will to Lady Jane Grey, descendant of his sister Mary. This gentle girl
of seventeen, sensitive and thoughtful, a devout reformer, who read
Greek and Hebrew and wrote Latin poetry, is a pathetic figure in
history, where we see her, the unwilling wearer of a crown for ten
days, and then with her young husband hurried to that fatal Tower, and
to death; a brief touching interlude before the crowning of Mary,
daughter of Henry and Katharine of Aragon.

Henry VIII. stoutly adhered to Protestantism, and preferred that the
succession should pass out of his own family, rather than into Catholic
dominion again. Hence his naming of Jane Grey instead of his own
daughter Mary, in case of the death of his delicate son Edward.

But Henry was no longer there to stem the tide of Catholic sentiment.
Lady Jane Grey was hurried to the block, and the Catholic Mary to the
throne.

[Sidenote: Mary 1553-1558. Calais Lost, 1558]

Her marriage with Philip II. of Spain quickly overthrew the work of her
father. Unlike Henry VIII., Mary was impelled by deep conviction. She
persecuted to save from what she believed eternal death. Her cruelty
was prompted by sincere fanaticism, mingled with the desire to please
the Catholic Philip, whose love she craved and could not win.
Disappointed in his aim to reign jointly with her, as he had hoped, he
withdrew to Spain. Unlovely and unloved, she is almost an object of
pity, as with dungeon, rack and fagot she strives to restore the
Religion she loves, and to win the husband she adores. But Philip
remained obdurately in Spain, and while she was lighting up all England
with a blaze of martyrs, Calais, the last English possession in France,