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to which the young men of their best families were sent, where many became priests, and where all appear to have imbibed opinions certainly hostile to the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy, and little favourable to her civil government. Severe laws were in consequence enacted, but they rather irritated than subdued the body against which they were directed; and, though near 200 Jesuits and other priests and their adherents suffered as traitors, the enterprise they had set before themselves, of endeavouring to restore Romanism, was never abandoned h.

Troubles had before arisen in another direction, and, being unwisely met, grew every day more serious. Many learned and pious men were from the first dissatisfied with certain points in the discipline of the Church, which to them savoured too much of Romanism, though fairly defensible on the grounds of decency and order. It was attempted to overcome such scruples by depriving some of the more eminent of them of their preferments; land, and established a house which still subsists at Old Hall Green, near Standon, in Hertfordshire; the patron saint, however, was changed to Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury. Other seminaries for the English were in the course of a few years established at Reims, St. Omer, Rome, Paris, Madrid, and elsewhere, the members of which took an oath to return to England, when ordered by their superiors, "to convert the souls of their countrymen and kindred."

Campion, the Jesuit, one of the earliest papal missionaries, wrote thus to the queen's council: "Be it known unto you, that we have made a league, all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England, cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked by your torments, or to be consumed by your prisons. Expenses are reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted, so must it be restored."

i The principal matters objected to at first were the vestments, the use of music, and bowing and kneeling; but afterwards episcopacy was attacked, and attempts were perseveringly made to substitute the presbyterian form of Church government.

but this only induced them to form separate congregations, which at length became the objects of the rigour of the laws equally with the Romanists. Many of the Puritans, as they came to be contemptuously termed, had been exiles in the time of Mary, and they had imbibed abroad a democratic spirit, which soon extended itself among their party, and rendered them willing to proceed to any lengths against the Church. They were favoured, from interested motives, by the unprincipled Leicesterk and others, but firmly repressed by the queen, who perceived that, humanly speaking, the Church and the State must stand or fall together.

The Puritans had no support from abroad, and, though violent in language, were too weak to do more than inspire uneasiness. The Romanists, on the other hand,

Robert Dudley was a younger son of the duke of Northumberland. He joined in the attempt to set Lady Jane Grey on the throne, seized the town of King's Lynn, and proclaimed her there, for which he was tried, Jan. 22, 1554; he pleaded guilty, but his life was spared, and he received a pardon the following year (Easter term, 1555); he went abroad, and served at the battle of St. Quentin. By Elizabeth he was created, on the same day, first Lord Denbigh, then earl of Leicester, received many important posts, and was treated with such peculiar favour that she was generally supposed to entertain a design of marrying him. In 1585 he was sent, with almost regal powers, into the Low Countries, but greatly injured their cause by his insolence and incapacity; yet in 1588 he was made generalissimo of the army raised to oppose the Spaniards. He died in the same year (Sept. 4), not without suspicion of poison. He professed an adherence to the rigid doctrines of the Puritans, but was in truth an execrable character. He was three times married; he was suspected of murdering his first wife (Amy Robsart), whom he wedded June 4, 1550; and he disowned the second (Lady Douglas Howard), but left by her a son, Sir Robert Dudley, who lived abroad, and, being a favourite of the emperor, Ferdinand II, styled himself duke of Northumberland; he died at Florence in 1650.

Arms of Dudley, earl of
Leicester.

Sixtus V.1), and of

had the active help of successive popes (particularly Philip of Spain, the most potent prince of his time. They made one feeble attempt at rebellion in England, but Ireland was for years the scene of a desolating war, the funds for which were supplied by Philip; and he engaged in a futile attempt at the conquest of England; its result was the destruction of his fleet, and the exposure of his own shores to every injury that a naval war could inflictTM.

