The Death Of Queen Mary
THE DEATH OF QUEEN MARY
After a long illness, Queen Mary died on November 17 at three or four in the morning, yielding her life to nature and her kingdom to her sister, Elizabeth.
Hearing her sighs before she died, her council asked if she was sad about the death of her husband. “Indeed, that may be one cause,” the queen replied, “but that is not the greatest wound that pierces my oppressed mind.”
No other king or queen of England spilled as much blood in a time of peace as Queen Mary did in four years through her hanging, beheading, burning, and imprisonment of good Christian Englishmen. When she first sought the crown and promised to retain the faith and religion of Edward, God went with her and brought her the throne through the efforts of the Protestants. But after she broke her promises to God and man, sided with Stephen Gardiner, and gave up her supremacy to the pope, God left her. Nothing she did after that thrived.
Instead, she married King Philip and made England subject to a stranger. With Philip came the pope and his Mass, monks, and the nuns, but still God prevented her from having her way.
No woman was ever more disappointed than Mary when she did not have children, even with the help of the Catholic Church’s prayers. She seemed unable to win the favor of God, the hearts of her subjects, or the love of her husband.
At last, when nothing could sway her to stop the tyranny of her priests and spare her subjects who were being drawn daily as sheep to the slaughter, it pleased God to cut off her rule by death, giving her throne to another after she reigned for five years and five months.
I mentioned this unlucky reign of Queen Mary not to detract from her position, which she was called to by the Lord, but as a warning to men and women in authority who persecute Christ’s Church and shed Christian blood, so they will not stumble on the same stone as the Jews who persecuted Christ and His Church to their own destruction.