upreme power. The meats of which she was to eat
were set on the table with bended knee, even when she was not present.
It was on their knees that men were presented to her.[277]

Between a sovereign like this and her Parliament points of contention
could not be wanting. The Commons claimed the privilege of absolute
freedom of speech, and repeatedly attacked the abuses which still
remained in the episcopal Church, and the injurious monopolies which
profited certain favoured persons. The Queen had members of the Lower
House imprisoned for speeches disagreeable to her: she warned them not
to interfere in the affairs of the Church, and even not in those of
the State, and declared it to be her prerogative to summon and
dissolve Parliament at her pleasure, to accept or reject its measures.
But with all this she still did not on the other hand conceal that, in
reference to the most important affairs of State, she had to pay
regard to the tone of the two Houses: however much she might be loved,
yet men's minds are easily moved and not thoroughly trustworthy. In
its forms Parliament studied to express the devotion which the Queen
claimed as Queen and Lady, while she tried to make amends for acts by
which the assembly had been previously offended: for statements of
grievances, as in the instance of the monopolies, she even thanked
them, as for a salutary reminder. A French ambassador remarks in 1596
that the Parliament in ages gone by had great authority, but now it
did all the Queen wished. Another who arrived in 1597 is not merely
astonished at its imposing exterior, but also at the extent of its
rights. Here, says he, the great affairs are treated of, war and
peace, laws, the needs of the community and the mode of satisfying
them.[278] The one statement is perhaps as true as the other. The
solution of the contradiction depends on this, that Queen and
Parliament were united as to the general relations of the country and
the world. The Queen, as is self-evident, could not have ruled without
the Parliament: from the beginning of her government she supported
herself by it in the weightiest affairs; but a simple consideration
teaches us how much on the other hand Parliament owed precisely to
that introduction into these great questions, which the Queen thought
advisable. They avoided, and were still able to avoid, any enquiry
into their respective rights and the boundaries of those rights. And
besides Elizabeth guarded herself from