Elizabeth took a lively interest in the affairs of France, as well as in those of the Netherlands; and her help, though often grudgingly bestowed", had a most important effect in establishing Henry IV. on the throne, and in raising up the United Provinces. Scotland was so much under her influence that it rather resembled a turbulent province of her realm than an independent

1 Pius V. issued a bull (April 25, 1570), pronouncing the queen excommunicated and deposed, the only effect of which was to bring down ruin on the few who attempted to execute it, and to cause the enactment of rigorous laws against the whole body of Romanists. Sixtus V. fulminated a similar bull, but he supported it by an invasion of Ireland at his own cost, and by inducing Philip to send his Armada against England.

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Spain itself was thus harassed after the destruction of the Armada, Cadiz being taken by the earl of Essex in 1596, but the English seamen, long before as well as after that event, carried on a destructive warfare against the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. It is difficult to defend their proceedings by any laws now recognised among nations, and Philip always stigmatized them as piracy.

" She had, in the early part of her reign, good reason to complain of the ingratitude of the French Protestants; they urgently solicited her aid, but soon after came to an agreement with their opponents, and shamelessly joined them in expelling her troops, their great leader, the prince of Condé, even taking the command at the siege of Havre. The Scots and the Netherlanders adhered with honourable firmness to their engagements, and thus succeeded in maintaining their religious freedom; while the French, who deserted their allies, were in their turn deserted by their own leaders, and utterly ruined.

kingdom; her ministers controlled everything, and, though they had fomented the troubles that rendered the rule of its king (James VI.) almost nominal, when they saw that he was destined for Elizabeth's successor, they paid such obvious court to him as embittered her declining years. Ireland was in reality a foreign country, where her treasures were exhausted in contending, with but a very moderate share of success, against the arts and arms of the popes and the king of Spain; its disturbed state prevented the following up with the necessary vigour the measures proper to recommend the reformed doctrines to the people, and from this fact the most lamentable consequences have ensued.

At home, for many years, Elizabeth was harassed by plots against her life, some real, some imaginary P; the unjustifiable death of Mary did not lessen her anxieties; the Puritans gave her deep uneasiness by the freedom of their attacks on the Church; her chief favourite, Leicester, was undeserving her esteem; his successor, Essex, provoked an untimely fate, and the queen at length died, worn out as much with grief and anxiety as age, March 24, 1603, and was buried in the chapel of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey.

The younger Cecil and Ralegh especially courted his favour; both were unprincipled men, but Cecil was probably the worst. He is suspected of having contrived the strange plot in which Ralegh was involved, and he is thought to have been privy to the proceedings of Catesby and his associates, but to have suffered them to proceed unmolested, in order to secure the forfeiture of their estates.

P of the various plotters, Parry, it would seem, never intended more than to obtain money; probably the same may be said of Squire; Babington's conspiracy was known from the very outset to her ministers, and guarded against; the attempt of Lopez, the physician, to poison her at the instigation of Spain, has the appearance of truth, and was very probably real.

Though Elizabeth was never married, the numerous negotiations into which she entered on that subject form an important feature of her reign. It is probable that her affections were really given to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, although state reasons prevented her accepting him for a husband. She fed with delusive hopes others of her subjects, as Sir William Pickering and Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel; she listened with apparent complacency to Eric, king of Sweden; to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria; and to a French prince who bore successively the titles of duke of Alençon and of Anjou. Perhaps she never intended to give her hand to any of them, but the apprehensions of her subjects were raised as to the French match, and one Puritan (Thomas Stubbe, a lawyer, and brother-in-law of Cartwright,) published a pamphlet, entitled, "The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf," in which he gave vent to remonstrances with a freedom that was highly resented and severely punished.

Elizabeth bore the same arms as her father and brother, but occasionally she employed a white greyhound for the sinister supporter. Her motto was MON DROIT," and sometimes

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DIEU ET

SEMPER EADEM." Her

badge is a Tudor

rose,

with the motto, "ROSA SINE SPINA;" she likewise used the badge of her mother, Anne Boleyn.

Arms of Elizabeth.

S

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