as to leave an open square in the centre opposite the tribune. Here sat the nobles in the order of their precedence, ecclesiastics on the right, and lay lords on the left. The rest of the crowd either sat or stood according to custom and the respect due to each individual. I must not omit to notice the great deference shown by the king to the family and person of the cardinal, or his reverence for the apostolic authority as represented by the legate's insignia. . . . When all had found their places, and the noise had subsided, amid deep attention from the surrounding spectators, monsignore the chancellor quitted his place, and after saluting their Majesties and the legate in exactly the same manner, he stepped upon the dais, and proceeded to set forth in the English tongue the resolution taken by Parliament the day before of returning into the unity of the Church. He then asked the members whether they still adhered to that resolution, . . . to which they assented by an unanimous shout. . . . Their Majesties then arose and turned toward the legate, and he arose and turned toward them, and the queen, speaking English, entreated, in her own name and the king's, for the absolution and reunion of the kingdom, after which all three returned to their seats."

One of Pole's attendants then read aloud the papal bull and brief whereby he was appointed legate, and the cardinal preached a short sermon on the sweets of repentance and the privileges of pardon, reminding his distinguished audience how indefinitely the angels' joy over one repentant sinner must needs be multiplied in the case of a whole great kingdom. At the close of this discourse all knelt, their Majesties setting the example, and the realm of England was absolved in due form. "And while the legate pronounced the words," continues the animated narrator, "the queen wept for joy and for devotion, and many of the members did the same. And after it

was over they might be seen rapturously embracing one another and exclaiming, To-day we have been born again.""

It is worth while dwelling for a moment on this dramatic scene, because, when all due allowance has been made for the excitement of the occasion and the effect of an imposing pageant, it undoubtedly goes to show that at the time of Queen Mary's accession a large proportion of the English people still believed, in their hearts, that the Roman Church was the one true ark of spiritual safety. Starting with such an advantage, how easy, one thinks, it would have been, by the exercise of a little tact and a reasonable humanity, for the Catholic rulers of England to preserve, cement, and render durable and dear to the nation the reunion which had been so pompously proclaimed! Dis aliter visum. As for Pole, no one who has followed his history can doubt that his preëminent part in this remarkably futile function was performed both in perfect good faith and with conspicuous good grace. Born in the purple, the playfellow of his future sovereign, he had himself come too near to being both pope and king to be dazzled by the homage of Philip and Mary; and, moreover, he had the essentially high-bred faculty of becoming always the more simple and self-possessed, the greater the part he had to play. Personally a man of quiet and even abstemious habits, he had large ideas concerning the befitting dignity of his es tablishment; and whether or no, as Hook and Froude insist, his dream was to rival Cardinal Wolsey, we gather from that most interesting book, Strype's Memorials, that the requirements for the cardinal's household, submitted to the queen before his arrival by his "steward or some other of his officers," were not modest. There is in Strype's Catalogue of Originals-pièces justificatives — a document declaring that the "most rev'd and illustrious father," beside his private revenue and the allowance he received from

the Pope, could not possibly spend more than 1000 Italian crowns a month, computing the regular members of his household at one hundred and thirty, and the average number of his guests at thirty more. The anonymous author of this estimate then proceeds minutely to apportion 1160 crowns monthly, allowing so much for fish, flesh, and fowl, so much for wine and condiments, and for the food and harness of forty horses and mules; concluding with the comprehensive entry, "For small charities, ferries, drugs and such like things, fifteen crowns.' Moreover, Pole was to be granted 2900 crowns to "mount" his establishment, and 1000 crowns yearly for keeping it up and renewing his ecclesiastical vest

ments.

"This extraordinary charge," says Strype, "the enjoyment of the cardinal's presence would cost the queen. And well it might be borne, seeing he was to bring such mighty blessings with him!'

