rche ancora egli a un tempo
medesimo si movesse da quella parte.'

[249] The Lord Treasurers advise in matters of Religion and State.
Somers Tracts i. 164.

CHAPTER V.

THE FATE OF MARY STUART.

How completely the circumstances of these times are misunderstood,
when they are measured by the rules of an age of peace! Rather they
were filled with hostilities in which politics and religion were
mingled; foreign war was at the same time a domestic one. The
religious confessions were at the same time political programmes.

The Queen took up arms not to make conquests, but to secure her very
existence against a daily growing power that openly threatened her,
before it had become completely an overmatch for her: she provoked an
open war: but she had not done enough when she now, as is necessary in
such cases, took into consideration the training of soldiers, securing
the harbours, fortifying strong places, improving the navy: the most
pressing anxiety arose from the general Catholic agitation in the
country.

Elizabeth's statesmen were well aware that the sharp prosecution of
the seminarist priests was not enough to put an end to it. With
reference to the laity, the Lord Treasurer, however strict in other
respects, recommends to his sovereign quite a different mode of
proceeding. We should never proceed to capital punishment of such men:
we should rather mitigate the oath imposed on them: in particular we
should never force the nobles to a final decision between their
religious inclinations and their political duties, never drive them to
despair. But at the same time he gives a warning against awakening any
hope in them that their demands could ever be satisfied, for this
would only make them more obstinate. And on no consideration should
arms be put into their hands. 'We do not wish to kill them, we cannot
coerce them, but we dare not trust them.' Nothing would be more
dangerous than to assume a confidence which was not really felt.

Even before this the Privy Council had recommended the Queen to employ
Protestants only in the government of her State, and to exclude all
Catholics from a share in it.[250] The before-mentioned 'Advice' of
Lord Burleigh is remarkable for extending the Protestant interest and
adding a popular one to it. He thinks it intolerable that the
copyholders and tenants of the Catholic lords, even when they fulfil
their obligations in all other respects, experience bad treatment from
them