ious
subjects. Once she read in a pamphlet that people denied Queen
Elizabeth the power to name a successor who was not of the Protestant
faith: she wrote to her that the supreme power was of divine right,
and raised high above all these considerations, and warned her against
opinions of that kind which were avowed by some near her, and which
might lead to the elective principle and become dangerous to herself.
This could not fail to have an exactly opposite effect on Elizabeth.
She was again threatened through the strict dynastic right that she
also enjoyed: she needed some other additional support. Despite all
inclination to the contrary, she decided to look for it in the
Parliament. She likewise aimed at making Mary submit the validity of
her claim to its previous decision. She could not but be thankful that
her subjects pledged themselves not to recognise any right to the
succession which was to be asserted by an attack on her life; she
ratified the act by which Parliament gave these feelings a legal form.
It is obvious how powerfully the rights of Parliament were thus
advanced as against the absolute claim of the hereditary monarchy. In
the course of the development of events this was to be the case in a
still higher degree.

Mary rejected with horror the suspicion that she could take part in an
attempt on Elizabeth's life: she wished to enrol herself in the
Association for her security.[257] And who could have failed to
believe at least that the threats against her own right and life, in
case of a second attempt at assassination, would deter her partisans
as well as herself from any thought of it! For they well understood
the energy with which the Parliament knew how to vindicate its laws.

But it is vain to try to bridle men's passions by showing them their
results. If the attempt on the Queen's life succeeded, this
Parliament of course would be annihilated as well as the Queen
herself, and another order of things begin.

In the seminary at Rheims the priests persuaded an English emigrant,
called Savage, who had served in the army of the Prince of Parma, that
he could not better secure himself eternal happiness than by ridding
the world of the enemy of religion who was excommunicated by the holy
father. Another English emigrant, Thomas Babington, a young man of
education and ambition, in whom throbbed the pulse of chivalrous
devotion to Mary, was informed of this design by a priest of the
seminary, and was fi