their property, and failed again.[1] A sharp blow was dealt also at the recovered privileges of ecclesiastics. A man named Benet Smith, who had been implicated in a charge of murder, and was escaping under plea of clergy, was delivered by a special Act into the hands of justice.[2] The leaven of the heretical spirit was still unsubdued. The Queen dissolved her fourth Parliament on the 9th of December; and several gentlemen who had spoken out with unpalatable freedom were seized and sent to the Tower. She was unwise, thought Noailles; such arbitrary acts were only making her day by day more detested, and, should opportunity offer, would bring her to utter destruction.
Unwise she was indeed, and most unhappy. When the poor results of the session became known to Philip, he sent orders that such of his Spanish suite as he had left behind him should no longer afflict themselves with remaining in a country which they abhorred; he summoned them all to come to him except Alphonso, his
- ↑ Et de mesme fust rejetté audict parlement à la grande confusion de ladicte dame ung aultre bill, par lequel elle vouloit confisquer les personnes et biens de ceulx qui sont transfuges de ce royaulme despuis son advènement à la couronne.—Noailles to the King of France, December 16: Ambassades, vol. v.
- ↑ 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. 17.
Winchester there were some passages-at-arms. She dressed a dog in a rochet on one occasion, and called it Bishop Gardiner.
Gardiner himself said that he was once at a party at the Duke of Suffolk's, and it was a question who should take the Duchess down to dinner. She wanted to go with her husband; but as that could not be, 'My lady,' said Gardiner, 'taking me by the hand, for that my lord would not take her himself, said that, forasmuch as she could not sit down with my lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom she loved worst.'—Holinshed.
