and numerical strength of London generally systematically tended, it is evident that no place throughout England was so favourable for those royal and political manœuvres of which the historical recollections of Guildhall furnish such memorable examples. If Gloster wishes to be king, it is to Guildhall that he first sends the wily Buckingham to expressly ask the suffrages of the people: if the bigoted council of the savage Henry determine to express in some exceedingly decisive manner their abhorrence of the spreading doctrines of the Reformation, and of the error of supposing that because Henry favoured them when he wanted a new wife, that he still did so when unable to think of anything but his own painful and disgusting sores, it is at Guildhall that the chosen victim— a lady, young, beautiful, and learned-receives her doom: if Mary would damage the Protestant cause whilst trying Protestant traitors, or James, the Catholic, at a similar opportunity, Guildhall is still the favourite spot. Whatever the effect sought to be produced, it was well known that success in London was the grand preliminary to success elsewhere.

It was on Tuesday, the 24th of June, 1483, that the citizens were seen flocking from all parts towards the Guildhall, on some business of more than ordinary import. Edward IV. had died a few weeks before, and his son and successor was in the Tower, under the care of his uncle, the Protector, waiting the period of his coronation. Doubt and anxiety were in every face. The suspicious eagerness shown to get the youthful Duke of York from the hands of his mother in the Sanctuary at Westminster, the almost inexplicable death of Hastings in the Tower, the severe penance inflicted on Jane Shore, the late King's favourite mistress, and the sermon which followed that exhibition on the same day, the preceding Sunday, at Paul's Cross, where the popular preacher, Dr. Shaw, spoke in direct terms of the illegitimacy of the young Princes, and of the right nobleness of their uncle, all produced a growing sense of alarm as to the future intentions of the principal actor, Gloster. As they now entered the hall, and pressed closer and closer to the hustings, to hear the Duke of Buckingham, who stepped forth to address them, surrounded by many lords, knights, and citizens, it was not long before those intentions, startling as they were, became sufficiently manifest. "The deep revolving, witty Buckingham" seems to have surpassed himself that day, in the exhibition of his characteristic subtlety and address. Commencing with a theme which found a deep response in the indignant bosoms of his listeners, the tyrannies and extortions of the late King (which the Londoners had especial reason to remember), he gradually led them to the consideration of another feature of Edward's character, his amours, which had, no doubt, caused many a heart-burning in the City domestic circles, and thence by an easy transition to his illegitimacy; Buckingham alleging that the late King was not the son of the Duke of York, and that Richard was. To give confidence to the citizens, he added that the Lords and Commons had sworn never to submit to a bastard, and called upon them accordingly to acknowledge the Protector as King. The answer was-dead silence. The confident orator and bold politician was for a moment" marvellously abashed," and calling the Mayor aside, with others who were aware of his objects, and had endeavoured to prepare the way for them, inquired "What meaneth this that the people be so still?” "Sir," replied the Mayor, "perchance they perceive [understand] you not well."

That we shall

amend," said Buckingham; and "therewith, somewhat louder, rehearsed the same matter again, in other order and other words, so well and ornately, and nevertheless so evidently and plain, with voice, gesture, and countenance so comely and so convenient, that every man much marvelled that heard him; and thought that they never heard in their lives so evil a tale so well told. But were it for wonder or fear, or that each looked that other should speak first, not one word was there answered of all the people that stood before; but all were as still as the midnight, not so much rouning [speaking privately] among them, by which they might seem once to commune what was best to do. When the Mayor saw this, he, with other partners of the council, drew about the Duke, and said that the people had not been accustomed there to be spoken to but by the Recorder, which is the mouth of the City, and haply to him they will answer. With that the Recorder, called Thomas Fitzwilliam, a sad man and an honest, which was but newly come to the office, and never had spoken to the people before, and loth was with that matter to begin, notwithstanding thereunto commanded by the Mayor, made rehearsal to the commons of that which the Duke had twice purposed himself; but the Recorder so tempered his tale that he showed everything as the Duke's words were, and no part of his own; but all this no change made in the people, which alway after one stood as they had been amazed." Such a reception at the outset might have turned some men from their purpose altogether—not so Buckingham, who now, after another brief converse with the Mayor, assumed a different tone and bearing. "Dear friends," said he to the

