Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter I · QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.

The precipitation with which Somerset, Cranmer, and Northumberland had attempted to carry out the Reformation, was thus followed by a natural recoil. Protestant theology had erected itself into a system of intolerant dogmatism, and had crowded the gaols with prisoners who were guilty of no crime but Nonconformity; it had now to reap the fruits of its injustice, and was superseded till its teachers had grown wiser. The first parliament of Mary was indeed more Protestant, in the best sense of that word, than the statesmen and divines of Edward. While the House of Commons re-established the Catholic services, they decided, after long consideration, that no punishment should be inflicted on those who declined to attend those services.[164] There was to be no pope, no persecution, no restoration of the abbey lands—resolutions, all of them disagreeable to a reactionary court. On the Spanish marriage both Lords and Commons were equally impracticable. The Catholic noblemen—the Earls of Derby, Shrewsbury, Bath, and Sussex were in the interest of Courtenay. The chancellor had become attached to him in the Tower when they were fellow-prisoners there; and Sir Robert Rochester, Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Edward Waldegrave, the queen's tried and faithful officers of the household, went with the chancellor. Never, on any subject, was there greater unanimity in England than in the disapproval of Philip as a husband for the queen, and, on the 29th of October, the Lower House had a petition in preparation to entreat her to choose from among her subjects.