at her left hand, under the royal canopy, j and Gardiner was placed outside the canopy, at her right. After a few words from Gardiner, Pole, in a long and eloquent harangue, formally invited the English nation to reconcile itself to the Holy See, from which he deplored it had been so long and so unhappily separated, and at the same time hinted that he had power from the Pope to absolve the nation without a previous restitution of the lands and property alienated from the church by Henry the Eighth, or his successor. The next day, the Lords and Commons voted, almost by acclamation, a petition for the reunion. The preamble stated, " That whereas they had been guilty of a most horrible defection and schism from the Apostolic See, they did now sincerely repent of it ; and in sign of their repentance, were ready to repeal all the laws made in prejudice of that See; therefore, since the King and Queen had been in no way defiled by their schism, they pray them to be intercessors with the legate to grant them absolution, and to receive them again into the bosom of the church." The day following, this petition being presented to the Queen and King in due form, the legate solemnly absolved all those present; and the ceremony ended by We Deum being chaunted in the presence of the Queen, her spouse, and the whole assembly. The solemnity of this ceremony deeply affected the Queen, and increased her indisposition, which she attributed to her being, as she supposed, enceinte ; but she recovered sufficiently to keep the Christmas festival with more than ordinary pomp and splendour. On Christmas eve, the great hall of the palace was lit up with one thousand lamps, where Mary and her husband entertained a brilliant assemblage of English and foreign nobles. The Princess Elizaj beth was permitted to take her place next to the Queen, as heir apparent ; and Courtney, who had been liberated, took part in the gay scene as the Earl of Devonshjre, and, at the termination of the festival, received a permission, tantamount to a command, to travel abroad that he might improve his mind. This splendour was scarcely terminated when the Queen's health again declined. On the sixteenth of January, she was carried to the throne to dissolve the Parliament, and had scarcely the strength to go through the ceremony of sceptring the seven persecuting acts which this, her third Parliament, had passed in favour of the iìoman Catholic church. One of the acts passed this session made it treason to publicly pray for the Queen's death ; and another threw great power into the hands of Philip, by naming him, in the event of the Queen's death, Regent during the minority of their issue, should they have any, and making it high treason to imagine or compass hia death.