by which his subjects were held, cut him off from all communion with his fellow-creatures, and promised temporal rewards and a crown of glory in heaven to those who should succeed in depriving him of throne and life.  Yet this was the position of Elizabeth.  It was war to the knife between her and Rome, declared by Rome itself; nor was there any doubt whatever that the Seminary Priests—­seedlings transplanted from foreign nurseries, which were as watered gardens for the growth of treason—­were a perpetually organized band of conspirators and assassins, with whom it was hardly an act of excessive barbarity to deal in somewhat summary fashion.  Doubtless it would have been a more lofty policy, and a far more intelligent one, to extend towards the Catholics of England, who as a body were loyal to their country, an ample toleration.  But it could scarcely be expected that Elizabeth Tudor, as imperious and absolute by temperament as her father had ever been, would be capable of embodying that great principle.

When, in the preliminaries to the negotiations of 1587, therefore, it was urged on the part of Spain, that the Queen was demanding a concession of religious liberty from Philip to the Netherlanders which she refused to English heretics, and that he only claimed the same right of dictating a creed to his subjects which she exercised in regard to her own, Lord Burghley replied that the statement was correct.  The Queen permitted—­it was true—­no man to profess any religion but the one which she professed.  At the same time it was declared to be unjust, that those persons in the Netherlands who had been for years in the habit of practising Protestant rites, should be suddenly compelled, without instruction, to abandon that form of worship.  It was well known that many would rather die than submit to such oppression, and it was affirmed that the exercise of this cruelty would be resisted by her to the uttermost.  There was no hint of the propriety—­on any logical basis—­of leaving the question of creed as a matter between man and his Maker, with which any dictation on the part of crown or state was an act of odious tyranny.  There was not even a suggestion that the Protestant doctrines were true, and the Catholic doctrines false.  The matter was merely taken up on the ‘uti possidetis’ principle, that they who had acquired the fact of Protestant worship had a right to retain it, and could not justly be deprived of it, except by instruction and persuasion.  It was also affirmed that it was not the English practice to inquire into men’s consciences.  It would have been difficult, however, to make that very clear to Philip’s comprehension, because, if men, women, and children, were scourged with rods, imprisoned and hanged, if they refused to conform publicly to a ceremony at which their consciences revolted-unless they had money enough to purchase non-conformity—­it seemed to be the practice to inquire very effectively into their consciences.