with much care, they suspended in the center a large picture of the "Padrona" of the navy, "Nuestra Senora del Carmine." Up went the altar at her feet, bedight as for a "fiesta," and when all was ready the great ship bell began to toll, calling us to the floating cathedral. The captain and his staff took the seats of honor, then the passengers of the three cabins, and the crew in orderly file. Two sailors bearing torches and an acolyte in spotless white accompanied the priest to the altar and mounted guard in motionless reverence while the awful mysteries were enacted. We seemed to be holding a triumphal procession of the "Sanguis Christi," and I thought of the many Corpus Christi processions on the green land with their exuberance of flowers, of chant, of in

cense, scarcely more beautiful not more impressive-than this one over the abyss. abyss. The tiny, silent Host, which, with its hidden might, was holding us poised over the dread, unfathomed deep, was lifted high above the smiling waters. And the blessed chalice, too, brimful of blood-red redeeming love!

And still the "Montevideo" glided on and all knelt in silent prayer, for on sea even the infidel has faith. And when, at the close of the great rite, we thanked the captain and expressed our unbounded admiration of the public act of faith, he smiled and answered: "This is nothing. Only wait till July 16th, the feast of the 'Padrona,' and then you will see solemnity."

"Volgame Dios, y Nuestra Senora del Carmine!"

Ο

IV

IN the next Sunday Bishop Gardiner preached at St. Paul's Cross the celebrated sermon in which he lamented in bitter terms his own conduct under Henry VIII, and exhorted all who had fallen through his means or in his company to rise with him and cling to the unity of the Catholic Church.

The title of "Supreme Head of the "Church" was abrogated from the crown. and a special embassy was sent to Rome composed of the Bishop of Ely, Sir Anthony Browne and Edward Carue, Doctor of Laws, to promise in the name of the King and Queen entire obedience to His Holiness and the Apostolic Chair.

The agitation and happy excitement of the great day of the restoration of religion had tried the strength of the Queen. Her health had been sinking since November set in, but, inspired by an illusive hope of an heir to the throne, she exerted herself to take part in the festivities of the court with more zest than usual. The bridal festivities, which had been deferred to Christmas, were carried out with great magnificence. The court was brilliant and gay, crowded with men whose names live in historythe Duke of Alva, in all the grace of manly beauty, the magnificent Fleming, Count Egmont, and his fellow countryman and patriot, Count Horn, the Spanish grandee, Ruy Gomez, afterwards prime-minister of Spain, and Philibert, Duke of Savoy, the suitor of Elizabeth and the future conqueror of St. Quintin. "Gentle Master Carden" invented masques and pageants for the amusement of the court, and it is interesting to read that a play called "Ire

land" was acted, and staged with attention to the costume of the country. There were "dresses made of 'grey carsey' like an Irishman's coat, with long plaits and orange frizado (frieze) for mantles. Thus at an earlier period than Shakespeare Irish characters had "* One possession of the English stage." wonders whether the "stage Irishman" of that day, was as grotesque as of late years he has been represented.

Queen Mary was a wife but for a few months when rumors reached her which proved that Don Philip of Spain was no saint, with all his observance of religious ceremonial. Broken health and a wellnigh broken heart, together with the disappointment of her hope of an heir, weighed upon her spirit, but the "sorsow's crown of sorrow" came when Philip, whom she loved, announced that he must return to Flanders. He had been summoned by his father, the Emperor Charles V, who, to the amazement of all Europe, had declared his intention of abdicating in favor of his son. It was. a summons that would admit of neither doubt nor delay on her husband's part, so Mary yielded to the necessity of the case and with a heavy heart accompanied him down the Thames to Greenwich.

After the departure of Philip, from whom she parted with passionate tears and lamentations, Mary's health failed completely. She suffered from a complication of "agonizing maladies.'

some little time she struggled to pay her usual attention to business of State, but it was more than she could accomplish, and she was seen no more at council or parliament.

It has been said that "with Mary's married life the independence of her

* Miss Strickland.

reign ceased; from whatever cause, either owing to her desperate state of health, or from her idea of wifely duty, Philip, whether absent or present, guided the English Government." To him, rather than to the Queen, may be attributed the cruelties of persecution with which hostile writers have credited her. Fuller, the historian of the Protestant Church, who lived too Mary's times to have been deceived, says: "She had been a worthy princess. if as little cruelty had been done under her as by her. She hated to equivocate and always was what was, without dissembling her judgment or conduct for fear or flattery."