66

citizens, we come to move you to that thing which, peradventure, we so greatly needed not, but that the lords of this realm and commons of other parts might have sufficed, saying, such love we bear you, and so much set by you, that we would not gladly do without you that thing in which to be partners is your weal and honour, which, as to us seemeth, you see not or weigh not; wherefore we require you to give us an answer, one or other, whether ye be minded, as all the nobles of the realm be, to have this noble Prince, now Protector, to be your King?" It was scarcely possible to resist this appeal by absolute silence. So, at these words, the people began to whisper among themselves secretly, that the voice was neither loud nor base, but like a swarm of bees, till at the last, at the nether end of the hall, a bushment of the Duke's servants, and one Nashfield, and others belonging to the Protector, with some prentices and lads that thrusted into the hall amongst the press, began suddenly, at men's backs, to cry out as loud as they could, King Richard! King Richard!' and then threw up their caps in token of joy, and they that stood before cast back their heads marvelling thereat, but nothing they said. And when the Duke and the Mayor saw this manner, they wisely turned it to their purpose, and said it was a goodly cry and a joyful to hear every man with one voice, and no man saying nay." This scene, so graphically described by Hall (from Sir T. More), would form one of the richest bits of comedy, were it not for the tragic associations which surround the whole. As it is, one can scarcely avoid enjoying the perplexity of Buckingham and the Mayor at the unaccountable and most vexatious silence, or the backward look of the people at the lads and others, who at last did shout, or without admiring the tact and impudence of Buckingham in acknowledging with a grave face, and in grateful words, the cry that was at once so goodly, joyful, and so very unani

mous.

It will be perceived how closely Shakspere has followed the account here transcribed, in the third act of his Richard III.; and as is usual with him, by so doing, made the passage scarcely less interesting, as illustrating him, than for its own historical value.

Passing from the craft and violence which formed the two steps to power during so many ages, and of which the incident narrated, with its well-known concomitants, furnishes a striking example, we find, but little more than half a century later, new trains of thought and action at work among men, high passions developed, struggles taking place for objects which by comparison make all the intrigues and feuds of rival and aspiring nobles appear contemptible, and maintained with a courage unknown to the days of chivalry. The Reformation came; and sufficiently terrible were its first effects. Division and strife extended throughout the land. By a kind of poetical justice, Henry himself, who drew the gospel light from Bullen's eyes, was fated in later years to see an emanation from that light come in a much less pleasing shape, namely, in the disputatious glances of his wife Catherine Parr, who, as he grew more helpless and impatient, ventured to engage in controversy with him, and had well nigh gone to the scaffold for so doing. And though she escaped, a victim was found sufficiently distinguished to gratify the inhuman and self-willed tyrant, who burned people not so much on account of their having any particular religion, as the daring to reject the one he proposed, or to keep it when accepted, if he altered his mind. This was Anne Askew, a young lady who had been seen very busy about court distributing tracts among the attendants of the Queen, and heard to speak vehemently against the Popish doctrine of transubstantiation. She was the daughter of Sir William Askew, of Kelsey, in Lincolnshire, and the wife of a neighbouring gentleman named Kyme, a violent Papist, who turned her out of doors when, after long study of the Bible, she became a Protestant. She then came to London to sue for a separation, and was favourably noticed, it is supposed, by the Queen, and certainly by the ladies of the court. But neither Henry nor his council, including such men as Bishop Bonner and the Chancellor Wriothesley, were to be quietly bearded thus. Anne Askew, as she called herself, was arrested, and carried before Bonner and others. Among the questions put to her was one by the Lord Mayor, inquiring whether the priest cannot make the body of Christ? Her reply was very striking: "I have read that God made man; but that man can make God I never yet read." However, some sort of recantation was obtained from her, probably through the natural and graceful timidity of her youth and sex overpowering for the moment, in the presence of so many learned and eminent men, the inherent strength of her convictions. Such triumphs, however, are of brief duration. Anne Askew was discharged, but quickly apprehended again, and, after examination by the Privy Council, committed to Newgate. Her next public appearance was at Guildhall, where she was condemned, with some more unfortunates, to death for heresy. And now this poor, solitary, but brave and self-possessed woman was subjected to treatment that makes one blush for human nature. The grand object of the Council was, it appears, to find what ladies of the court they could get into their toils, since the Queen herself had escaped them. So after a vain attempt made by Nicholas Shaxton, the former Bishop of Salisbury, to induce her to imitate his example, and save her life by

