Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon, was crowned with great ceremony October 1, 1553, and her first Parliament met four days later. It reversed a decision of the former Parliament, and declared that Henry’s marriage with Catharine had been valid, and that Mary was the legitimate heir to the throne; and it repealed all the religious legislation under Edward VI. On taking the throne Mary promised to force no one’s religion, but as soon as she dared she began to restore Romanism with a zeal that delighted the pope. Mary was married to Philip of Spain January 1, 1554; but the alliance was very unpopular from the first. Immediately after the marriage “the bloody acts of the tragedy were begun.” Care was taken to elect to Parliament members “of a wise, grave and Catholic sort.” This body obtained the pope’s absolution of the nation for its guilt of schism and abolished all acts which made the sovereign the supreme head of the Church. The Latin service was restored. Fully half of the clergy were thrust out of their offices. Bishop Gardner secured the passage of the terrible edicts and laws, and Bishop Bonner so applied them as to gain the title of “the bloody.” The fires of Smithfield and the ax at the Tower were in such active service during four years that some four hundred “martyrs left their record of faith and triumph as one of painful glories of the English Reformation.” Among those burned were Latimer and Ridley. Bound to the stake with his friend, Latimer said, when the lighted fagot was applied: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day, by God’s grace, light such a candle in England as, I trust, shall never be put out.” Cranmer had been the decisive agent in the divorce against Catharine, thus branding the birth of her daughter, Mary, as illegitimate. This Mary never forgave. But there were other motives. “To burn the Primate of the English Church for heresy was to shut out meaner victims from all hope of escape.” He was more than any other man the representative of the religious revolution which had passed over the land. In an hour of weakness, and under the entreaties of his friends, he recanted. But in the end he redeemed his momentary weakness by a last act of heroism. He knew that his recantations had been published, and that any further declaration made would probably be suppressed by his unscrupulous antagonists. He resolved by a single action to defeat their calculations and stamp his sincerity on the memories of his countrymen. His dying speech was silenced, as he might well have expected; but he had made up his mind to something that could not be stifled. In his speech he said: