to destroy and ruin or to plant and build up, and
whereas Elizabeth, the slave of vice, has usurped the place of supreme
head of the church, has sent her realm to perdition and has celebrated
the impious mysteries of Calvin, therefore she is cut off from the body
of Christ and deprived of her pretended right to rule England, while
all her subjects are absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The bull
also reasserted Elizabeth's illegitimacy, and echoed the complaint of
the northern earls that she had expelled the old nobility from her
council. The promulgation of the bull, without the requisite warning
and allowance of a year for repentance, was contrary to the canon law.

The fulmination was sent to Alva to the Netherlands and a devotee was
found to carry it to England. Forthwith Elizabeth issued a masterly
proclamation vouchsafing that,

her majesty would have all her loving subjects to
understand that, as long as they shall openly continue in
the observation of her laws, and shall not wilfully and
manifestly break them by open actions, her majesty's means
is not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or
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examination of their consciences in causes of religion, but
to accept and entreat them as her good and obedient subjects.

But to obviate the contamination of her people by political views
expressed in the bull, [Sidenote: Anti-papal laws] and to guard against
the danger of a further rising in the interests of Mary Stuart, the
Parliament of 1571 passed several necessary laws. One of these forbade
bringing the bull into England; another made it treasonable to declare
that Elizabeth was not or ought not to be queen or that she was a
heretic, usurper or schismatic.

The first seventeen years of Elizabeth's reign had been blessedly free
from persecution. The increasing strain between England and the papacy
was marked by a number of executions of Romanists. A recent Catholic
estimate is that the total number of this faith who suffered under
Elizabeth was 189, of whom 128 were priests, 58 laymen and three women;
and to this should be added 32 Franciscans who died in prison of
starvation. The contrast of 221 victims in Elizabeth's forty-five
years as against 290 in Mary's five years, is less important than the
different purpose of the government. Under Mary the executions were
for heresy; under Elizabeth chiefly for treason. It is true that the
whole age acted upon Sir Philip Sid