour with the Queen, and possessed power that his talents and character did not entitle him to; that, after the murder, he was acquitted of it by a mock trial, which she might have prevented; that, on the 24th of April (53 days after the murder) she was, on her return from a visit to her infant son, seized by Bothwel at the head of 3,000 horsemen, and carried to his castle of Dunbar; that before she left the castle, on the 3d of May, she agreed to marry him; that he had a wife then alive; that a divorce, both Protestant and Catholic, in. one court for adultery and in the other for consanguinity, took place between Bothwel and his wife, in the space of six days; that, on the 12th of May, Bothwel led the Queen to the Sessions House, where, in the presence of the judges, she pardoned him for the violence committed on her person; that on the 15th of May, she openly married him; that the French Ambassador refused to appear at the ceremony; and that Mary refused, in this case, to listen to the entreaties of the family of Guise.

312. Scores of volumes have been written, some in sup port of the assertion that Mary was consenting to the murder of her husband; and others in support of the negative of that proposition. Her enemies brought forward letters and sonnets, which they alleged to have been written by Mary to Bothwel, previous to her husband's murder. Her friends deny the authenticity of these; and I think they make their denial good. WITAKER, an Englishman, a Rector in the Church of England, mind; a man, too, who has written much against the Catholic religion, defends Mary against the charge of having consented, or having known of the intention, to murder her husband. But, nobody can deny, that she was carried off by Bothwel; that she, being at perfect liberty, pardoned him for that; and that she immediately married him, though it excited horror in the family of Guise, whom she had always heretofore listened to with the docility of a dutiful daughter.

313. This gross conduct, almost equal, in power of exciting odium, to the murder of such a wretch as Darnley, was speedily followed by tremendous punishment. A part of her subjects, armed against her, defeated Bothwel, who was compelled to flee the country, and who, in a few years afterwards, died in prison in Denmark. She herself be came a prisoner in the hands of her own subjects; and she escaped from their prison walls only to come and end her life within those of Elizabeth, her wily and deadly enemy.

314. The rebels were headed by the Earl of MURRAY, a natural son of Mary's father, and to her a most unnatural and cruel brother. He had imprisoned and deposed the Queen, had had her son crowned at thirteen months old, and had had himself elected Regent of the Kingdom. Murray had begun his life of manhood, not only as a Catholic, but as an ecclesiastic. He was prior of St. Andrew's; but, finding that he could gain by apostacy, he, like Knox, apostatized, and of course, broke his oath; and WITAKER says of him, that though "he was guilty of the most monstrous crimes, yet he was denominated a good man by the reformers of those days." His great object was to extirpate the Catholic religion, as the best means of retaining his power, and, being also a "bold liar" and a man that stuck at no forgery, no perjury, no bloody deed, that answered his purpose, he was a man after "good Queen Bess's" own heart.

315. She, however, at first affected to disapprove of his conduct, threatened to march an army to compel him to restore the Queen, gave the Queen positive assurances of her support, and invited her to take, in case of need, shelter, and receive protection, in England. In evil hour Mary, confiding in these promises and invitations, took, contrary to the prayers of her faithful friends, on their knees, the fatal resolution to throw herself into the jaws of her who had so long thirsted for her blood. At the end of three days she found that she had escaped to a prison. Her prison was, indeed, changed two or three times; but a prisoner she remained for nineteen long years; and was, at last, most savagely murdered for an imputed crime, which she neither did nor could commit.

316. During these nineteen years, Elizabeth was intriguing with Mary's rebellious subjects, tearing Scotland to pieces by means of her corruption spread amongst the different bands of traitors, and inflicting on a people, who had never offended her, every species of evil that a nation can possibly endure.

