followed, almost as a matter of necessity, that the old heresy laws should be revived, as they were then by Act of Parliament. They had been abolished by the Protector Somerset for the express purpose of promoting changes of doctrine which did violence to what was still the prevailing religious sentiment; and now the old religion required to be protected from insult and fanatical outrages. Doubts were felt as to the result even from the first; but the law having been once passed could not be relaxed merely because the victims were so numerous; for that would only have encouraged the irreverence which it was intended to check. No doubt there were milder men among the heretics, but as a class their stern fanaticism and ill-will to the old religion made them dangerous, even to the public peace. Rogers, the first of the martyrs, was burnt on the 4th of February 1555. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, had been condemned six days before, and suffered the same fate upon the 9th. From this time the persecution went on uninterrupted for three years and three quarters, numbering among its victims Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer. It came to an end at last on the death of Mary. It seems to have been more severe in the eastern and southern parts of England, and the largest number of sufferers was naturally in the diocese of Bonner, bishop of London. From first to last nearly three hundred victims are known to have perished at the stake; and their fate certainly created a revulsion against Rome that nothing else was likely to have effected.
Mary was of weak constitution and subject to frequent illnesses, both before and after her accession. One special infirmity caused her to believe a few months after her marriage that she was with child, and thanksgiving services were ordered throughout the diocese of London in November 1554. The same delusion recurred in March 1558, when though she did not make her expectation public, she drew up a will in anticipation of the dangers of childbirth, constituting her husband regent during the minority of her prospective heir. To this she added a codicil on the 28th of October following, when the illness that was to be her last had set in, showing that she had ceased to have much expectation of maternity, and earnestly entreating her “next heir and successor by the laws” (whom she did not name) to allow execution of the instrument. She died on the 17th of November.
Her name deserved better treatment than it has generally met with; for she was far from cruel. Her kindness to poor people is undoubted, and the severe execution of her laws seemed only a necessity. Even in this matter, moreover, she was alive to the injustice with which the law was usually strained in behalf of the prerogative; and in appointing Sir Richard Morgan chief justice of the Common Pleas she charged him “not to sit in judgment otherwise for her highness than for her subjects,” and to avoid the old error of refusing to admit witnesses against the Crown (Holinshed III. 1112). Her conduct as queen was certainly governed by the best possible intentions; and it is evident that her very zeal for goodness caused most of the trouble she brought upon herself. Her subjects were entirely released, even by papal authority, from any obligation to restore the confiscated lands of the Church. But she herself made it an object, at her own expense, to restore several of the monasteries; and courtiers who did not like to follow her example, encouraged the fanatics to spread an alarm that it would even yet be made compulsory. So the worldly minded joined hands with the godly heretics in stirring up enmity against her. (J. Ga.)
MARY II. (1662–1694), queen of England and wife of king William III., elder daughter of James, duke of York, afterwards
King James II., by his first wife, Anne, daughter of Edward
Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon, was born in London on the 30th
of April 1662. She was educated as a Protestant, and as it was
probable that she would succeed to the English throne after
the deaths of her uncle, Charles II., and her father, the choice
of a husband for her was a political event of high importance.
About 1672 the name of William, prince of Orange, was mentioned
in this connexion; and after some hesitation on both
sides caused by the condition of European politics, the betrothal
of William and Mary took place in October 1677, and was
quickly followed by their marriage in London on the 4th of
November. Mary’s married life in Holland does not appear
to have been a happy one. Although she soon became popular
among the Dutch, she remained childless, while William treated
her with neglect and even with insult; and her troubles were
not diminished after her father became king of England in 1685.
James had treated his daughter very shabbily in money matters;
and it was increasingly difficult for her to remain loyal to both
father and husband when they were so divergent in character
and policy. Although Mary never entirely lost her affection
for her father the wife prevailed over the daughter; and after
the birth of her half-brother, the prince of Wales, in 1688,
she regarded the dethronement of James as inevitable. It cannot be said, however, that William merited this confidence. Possibly he was jealous of his wife as the heiress of the English throne, contrasting her future position with his own; but according to Burnet, who was then staying at the Hague, this cause of difference was removed by the tactful interference of Burnet himself. The latter asserts that having divined the reason of the prince’s jealousy he mentioned the matter to the princess, who in her ignorance of statecraft had never considered the relative positions of herself and her husband with regard to the English throne; and that Mary, by telling the prince “she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him king for life” (Burnet, Supplement, ed. Foxcroft, p. 309), probably mollified her husband’s jealousy. On the other hand Macaulay’s statement that henceforward there was “entire friendship and confidence” between them must be taken with some reserve. Mary shared heartily in the events which immediately preceded William’s expedition to England in 1688. After the success of the undertaking she arrived in London in February 1689; and by her faithful adherence to her promise made a satisfactory settlement of the English crown possible. William and Mary were together proclaimed king and queen of England, and afterwards of Scotland, and were crowned on the 11th of April 1689. During the king’s absence from England the queen, assisted by a committee of the privy council, was entrusted with the duties of government, duties which she performed faithfully, but which she gladly laid down on William’s return. In these times of danger, however, she acted when necessary with courage and promptitude, as when in 1690 she directed the arrest of her uncle Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon; but she was constantly anxious for William’s safety, and unable to trust many of her advisers. She was further distressed by a quarrel with her sister Anne in 1692 following the dismissal of Marlborough, and this event somewhat diminished her popularity, which had hitherto been one of the mainstays of the throne. Weak in body and troubled in mind, the queen died at Kensington Palace from small-pox on the 28th of December 1694, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mary was a woman of a remarkably modest and retiring disposition, whose outstanding virtue was perhaps her unswerving loyalty to William. Burnet has passed a remarkable panegyric upon her character. She was extremely pious and charitable; her blameless private life was in marked contrast with her surroundings, both in England and Holland; without bigotry she was greatly attached to the Protestant faith and to the Church of England; and she was always eager to improve the tone of public morals, and to secure a better observance of Sunday. Greenwich Hospital for Seamen was founded in her honour.
For the political events of Mary’s life see William III. For her private life see Sir John Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1790); Countess Bentinck, Lettres et mémoires de Marie, reine d’Angleterre (The Hague, 1880); Memoires and Letters of Mary Queen of England (ed. by R. Doebner, Leipzig, 1886); F. J. L. Krämer, Maria II. Stuart (Utrecht, 1890); Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vols. x. and xi. (London, 1847); G. Burnet, History of my own Time (Oxford, 1833); and O. Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart (Vienna, 1875–1888).
