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1554.]

THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.

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pleased to show mercy at the holy season; but it was his duty to remind her that he doubted whether the Prince could be trusted with her.

This argument never failed to drive Mary to madness; and, on the other side, Renard applied to Gardiner to urge despatch in bringing Elizabeth to trial: as long as she lived, there was no security for the Queen, for the Prince, or for religion. Gardiner echoed the same opinion. If others, he said, would go to work as roundly as himself, all would be well.^[1]

April 2.In this condition of the political atmosphere Parliament assembled on the 2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as impracticable. The Lord Mayor informed the Queen that he would not answer for the peace of the city in the absence of the Court; the Tower might be surprised and the prisoners released; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The Queen said that she would

↑ Il me repliqua que vivant Elizabeth il n'a espoir a la tranquillité du Royaulme, que quant a luy si chascun alloit si rondement en besoyn comme il fait, les choses se porteroient mieux.—Renard to the Emperor, April 3: Rolls House MSS. From these dark plotters, what might not be feared? Holinshed says that, while Elizabeth was in the Tower, a writ was sent down for her execution devised, as was believed, by Gardiner; and that Lord Chandos (Sir John Brydges, the Lieutenant of the Tower) refused to put it in force. The story has been treated as a fable, and in the form in which it is told by Holinshed, it was very likely untrue: yet, in the presence of these infernal conversations, I think it highly probable that, as the hope of a judicial conviction grew fainter, schemes were talked of, and were perhaps tried, for cutting the knot in a decisive manner. In revolutionary times men feel that if to-day is theirs, to-morrow may be their enemies'; and they are not particularly scrupulous. The anxious words of Sussex did not refer to the merely barring a prisoner's door.

[1] Il me repliqua que vivant Elizabeth il n'a espoir a la tranquillité du Royaulme, que quant a luy si chascun alloit si rondement en besoyn comme il fait, les choses se porteroient mieux.—Renard to the Emperor, April 3: Rolls House MSS. From these dark plotters, what might not be feared? Holinshed says that, while Elizabeth was in the Tower, a writ was sent down for her execution devised, as was believed, by Gardiner; and that Lord Chandos (Sir John Brydges, the Lieutenant of the Tower) refused to put it in force. The story has been treated as a fable, and in the form in which it is told by Holinshed, it was very likely untrue: yet, in the presence of these infernal conversations, I think it highly probable that, as the hope of a judicial conviction grew fainter, schemes were talked of, and were perhaps tried, for cutting the knot in a decisive manner. In revolutionary times men feel that if to-day is theirs, to-morrow may be their enemies'; and they are not particularly scrupulous. The anxious words of Sussex did not refer to the merely barring a prisoner's door.

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