whether the Catholic or Protestant religion should have the ascendency,
and that this ascendency seemed to hinge upon the private inclinations
of the sovereign who in the furtherance of this great end would scruple
at nothing to accomplish it, and that the greatest crimes committed for
its sake would be justified by all the sophistries that religious
partisanship could furnish, and be upheld by all bigots and statesmen as
well as priests, it is really remarkable that Elizabeth was spared. For
Mary was not only urged on to the severest measures by Gardiner and
Bonner (the bishops of Winchester and London), and by all the influences
of Rome, to which she was devoted body and soul,--yea, by all her
confidential advisers in the State, to save themselves from future
contingencies,--but she was also jealous of her sister, as Elizabeth was
afterwards jealous of Mary Stuart. And it would have been as easy for
Mary to execute Elizabeth as it was for Elizabeth to execute the Queen
of Scots, or Henry VIII. to behead his wives; and such a crime would
have been excused as readily as the execution of Somerset or of the Lady
Jane Grey, both from political necessity and religious expediency.
Elizabeth was indeed subjected to great humiliations, and even compelled
to sue for her life. What more piteous than her letter to Mary, begging
only for an interview: "Wherefore I humbly beseech your Majesty to let
me answer before yourself; and, once again kneeling with humbleness of
heart, I earnestly crave to speak to your Highness, which I would not be
so bold as to desire if I knew not myself most clear, as I know myself
most true." Here is a woman pleading for her life to a sister to whom
she had done no wrong, and whose only crime was in being that sister's
heir. What an illustration of the jealousy of royalty and the bitterness
of religious feuds; and what a contrast in this servile speech to that
arrogance which Elizabeth afterward assumed towards her Parliament and
greatest lords! Ah, to what cringing meanness are most people reduced by
adversity! In what pride are we apt to indulge in the hour of triumph!