apostacy, for which attempt he got in answer the solemn assurance that it had been better for him if he had never been born, she was carried to the Tower, and examined as to her connexions at court. She denied that she had had any, but was told the King knew better; and then followed a question that shows the privations she had already been intentionally exposed to: How had she contrived to get food and comfort in prison if she had no powerful friends? "My maid," said Anne," bemoaned my wretched condition to the apprentices in the street, and some of them sent me money, but I never knew their names." It was probably at this period of the examination that she was laid on the rack, and that Wriothesley and Rich, having both applied their own hands to the instrument, obtained an admission from her that a man in a blue coat had given her maid ten shillings, saying they came from Lady Hertford, and another time a man in a violet coat eight shillings from Lady Denny; but as to the truth of the statements she could say nothing, and constantly persevered in her assertion that she had not been supported by these or any of the Council. To the eternal honour of her sex, it is understood that no amount of anguish could wring anything more from her, and in consequence Henry and the Council were compelled to be content with the victim they had. So, whilst still unrecovered from the effects of the rack, she was hurried off to Smithfield on the 16th of July, 1546, and chained with three others to stakes. Near them was a pulpit, from which poor Shaxton, as if not already sufficiently humiliated, was chosen to preach. At the conclusion of his discourse, a pardon was exhibited for the whole if they would recant; but there was no such stuff in their thoughts: Anne Askew and her companions died as heroically as their own hearts could have ever desired they should die.

After all, martyrdom, it must be acknowledged, is not a pleasant thing; and we need not wonder that, through the period extending from the reign of

Henry VIII. to that of James I., so many indications present themselves of Protestants and Catholics alike changing passive endurance for active warfare, and determining that it was as easy to run the risk of conviction for treason as for heresy, with a much greater probability of improving their position by success. As to each party, whether in power or not, applying its own dislike of the flames, its own sense of the monstrous injustice of such influences, its own knowledge of their inefficacy, to the case of the other, no such supposition seems to have been conceivable in the philosophy of the sixteenth century. So, burnings, plots, and insurrections follow each other in rapid succession through this terrible period, disturbing even the comparative repose of Elizabeth's brilliant reign. Two of the most striking of these events belong to the history of Guildhall—the one arising out of Sir Thomas Wyatt's attempt against the Catholic Mary, and the other from the Gunpowder Plot, destined to overthrow the Protestant James : each, we may add, forming one of the most interesting features of the altogether interesting history to which it belongs. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, himself a Protestant, was the son of a zealous Papist, Sir George Throckmorton, who had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, and been imprisoned in the Tower many years by Henry. On his release in 1543, Nicholas, his son, received the appointment of Sewer to the King, and, having accompanied the latter in the French expedition, was rewarded by a pension for his services. During the reign of Edward VI. he still further distinguished himself by his conduct at the battle of Pinkie (or Musselburgh), and rose still higher in kingly favour. Edward knighted him, received him into close personal intimacy, and, besides making him under-treasurer of the Mint, gave him some valuable manors. Everything, therefore, concurred to deepen the impression in favour of Protestantism made first on his mind, no doubt, by study and conviction. How little inclined Throckmorton was to interfere with the ordinary laws of legitimacy and succession to the crown under ordinary circumstances, may be inferred from his conduct at the commencement of Mary's reign. He was present at Greenwich when Edward died; and, although aware of the designs of the friends of Lady Jane Grey, towards whom, as a Protestant, his sympathies must have tended, yet he did not hesitate to depart immediately for London, and dispatch Mary's goldsmith to her with the intelligence of her accession. It is evident, therefore, that when, only a few months later, we find him on his trial for treason, he must, supposing the charge to have any truth in it, have experienced some great disappointment as to the policy he had hoped to have seen pursued, or some new event must have occurred utterly unlooked for, and most threatening to the Protestant interests. Such, no doubt, seemed, to a large portion of the nation, the marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain, one of the most inexorable bigots in religious matters that ever existed, and whose power seemed to be almost as ample to accomplish as his temper and fanaticism were prompt to instigate the destruction of the new faith wherever his influence might extend, and who did destroy it in the Spanish peninsula, however signal his failures elsewhere. One little incident tells volumes as to Philip's character. Whilst present at an auto-da-fé, when forty persons were marching in the horrible procession towards the stake, to which they had been sentenced by the Inquisition, one of the poor creatures called out as he passed the King for Mercy! mercy! "Perish thou, and all like