ut the scruples
of the zealous young king on this head could not be brought to yield to
reasons of state, till he had "advised with the archbishop of Canterbury
and the bishops of London and Rochester, who gave their opinion that to
give license to sin was sin, but to connive at sin might be allowed in
case it were neither long, nor without hope of reformation[16]."

[Note 16: Hayward's Life of Edward VI.]

By this prudent and humane but somewhat jesuitical decision this
perplexing affair was set at rest for the present; and during the small
remainder of her brother's reign, a negative kind of persecution,
consisting in disfavor, obloquy, and neglect, was all, apparently, that
the lady Mary was called upon to undergo. But she had already endured
enough to sour her temper, to aggravate with feelings of personal
animosity her systematic abhorrence of what she deemed impious heresy,
and to bind to her heart by fresh and stronger ties that cherished
faith, in defence of which she was proudly conscious of having struggled
and suffered with a lofty and unyielding intrepidity.

In order to counterbalance the threatened hostility of Spain, and impose
an additional check on the catholic party at home, it was now judged
expedient for the king to strengthen himself by an alliance with
Christian III. king of Denmark; an able and enlightened prince, who in
the early part of his reign had opposed with vigor the aggressions of
the emperor Charles V. on the independence of the north of Europe, and
more recently had acquired the respect of the whole protestant body by
establishing the reformation in his dominions. An agent was accordingly
dispatched with a secret commission to sound the inclinations of the
court of Copenhagen towards a marriage between the prince-royal and the
lady Elizabeth.

That this negotiation proved fruitless, was apparently owing to the
reluctance to the connexion manifested by Elizabeth; of whom it is
observable, that she never could be prevailed upon to afford the
smallest encouragement to the addresses of any foreign prince whilst
she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an
alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the
loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never
absent from her aspiring thoughts.

Disappointed in this design, Edward lost no time in pledging his own
hand to the infant daughter of Henry II. of France, which contract he