Had Joanna become acquainted with the Reformation and the writings of the Reformers, and with the doctrines which they professed? This has been doubted; but it seems improbable that she should have been ignorant of them. Joanna was a Lutheran, says one of the learned writers who have devoted most attention to this subject.[211] This statement is perhaps too definite. But the evangelical doctrines were penetrating everywhere; and they must have reached the prison of Joanna. It has been asserted that Luther at this time had more numerous adherents in Spain than in Germany itself.[212] The keepers of the prison perhaps prevented evangelical works from reaching the queen. There is, however, a light which no hand of man can intercept. The theologian de Soto, celebrated for his acquirements, as well as for his piety, came to her on the morning of her death; and he appears to have thought her a Christian, but not a Roman Catholic. He said: '_Blessed be the Lord, her highness told me things which have consoled me_.' Here is the Christian. He adds: '_Nevertheless, she is not disposed to the sacrament of the Eucharist_.' Here is the enlightened woman who rejects the rites of Rome. 'She committed her soul to God,' said the princess Joanna, granddaughter of the queen, 'and gave thanks to Him that at length He delivered her from all her sorrows.' Her last words were: '_Jesus Christ crucified, be with me_.'[213] She breathed her last on April 12, 1555, between five and six o'clock in the morning. Thus died the mother of Charles V. at the age of seventy-six years. She had been at various times kept in prison by her husband, Philip of Austria; for ten years by her father, Ferdinand the Catholic; and for thirty-nine years by her son, the emperor Charles V. She is a unique example of the greatest misfortunes, and her dark destiny surpasses all the stories of ancient times. The heiress of so many famous kingdoms, treated as the most wretched of women, was in her last year strictly confined in her dungeon, and lay in the midst of filth which was never removed. Covered as she was with tumors, in anguish and solitude, can we wonder that strange and terrifying images were sometimes produced in her brain by her isolation, melancholy, and fear? But while she was the victim of the gloomiest fanaticism ever met with in the world, she was consoled in the midst of all these horrors, as her latest words prove, by her God and Father in heaven. The time has come for posterity to render to her memory the compassion and the honor which are her due. BOOK XV. ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. THE THREE PARTIES WHICH DIVIDED ENGLAND. (1536-1540.)