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some pause; because of the severity of the laws, made against her subjects of the Romish persuasion: but I will mention such things as were well known, and carefully observed by myself. It is certain she was, in her sentiments, averse to the forcing of conscience: yet, on the other hand, she would not suffer the state to be endangered, under the pretence of conscience and religion. Hence she concluded, that to allow a liberty and toleration of two religions, by public authority, in a military and high mettled nation, that might easily fall from difference in judgment to blows, would be certain destruction. Thus, in the beginning of her reign, when all things looked suspicious, she kept some of the prelates, who were of a more turbulent and factious spirit, prisoners at large; though not without the warrant of the law: but to the rest of both orders she used no severe inquisition, but protected them by a generous connivance. And this was the

posture of affairs at first. Nor did she abate much of this clemency, though provoked by the excommunication of Pope Pius Quintus; which might have raised her indignation, and driven her to new measures; but still she retained her own generous temper. For this prudent courageous lady was not moved with the noise of those terrible threats; being secure of the fidelity and affection of her subjects, and of the inability of the popish faction within the kingdom to hurt her, unless seconded by a foreign enemy.

But about the three and twentieth year of her reign, the face of affairs changed. This difference of the times is not artfully feigned, to serve

a turn; but stands expressed in the public records, and engraven, as it were, in leaves of brass. For before that year none of her subjects, of the Roman religion, had been punished with any severity, by the laws formerly enacted. But now the ambitious and monstrous designs of Spain, to conquer this kingdom, began by degrees to open themselves. A principal part of which was, by all public ways and means, to raise a faction, in the heart of the kingdom, of such as were disaffected, and desirous of innovation: in order to join the enemy upon the invasion. Their hopes of effecting this were grounded upon the difference there was amongst us in religion; whence they resolved to labour this point effectually. And the seminaries at that time budding, priests were sent into England, to sow and raise up an affection for the Romish religion; to teach and inculcate the validity of the pope's excommunication, in releasing subjects from their allegiance; and to awaken and prepare men's minds to an expectation of a change in the government.

About the same time Ireland was attempted by an invasion; and the name and government of Queen Elizabeth vilified and traduced by scandalous libels: in short, there was an unusual swelling in the state; the prognostic of a greater commotion. Yet I will not affirm that all the priests were concerned in the plot, or privy to the designs then carrying on; but only that they were corrupt instruments of other men's malice. It is however attested by the confession of many, that almost all the priests sent into this kingdom

from the year above mentioned, to the thirtieth year of the queen, wherein the design of Spain and the Pope was put in execution by the Armada, had it in their instructions, among other parts of their function, to insinuate, "That affairs could not possibly continue long as they were; that they would soon put on a new face; that the Pope and the Catholic princes would take care for the English state, provided the English were not their own hinderance." Again, some of the priests had manifestly engaged themselves in plots and contrivances, which tended to the undermining and subverting of the government : and as the strongest proof, the whole train of the plot was discovered by letters intercepted from several parts; wherein it was expressly mentioned, "that the vigilancy of the queen and her council, in respect of the Catholics, would be baffled; because the queen only watched, that no nobleman or person of distinction should rise to head the Catholic faction; whereas the design they laid was that all things should be disposed and proposed by private men, of an inferior rank, without their conspiring or consulting together; but wholly in the secret way of confession." And those were the artifices then practised, which are so familiar and customary to that order of men.

In such an impending storm of dangers, the queen was obliged, by the law of necessity, to restrain such of her subjects as were disaffected and rendered incurable by these poisons; and who in the mean time began to grow rich by retirement and exemption from public offices :

and accordingly some severer laws were enacted. But the evil daily increasing, and the origin thereof being charged upon the seminary priests, bred in foreign parts, and supported by the bounty and benevolence of foreign princes, the professed enemies of this kingdom; which priests had lived in places where the name of Queen Elizabeth was always tacked to the titles of heretic, excommunicated, and accursed; and who, though they themselves were not engaged in the treasonable practices, yet were known to be the intimate friends of such as had set their hands to villanies of that kind; and who by their arts and poisonous insinuations, had infected the whole body of the Catholics, which before was less malignant ; there could no other remedy be found, but the forbidding such persons all entrance into this kingdom, upon pain of death: which at last in the twenty-seventh year of her reign, was accordingly enacted.

Yet the event itself, which followed soon after, when so violent a storm fell upon this kingdom, with all its weight, did not in the least abate the envy and hatred of these men, but rather increased it; as if they had divested themselves of all affection to their country. And afterwards, indeed, though our fears of Spain, the occasion of this severity, were abated; yet because the memory of the former times was deeply imprinted in men's minds, and because it would have looked like inconstancy to have abrogated the laws already made, or remissness to have neglected them; the very constitution and nature of affairs suggested to the queen, that she could not with

safety return to the state of things that obtained before the three and twentieth year of her reign.

To this may be added the industry of some to increase the revenues of the exchequer; and the earnestness of the ministers of justice, who usually regard no other safety of their country but what consists in the law; both which called loudly for the laws to be put in execution. However, the queen, as a specimen of her good nature, so far took off the edge of the law, that but a few priests, in proportion, were put to death. And this, we say, not by the way of defence, for the case needs none; as the safety of the kingdom turned upon it; and as the measure of all this severity came far short of those bloody massacres, that are scarce fit to be named among Christians, and have proceeded rather from arrogance and malice than from necessity, in the catholic countries, and thus, we think, we have made it appear that the queen was moderate in the point of religion; and that the change which ensued was not owing to her nature, but to the necessity of the times.

The greatest proof of her constancy in religion and religious worship is, that notwithstanding popery, which in her sister's reign had been strenuously established by public authority, and the utmost diligence, began now to take deep root, and was confirmed by the consent and zeal of all those in office and places of trust; yet because it was not agreeable to the word of God, nor to the primitive purity, nor to her own conscience, she, with much courage, and with very few helps, extirpated and abolished it. Nor did

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