or of associating her with him in the administration". Elizabeth, alarmed at the danger which might ensue from the prevalence of this interest in Scotland, sent anew Sir Robert Bowes to Stirling; and accusing d'Aubigney, now created Earl of Lenox, of an attachment to the French, warned James against entertaining such suspicious and dangerous connexions'. The king excused himself by Sir Alexander Hume, his ambassador; and Lenox, finding that the queen had openly declared against him, was farther confirmed in his intention of overturning the English interest, and particularly of ruining Morton, who was regarded as the head of it. That nobleman was arrested in council, accused as an accomplice in the late king's murder, committed to prison, brought to trial, and condemned to suffer as a traitor. He confessed that Bothwell had communicated to him the design, had pleaded Mary's consent, and had desired his concurrence; but he denied that he himself had ever expressed any approbation of the crime; and, in excuse for his concealing it, he alleged the danger of revealing the secret, either to Henry, who had no resolution nor constancy, or to Mary, who appeared to be an accomplice in the murder. Sir Thomas Randolph was sent by the queen to intercede in favour of Morton; and that ambassador, not content with discharging this duty of his function, engaged, by his persuasion, the Earls of Argyle, Montrose, Angus, Marre, and Glencarne, to enter into a confederacy for protecting, even by force of arms, the life of the prisoner. The more to overawe that nobleman's enemies, Elizabeth ordered forces to be assembled on the borders of England; but this expedient served only to hasten his sentence and execution". Morton died with that constancy and resolution which had attended him through all the various events of his life; and left a reputation, which was less disputed with regard to abilities than probity and virtue. But this conclusion of the scene happened not till the subsequent year. CHAP. XLI. 1580. Elizabeth was, during this period, extremely anxious Spanish b Spotswood, p. 309. a Digges, p. 412. 428. Melvil, p. 130. affairs. CHAP. 1580. Sir Francis on account of every revolution in Scotland; both because that country alone, not being separated from England by sea, and bordering on all the catholic and malecontent counties, afforded her enemies a safe and easy method of attacking her; and because she was sensible that Mary, thinking herself abandoned by the French monarch, had been engaged by the Guises to have recourse to the powerful protection of Philip, who, though he had not yet come to an open rupture with the queen, was every day, both by the injuries which he committed and suffered, more exasperated against her. That he might retaliate the assistance which she gave to his rebels in the Low Countries, he had sent, under the name of the pope', a body of seven hundred Spaniards and Italians into Ireland; where the inhabitants, always turbulent, and discontented with the English government, were now more alienated by religious prejudices, and were ready to join every invader. The Spanish general, San Josepho, built a fort in Kerry; and being there besieged by the Earl of Ormond, president of Munster, who was soon after joined by Lord Gray, the deputy, he made a weak and cowardly defence. After some assaults, feebly sustained, he surrendered at discretion; and Gray, who commanded but a small force, finding himself encumbered with so many prisoners, put all the Spaniards and Italians to the sword without mercy, and hanged about fifteen hundred of the Irish: a cruelty which gave great displeasure to Elizabeth'. When the English ambassador made complaints of this invasion, he was answered by like complaints of the piracies committed by Francis Drake, a bold seaman, who had assaulted the Spaniards in the place where they deemed themselves most secure, in the new world. This man, sprung from mean parents in the county of Devon, having acquired considerable riches by depredations made in the isthmus of Panama, and having there gotten a sight of the Pacific Ocean, was so stimulated by ambition and avarice, that he scrupled not to employ his whole fortune in a new adventure through those seas, so much unknown at that time to all the European nations". By e Digges, p. 359. 370. f Camden, p. 475. Cox's Hist. of Ireland, p. 368. 8 Camden, p. 478. Stowe, p. 689. XLI. 1580. means of Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain, CHAP. h Camden, p. 478. Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 730. 748. Purchas's Pil- CHAP. part of it in the pay of the Prince of Parma's troops, she determined to make no more restitutions. XLI. 1581. 16th Jan. A Parlia ment. There was another cause which induced the queen to take this resolution: she was in such want of money, that she was obliged to assemble a Parliament; a measure which, as she herself openly declared, she never embraced, except when constrained by the necessity of her affairs. The Parliament, besides granting her a supply of one subsidy and two fifteenths, enacted some statutes for the security of her government, chiefly against the attempts of the Catholics. Whoever, in any way, reconciled any one to the church of Rome, or was himself reconciled, was declared to be guilty of treason; to say mass was subjected to the penalty of a year's imprisonment, and a fine of two hundred marks; the being present was punishable by a year's imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred marks; a fine of twenty pounds a month was imposed on every one who continued, during that time, absent from church. To utter slanderous or seditious words against the queen was punishable, for the first offence, with the pillory and loss of ears; the second offence was declared felony: the writing or printing of such words was felony even on the first offence'. The puritans prevailed so far as to have farther applications made for reformation in religion"; and Paul Wentworth, brother to the member of that name who had distinguished himself in the preceding session, moved, that the Commons, from their own authority, should appoint a general fast and prayers; a motion to which the House unwarily assented. For this presumption they were severely reprimanded by a message from the queen, as encroaching on the royal prerogative and supremacy; and they were obliged to submit, and ask forgiveness". The queen and Parliament were engaged to pass these severe laws against the Catholics by some late discoveries of the treasonable practices of their priests. When the ancient worship was suppressed, and the reformation introduced into the universities, the King of Spain reflected, that as some species of literature was necessary k 23 Eliz. cap. 1. 1 Ibid. cap. 2. XLI. 1581. for supporting these doctrines and controversies, the CHAP. Romish communion must decay in England, if no means were found to give erudition to the ecclesiastics; and for this reason he founded a seminary at Douay, where the Catholics sent their children, chiefly such as were intended for the priesthood, in order to receive the rudiments of their education. The Cardinal of Lorraine imitated this example, by erecting a like seminary in his diocese of Rheims; and though Rome was somewhat distant, the pope would not neglect to adorn, by a foundation of the same nature, that capital of orthodoxy. These seminaries, founded with so hostile an intention, sent over every year a colony of priests, who maintained the Catholic superstition in its full height of bigotry; and being educated with a view to the crown of martyrdom, were not deterred, either by danger or fatigue, from maintaining and propagating their principles. They infused into all their votaries an extreme hatred against the queen, whom they treated as an usurper, a schismatic, a heretic, a persecutor of the orthodox, and one solemnly and publicly anathematized by the holy father. Sedition, rebellion, sometimes assassination, were the expedients by which they intended to effect their purposes against her; and the severe restraint, not to say persecution, under which the Catholics laboured, made them the more willingly receive, from their ghostly fathers, such violent doctrines. These seminaries were all of them under the direction of the jesuits, a new order of regular priests erected in Europe, when the court of Rome perceived that the lazy monks and beggarly friars, who sufficed in times of ignorance, were no longer able to defend the ramparts of the church, assailed on every side, and that the inquisitive spirit of the age required a society more active and more learned to oppose its dangerous progress. These men, as they stood foremost in the contest against the Protestants, drew on them the extreme animosity of that whole sect; and by assuming a superiority over the other more numerous and more ancient orders of their own communion, were even exposed to the envy of their brethren so that it is no wonder, if the blame, to which their principles and conduct might be exposed, has in |