least thirty thousand Protestants had been shamefully murdered, and the dreadful executions in the Netherlands by the ferocious Alva, of ten thousand Protestants, together with the sacking of Antwerp by the same Duke—had taken place during Mary's imprisonment, and these with the recollection of the fierce fires of Mary Tudor's reign, and the fear of their renewal, led the people as well as the nobles, who were already becoming ultra-Protestants or Puritans, to desire the death of Mary, who with Tudor tenacity still held fast to all the revoked ritual of her fallen church; thus allying herself with the enemies of England and her own country, and also with all the enemies of truth and progress and enlightend piety throughout the world. Mary died a martyr to her religion, as she herself declared, when she took that last lone sacrament at Fotheringay; but it was the hard and fearful events of the times rather than the evil disposition of either the nobles or the people, or even the sovereign, which principally procured her death. Requiescat in pace. There seems injustice, but in the vast reaches of celestial jurisdiction good and evil interflow, and the wise and the thoughtful are "reduced as they ponder the solemn mysteries of life and time to a devout belief in a sublime optimism, which for ever and ever, in large and in little, by suffering and by peace, works out a greater and still a greater good.
Concluding this episode, and taking a last look at this antique table, at which we almost seemed to feel the inspiring presence of the fair captive, we resume our explorations of the castle, our next progress being
