ance.
The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the Host before
setting out for London "to shoot the Queen with his dagg," was followed
by measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic
gentry and peers, by a vigorous purification of the Inns of Court where
a few Catholics lingered, and by the despatch of fresh batches of
priests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the
House of Commons who had served in the royal household, on a similar
charge fed the general panic. The leading Protestants formed an
association whose members pledged themselves to pursue to the death all
who sought the Queen's life, and all on whose behalf it was sought. The
association soon became national, and the Parliament met together in a
transport of horror and loyalty to give it legal sanction. All Jesuits
and seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death, and
a bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of the
succession who instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's
person from ever succeeding to the Crown.

[Sidenote: Death of Mary Stuart.]

The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of her
failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to her aid, of the baffled revolt of
the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, Mary had
bent for a moment to submission. "Let me go," she wrote to Elizabeth;
"let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare my
soul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either I
or mine can claim." But the cry was useless, and in 1586 her despair
found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth's
life. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of
young Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household,
to kill the Queen and seat Mary on the throne; but plot and approval
alike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's
correspondence revealed her connivance in the scheme. Babington with his
fellow-conspirators was at once sent to the block, and the provisions of
the act passed in the last Parliament were put in force against Mary. In
spite of her protests a Commission of Peers sate as her judges at
Fotheringay Castle; and their verdict of "guilty" annihilated under the
provisions of the statute her claim to the Crown. The streets of London
blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from ste