st Henry, the ally of that pope, he seized the
opportunity of revenge; and revoking Pole's legatine commission,
appointed in his room Cardinal Peyto, an Observantine friar, and
confessor to the queen. But Mary would never permit the new legate to
act upon the commission; and Paul was afterwards obliged to restore
Cardinal Pole to his authority.

There occur few general remarks, besides what have already been made
in the course of our narration, with regard to the general state of
the kingdom during this reign. The naval power of England was then
so inconsiderable, that fourteen thousand pounds being ordered to be
applied to the fleet, both for repairing and victualling it, it was
computed that ten thousand pounds a year would afterwards answer all
necessary charges.[*]

* Burnet, vol. iii. p. 259.

The arbitrary proceedings of the queen above mentioned, joined to many
monopolies granted by this princess, as well as by her father, checked
the growth of commerce; and so much the more, as all other princes
in Europe either were not permitted, or did not find it necessary, to
proceed in so tyrannical a manner. Acts of parliament, both in the last
reign and in the beginning of the present, had laid the same impositions
on the merchants of the still-yard as on other aliens; yet the queen,
immediately after her marriage, complied with the solicitations of the
emperor, and by her prerogative suspended those laws.[*] Nobody in that
age pretended to question this exercise of prerogative. The historians
are entirely silent with regard to it; and it is only by the collection
of public papers that it is handed down to us.

An absurd law had been made in the preceding reign, by which every one
was prohibited from making cloth unless he had served an apprenticeship
of seven years. The law was repealed in the first year of the queen; and
this plain reason given, that it had occasioned the decay of the woollen
manufacture, and had ruined several towns.[**] It is strange that
Edward's law should have been revived during the reign of Elizabeth; and
still more strange that it should still subsist.

A passage to Archangel had been discovered by the English during the
last reign; and a beneficial trade with Muscovy had been established. A
solemn embassy was sent by the czar to Queen Mary. The ambassadors were
shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland; but being hospitably entertained
there, they proceeded on the journey, and were receiv