r crescent of the Percies, vanished from the field:
the chiefs themselves fled over the Scotch border, their troops
dispersed, their declared partisans underwent the severest
punishments. Many who knew themselves guilty passed over to the
Queen's party in order to escape.

But at the very time of this victory the war against the Queen at home
and abroad first received its most vivid impulse through the supreme
head of the Catholic faith. Pope Pius V, who saw in Elizabeth the
protectress of all the enemies of Catholicism, had issued the long
prepared and hitherto withheld excommunication against her. In the
name of Him who had raised him to the supreme throne of Right, he
declared Elizabeth to have forfeited the realm of which she claimed to
be Queen: he not merely released her subjects from the oath they had
taken to her: 'we likewise forbid,' he added, 'her barons and peoples
henceforth to obey this woman's commands and laws, under pain of
excommunication.'[235] It was a proclamation of war in the style of
Innocent III: rebellion was therein almost treated as a proof of
faith.

The way in which the Queen opened her Parliament in 1571 forms as it
were a conscious contrast to the Papal bull, and its declaration that
she was deposed. She appeared in the robes of state, the golden
coronal on her head. At her right sat the dignitaries of the English
Church, at her left the lay lords, on the woolsack in the centre the
members of the Privy Council, by the sides stood the knights and
burgesses of the lower house. The keeper of the great seal reminded
the Houses of the late years of peace, in which--a thing without
example in England--no blood had been shed; but now peace seemed
likely to perish through the machinations of Rome. All were of one
accord that they must confront this attempt with the full force of the
law. It was declared high treason to designate the Queen as heretical
or schismatic, to deny her right to the throne, or to ascribe such a
right to any one else. To proselytise to Catholicism, or to bring into
England sacred objects consecrated by the Pope, or absolutions from
him, was forbidden and treated as an offence against the State. What a
decidedly antipapal character did the Church, which retained most of
the hierarchic usages, nevertheless assume! The oath of supremacy
became indispensable even for places at court and in the country
districts, in which it had not hitherto been required. Men deemed the
Que