yielding only in abhorrent tears to sign the warrant for persecution, bore the best testimony to the purity of the principles which he had imbibed from the word of God; had his reign been prolonged, the Church of England would have risen under his auspices, when he became emancipated from the controul of his more unprincipled court, and when his early principles of toleration had gained the sanction of his mature judgment, without spot or blemish. The annals of the country would have been spared not only the atrocities of Mary's reign, but long centuries, perhaps, of mutual animosity and aggression between the conflicting parties of papists and protestants.

The reign of Queen Mary is now left almost without defence; the more respectable Roman catholic writers join in the cry of execration which has been raised from generation to generation by protestants of every description. Their utmost endeavours are limited to palliate its atrocities, to diminish the number of sufferers, and to cast the blame from the principles of their religion upon the spirit of the age. In the first of these objects they are eminently unsuccessful. We have before stated our opinion as to the general veracity of Fox; but the number of those who suffered in the great persecution is carried even higher than his computation by the indefatigable and accurate Strype. Dr. Lingard states the number of sufferers at almost 200, after all allowances made.' Strype's account gives 288 actually executed, besides those that dyed of famine in sundry prisons.' The convenient tenderness of Dr. Lingard's nature, which will not allow him to dwell on such atrocities, we have already noticed. But the following is still worse. Burnet and Hume assert that the commission for the extirpation of heresy was an attempt to introduce an Inquisition, because at the same time instructions were issued (which they quote) for the application of torture and the employment of informers. Dr. Lingard dwells entirely on the commission, (for part of which he quotes the words of another document,) omits entirely the torture and the informers, and thus obtains an easy triumph over his antagonists.

We shall postpone the discussion of the more important question, namely, the connection of the Roman catholic creed with intolerance and persecution, and proceed to that which the Romanists consider their final and triumphant argument, recrimination. Let protestants cease to reproach the Roman catholics with Mary's fury, and Roman catholics shall be equally silent on the sanguinary code of Elizabeth, and the savage executions under it.' Such was the proposition of Dr. Milner, and it is now reiterated by Mr, Butler; let us dispassionately examine the circum

stances

stances of either case, and inquire into the points of coincidence and disagreement. The following is the theory of Elizabeth's reign, devised by the Roman catholic writers, developed with great industry and skill by Dr. Lingard, and zealously maintained by all the chivalrous apologists whom the beauty and sufferings of Mary Queen of Scots still fascinate and who are always ready to break a lance in her service. Elizabeth,' they say, at her accession was indifferent to both forms of religion; she threw herself into the arms of the protestants, and, under the influence of protestant advisers, re-established that church, commenced a series of unprovoked, and therefore unjustifiable intrigues in neighbouring states, in Scotland, France, and the Low Countries; went on enacting unnecessary laws against the unoffending Roman catholics, and executing them with equally unnecessary severity. Her ministers, to preserve their own influence, invented plots against her life, fomented insurrections, the guilt of which they falsely laid upon the catholics; until the merited vengeance of the Roman catholic princes burst upon her in the memorable invasion by the Armada. After the defeat of the Armada, she went on in her course of unrelenting and sanguinary judicial murder, without end or object, especially against the missionary priests, who visited England for the sole purpose of exercising their functions peaceably."

All this is moulded up with insinuations against her private character, not always the most delicate, nor to be received without the mistrust with which such scandal is always to be heard in public as well as in private. With this, however, we have at present no concern; as to the former point, we fearlessly assert our conviction, that Elizabeth, from education, from the hard usage of her sister Mary, and from the strength of her own character, deliberately adopted the protestant faith; that she was forced by necessity as well as by policy to place herself at the head of the protestant interest; that she chose her ministers with wisdom and retained them from well-grounded confidence in their measures; that after the deposing bull of the Pope, plot followed upon plot, insurrection upon insurrection; in all of which the agency of the Romanists was conclusively detected; that the statutes against Roman catholics were enacted on this account, but only put in force against men who were sworn and devoted to her ruin, namely the priests educated in the foreign seminaries, and those who entertained them; that her alarm at assassination was kept naturally alive by the successive murders of the Prince of Orange and Henry III.; that self-expatriated Englishmen excited and vindicated the invasion by the Armada; that the Roman catholic intrigues were continued till her death, in hopes, if not of wresting

the

E

the crown from off her head, at least of securing the succession in the Roman catholic line.

The facts on which we build this conviction, we shall state as much as possible on Roman catholic authority. Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558: all parties acquiesced in her accession with seeming unanimity; but the Roman catholic prelates, who had acknowledged her right to the crown, having discovered her leaning to the Reformation, with ill-judged inconsistency refused, one only excepted, to crown her. They were deprived of their sees; but all, even the bloody Bonner, (we cannot justify ourselves in any other epithet,) remained prisoners at large, except "Vatson, who, at a somewhat later period, was confined in WisDech Castle. The greater part of the clergy acquiesced in the hange of religion. On the part of Elizabeth, it is admitted that moderate and conciliatory measures were at first adopted. She rejected the clause in the Litany denouncing the Pope and his detestable enormities.'

