It must be owned that it is hard to deny that the necessity of self-defence, which is the only just foundation of the rights of war and of criminal justice, may not, in extreme emergencies, warrant violence to individuals, even though the principle of defence be not embodied in antecedent rules of law. Yet the methods by which men may be regularly and legitimately deprived of life or liberty are sufficiently comprehensive. The seasons at which exceptions present themselves, are commonly those in which fear and anger render just judgment most improbable, If they be considered as warranted in cases of minor severity, it will be found impossible to assign any limits to them other than the conscience and mercy of the possessors of power. Their opinion of what is necessary to ward off danger from themselves must become the sole measure of their conduct. The immense range of moral colours, from a fraudulent pretension through a considerable convenience, or the removal of an impediment or an accession to safety, up to the very confines of a struggle for existence, is more than enough to dazzle and bewilder the eye of the mind. A restraint on personal liberty, which seems to be the mildest and most strictly defensible of all irregular measures, has yet evils peculiar to itself, arising from the circumstance that it must often be long in order to be effectual. The danger is forgotten by the sufferer and the spectators; the anomaly alone steadfastly continues to glare on the eye. The prisoner complains often only from the irritation of his condition, sometimes with a purpose to provoke. Impartial bystanders embrace his cause, in proportion as his vexations are prolonged. The inferior agents in his detention, sometimes justly displeased, sometimes to pay their court to their employers, become more harsh. The process is sometimes cut short by the death of the prisoner, which generally earns for his memory the fellow-feeling of after ages. In other cases it proceeds

which pronounces, that he " shall be deemed and taken to be, and shall be treated and dealt with, as a prisoner of war;" a distinct admission that h was not so in contemplation of law until the statute had imposed that character upon him.

from complaint to conspiracy, which exasperates the sovereign more and more, until a government is provoked into a deed of blood, which leaves an indelible stain on its name.

Whoever with calmness reviews these melancholy portions of history, after temporary passions have subsided, will find it impossible to repress a wish that no exceptions from the rules of moral and even of legal justice towards individuals may hereafter be countenanced by historians or moralists. This might at length contribute to banish such direful expedients from the practice of states. The least reflection will enable a reader, even if he only glances over the surface of history, to perceive how surely such stretches of power render their authors for ever odious, and how seldom (if ever) they were necessary to the safety of communities.

CHAP. III.

ELIZABETH.

1560-1574.

INTERNAL AFFAIRS.

THE revolutions of Scotland, the highest object of English policy during the early years of Elizabeth, have been thus related somewhat fully, until the moment arrived when, by the firm establishment of a reformed government among the Scots, they lost their importance in the history of England. Till Scotland was in friendly hands, Britain could not, in a military view, be regarded as an island. It was only then that the allies of Bayonne were deprived of the vantage ground from which they most nearly threatened the overthrow of Elizabeth's throne. The duke of Alva, who was then beginning to carry into execution the secret projects of these

princes, was not yet aware that the ruler of the island fortress, of which the works were just completed, was to prove a guardian of national independence, and an unconscious champion of religious liberty; who would sally forth in due time from behind her bulwarks, pouring hope into the bosoms of the persecuted, and striking terror into the hearts of the bigot and the tyrant.

These events, thus big with the fortunes of Christendom, become peculiarly interesting to the English historian, by enabling him to estimate our most famous sovereign and our wisest statesman, whose qualities are exhibited in their dealing with Scotland. We have seen, in original documents, which have strong intrinsic claims on belief, that the measures of the English cabinet, though not above exception, were not full of such art and stratagem,- -nor, on the other hand, so characterised by caprice and jealousy,— as they have been supposed to be, by some historians, from hostile prejudice; by others, from a desire to excite surprise at contrasted qualities in the same character, and more especially at an union of high faculties with shameful foibles. It has appeared that the supposed influence of the most odious of womanish faults cannot be really traced in negotiations, of which the whole particulars were intrusted to experienced statesmen. We shall not be recalled to the contemplation of these circumstances in the relations between the queens of England and Scotland, till scenes present themselves which will compel us to transfer our admiration and blame, with an equal observance of historical justice, to diametrically opposite parties.

