would like to have upon her tomb; saying that she had no fancy for glory or splendid titles, but would rather have a line or two of memorial, recording in few words only her name, her virginity, the time of her reign, the reformation of religion, and the preservation of peace. It is true that in the flower of her years, while she was yet able to bear children, being questioned about declaring a successor, she replied that she would not have her winding sheet spread before her. eyes while she was alive; and yet not many years before her death, being in a thoughtful mood, meditating probably upon her mortality, and being interrupted by one of her familiars with a complaint that many great offices in the commonwealth were too long vacant, she rose up and said in some displeasure, it was clear that her office would not be vacant for an instant.

With regard to her moderation in religion there may seem to be a difficulty, on account of the severity of the laws made against popish subjects. But on this point I have some things to advance which I myself carefully observed and know to be true.

Her intention undoubtedly was, on the one hand not to force consciences, but on the other not to let the state, under pretence of conscience and religion, be brought in danger. Upon this ground she concluded at the first that, in a people courageous and warlike and prompt to pass from strife of minds to strife of hands, the free allowance and toleration by public authority of two religions would be certain destruction. Some of the more turbulent and factious bishops also she did, in the newness of her reign when all things were subject to suspicion, -but not without legal warrant restrain and keep in free custody. The rest,

both clergy and laity, far from troubling them with any severe inquisition, she sheltered by a gracious connivency. This was the condition of affairs at first. Nor even when provoked by the excommunication pronounced against her by Pius Quintus (an act sufficient not only to have roused indignation but to have furnished ground and matter for a new course of proceeding), did she depart almost at all from this clemency, but persevered in the course which was agreeable to her own nature. For being both wise and of a high spirit, she was little moved with the sound of such terrors; knowing she could depend upon the loyalty and love of her own people, and upon the small power the popish party within the realm had to do harm, as long as they were not seconded by a foreign enemy. About the twenty-third year of her reign however, the case was changed. And this distinction of time is not artificially devised to make things fit, but expressed and engraved in public acts.

For up to that year there was no penalty of a grievous kind imposed by previous laws upon popish subjects. But just then the ambitious and vast design of Spain for the subjugation of the kingdom came gradually to light. Of this a principal part was the raising up within the bowels of the realm of a disaffected and revolutionary party which should join with the invading enemy; and the hope of effecting this lay in our religious dissensions. To this object therefore they addressed themselves with all their might; and, the seminaries beginning then to blossom, priests were sent over into England for the purpose of kindling and spreading a zeal for the Romish religion, of teaching and inculcating the power of Romish excommunication

to release subjects from their obedience, and of excit ing and preparing men's minds with expectation of a change. About the same time an attempt was made upon Ireland with open arms, the name and government of Elizabeth was assailed with a variety of wicked libels, and there was a strange ferment and swelling in the world, forerunner of some greater disturbance. And though I do not say that all the priests were acquainted with the design, or knew what was doing; for they may have been only the tools of other men's malice; yet it is true, and proved by the confessions of many witnesses, that from the year I have mentioned to the thirtieth of Elizabeth (when the design of Spain and the Pope was put in execution by that memorable armada of land and sea forces) almost all the priests who were sent over to this country were charged among the other offices belonging to their function, to insinuate that matters could not long stay as they were, that a new aspect and turn of things would be seen shortly, and that the state of England was cared for both by the Pope and the Catholic princes, if the English would but be true to themselves. Besides which, some of the priests had plainly engaged themselves in practices tending directly to the shaking and subversion of the state; and above all, letters were intercepted from various quarters by which the plan upon which they were to proceed was discovered; in which letters it was written, that the vigilance of the Queen and her council in the matter of the Catholics would be eluded; for that she was only intent upon preventing the Catholic party from getting a head in the person of any nobleman or great personage, whereas the plan now was to dispose and prepare everything by the

agency of private persons and men of small mark; and that too without their having any communication or acquaintance one with another; but all to be done under the seal of confession. Such were the arts then resorted to arts with which these men (as we have seen lately in a case not much unlike) are practised and familiar. This so great tempest of dangers made it a kind of necessity for Elizabeth to put some severer constraint upon that party of her subjects which was estranged from her and by these means poisoned beyond recovery, and was at the same time growing rich by reason of their immunity from public offices and burdens. And as the mischief increased, the origin of it being traced to the seminary priests, who were bred in foreign parts, and supported by the purses and charities of foreign princes, professed enemies of this kingdom, and whose time had been passed in places where the very name of Elizabeth was never heard except as that of a heretic excommunicated and accursed, and who (if not themselves stained with treason) were the acknowledged intimates of those that were directly engaged in such crimes, and had by their own arts and poisons depraved and soured with a new leaven of malignity the whole lump of Catholics, which had before been more sweet and harmless; there was no remedy for it but that men of this class should be prohibited upon pain of death from coming into the kingdom at all; which at last, in the twenty-seventh year of her reign, was done. Nor did the event itself which followed not long after, when so great a tempest assailed and fell with all its fury upon the kingdom, tend in any degree to mitigate the envy and hatred of these men; but rather increased it, as if they had utterly

cast off all feeling for their country, which they were ready to betray to a foreign servitude. And though it is true that the fear of danger from Spain, which was the spur that goaded her to this severity, did afterwards subside or abate; yet because the memory of the time past remained deeply printed in men's minds and feelings, and the laws once made could not be abrogated without the appearance of inconstancy, or neglected without the appearance of weakness and disorder, the very force of circumstances made it impossible for Elizabeth to return to the former state of things as it was before the twenty-seventh year of her reign. To which must be added the industry of some of her officers to improve the exchequer, and the solicitude of her ministers of justice who saw no hope of salvation for the country but in the laws; all which demanded and pressed the execution of them. And yet what her own natural disposition was appears plainly in this, that she so blunted the law's edge that but a small proportion of the priests were capitally punished. All which I say not by way of apology; for these proceedings need no apology; since the safety of the kingdom turned upon them, and all this severity both in the manner and the measure of it came far short of the bloody examples set by the priesthood, -examples scarcely to be named among Christians, and proceeding moreover some of them rather out of arrogance and malice than out of necessity. But I conceive that I have made good my assertion, and shown that in the cause of religion she was indeed moderate, and that what variation there was was not in her nature but in the times.

Of her constancy in religion and worship the best