dversion was
capable of deterring the lady Mary from the observance of this essential
rite of her religion; and finding herself and her household exposed to
serious inconveniences on account of their infraction of the new
statute, she applied for protection to her potent kinsman the emperor
Charles V., who is said to have undertaken her rescue by means which
could scarcely have failed to involve him in a war with England. By his
orders, or connivance, certain ships were prepared in the ports of
Flanders, manned and armed for an attempt to carry off the princess
either by stealth or open force, and land her at Antwerp. In furtherance
of the design, several of her gentlemen had already taken their
departure for that city, and Flemish light vessels were observed to keep
watch on the English coast. But by these appearances the apprehensions
of the council were awakened, and a sudden journey of the princess from
Hunsdon in Hertfordshire towards Norfolk, for which she was unable to
assign a satisfactory reason, served as strong confirmation of their
suspicions.

A violent alarm was immediately sounded through the nation, of foreign
invasion designed to co-operate with seditions at home; bodies of troops
were dispatched to protect different points of the coast; and several
ships of war were equipped for sea; while a communication on the subject
was made by the council to the nobility throughout the kingdom, in terms
calculated to awaken indignation against the persecuted princess, and
all who were suspected, justly or unjustly, of regarding her cause with
favor. A few extracts from this paper will exhibit the fierce and
jealous spirit of that administration of which Dudley formed the soul.

"So it is, that the lady Mary, not many days past, removed from Newhall
in Essex to her house of Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, the cause whereof,
although we knew not, yet did we rather think it likely that her grace
would have come to have seen his majesty; but now upon Tuesday last, she
hath suddenly, without knowledge given either to us here or to the
country there, and without any cause in the world by us to her given,
taken her journey from Hunsdon towards Norfolk" &c. "This her doing we
be sorry for, both for the evil opinion the king's majesty our master
may conceive thereby of her, and for that by the same doth appear
manifestly the malicious rancour of such as provoke her thus to breed
and stir up, as much as in her and them lieth, oc