The whole country was in fact in a condition of irritated despondency, sick of persecution, sick of disaster, disheartened by epidemics and bad harvests; without the spirit or the material means to attempt a whole- hearted prosecution of the war, yet too sore to be willing to make peace till Calais should be recovered. And so in despair and gloom dragged out the last months of Mary Tudor's life. The last message she received from her husband was to beg her to make no difficulties about the succession of the sister who, she knew, would seek to reverse her policy. It was not till November that she passed away--to be followed in a few hours by her one trused friend, Cardinal Pole: the most disastrous example on record of one who with conscientious and destructive persistence aimed at an ideal which her own methods made for ever impossible of attainment. [Sidenote: and character] From the time of her childhood she was exposed to unceasing harshness; a princess born, she was treated as a bastard; despite it all, her natural generosity survived. Royally courageous, loyal and straightforward; to her personal enemies almost magnanimous; to the poor and afflicted pitiful; loving her country passionately: she was blind to the forces at work in the world, obsessed with the idea of one supreme duty, and she set herself, as she deemed, to do battle with Antichrist by the only methods she knew, though they were alien to her natural disposition, facing hatred and obloquy. She whose life was one long martyrdom, for conscience' sake offered up a whole holocaust of martyrs: she who thirsted for love died clothed with a nation's hate. Where in all history is a tragedy more piteous than that of Mary Tudor? CHAPTER XVI ELIZABETH (i), 1558-61--A PASSAGE PERILOUS [Sidenote: 1558 Accession of Elizabeth]