The first ten years of Elizabeth's domestic administration were a season of undisturbed quiet, — barren in memorable events or affecting incidents. They were called by contemporaries "her halcyon days."* "Until the tenth year of her reign the times were calm and serene, though sometimes overcast; as the most glorious sunshine is subject to shadowings and droopings;-for *Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia.

the clouds of Spain, and the vapours of the holy league (of Bayonne), began to disperse*, and to threaten her felicity." It was a part of this felicity that many, -perhaps the greater number-of English catholics were content occasionally to conform to the rites of the English church, and to partake in the legal form of worship; inasmuch as they deemed it to contain nothing contrary to religion, though it was wanting in many of its important parts. ‡ Allen, a catholic clergyman, afterwards conspicuous under the name of cardinal Allen, during his visit to England, where he resided from 1562 to 1565, seems to have lessened the number of the occasional conformists by arguments which are conclusive; as well as by the authority of the most learned of the divines at Trent. His rigour was, however, so unpopular, that he was obliged to quit his native county of Lancaster; and, though he was more successful at Oxford, he soon returned to Flanders.

The first symptoms of a persecuting spirit which began to creep into the legislation of Elizabeth, must have arisen rather from fears excited by the clouds portending storm on the Continent, than from any indiscretion or inflexibility of her own catholic subjects. The English ministers, in 1564, received from their secret agents in Italy information of designs against their sovereign entertained at Rome. It was a part of this intelligence that a congregation of cardinals, appointed to consider the state of the British islands, had advised Pius IV. to grant the crown of England to any catholic prince who should undertake to reduce that rebellious country to a state of

* i. e. To spread abroad, even while they were thickening and darkening. Sir R. Naunton, Fragm. Regalia. art. Cecil.

Dod, Church History, ii. 44. Butl. Hist. Mem. i. 166. The first of these respectable works exhibits, on these subjects, two remarkable instances of the power of eager zeal to blind a sagacious and honest writer. Speaking of the supposed versatility of Elizabeth's religion, Mr. Dod says, "The six articles of her faith- the medley liturgy of her brother-all sat easy upon her." Dod, ii. 44. Will the reader believe, that in the year of the law of the six articles, 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14., to which the historian alluded, Elizabeth was in her seventh year? But the liturgy of her brother was substantially the same with her own. "After some months' hesitation," says the same writer," she appeared visibly for the reformation." The reader of the above narrative will perceive, that she never really hesitated for a moment, and that her public avowal of protestantism followed her accession in some days, or, according to the largest calculation, in the space of a month. Strype, Ann. vol. i. part ii. 54-57.

due obedience towards the holy see. They cannot fail to have much earlier obtained intelligence of a nature that awakened their alarms. The particulars of these accounts, and their coincidence with those secrets of the great continental powers which had transpired since the peace of Câteau-Cambresis, gave considerable probability to the outline of the reports which were made to Cecil by his agents at Venice, and of which, however mixed with mistakes and exaggerations, the substance seems to have been believed by that sagacious minister, and therefore in some measure acted upon by the English government. About the time of these informations, the parliament of 1563 sharpened the severity of the act of uniformity by making the second offence against its provisions capital, if committed by an ecclesiastic of the established church, or by a person who deviated from the authorised rites of the church after admonition, or by such as in words or writing endeavoured to defame* the public worship, or who said or heard private mass.

The oath of supremacy was declared by this statute to import no more than an acknowledgment that "her majesty is, under God, to have the sovereignty and rule over all persons born within her dominions, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, so as that no foreign power shall have or ought to have any superiority over them;" an interpretation conformable to the instructions issued two years before by the ecclesiastical commissioners, who had copied it from the ambiguous and evasive laws of Henry VIII. The oath of supremacy was for the first time imposed on members of the house of commons, as a condition which must be performed before entrance into the house. Peers were exempted from the oath, as persons of whose faith and loyalty the queen was otherwise assured. † One means of hostility against catholics had, indeed, been supplied by a clause in the act of uniformity, which inflicted fine and imprisonment on

"Deprave" is the expression used in the statute. In Minsheu's Dictionary of Nine Languages, one of the senses of that word is " to diffame," which is reduced in the text to modern orthography.

+ 5 Eliz. cap. 1.