MARY, FIRST QUEEN REGNANT. CHAPTER I. Mary sitrnamcd the Bloody—Parentage—Birth—Christening—Early infancy—Accomplishments—Penderne in Wales—Projected marriage to tJie Emperor—Translates the prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas—Offered in marriage to the King of France—Takes part in the pleasures of the court—Afflicted by the divorce of her mother—Kind letter from her mother. HOSE short-sight cd historians, who believed our rock founded religion in danger of falling if not bolstered up by the rotten props of sophistry and falsehood, have unscrupulously painted the character and conduct of "tho subject of the present memoir in colours so base, vile, and horrible, as to obtain for her tbe revolting surname of " Bloody Queen Mary." How far she deserved this terrible adjective to be subjoined to her . soft poetical name, it will be our duty : to shew; not, be it observed, by simply retailing the statements and sentiments of other writers—albeit an exposure of late years to the atmosphere of a searching criticism has caused the crumbling lamp-black, with which the image of our first Queen Regnant was so lavishly incrusted, to fall off in flakes—but by a pliiin, nngarnished detail of facts, gleaned from the records in our national archives and other reliable sources. Queen Mary, Katherine of Arragon and Henry the Eighth's only child who reached maturity, was born at Greenwich at half-past two in the morning, on the eighteenth of February, 151G, Three days after her birth she was christened with royal pomp. The sponsors were, Cardinal Wolsey, Katherine PLuitagenet, and the Duchess of Norfolk. The Countess of Salisbury carried the royal babe, and on each side of her walked the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. The procession walked on a carpet laid down for the occasion, from Greenwich Palace to the Grey Friar's Church, where the infant was baptized Mary, after her aunt Mary Tudor, in the same silver fount that the children of Henry the Seventh and Elizabeth of York had been christened, and then confirmed. The ceremony concluded, presents of a gold cup from Wolsey, a gold spoon from tbe Princess Katherine, a richly illuminated Catholic book of devotion from the Duchess of Norfolk, a gold pomander or scent ball from Mary Tudor, and other articles from her relatives and the attendant nobles and ladies were conferred on the unconscious infant, who, on the return to the palace, did nothing but kick and cry, despite the strenuous efforts of her attendants to soothe and quiet her. Mary passed the earliest months of her existence at the residence of her affectionate mother, but under tho official care of the Countess of Salisbury, with