stand before the tribunal of the world. Nothing could subject Mary to an English court of justice, but her own injudicious submission to it; and it is a fair question for casuists to decide, how far any act which originated from presumed force * can bind the person who submits to it. At all events, the conditions of the act of parliament ought to have been complied with †, (1 13° Eliz.) and the testimony of her secretaries have been confirmed by their being confronted to her: but few or no criminals, in those happy days, had the advantage of evenhanded justice. Her guilt must ever remain problematical; and however this transaction must disgrace the name of Elizabeth, it should not be forgotten that the nation was full as guilty as the queen t. The policy, too, of the measure may be questioned, if indeed it can possibly be politic to do wrong.

g. 456. (A.D. 1587.) The firmness of the queen during the last parliament did not damp the ardour for innovation ; for on Feb 27 a bill was brought forward which would have abrogated all ecclesiastical law, and substituted a new code in its place; but during the debate on the question, whether the book which contained it should be read, the house adjourned, and several of the more violent members were afterwards committed to the Tower by the queen 5. The book ||, as appears from the draught of

* Camden's Eliz. 352. † Ibid. 362. Strype’s Whitgift, i. 509. Ibid. i. 488. || Ibid. iii. 186. No. 31.

compel all preachers to deliver, every year, eight sermons at least at each of their benefices.

§. 457. (A.D. 1588.) The history of this eventful year belongs much more to the civil than the ecclesiastical historian; for notwithstanding the steps which were taken to urge the Roman catholics of England to unite in the attempt at subjugating our island, it is manifest that the mass of them viewed the matter in its true light, and joined hand and heart in the common cause, wherever the government was wise enough to employ their services. But it should not be forgotten, when we examine the treatment which they received at the hands of the protestants, and which every well wisher to the honour of our cause must deplore, that the men who were supposed to possess the most spiritual influence among them, cardinal Allen and Father Persons, were exerting their utmost endeavours to enslave their country. The conduct of a party must ordinarily be viewed from what is done by its leaders; and perhaps there never was a cause so cursed with injudicious leaders, as that of the English Roman catholics. This example, however, was by no means universally followed by the ecclesiastics; for Wryght, a priest of the college of Douay *, and ing therefore in a state of proscription, wrote a tract for the satisfaction of some Roman catholics, in which he proves that it was their duty to defend the country against the invasion of Philip; and, to

* Strype's Annals, vi. 583. No. 65.