to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The History of Mary I, Queen of England as found in the public records, despatches of ambassadors in original private letters, and other contemporary documents Author: Jean Mary Stone Release Date: March 29, 2018 [EBook #56875] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF MARY I *** Produced by MWS, Christian Boissonnas, Stephen Rowland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE HISTORY OF MARY I., QUEEN OF ENGLAND [Illustration: THE PRINCESS MARY. From the original portrait in the Gallery of the University, Oxford.] THE HISTORY OF MARY I. QUEEN OF ENGLAND AS FOUND IN THE PUBLIC RECORDS, DESPATCHES OF AMBASSADORS IN ORIGINAL PRIVATE LETTERS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS BY J. M. STONE LONDON SANDS & CO. 12 BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1901 PREFACE. At a time when prejudiced historical verdicts are being largely revised, and when it is universally admitted that history must be studied on broader and more discriminating lines than heretofore, the restatement of the case for our first Queen Regnant scarcely needs an apology. Two books, one _The Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary_, with an Introductory Memoir by Sir Frederick Madden, some time Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, and the other, _The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria_, edited by the Rev. Joseph Stevenson, from the original manuscript in the possession of Lord Dormer, first revealed Queen Mary to me as an attractive and sympathetic personality. Subsequent diligent examination of documents relating to her life and reign, scattered about the various archives of Europe, has not belied that impression, but has further shown that more interest attaches to her dire struggle with the difficulties which beset her than has generally been supposed. This material has proved to be extremely rich and abundant, especially as regards the archives of Venice, Austria, Belgium and England. The valuable papers formerly at Brussels have, it is true, disappeared, but fortunately we are provided with transcripts of them in the Record Office. And where the despatches of ambassadors, those of Giustinian, Chapuys, Renard, Michiel, de Noailles, Surian and others, drop the thread of the story, our own chroniclers, Stowe, Holinshed, Machyn, Wriothesley, Foxe, etc., take it up, so that an almost continuous narrative is formed, reaching from Mary’s earliest childhood to her death. I have endeavoured, where possible, to give the story in the words of each individual ambassador or annalist, in order to preserve, if it might be, the atmosphere of the times, in a manner unattainable by our modern phraseology. In most instances, I have been careful to reproduce even the eccentricities of the spelling in the English documents quoted, but in others, where I have given somewhat lengthy extracts from our chroniclers, the spelling has been modernised to avoid tedium. It has not come within the scope of the present work to deal exhaustively with Mary’s correspondence, and many of her most interesting letters have been unavoidably omitted, preference being given to those which relate to the more crucial points in her history. One word may not be out of place here, as to the now fully recognised necessity of bringing historical imagination to bear upon any period under consideration; for unless we throw ourselves into the spirit, the views, the interests of that period, we shall utterly fail to form a correct notion of its merits and its short-comings. The thoughts and opinions,...