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Pollard : Political History of England 295
in preparing for which Henry had spent the last months of his life ; of
the seizure of Edinburgh and the papist abbeys ; and of Pinkie, the last
and bloodiest of the battles between the independent kingdoms. It shows
us the optimist Somerset, a unique dictator, trying to rule with a '
gentle
hand,' and seeming to think he could reverse the despotic methods of the
Tudors, almost dispense with axe and gallows, and ignore the heresy laws
of the late king. It tells of the enduring acts of the Protectorate and the
short reign of the boy king, Edward VI. j of the adoption of the Book of
which John Knox contrived to
Common Prayer, with the ' black rubric '
get interpolated in it; of the legalisation of inclosures at the discretion
of lords of the manor ; and of the sparing (not the founding, as their name
erroneously suggests) of the so-called King Edward VI.'s Grammar Schools.
We read again the pathetic tale of Lady Jane Grey, the almost perfect type
of intellectual graces, of modesty, sincerity, and saint-like innocence, the
blameless instrument of her father-in-law's desperate plot and of the half-
;
Spanish Mary, whom Mr. Pollard calls, without undue flattery, the most
honest of Tudor rulers, and who yet brings a blight on national faith and
confidence. He describes her as a pitiful woman by nature, freely pardoning
convicted traitors, but burning Protestant widows, striving
in vain to
satisfy by such burnt-offerings the cravings of a mind diseased in a disordered
frame, forsaken by her husband and estranged from her people.
Sterility, he says, was the conclusive note of her reign. Under Mary the
Church was restored. But there was no spiritual fervour. There was an
intellectual
paralysis. Even theology was neglected.
Mr. Pollard has drawn every character in clear, bold strokes, and he is
as faithful with Elizabeth as with the rest. He shows her self-reliant,
steadfast, absolute, of true English tenacity, and thanking God for giving
her 'a heart which never yet feared foreign or home enemy' ; more than
a Macchiavelli in deceit, and one of the most accomplished liars who ever
practised diplomacy. When she wills the end, she wills the means. She
secretly attacks while publicly professing friendship. Her servants' lives
and fame are hers to spend or throw away, and she is
disloyal
to her
agents whenever it suits her to repudiate them. These are the methods
of her time, but she has an asset in diplomacy that is all her own. Her
courtships played a leading part in the subtle work of her foreign policy.
She dangled the bait, that cost her neither expense nor risk, before greedy
Spaniard, Austrian, Scot, Swede, and Frenchman in turn, if she could
thus for the moment attract an ally to, or divert an enemy from, England.
Each was beguiled with hopes which she alone knew to be vain. For
she had a secret which she never revealed, and which her ministers did
not dare to whisper, though they suspected it. Mr. Pollard accepts the
evidence that she knew that, for physical causes, she could never have a
child, and marriage was as repulsive to her as imprisonment.
With unfailing skill he has set forth the devious ways, and the extraordinary
success of her policy; her gradual steering of England from
alliance with Spain to alliance with France and with Scotland; her
manoeuvreing of Mary Stuart from being the representative
of France to
being the client of Spain ; her completion of the recovery by the crown,