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370 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. gents in the north of England praying for her restoration to her former rank. The severity with which Henry caused these men to be pursued, and the blood shed as a punishment for their outbreak, must have terrified Mary for her own safe- ty, so greatly endangered by their injudicious revival of her claims, while the cruelties practiced towards the unfortunate victims must have hardened her heart even while it horrified her. The scaffold was deluged with some of the best blood in England, and the flames which ascended from the stake toward heaven, filled the nation with terror and horror — neither age nor sex were spared. Superstition urged on vengeance, and a charge of sorcery was sufficient to condemn a helpless woman. Lady Bulmer, to the flames ! The next claimant for the hand of Mary was the Duke of Cleves, but this proposed marriage, like all former ones, went off, probably because she was, pending the negotiations, termed "the king's natural daughter," which must have been a serious obstacle in the eyes of so formal a family as that of Cleves. It might be urged that the declaration of Mary's ille- gitimacy had been already universally known before this union had been contemplated ; but it should be borne in mind that Henry had so often hinted that he could as easily raise her to her former position as he had hurled her from it, that expecta- tions might have been entertained that in default of male issue, Mary might one day be called to fill the throne ; and as Prince Edward was the only male heir that stood between her and it, the Duke of Cleves probably viewed her as heiress in pros- pective. Severely were the feelings of Mary tried in the following year by the ruin that overwhelmed a family in whom she took a deep and affectionate interest. The friend and guardian of her childhood, the Countess of Salisbury, to whom she was tenderly attached, was imprisoned in the Tower, her property seized, and, in her advanced age and its consequent infirmities, she was by the malice of her foes deprived of not only the common comforts of life, but even of strict necessaries. Her son, the Lord Montague, was beheaded, and her near and dear relative, the Marquis of Exeter, suffered the same fate. If the misfortunes of those so dear to her could receive aggrava- tion in her mind, it must have been furnished by the con- sciousness that to their consanguinity and affection for Reg- inald Pole, the courageous advocate against her mother's