Let it be said to poor Mary's honor that it was borne well and ungrudgingly. She crippled her private resources by her pious restitution of all the Church lands confiscated to the Crown under Henry VIII.; but "to qualify the cardinal the better to live in the port of a cardinal," she added to his other resources about £800 a year, being the income of her own principal manors and farms in Kent. Knole, the gem of that beautiful county, was already an appanage of the Archbishops of Canterbury, but the queen's grant included poetic Penshurst, as well as Chevening Bexley and its woods, and the "Forest of South Frith, which lyeth a mile south of Tunbridge." All these estates, the chronicler takes care to add, came back to the Crown under Queen Elizabeth.

But Pole had become thoroughly Italianized during his long exile, and though his blameless life, and in many respects noble character, must at least be held to limit the application of the bitter proverb,

"Inglese Italianato

È diavolo incarnato,” 1

he was out of touch from the first with his insular flock. His huge household was composed largely of foreigners, and he showed a singular want of tact and sympathy with the common people in one of his earliest official acts. Having decided that his general absolution of the kingdom ought to be followed by a special absolution of the clergy, he fixed upon St. Nicholas' Day for the performance of this office; and on the vigil of the same, "at evensong time," says Strype," came a commandment that St. Nicholas should not go abroad nor about."

There had prevailed in the parishes of England from time immemorial a very foolish, fond old way of celebrating the feast of the children's saint, whose own glad childhood was reputed to have been a miracle of holiness. A boy was chosen from among the choristers, dressed up in pontifical robes, and provided with a little mitre and staff, and from St. Nicholas' Day to Holy Innocents (December 6 to 28), at night, this child was called a bishop, and was permitted to read the holy offices and walk in procession, distributing blessings which were especially valued by the humble folk who thronged his footsteps. This mummery, for which the Bishop of London had as usual given permission, plainly struck Pole as both frivolous and blasphemous, and he seized the opportunity to forbid it. But he was by no means universally obeyed, for "so much were the citizens taken with the mock St. Nicholas, that is, a boy-bishop, that there went about these St. Nicholases in divers parishes, as in St. Andrew's Holborn, and in St. Nicholas Olave's in Bread-street."

The prohibition is remarkable as an indication of that essentially Protestant, not to say Puritanical spirit always cropping up in the man who was to be, in part at least, responsible for the slaughter of 1 “ An Italianized Englishman is an incarnate fiend."

For the

so many Protestant martyrs. rest, many of the earlier acts of Mary's reign, to which Pole as cardinal legate appended his signature, show a wise and timely moderation. The private citizens who had received Church lands were confirmed in their tenure by a decree of convocation passed on the 24th of December, 1554, and subscribed by the cardinal; and in general, all acts of the time of schism which did not attack directly the supremacy of the Holy See were legalized, even when, as in the case of marriage within the prohibited degrees, they were forbidden for the future. On the other hand, the bill annulling all such laws as did touch the supremacy of Rome was drawn up by Pole himself, and passed both Houses of Parliament without opposition early in January, 1555. The legate had already heard from his fast friend, Cardinal Morone at Rome, how King Philip had sent a private letter to his Holiness Julius III. announcing the submission of England, and he goes on to describe the joy occasioned at the centre of Christendom by the repentance of so considerable a sinner, as well as the plans on foot for a suitable celebration of the great event. In Morone's next letter, which is dated December 30, he enlarges upon this theme still further. "And may it please the Divine Goodness," he adds, " after this miracle of the spiritual peace of England, to work us another of temporal peace between Christian princes, which your lordship, by the help of God and the Queen's most excellent Majesty, may be able greatly to promote." Pole acted upon the suggestion of his friend, and, leaving the cure of British heresy to complete itself, went over to France in the winter of 1555, and made an earnest but signally unsuccessful effort to bring about a better understanding between Henry II. and the Emperor Charles V.

The latter, meanwhile, had convened a Diet at Aix, in Provence, for the same general purpose, requesting the Pope to

send a legate, and Morone was chosen for the office. He found it very dull at Aix, and "business,” as he tells Pole on the 28th of March, "proceeding so languidly that I do not think any good can come of it." But the disquieting news had just come that Pope Julius III. was desperately ill; " and this," says Morone, "supersedes everything else. . . . If we hear that his Holiness is really dead, the Bishop of Aix and I will both go to Rome and do our duty in helping to choose a good Pope; and may God have mercy upon us, for we deserve rather that he should give us regem in furore, as he did to the descendants of the Israelites;" and he adds that he shudders at the recollection of the last conclave.

