not very merciful to heretics, but he tried to bridle the zeal of the Holy Office in burning the English seamen.  Even Philip himself remonstrated.  It was to no purpose.  The Holy Office said they would think about it, but concluded to go on.  I am not the least surprised if the English seamen were intolerant.  I should be very much surprised if they had not been.  The Queen could not protect them.  They had to protect themselves as they could, and make Spanish vessels, when they could catch them, pay for the iniquities of their rulers.

With such a temper rising on both sides, Elizabeth’s policy had but a poor chance.  She still hoped that the better sense of mankind would keep the doctrinal enthusiasts in order.  Elizabeth wished her subjects would be content to live together in unity of spirit, if not in unity of theory, in the bond of peace, not hatred, in righteousness of life, not in orthodoxy preached by stake and gibbet.  She was content to wait and to persevere.  She refused to declare war.  War would tear the world in pieces.  She knew her danger.  She knew that she was in constant peril of assassination.  She knew that if the Protestants were crushed in Scotland, in France, and in the Low Countries, her own turn would follow.  To protect insurgents avowedly would be to justify insurrection against herself.  But what she would not do openly she would do secretly.  What she would not do herself she let her subjects do.  Thousands of English volunteers fought in Flanders for the States, and in France for the Huguenots.  When the English Treasury was shut to the entreaties of Coligny or William of Orange the London citizens untied their purse-strings.  Her friends in Scotland fared ill.  They were encouraged by promises which were not observed, because to observe them might bring on war.  They committed themselves for her sake.  They fell one after another—­Murray, Morton, Gowrie—­into bloody graves.  Others took their places and struggled on.  The Scotch Reformation was saved.  Scotland was not allowed to open its arms to an invading army to strike England across the Border.  But this was held to be their sufficient recompense.  They cared for their cause as well as for the English Queen, and they had their reward.  If they saved her they saved their own country.  She too did not lie on a bed of roses.  To prevent open war she was exposing her own life to the assassin.  At any moment a pistol-shot or a stab with a dagger might add Elizabeth to the list of victims.  She knew it, yet she went on upon her own policy, and faced in her person her own share of the risk.  One thing only she did.  If she would not defend her friends and her subjects as Queen of England, she left them free to defend themselves.  She allowed traitors to be hanged when they were caught at their work.  She allowed the merchants to fit out their privateer fleets, to defend at their own cost the shores of England, and to teach the Spaniards to fear their vengeance.