minster Hall to the Abbey, Her train was borne by the Duchess of Norfolk, attended by the vice-chamberlain. Immediately after her walked the Princess Elizabeth, followed by the Lady Anne of Cleves and other noble personages. On reaching the Abbey, she was crowned and anointed, with all the ceremonies and solemnities then established, according to custom, by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, assisted by ten other bishops —the unfortunate Archbishops of Canterbury and of York being in prison. Afterwards, she received the homage of the lords spiritual and temporal, remained seated whilst mass was performed, and, at Agnus Dei, kissed the pax. The crown and the other regalia were then offered on the altar, and the Queen changed her dress, and went with her train to the banquet in Westminster Hall. This royal feast, at which the ceremonies observed were the same as at previous coronations, was conducted with judgment and decorum. The Princess Elizabeth took precedence of all other ladies, as next in rank to the Queen. The Champion of England valiantly offered to do battle in vindication of Mary's claims to the crown, and Garter Kingat-Arms proclaimed her as "the most high, puissant and most excellent Princess Mary the First, by the grace of God Queen of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, and of the Church of England and Ireland supreme head." In the evening, the Queen and all the noble company threw off their robes and proceeded by water to Whitehall, where a sumptuous supper terminated the fa tiguing festivities, at the late hour of four the next morning. On the day Mary was crowned, a general pardon was proclaimed, with the exception of sixty individuals, who had been imprisoned or confined to their houses for political or religious offences —a significant sign of the disturbed state of the times. On the fifth of October, Mary opened her first Parliament in person. Both the peers and commoners, according to ancient custom, but in violation of the laws of Edward the Sixth, which were not yet annulled, accompanied their sovereign to Westminster Abbey, where the mass of the Holy Ghost was celebrated before them, m the Latin tongue. Taylor of Lincoln and llarley of Hereford, two Protestant bishops, pronounced the service heretical and unlawful ; and, for their pains, were violently thrust out of the Abbey. After mass, the Queen and the two Houses went in procession to the parliament chamber, in Westminster Palace ; and, on Mary being seated, Gardiner addressed the members in her name. Some historians affirm that Mary bribed this Parliament ; but a glance at the state of her finances at this period will show that this assertion is unfounded. On the thirtieth of August, she remitted the subsidy of four shillings in the pound on land, and two shillings and eightpence on goods, granted by the late Parliament to pay the debts of the crown—debts, be it understood, chiefly incurred by Northumberland's misrule, but which, in gratitude for the nation's attachment to her rights, she now undertook, of her own free will, to pay from her own resources. Then, on her accession, she bad no private purse of her own, she surrendered property, which had been seized by the crown, and which brought in about sixty thousand pounds per annum, to the rightful owners ; and restored a depreciated currency to its original value, by ordering a new coinage at tbe sole cost and loss of the treasury. Indeed, the royal coffers were well nigh empty, and likely, for a time, to continue so. therefore, although she might, in imitation of the conduct of her predecessors, have promised, entreated, commanded, she could not have bribed her senate on account of her poverty ; and if, as has been stated by more than one writer, tbe Emperor furnished the means for this bribery, then the bribed were unusually ungrateful, for they forcibly opposed the Queen's will in nothing but her marriage with the Emperor's son, Philip. Tbe first act of this parliament was the praiseworthy abolition of all treasons created since the twenty-fifth of Edward the Third, and all felonies and cases of premunire introduced since the first of Henry the Eighth.* They next passe 1 * The penal laws of Henry the Eighth