ter. With
courtly manners, and a magnificent way of living, he combined a
shrewdness and solidity of judgment, that eminently fitted him for his
present mission. The queen received with great joy the letters which he
brought her, though too ill to read them. Feria, seeing the low state of
Mary's health, was earnest with the council to secure the succession for
Elizabeth.

He had the honor of supping with the princess at her residence in
Hatfield, about eighteen miles from London. The Spaniard enlarged, in
the course of conversation, on the good-will of his master to Elizabeth,
as shown in the friendly offices he had rendered her during her
imprisonment, and his desire to have her succeed to the crown. The envoy
did not add that this desire was prompted not so much by the king's
concern for the interests of Elizabeth as by his jealousy of the French,
who seemed willing to countenance the pretensions of Mary Stuart, the
wife of the dauphin, to the English throne.[252] The princess
acknowledged the protection she had received from Philip in her
troubles. "But for her present prospects," she said, "she was indebted
neither to the king nor to the English lords, however much these latter
might vaunt their fidelity. It was to the people that she owed them, and
on the people she relied."[253] This answer of Elizabeth furnishes the
key to her success.

The penetrating eye of the envoy soon perceived that the English
princess was under evil influences. The persons most in her confidence,
he wrote, were understood to have a decided leaning to the Lutheran
heresy, and he augured most unfavorably for the future prospects of the
kingdom.

On the seventeenth of November, 1558, after a brief, but most disastrous
reign, Queen Mary died. Her fate had been a hard one. Unimpeachable in
her private life, and, however misguided, with deeply-seated religious
principles, she has yet left a name held in more general execration than
any other on the roll of English sovereigns. One obvious way of
accounting for this, doubtless, is by the spirit of persecution which
hung like a dark cloud over her reign. And this not merely on account of
the persecution; for that was common with the line of Tudor; but because
it was directed against the professors of a religion which came to be
the established religion of the country. Thus the blood of the martyr
became the seed of a great and powerful church, ready through all after
time to bear testimony to