They (the catholics), writes Dodd in his History, were entertained by her in the army, and now and then in the cabinet, till such times as the misbehaviour of some persons drew a persecution upon the whole body, and occasioned those penal and sanguinary laws to which their substance and lives have ever since been exposed.'-vol. ii. 18. what the parsimony of her disposition makes remarkable, she ordered the arrears due to the ecclesiastics ejected from the abbeys to be paid to a farthing.'*

And

How was this spirit met? Elizabeth's title was dubious. 'The Pope's ear had been pre-occupied by the diligence of the French ambassador.' (Lingard.) Paul accordingly denied her legitimacy and right to the crown, and asserted that of Mary Queen of Scots. Francis, upon this, quartered the arms of England, and returned an evasive and contemptuous answer to Elizabeth's remonstrance. To disable Mary from asserting this dangerous claim, she leagued with the Reformers in Scotland, and this was unquestionably the primary cause which led to Elizabeth's crime and Mary's fate. This hostile measure on the part of Francis necessarily produced also her support of his domestic enemies; and hence her connexion with the French Reformers. In 1563 occurred the conspiracy of the Poles, who, on the event of Elizabeth's expected death, intended to proclaim Mary Queen of Scots. They were convicted but pardoned. In 1565, the memorable meeting of Catherine of Medicis and the Duke of Alva took place at Bayonne, in which the universal testimony of history asserts designs to have been formed for the entire extinction of

* Camden's Elizabeth, quoted by Rapin.

Pro

Protestantism. Dr. Lingard denies the existence of any treaty, because no formal record remains of the secret articles agreed on by two of the most crafty politicians of that or any other age. In 1569, the rebellion of Northumberland took place; the re-establishment of the Romish religion (religious liberty! says Dr. Lingard) was among the avowed objects. The standard of the rebels displayed the Popish symbol of the five wounds of Christ; and the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer were burnt in the cathedral of Durham. Sanders, (as quoted in a pamphlet called • Important Considerations,' hereafter to be noticed,) in his book de Visibili Monarchiâ, owns the rising in the north to have been raised by the Pope; and a letter is quoted in a contemporary pamphlet, in which the Pontiff ascribes to the Lord! their attempt to free the country from the shameful slavery of female lewdness.' Northumberland, Norton, and the other rebels, are almost invariably reckoned among the Roman Catholic martyrs of Elizabeth's reign. In 1570 was issued the celebrated bull, ever to be condemned and ever to be lamented,' says Mr. Butler, in which Elizabeth was formally deposed, her subjects absolved from their allegiance, and herself styled flagitiorum serva. Of this bull, (which Dr. Lingard does not appear to reprobate with equal vehemence,) copies were sent to the Duke of Alva, and by the Duke some of these were forwarded to the Spanish ambassador in England. Early in the morning of the 15th of May, one was seen affixed to the gates of the Bishop of London's residence in the capital.'-Lingard. In January, 1572, the conspiracy of Norfolk was detected, who was unquestionably in correspondence with the Duke of Alva, through Ridolfi. In the same year the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place. In 1577, Elizabeth ' received from the Prince of Orange the important information, that the real object of Don John was not so much the subjugation of the Netherlands as of England; that he intended to transport his army from the Belgian ports; to marry, at least by proxy, the Queen of Scots; and in her name, and with the aid of her friends, to contend on English ground for the English crown. This intelligence was not entirely devoid of foundation. Gregory XIII., the successor of Pius V., had solicited the King of Spain to unite with him in an attempt to liberate the Scottish Queen, and to restore the Catholic worship in England.'-Lingard.

Up to this time no blood had been shed; though it was notorious that the seminary priests had been poured into the country, not one had perished. From this period Elizabeth began to execute such of these persons as persisted in remaining in it in defiance of repeated acts of parliament. Her ministers asserted that they suffered for treason, and assuredly this deference to public opinion, whether their assertion was true or false, implied

that

that the doctrine of religious toleration had already made some progress. But

To remain in, or return to England, was the duty of the Catholic priesthood; and for some act of this religious duty-but for no act of any other kind—were they executed. Thus, if you say they were hanged and embowelled, not for being priests, but for being traitors, then, as their being priests was the sole cause of their being traitors, they were, in truth, hanged and embowelled for being priests."-Butler, p. 260.

Now their being priests was not the sole cause of their being traitors, but their being priests educated in certain seminaries, professing certain doctrines dangerous to the safety of the state, which, when offered pardon, they refused to disclaim; their being priests sent into this country by foreign powers, hostile to the government and plotting its ruin; their being priests under the direction and influence of men in the pay and allegiance of the Pope and the King of Spain; their being priests whose avowed object it was to further the execution of the Pope's bull of deposition, which, according to their leader, Persons, it was the duty of every faithful Romanist to do to the utmost of his ability; their being priests, of whom the increase in numbers was regularly attended by more frequent plots and insurrections, and whose leaders, rulers and advocates, namely, Cardinal Allen, Stapleton, Bristow, and Persons, vindicated, furthered, assisted, by all the means in their power, the subjugation of this country to a foreign yoke. Now for our proofs, without the evidence of a single Protestant writer: for were we to extract from Camden, Speed, Strype, or the State Trials, the mass of testimony to the traitorous practices of the seminary priests, we must write volumes, not an article. The seminaries at Rheims, Douay, and Rome, were established by Cardinal Allen and Robert Persons. Let us ask what were the principles of these men relative to the deposing power of the Pope, and the consequent duty of the Romish priests? In Cardinal Allen's True and Modest Reply to Lord Burleigh's 'Libel of English Justice,' it is asserted, that all conversations on subjects of state or policy were strictly prohibited to the students in the foreign seminaries.' What then, were they prohibited from reading this very book?-in which we find the following senti

ments:

There is no warre in the world so just and honourable, be it civil or forraine, as that which is waged for religion; we say for the true, ancient, catholique, Roman religion; which by the laws of Holie Church and all Christianity, is adjudged to be the true worship of God. ... For this it is godlike and honourable to fight in such order and time, as we be warranted in conscience and law by our supreme pastors and priestsfor that no crime in the world deserveth more sharp and zealous pursuit

of