pt away all other feelings. Every death
at the stake won hundreds to the cause for which the victims died. "You
have lost the hearts of twenty thousands that were rank Papists within
these twelve months," a Protestant wrote triumphantly to Bonner. Bonner
indeed, who had never been a very zealous persecutor, was sick of his
work; and the energy of the bishops soon relaxed. But Mary had no
thought of hesitation in the course she had entered on, and though the
Imperial ambassador noted the rapid growth of public discontent
"rattling letters" from the council pressed the lagging prelates to
fresh activity. Yet the persecution had hardly begun before
difficulties were thickening round the Queen. In her passionate longing
for an heir who would carry on her religious work Mary had believed
herself to be with child; but in the summer of 1555 all hopes of any
childbirth passed away, and the overthrow of his projects for the
permanent acquisition of England to the House of Austria at once
disenchanted Philip with his stay in the realm. But even had all gone
well it was impossible for the king to remain longer in England. He was
needed in the Netherlands to play his part in the memorable act which
was to close the Emperor's political life. Already King of Naples and
Lord of Milan, Philip received by his father's solemn resignation on the
twenty-fifth of October the Burgundian heritage; and a month later
Charles ceded to him the crowns of Castille and Aragon with their
dependencies in the New World and in the Old. The Empire indeed passed
to his uncle Ferdinand of Austria; but with this exception the whole of
his father's vast dominions lay now in the grasp of Philip. Of the
realms which he ruled, England was but one and far from the greatest
one, and even had he wished to return his continued stay there became
impossible.

[Sidenote: The Catholic revival.]

He was forced to leave the direction of affairs to Cardinal Pole, who on
the death of Gardiner in November 1555 took the chief place in Council.
At once Papal Legate and chief minister of the Crown, Pole carried on
that union of the civil and ecclesiastical authority which had been
first seen in Wolsey and had formed the groundwork of the system of
Cromwell. But he found himself hampered by difficulties which even the
ability of Cromwell or Wolsey could hardly have met. The embassy which
carried to Rome the submission of the realm found a fresh Pope, Paul the
Fourth, on the t