was handsome, and apparently of taking manners, but he had no sooner been released from the Tower on 3 Aug. 1553 than he gave himself up to a life of the wildest dissipation. The queen treated him with marked favour, but he soon found be bad no chance of winning her hand. Then he turned to Elizabeth. The vulgar roué was a puppet in the hands of very cunning plotters. Sir Thomas Wyatt had his plan marked out with clearness. He and his fellow-conspirators would effect a rising, the catholic party should be mastered, Courtenay should marry Elizabeth, and she should be set upon the throne. Would she make common cause with the party of revolt? She behaved with extraordinary wisdom and caution. She would do nothing, say nothing, write nothing which could compromise herself. If they succeeded they could not do without her, if they failed she would not be implicated. The mad and stupid outbreak collapsed, and sickening butchery followed. Gardiner and Renaud thought that nothing had been gained while Elizabeth was allowed to live. The wretched leaders of the miserable rebellion were spared from day to day in the hope of extorting from them some evidence of declaration of Elizabeth's complicity, but there was none forthcoming. Meanwhile she was confined to her apartments in Whitehall, her fate trembling in the balance from time to time. At last on Sunday, 18 March, she was thrown into the Tower. The story of her arrest and her entry into the grim old fortress has been told by Mr. Froude in his very best manner. On 11 April Wyatt met his fate like a man, and with his last words declared Elizabeth innocent of all knowledge of his intended rising. Nevertheless she was kept in the Tower, Gardiner insisting, in season and out of season, that she must needs be sacrificed. It was not so to be. On 19 May she was released from the one prison only to be removed to Woodstock, there to be kept under the custody of Sir Henry Bedingfield (1509?–1583) [q. v.], the same gentleman who had kept watch and ward over Queen Catherine of Arragon at Kimbolton seventeen years before. Sir Henry was a courtier and a gentleman, but he had to obey his stern mistress, and though Elizabeth was under surveillance, and her health suffered from her confinement and the irritation which her captivity occasioned, her daily life was made as tolerable as under the circumstances it could be, and she spent her time pursuing her favourite studies, and in all outward observances of religion she scrupulously conformed to the Roman ritual. So prudently did she conduct herself during this trying time that after six months of detention she was summoned once more to her sister's presence, and at the Christmas festival took her seat at the royal table, and was treated with marked courtesy by King Philip himself, while Mary showed her renewed signs of favour. The queen had hopes of issue now; she could afford to be gracious. While Elizabeth bad been languishing at Woodstock Mary had been married on St. James's day (25 July) 1554, and now she persuaded herself that in due time an heir would be born to the throne. Philip was weary of England and his English wife, and on 4 Sept. 1555 he set sail from Dover, and turned his back upon the land and the people that he never ceased to hate (Wriothesley).
All through this horrible year a hideous persecution had been going on. On 7 Sept. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were brought up for trial at Oxford. On 16 Oct. the last two were burnt. Two days later Elizabeth, who during the last few months had been in frequent attendance at court, was allowed to leave London, and took her final departure for her favourite residence at Hatfield. The people crowded to see her. She at any rate, they thought, was not to blame for all the blood that had been shed. They cheered her to the echo as she passed. With her usual prudence she made no response or acknowledgment.
At Hatfield she again resumed her studies, Ascham returned there for a while and read Demosthenes with her. Castiglione gave her lessons in Italian, and Sir Thomas Pope exhibited costly pageants for her amusement, and 'the play of Holofernes' was acted before her, but somewhat coldly received. With Philip away, Mary death-stricken, and Gardiner dead, Elizabeth from this time had only to wait and be still. The next two years of her life were passed in comparative tranquillity. There were stupid attempts at rebellion, Courtenay once more figuring among the plotters (for he had not been thought dangerous enough to make it necessary to slay him when Wyatt and the rest suffered), the ghastly burnings grew fiercer and more frequent, there were famine and misery, proposals of marriage for the hand of the princess first by one then by another. On 18 March 1557 Philip came over to England once more (ib.), and Elizabeth seems to have visited her sister during his stay (Strickland, p. 92). A month before she had attended at Whitehall in great state, and in July Philip had departed. On 20 Jan. following Calais was lost, and the English were at last driven out of France, and on that same day the last of Queen Mary's parlia-
