men as have
showed they think evil contentment a ground of any rebellion; who have
seen no commonwealth but in faction, and divers of which have defiled
their hands in odious murders. With such fancies and favorites what is
to be hoped for? or that he will contain himself within the limits of
your conditions?"

...."Against contempt, if there be any, which I will never believe, let
your excellent virtues of piety, justice and liberality, daily, if it be
possible, more and more shine. Let such particular actions be found out
(which be easy, as I think, to be done) by which you may gratify all the
hearts of your people. Let those in whom you find trust, and to whom you
have committed trust, in your weighty affairs, be held up in the eyes
of your subjects: Lastly, doing as you do, you shall be as you be, the
example of princes, the ornament of this age, and the most excellent
fruit of your progenitors, and the perfect mirror of your posterity."

Such had ever been the devoted loyalty of Philip Sidney towards
Elizabeth, and so high was the place which he held in her esteem, that
she appears to have imputed the boldness of this letter to no motives
but good ones; and instead of resenting his interference in so delicate
a matter, she is thought to have been deeply moved by his eloquence, and
even to have been influenced by it in the formation of her final
resolve. But far other success attended the efforts of a different
character, who labored with equal zeal, equal reason, and probably not
inferior purity of intention, though for less courtliness of address, to
deter rather than dissuade her from the match, on grounds much more
offensive to her feelings, and by means of what was then accounted a
seditious appeal to the passions and prejudices of the nation.

The work alluded to was entitled "The discovery of a gaping gulf wherein
England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord
forbid not the banns by letting her see the sin and punishment thereof."
Its author was a gentleman named Stubbs, then of Lincoln's Inn, and
previously of Bene't College Cambridge, where we are told that his
intimacies had been formed among the more learned and ingenious class of
students, and where the poet Spenser had become his friend. He was
known as a zealous puritan, and had given his sister in marriage to the
celebrated Edmund Cartwright the leader of the sect. It is probable that
neither his religious principles nor th