as if there had been blood upon his lips. On the 28th she took possession of the Tower; on 5 Dec. she removed to Somerset House, where she attended the sittings of her council from day to day. Meanwhile the two religious parties were watching; her every movement, look, and word with feverish excitement. On the 14th Queen Mary was buried at Westminster according to the Roman ritual. Ten days later the obsequies of Charles V were celebrated after the same fashion, and on the 28th again Christopherson, the late bishop of Chichester, was buried with much ceremonial at Christ Church, five of the bishops offering and two of them singing the mass. On the other hand, on 1 Jan., being Sunday, the English litany was read in the London churches in accordance with a royal proclamation, and the epistle and gospel were read in English at mass by order of the lord mayor. Which side was going to win? The bishops were strangely unanimous, but they overestimated their strength. The oath of allegiance contained one clause which had been handed down from Elizabeth's father; it spoke of the sovereign as supreme head of the church. That clause was hateful to a catholic. Heath, the archbishop of York, protested, the other bishops followed him to a man. But the coronation was fixed for 15 Jan. All, it seemed, would refuse to place the crown upon the queen's head. At the eleventh hour Watson, bishop of Lincoln, gave way. The mass was sung as of old, but only one bishop was there. The gospel was read in Latin and English; it was significant — a sign of compromise.
On the 25th the queen opened parliament; again high mass was celebrated at the altar at Westminster, but after it was over Dr. Cox, an exile for religion in Queen Mary's reign, preached the sermon. The parliament had enough upon its hands. On 10 Feb. it was ordered that Mr. Speaker with all the privy council and thirty members of the House of Commons should attend upon the queen to petition her majesty touching her marriage. Her answer is well known. She had already refused the hand of Philip II, and now she declared, what she had declared more than once before, that she had no inclination for marriage and she ended her speech with the memorable words: 'This shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, died a virgin' (D'Ewes, p. 46). The faithful commons voted money lavishly, gave back to the queen all that Mary had surrendered to the religious orders which she had attempted to revive, confirmed her deposition of the recalcitrant, bishops, voted that all the temporalities of vacant sees should be handed over to her during a vacancy; they showed her that she could depend upon them even to the utmost, that she was in fact, though not in name, an absolute sovereign. On 8 May parliament was dissolved, and on the 12th the English service was first said in the Queen's Ohapel, four days before the date appointed by act of parliament for it to be used.
Meanwhile Cecil and the council had been exhibiting astonishing activity. Sir Thomas Gresham had been commissioned to negotiate a loan abroad. What money could be got was borrowed at home. Peace was concluded with France on 12 March, on terms far better than could have been expected, and if about the same time Mary Stuart thought proper to assume the royal arms of England, and to induce her puny boy husband to call himself king of France, Scotland, England and Ireland, the fact would not be forgotten, though the act need not be noticed. On the last day of that same month of March the great controversy between the champions of the old faith and the new took place in Westminster Abbey. The result was by this time felt to be a foregone conclusion. The catholic bishops were sent to the Tower. On 15 May they were all called upon to take the oath of supremacy. All except Kitchin of Llandaff refused, the rest had time given them to reconsider their decision, and they availed themselves of the delay. The court was all astir with festivities from day to day, the queen showing herself in wonderful attire, dazzling her subjects with the splendour of her dresses and her jewellery; there were masques and pageants, and tiltings and plays and banquets; the queen in her progresses going from house to house received magnificent entertainment at the charge of the owners of the several mansions. On 5 Sept. the obsequies of Henry II of France, who had died in July, were celebrated with great pomp in St. Paul's, and the first three of the four bishops-elect, Parker of Canterbury, Scory of Hereford, and Barlow of Chichester, appeared in public in black gowns. Grindal of London, the fourth bishop-elect (Bonner had been deposed), being ill, was absent. Nevertheless, on 1 Nov., to the horror and dismay of the protestants, lighted tapors were seen in broad daylight in the royal chapel, and once more the crucifix in silver was set up upon the altar there. Of late there had come the emissaries of at least three suitors for the hand of the queen. Eric of Sweden, a dissipated young prince, had sent his brother to plead his cause. Adolphus, duke of Hol-
