period of hesitation, of drift, was over. All chance of submission to
the Papacy was at an end. In joining the Lutheran states in their
rejection of this Council, England had definitely ranged itself on the
side of the Reformation.

CHAPTER IV

ENGLAND AND MARY STUART

1561-1567

[Sidenote: The English Catholics.]

What had hitherto kept the bulk of Elizabeth's subjects from opposition
to her religious system was a disbelief in its permanence. Englishmen
had seen English religion changed too often to believe that it would
change no more. When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St.
John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White, simply took
away its vestments and crucifixes, and hid them in his house for the
better times that every zealous Catholic trusted would have their turn.
They believed that a Catholic marriage would at once bring such a turn
about; and if Elizabeth dismissed the offer of Philip's hand she played
long and assiduously with that of a son of the Emperor, an archduke of
the same Austrian house. But the alliance with the Scotch heretics
proved a rough blow to this trust: and after the repulse at Leith there
were whispers that the two great Catholic nobles of the border, the
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, were only waiting for the
failure of the Scotch enterprise to rise on behalf of the older faith.
Whatever their projects were, they were crushed by the Queen's success.
With the Lords of the Congregation masters across the border the
northern Earls lay helpless between the two Protestant realms. In the
mass of men loyalty was still too strong for any dream of revolt; but
there was a growing uneasiness lest they should find themselves heretics
after all, which the failure of the Austrian match and the help given to
the Huguenots was fanning into active discontent. It was this which gave
such weight to the Queen's rejection of the summons to Trent. Whatever
colour she might strive to put upon it, the bulk of her subjects
accepted the refusal as a final break with Catholicism, as a final close
to all hope of their reunion with the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart.]

The Catholic disaffection which the Queen was henceforth to regard as
her greatest danger was thus growing into life when in August 1561, but
a few months after the Queen's refusal to acknowledge the Council, Mary
Stuart landed at Leith. Girl as she was, and she was only nineteen, Mary
w