on
the side of Elizabeth. A Roman Catholic is one who acknowledges the
Roman Bishop's authority. The Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth, had
pronounced her deposed, had absolved her subjects from their allegiance,
and forbidden them to fight for her. No Englishman who fought on that
great occasion for English liberty was, or could have been, in communion
with Rome. Loose statements of this kind, lightly made, fall in with the
modern humour. They are caught up, applauded, repeated, and pass
unquestioned into history. It is time to correct them a little.

I have in my possession a detailed account of the temper of parties in
England, drawn up in the year 1585, three years before the Armada came.
The writer was a distinguished Jesuit. The account itself was prepared
for the use of the Pope and Philip, with a special view to the reception
which an invading force would meet with, and it goes into great detail.
The people of the towns--London, Bristol, &c.--were, he says, generally
heretics. The peers, the gentry, their tenants, and peasantry, who
formed the immense majority of the population, were almost universally
Catholics. But this writer distinguishes properly among Catholics. There
were the ardent impassioned Catholics, ready to be confessors and
martyrs, ready to rebel at the first opportunity, who had renounced
their allegiance, who desired to overthrow Elizabeth and put the Queen
of Scots in her place. The number of these, he says, was daily
increasing, owing to the exertions of the seminary priests; and plots,
he boasts, were being continually formed by them to murder the Queen.
There were Catholics of another sort, who were papal at heart, but went
with the times to save their property; who looked forward to a change in
the natural order of things, but would not stir of themselves till an
invading army actually appeared. But all alike, he insists, were eager
for a revolution. Let the Prince of Parma come, and they would all join
him; and together these two classes of Catholics made three-fourths of
the nation.

'The only party,' he says (and this is really noticeable), 'the only
party that would fight to death for the Queen, the only real friends she
had, were the _Puritans_ (it is the first mention of the name which I
have found), the Puritans of London, the Puritans of the sea towns.'
These he admits were dangerous, desperate, determined men. The numbers
of them, however, were providentially small.

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