But in May following another change occurred. Anne Boleyn, the cause of her miseries, fell under the king's displeasure and was put to death. Mary was then urged to make a humble sub mission to her father as the means of recovering his favour, and after a good deal of correspondence with the king's secretary, Cromwell, she actually did so. The terms exacted of her were bitter in the extreme, but there was no chance of making life tolerable otherwise, if indeed she was permitted to live at all; and the friendless girl, absolutely at the mercy of her father who could brook no contradiction, at length subscribed an act of submission, acknowledging the king as "Supreme Head of the Church of England under Christ," repudiating the pope's au thority, and confessing that the marriage between her father and mother "was by God's law and man's law incestuous and unlawful." Henry was now reconciled to her, and gave her a household in some degree suitable to her rank. During the rest of the reign we hear little about her except in connection with a number of new marriage projects taken up and abandoned. Her privy purse expenses for nearly the whole of this period have been published, and show that Hatfield, Beaulieu or Newhall in Essex, Richmond and Hunsdon were among her principal places of resi dence. Although she was still treated as of illegitimate birth, it was believed that the king, having obtained from parliament the extraordinary power to dispose of the crown by will, would restore her to her place in the succession, and three years before his death she was so restored by statute, but still under conditions to be regulated by her father's will.
Under the reign of her brother, Edward VI. she was again subjected to severe trials, which at one time made her seriously meditate escaping abroad. Edward himself indeed seems to have been personally kind to her, but the religious revolution in his reign assumed proportions such as it had not done before, and Mary, who had done sufficient violence to her own convictions in submitting to a despotic father, was not disposed to yield an equally tame obedience to authority exercised by a factious coun cil in the name of a younger brother not yet come to years of discretion. Besides, the cause of the pope was naturally her own. In spite of the declaration formerly wrung from herself, no one regarded her as a bastard, and the full recognition of her rights depended on the recognition of the pope as head of the Church. Hence, when Edward's parliament passed an Act of Uniformity enjoining services in English and communion in both kinds, she insisted on having Mass in her own private chapel under the old form. When ordered to desist, she appealed for protection to the emperor Charles V., who, being her cousin, intervened for some time not ineffectually, threatening war with England if her religious liberty was interfered with.
But Edward's court was composed of factions of which the most violent eventually carried the day. Lord Seymour, the ad miral, was attainted of treason and beheaded in 1549. His brother, the Protector Somerset, met with the same fate in 1552. Dudley, duke of Northumberland, then became paramount in the privy council, and easily obtained the sanction of the young king to those schemes for altering the succession which led immediately after his death to the usurpation of Lady Jane Grey. Dudley had, in
fact, overawed the rest of the privy council, and when the event occurred he took such energetic measures to give effect to the scheme that Lady Jane was actually recognized as queen for some days, and Mary had to fly from Hunsdon into Norfolk. But the country was devoted to her cause, as indeed her right in law was unquestionable, and before many days she was royally re ceived in London, and took up her abode within the Tower.
Her first acts at the beginning of her reign displayed a char acter very different from that which she still holds in popular estimation. Her clemency towards those who had taken up arms against her was remarkable. She released from prison Lady Jane's father, Suffolk, and had difficulty even in signing the warrant for the execution of Northumberland. Lady Jane herself she fully meant to spare, and did spare till after Wyatt's formidable in surrection. Her conduct, indeed, was in every respect conciliatory and pacific, and so far as they depended of her personal character the prospects of the new reign might have appeared altogether favourable. But her position was one of peculiar difficulty, and the policy on which she determined was far from judicious. In experienced in the art of governing, she had no trusty councillor but Gardiner; but she was naturally led to rely even more on the advice of her cousin, the emperor, who had been her mother's friend in adversity, and had done such material service to herself in the preceding reign. Following the emperor's guidance she de termined almost from the first to make his son Philip her husband, though she was eleven years his senior. She was also strongly de sirous of restoring the old religion and wiping out the stigma of illegitimacy upon her birth.
Restoration of the old religion might deprive the new owners of abbey lands of their comfortable acquisitions; and it was only with an express reservation of their interests that the thing was actually accomplished. A declaration of her own legitimacy necessarily cast a slur on that of her sister Elizabeth, and cut her off from the suc cession. But the marriage promised to throw England into the arms of Spain and place the resources of the kingdom at the com mand of the emperor's son. The Commons sent her a deputation to entreat that she would not marry a foreigner, and when her resolution was known insurrections broke out in different parts of the country. Suffolk, whose first rebellion had been pardoned, pro claimed Lady Jane Grey again in Leicestershire, while Wyatt raised the county of Kent and, though denied access by London Bridge, led his men round by Kingston to the very gates of Lon don before he was repulsed. In the midst of the danger Mary showed great intrepidity, and the rebellion was presently quelled ; after which she married Philip, restored the old religion, and in duced Cardinal Pole to absolve the kingdom from its past dis obedience to the Holy See.