317. To enumerate, barely to enumerate, all, or one half, of the acts of hypocrisy, perfidy, meanness, and barbarity that "good Bess" practised against this unfortunate Queen, who was little more than twenty-five years of age when she was inveigled within the reach of her harpy claws; barely to enumerate these would require a space exceeding that of this whole Letter. While she affected to disapprove of Murray, she instigated him to accuse his queen and sister; while she pretended to assert the inviolability of sovereigns, she appointed a commission to try Mary for her conduct in Scotland; while she was vowing vengeance against the Scotch traitors for their rebellious acts against her cousin, she received, as presents from them, a large part of the jewels which Mary had received from her first husband, the King of France; and when, at last, she was compelled to declare Mary innocent of having consented to the murder, she not only refused to restore her, agreeably to her solemn promise repeatedly made, but refused also to give her her liberty, and, moreover, made her imprisonment more close, rigorous and painful than ever. Murray, her associate in perfidy, was killed in 1570 by a man whose estate he had unjustly confiscated; but, traitor after traitor succeeded him, every traitor in her pay, and Scotland bleeding all the while at every pore, because her cruel policy taught her that it was necessary to her own security. WITAKER produces a crowd of authorities to prove, that she endeavoured to get Mary's infant son into her hands, and that having failed in that, she endeavoured to cause him to be taken off by poison!

318. At last, in 1587, the tigress brought her long suffering victim to the block! Those means of dividing and destroying, which she had, all her life long, been employing against others, began now to be employed against herself, and she saw her life in constant danger. She thought and, perhaps, rightly, that these machinations against her arose from a desire in the Catholics (and a very natural desire it was) to rid the world of her and her horrid barbarities, and to make way for her Catholic, lawful successor, Mary; so that, now, nothing short of the death of this Queen seemed to her a competent guarantee for her own life. In order to open the way for the foul deed that had been resolved on, an Act of Parliament was passed, making it death for any one who was within the realm to conspire with others for the purpose of invading it, or, for the purpose of procuring the death of the Queen. A seizure was made of Mary's papers. What was wanting in reality was, as WITAKER. has proved, supplied by forgery, "a crime," says he, "which with shame to us, it must be confessed, belonged peculiarly to the Protestants." But, what right had Bess to complain of any hostile intention on the part of Mary? She was a queen as well as herself. She was held in prison by force; not having been made prisoner in war; but having been perfidiously entrapped and forcibly detained. Every thing had been done against her short of spilling her blood: and, had she not a clear and indisputable right to make war upon, and to destroy, her remorseless enemy, by all the means within her power? And, as to a trial, where was the law, or usage, that authorised one queen to invite another into her dominions, then imprison her, and then bring her to trial for alleged offences against her?

319. When the mode of getting rid of Mary was debated in "good Bess's" council: LEICESTER was for poison; others were for hardening her imprisonment, and killing her in that way; but WALSINGHAM was for death by means of a trial, a legal proceeding being the only one that would silence the tongues of the world. A commission was accordingly appointed, and Mary was tried and condemned; and that, too, on the evidence of papers, a part, at least, of which, were barefaced forgeries, all of which were copies, and the originals of none of which were attempted to be produced! The sentence of death was pronounced in October. For four months the savage "good Queen Bess," was employed in devising plans for causing her victim to be assassinated, in order to avoid the odium of being herself the murderer! This is proved by WITAKER beyond all possibility of doubt: but, though she had entrusted the keeping of Mary to two men, mortal enemies of the Catholics, they, though repeatedly applied to for the purpose, perseveringly refused. Having ordered her Secretary, Davison, to write to them on the subject, Sir AMIAS PAULET, one of the keepers, returned for answer, that he "was grieved at the motion made to him, that he offered his life and his property to the disposal of her Majesty; but absolutely refused to be concerned in the assassination of Mary." The other keeper, Sir DRUE DRURY, did the same. When she read this answer, she broke out into reproaches against them, complained of the " daintiness of their consciences," talked scornfully of the niceness of such precise fellows," and swore that she would "have it done without their assistance." At the end, however, of four months of unavailing efforts to find men base and bloody enough to do the deed, she resorted to her last shift, the legal murder, which was committed on her hapless victim on the 8th of February, 1587, a day of everlasting infamy to the memory of the English Queen, "who, says WITAKER, had no sensibilities of tenderness, and no sentiments of generosity; who looked not forward to the awful verdict of history, and who shuddered not at the infinitely more awful doom of God. I blush as an Englishman to think that this was done by an English Queen, and one whose name I was taught to lisp in my infancy, as the honour of her sex, and the glory of our isle."

320. Ah! and thus was I taught; and thus have we all been taught. lt is surely then our duty to teach our children to know the truth. Talk of "answers" to me, indeed! Let them deny, if they can, that this she "Head of the Church," this maker of it, was a murderer, and wished to be an assassin, in cold blood.