final scene at Fotheringay had closed the tragedy of Mary Stuart's existence, Elizabeth's life was the mark of unceasing plots and conspiracies, of which Jesuits and Seminarists were both the brain and the hands, even though they had received the unqualified approval of kings, popes, cardinals, and nobles, who, while they would not stain their own hands or risk their own skins by assassination, were willing enough to encourage others to do it, and to profit by the deed when done. The evidence of all this is unimpeachable, and comes from their own side.[1] There is no room for reasonable question or doubt about it. An English convert in his sermon at Rheims had said, 'Pity it was there could not be found any of that courage to bereave her (Elizabeth) of her life'; and Pope Gregory XIII. had said to Ballard and Tyrrel that he 'not only approved the act, but thought the doer, if he suffer death simply for that, to be worthy of canonisation.' In the face of these precepts given by the highest Catholic authority, and followed by the actual attempts which were made at assassination, the declamation about 'our religion only is our crime' is felt to be mere bluster. If a
- ↑ Records and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, London, 1882, p. 412; also the remarkable reasoning in the historical introduction to the same, pp. 48-51. See also Green, vol. ii. p. 416; and Froude, vol. xi. ch. xxviii. passim, and especially pp. 303-5. Also Simpson's Life of Campian, pp. 342-3, where he says, 'To be a conspirator generally implies a readiness to swear that you are not one. That is but a lame plot when the plotters are not ready to deny it at the bar. But Allen and Parsons put all the English Catholics in this position, that they were obliged to risk life, liberty, and lands, rather than take the oath of allegiance, which denied the Pope's right to depose princes; and, at the same time, they were obliged by their position to deny, with any amount of imprecation, their complicity in any plot, or in any general design or intention, under any circumstances, to enforce this Papal claim. Hence grew up a suspicion which has always remained in England of the inherent falsehood of Catholic morality,' &c. The whole passage is well worth perusal.
