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    4 Female Sovereigns ofEngland when young...

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    The Accession Of Queen To The Throne Ayo...

    for a pair of mere innocent lorers , and victims . Victim she was , to others and their bad passions ; but not without a weakness , little amiable , on her own side . *

    Of the first Mary , long and too deservedly known by the horrible title of " Bloody Mary , " ( which the truer justice of a right Christian philosophy has latterly been the means of discontinuing ) we confess we can never think without deep commiseration . Most

    unamiable she certainly was , and most bigotted ; and sent two hundred and eighty-four people to the stake during a short reign of five years and four months ; which , upon an average , is upwards of four a week ! She was withal plain , petty of sta-

    The Accession Of Queen To The Throne Ayo...

    ture , ill-coloured , and fierceeyed , with a voice almost as deep as a man ' s ; had a bad

    blood , and ended with having nobody to love her , not even the bigots in whose cause she had lost the love of her people , f But let us recollect whose

    daughter she was , and under what circumstances born and bred . She inherited her fathers tyrannical tendencies , her mother ' s melancholy and stubbornness ; and she had the misfortune , say rather the unspeakable

    misery , of being taught to think it right to commit her fellowcreatures to the flames , for doing no more than she stubbornly did herself , —vindicate the right of having their own opinion . Recollect above all , that she was not happy ;—that it was not

    ? " Mild and modest , and young , as she spirit of royalty and power had within twenty-four hours gained such an ascendancy in her studious mind , that she heard the intimation of her husband being elevated to the same dignity as herself , with vexation and displeasure . As soon as she was left alone with him , she remonstrated against this measure ; and after much dispute , he agreed to wait till she herself should make him king , and by an act of Parliament . But even this concession , to take this dignity as a boon from her , did not satisfy the sudden expansion of her new-born ambition . She soon sent for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke , and informed them that she was willing to create her husband a duke , but would never consent to make him king . This declaration brought unquestionably was , " says Turner , " the

    down his mother in great fury to her , with all the force of enraged language and imperious disdain . The violent duchess scolded her young queen , and roused the mortified Dudley to forsake her chamber of repose , and to vow that he would accept no title but the regal honour . " History of England , as _quoted further on p _, 219 . —Jane ' s best claim to the respect of posterity must remain with her taste for literature . She had the good sense to feel , and avow , that there was no comfort like her books , after all . Her nature seems in other respects to have had a formal nsipidity , " excitable only by stimulants which did not agree with it . + Michele , the Venetian Ambassador , in the account which he wrote of her , ( see

    _Enis _' s Letters , mentioned a little further on ) describes her as *• moderately pretty , " according to the translator . But there is reason to doubt the correctness of a version , which in speaking of Elizabeth ' s complexion , renders " olivastro" by " sallow ;"—at least that is not the usual acceptation of the meaning of the word " sallow ; " it is also opposed by the context , as will be seen presently ; and if Michele really meant to say that Mary was " moderately pretty , " and did not use the words as goodnaturedly implying something different , he goes counter to all which is understood of her face in history , and certainly to the prints of it , which are those of a melancholy and homely-looking vixen . It is a pity the rest of the original had not been quoted , as well as a few sentences .

    4 Female Sovereigns Ofengland When Young...

    4 Female Sovereigns ofEngland when young .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1837, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_01071837/page/2/