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Fox, author of the "Book of Martyrs," calls Queen Mary “a woman every way excellent, while she followed her own inclinations." Noailles, the French ambassador, describes "the depth of melancholy" in which the Queen was sunk after Philip's departure, when she realized-poor wife!-that she was not loved, "but she is so virtuous and good a lady that she will conquer this adversity by the same means and remedy which she has found efficacious in an infinity of other tribulations which have been her aliment from her youth upwards, like her daily bread, when she saw her life, and even her honor, many times matter of dispute, and she found no enemies more bitter than her own father and brother."

Cambden Clarencieux, in his preface. to his "Life of Queen Elizabeth," mentions Queen Mary as "a princess never sufficiently to be commended of all men, for her pious and religious demeanor, her commiseration towards the poor, and her munificence and liberality towards the nobility and churchmen."

The character of Mary given by contemporaries, friend and enemy, Catholic and Protestant alike, was quite inconsistent with the cruel spirit of the persecutor. It was her lot to live in an age of religious intolerance, when to punish

erroneous opinions was deemed a duty by the leaders of every religious party, but it was never a tenet of Catholic faith. What has been designated persecution by Catholic sovereigns may be traced by the inquiring student of history to political expediency. It is bigotry, indeed, for Protestant writers to attach the epithet of "bloody" to Queen Mary's name, although the numbers who suffered in her reign were few in comparison to those in the time of Henry VIII and Edward, who preceded her, and not to be compared in number or cruelty to those under Elizabeth's.

The number of the victims of Mary Tudor's so-called persecution is given by Fox as two hundred and twenty-seven; but it is a fact worth recording, and one. not very generally known, that many whose names are inscribed in his "Book of Martyrs" died peaceably a natural death, and some were living long after its publication. Father Parsons, the Jesuit, who lived very near that time, after an accurate examination of Fox's account, has shown that "great abatements are to be made in what he sets forth as to the number, behavior and cause of the sufferers; that he has advanced many and manifest falsehoods and has made himself suspected of more." Which caused an eminent divine of the Protestant Church to pass this censure on him: "Where Fox produces records he may be credited, but as to other relations he was a very slender authority."

Dr. Milner, in his "Letters to a Prebendary," gives a list of names from Fox's book with the crimes for which some of the "martyrs" really suffered. One stabbed a priest at the altar at St. Margaret's, Westminster; another was executed for attacking Cardinal Prince Henry, afterwards King of Portugal, while officiating at the altar; others for sedition and for theft, while the names of idiots and lunatics are inserted and even repeated twice in order to swell the

list. Persecution for heresy is totally opposed to the spirit of the Catholic religion, and the Cardinal Legate and bishops succeeded in suppressing the least approach to it in nine out of the fourteen dioceses, one only suffering death in each of the five others, even in Lincoln, which was then the largest see in England.

The outrageous conduct of the Protestants made it impossible that the Government could overlook their proceedings. They preached rebellion publicly all through the land; declared that in obeying the Queen the people of England displeased God; that when that idolatrous woman came to the throne, Antichrist, with all his infections, came with her; and they prayed God for her death at a time, too, when England expected an heir to the throne.

This last offence had been so frequently committed that a law was passed which made it treason to pray for the death of the Queen; but, being persevered in, several of the preachers were thrown into prison, as they certainly would be if it had occurred in Queen Victoria's reign. To these "suffering saints" Bishop Hooper wrote the most consoling letters. Not satisfied, however, with "the sword of the spirit" they had recourse to the "arm of flesh," and a priest was fired at in the pulpit at St. Paul's Cross, and two others, royal chaplains, insulted and pelted with stones in the public streets.

The priest of whom Dr. Milner makes mention was giving Holy Communion. at St. Margaret's, Westminster, when he was hacked and cut with a "hanger" so that his blood was sprinkled over the chalice and the Holy of Holies. Ballads, pictures and plays were published which made a mockery of everything sacred. But the suppression of these crimes and disorders comes down to us under the guise of "persecution."

Mary Tudor's experience of "Reformers" presented to her mind such pictures

as (besides the persecution she herself endured) the Catholic bishops confined for years in dungeons; the ancient faith proscribed; the succession changed because she, the rightful heir, was a Catholic; an armed force resisting her authority; insurrections threatening her throne from the same party, and her religion insulted. She deemed it her obvious duty to order repressive measures to be enacted; but they were more general than particular, and not one instance can be produced against the Queen of persecution, properly socalled.

She was at this time, as we have said, suffering the extreme of ill health. Her head was swollen to an immense size; she often lay in a species of trance for hours, nay, for days, and was a prey to frequent attacks of violent hysteria. It is impossible that she could have taken any share in public business, and a great many of the executions for which her name has been branded with cruelty, took place, no doubt, without her knowledge or consent, and certainly without her royal signature, as the State papers can testify.

Bishop Gardiner has been ranked as next in "bloodthirsty cruelty" to the Queen. We shall content ourselves with again quoting a passage from Father Parsons, S. J., who gives his opinion of his character thus:

"Verily, I believe that if a man should .ask any good-natured Protestant that lived in Queen Mary's time, and hath both wit to judge and indifferency to speak the truth without passion, he will confess that no one great man in that Government was further off from blood and bloodiness, or from cruelty and revenge, than Bishop Gardiner, who was known to be a most tender-hearted and mild man in that behalf, inasmuch that it was sometimes, and by some great personages, objected to him for no small fault to be overfull of compassion in the office and charge that he bore (he was

Lord Chancellor); yea, to him especially it was imputed that none of the greatest and most known Protestants in Queen Mary's reign were ever called to account or put to trouble for religion."

Lingard tells us, that having once presided at the trial of some heretics who were condemned to the stake, he (Gardiner) ever afterwards continued to be absent, transferring his disagreeable duty to Bonner, Bishop of London.

A word about the five bishops who suffered death in Queen Mary's reign. Protestant writers have lauded them to the skies as models of virtue and holiness; martyrs to the "faith that was in them," steadfast champions of the Reformation, which they declare restored religion and morality, which had ceased to exist in the ages of faith until they were revived by the agency of Luther, Henry VIII, Cranmer, the Duke of Somerset and Queen Elizabeth!

It is quite certain that the character of these men has been disguised in a most astonishing degree by historians. Can it be possible that Protestants do not know that John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, was an apostate Cistercian monk who abandoned his religious vows and married? That Latimer, who is credited by his panegyrists with "perfect simplicity and honesty," dissembled his religion for twenty years, held the high office of bishop in a Church in which he did not believe, sent Catholics and Protestants alike to the stake for the opinions which he himself professed at different times, became the political tool of Seymour in bringing his brother, Lord Thomas, to the scaffold, and was guilty of high treason by taking part with Lady Jane Grey against the lawful sovereign, Queen Mary? It would be difficult to reconcile all this either with the virtue of a martyr, or the integrity of an ordinary Christian.

Ridley, when Bishop of Rochester, in the reign of Henry VIII and Bishop of London in that of Edward VI, was

himself a persecutor, sending Protestants and Anabaptists to the stake, and was zealous in the rebellion got up to interrupt the regular succession, and so also guilty of high treason.

Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, has been endowed with all the virtues by his Protestant admirers. The fact that he was guilty of bigamy is not to be denied. His first marriage took place when he was a fellow of Cambridge, contrary to the engagements of his admission. Afterwards, when a priest, he married a second wife in Germany. His daughter-in-law made known the means by which he brought her privately into England. To avoid scandal the poor lady was put into a large chest, which being landed at Gravesend was set on the wrong end when, to avoid having her neck broken, Mrs. Cranmer had to cry out and so revealed her presence. One wonders whether the Archbishop of Canterbury was present at the unpacking, and how his Grace's baggage was afterwards conveyed to Lambeth Palace!

Cranmer governed the English Church for fourteen years, ordaining priests, celebrating Mass, which in his opinion was "an idolatrous act of superstition." His action in the matter of the divorce of King Henry and QueenKatherine of Aragon; his part in the marriage of Anna Boleyn; his part in the third and the fourth-and six months afterwards, Cranmer was compliant enough to again dissolve the matrimonial tie in favor of a fifth partner for his roval master. The record is sickening, and this is the great Archbishop, "the chief agent of the Reformation," whose character is embellished by modern writers with every grace and beauty!

The ministry and the council of the Star Chamber have had much to answer for in the matter of persecutions, and yet they, who were probably actuated in many instances by cruelty and revenge,