as devout, and
most earnest in her devotion. The daughter of Katharine of Aragon, the
granddaughter of Isabella of Castile, could hardly have been otherwise.
The women of that royal line were uniformly conspicuous for their piety,
though this was too often tinctured with bigotry. In Mary, bigotry
degenerated into fanaticism, and fanaticism into the spirit of
persecution. The worst evils are probably those that have flowed from
fanaticism. Yet the amount of the mischief does not necessarily furnish
us with the measure of guilt in the author of it. The introduction of
the Inquisition into Spain must be mainly charged on Isabella. Yet the
student of her reign will not refuse to this great queen the praise of
tenderness of conscience and a sincere desire to do the right.
Unhappily, the faith in which she, as well as her royal granddaughter,
was nurtured, taught her to place her conscience in the keeping of
ministers less scrupulous than herself; and on those ministers may
fairly rest much of the responsibility of measures on which they only
were deemed competent to determine.

Mary's sincerity in her religious professions was placed beyond a doubt
by the readiness with which she submitted to the sacrifice of her
personal interests whenever the interests of religion seemed to demand
it. She burned her translation of a portion of Erasmus, prepared with
great labor, at the suggestion of her confessor. An author will readily
estimate the value of such a sacrifice. One more important, and
intelligible to all, was the resolute manner in which she persisted in
restoring the Church property which had been confiscated to the use of
the crown. "The crown is too much impoverished to admit of it,"
remonstrated her ministers. "I would rather lose ten crowns," replied
the high-minded queen, "than place my soul in peril."[58]

Yet it cannot be denied, that Mary had inherited, in full measure, some
of the sterner qualities of her father, and that she was wanting in that
sympathy for human suffering which is so graceful in a woman. After a
rebellion, the reprisals were terrible. London was converted into a
charnel-house; and the squares and principal streets were garnished with
the unsightly trophies of the heads and limbs of numerous victims who
had fallen by the hand of the executioner.[59] This was in accordance
with the spirit of the age. But the execution of the unfortunate Lady
Jane Grey--the young, the beautiful, and the good--leave