ary's strength. Elizabeth felt
bitterly the blow. "The Queen of Scots," she cried, "has a fair son, and
I am but a barren stock." The birth of James in fact seemed to settle
the long struggle in Mary's favour. The moderate Conservatives joined
the ranks of her adherents. The Catholics were wild with hope. "Your
friends are so increased," her ambassador, Melville, wrote to her from
England, "that many whole shires are ready to rebel, and their captains
named by election of the nobility." On the other hand, the Protestants
were filled with despair. It seemed as if no effort could avert the rule
of England by a Catholic Queen.

[Sidenote: The developement of England.]

It was at this moment of peril that the English Parliament was again
called together. Its action showed more than the natural anxiety of the
time; it showed the growth of those national forces which far more than
the schemes of Mary or the counter-schemes of Elizabeth were to
determine the future of England. While the two Queens were heaping
intrigue on intrigue, while abroad and at home every statesman held
firmly that national welfare or national misery hung on the fortune of
the one or the success of the other, the English people itself was
steadily moving forward to a new spiritual enlightenment and a new
political liberty. The intellectual and religious impulses of the age
were already combining with the influence of its growing wealth to
revive a spirit of independence in the nation at large. It was
impossible for Elizabeth to understand this spirit, but her wonderful
tact enabled her from the first to feel the strength of it. Long before
any open conflict arose between the people and the Crown we see her
instinctive perception of the changes which were going on around her in
the modifications, conscious or unconscious, which she introduced into
the system of the monarchy. Of its usurpations upon English liberty she
abandoned none. But she curtailed and softened down almost all. She
tampered, as her predecessors had tampered, with personal freedom; there
was the same straining of statutes and coercion of juries in political
trials as before, and an arbitrary power of imprisonment was still
exercised by the Council. The duties she imposed on cloth and sweet
wines were an assertion of her right of arbitrary taxation.
Proclamations in Council constantly assumed the force of law. But,
boldly as it was asserted, the royal power was practically wielded with