Henry VIII. dying January 28, 1547, was succeeded by his son, Edward VI., who laboured to forward the reformation. Those who formed the regency, his protectors, were Protestants, and the persecuting laws were soon repealed, with other measures for the advancement of the religion of the Scriptures. But this pious young king died, July 6, 1553, and was succeeded on the throne by his sister Mary. She was a consistent Papist, directed entirely by the Romish prelates. They revived all the powers of the Inquisition, and soon imprisoned Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, and the other leaders in the reformation, accusing them of heresy. Queen Mary accepted the proposal to marry Philip, son of the Emperor Charles V., though ten years her junior, and a widower. As a bigot Papist, “all who had espoused the cause of the reformation in England,” as Bishop Bonner states, “anticipated not only a change of religion, but the erection of a Spanish government and Inquisition. Those who valued the _civil_ liberty of their country, without any concern for religion, concluded that England would become a province of Spain; and they beheld how the Spaniards ruled in the Netherlands, in Milan, Naples, and Sicily; but, above all, they heard of their unexampled inhumanities in the West Indies.” Philip was a man of great talents; but, as it is said of him, “his religion was of the most corrupt kind; it served only to increase the natural depravity of his disposition, and prompted him to commit the most odious and shocking crimes. Of the triumph of honour and humanity over the dictates of superstition, there occurs not a single instance in the whole reign of Philip; who violated the most sacred obligations as often as religion afforded him a pretence, and exercised, for many years, the most unrelenting cruelty, without reluctance or remorse. Few princes have been more dreaded, more abhorred, or have caused more blood to flow, than Philip II. of Spain.” Mary, on the 23rd of October, before the altar in her private chapel, solemnly plighted her troth to Philip; and Bishop Gardiner was despatched to arrange the marriage settlement with the Emperor Charles V., who borrowed _one million two hundred thousand_ crowns,--a prodigious sum at that time,--to enable that prelate to secure an obsequious parliament.