The souvenir was probably no more agreeable to Pole himself, for it was then, on the 7th of February, 1550, that his own election had appeared all but certain during one midnight hour, until a random joke, exploded by that notorious bon vivant, Cardinal del Monte, amid the sleepy electors, had resulted, to the amazement of everybody, in the timely jester's own election to the great vacant office. This time the conclave was both more expeditious and more circumspect. The best hopes of the best men in Christendom seemed near their fulfillment, when, on the 11th of April, 1555, Cardinal Cervini, the blameless, high-minded, and devout, assumed the tiara, under his own name of Marcellus. He, it was fondly believed, of all living churchmen, was the one best able to reconcile under a broad and righteous rule both the contending parties inside the Church and the warring potentates without; but, like his young namesake in imperial Rome, he was barely "shown by the Fates," and he died on the 3d of May, three weeks and one day after his election.

Two letters were addressed by Pole to the Holy Father during this tragically brief pontificate, of which the first is undated, while the second is subscribed Richmond, May 1, 1555, only two days

luxury of many of the Roman clergy, Paul did accomplish, and that sweepingly; but varieties of opinion were less than ever to be tolerated, and Reginald Pole was under no delusion concerning his own possible danger.

It was during the brief interval of Marcellus's pontificate that Queen Mary had ostentatiously withdrawn from London to Hampton Court for her confinement. Everything was made ready for the arrival of the imaginary heir, and the very letters were drawn up in which the auspicious event was to be announced to the proper dignitaries, among which was one to Pole:

“PHILIP: MARY THE QUEEN.

"Most Reverend Father in God, our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin, We greet you well: And whereas it hath pleased Almighty God of His infinite goodness to add unto the great number of His other benefits bestowed upon us the gladding us with the happy deliverance of a prince, for the which we humbly thank Him; knowing your affections to be such towards us as whatsoever shall fortunately succeed unto us, the same cannot but be acceptable unto you also; We have thought good to communicate unto you these happy news of ours, to the intent you may rejoice with us, and praying for us, give God thanks for this His work, accordingly. Given under our signet, at our house of Hampton Court, the day of the first and second year of our and my Lord the King's reign."

We all know the melancholy end of these pompous preparations. Weeks passed away without the expected event, and by midsummer everybody but Mary herself knew that it would never take place, and that instead the unhappy queen was the victim of mortal disease. All the more, on this account, had Philip's presence on the Continent become an imperative necessity. The emperor was now fully resolved to abdicate, and it was essential for father and son to VOL. LXXIV. NO. 446.

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consult together upon many things, as well as that Philip should be at hand to assume the reins of government when Charles should let them fall. To calm the transports of Mary's jealous distress and tear himself from her side in her melancholy state of health was, however, no easy matter; and it was not until the last days of August, and after many deceitful promises of a speedy return, that the king, in the words of Strype, "took his Journey toward Dover with a great Company. And there tarried for a Wind, the ships lying ready for his wafting over Sea."

Pole was one of those whom Philip commissioned to keep him informed, as the cardinal was so well able to do, of the exact condition of things at the English court; and the correspondence which ensued was a fairly candid one upon both sides. Pole never could divest himself of his long-winded style, nor even describe the monotony of the queen's forsaken days in any simpler terms than these:

"During the morning, our Most Serene Sovereign performs the part of Mary, prostrating herself in prayer and praise to God. In the afternoon she gloriously fulfills the functions of Martha, spurring up all her counselors to such a degree that no one of them is permitted to be other than incessantly occupied. And so she soothes the pain of your Majesty's absence, by fancying you in some sort still present at her deliberations."

Nobody knew better than the cardinal legate with what a rapture of relief the Spanish king and his personal suite turned their backs on England, or how extremely unlikely it was that they would ever be seen there again. He himself was left the mainstay of the royal cousin. who had so nearly been his own bride, and his influence naturally became paramount with her, while a new field seemed opening to his ambition when on the 13th of November, 1555, the chancellor of the kingdom died.