DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

‘aad ween ™ 9) the high standard of their character, which have added the halo of romance to the halo of martyrdom, and caused the fame of Elizabeth, and the reputation of Mary Tudor, to come down to posterity sullied with the dark stains of intolerance and cruelty. The first act of Mary Tudor’s government had been to send to the block her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, an accomplished young woman of nineteen, whom a powerful faction wished to raise to the throne. When after this act the Protestant factions of England turned to Elizabeth as their leader, Mary Tudor readily yielded to the impulses of her san- guinary nature, and sent to the Tower the Princess Elizabeth, who was in her twenty-first year. Few prisoners who entered that fortress ever left it alive. Princes, archbishops, prime ministers, and worthies of every class and description, stained Tower Hill with their blood ; and yet, when Elizabeth ap- proached the fatal stairs of Traitors’ Gate, her proud spirit already broke forth in the words: ‘ Here lands as loyal a subject, although a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; before Thee, O God, I speak it, having no other friend but Thee alone!’ In sparing her sister’s life, Mary Tudor was not influenced by any motives of humanity. Mary was old and broken in health, her own position was insecure, and she was afraid to incur the conse- quences of beheading the next heir to the throne.