more importance to ceremonial rites, has one remarkable difference from the protestant, that it is far less social; and consequently the prevention of its open exercise has far less tendency to weaken men's religious associations, so long as their individual intercourse with a priest, its essential requisite, can be preserved. Priests therefore travelled the country in various disguises, to keep alive a flame which the practice of outward conformity was calculated to extinguish. There was not a county throughout England, says a catholic historian, where several of Mary's clergy did not reside, and were commonly called the old priests. They served as chaplains in private families.179 By stealth, at the dead of night, in private chambers, in the secret lurking-places of an ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that subdues the imagination, with all the mutual trust that invigorates constancy, these proscribed ecclesiastics celebrated their solemn rites, more impressive in such concealment than if surrounded by all their former splendour. The strong predilection indeed of mankind for mystery, which has probably led many to tamper in political conspiracies without much further motive, will suffice to preserve secret associations, even where their purposes are far less interesting than those of religion. Many of these itinerant priests assumed the character of protestant preachers; and it has been said, with some truth, though not probably without exaggeration, that, under the directions of their crafty court, they fomented the division then springing up, and mingled with the anabaptists and other sectaries, in the hope both of exciting dislike to the establishment, and of instilling their own tenets, slightly disguised, into the minds of unwary enthusiasts.180
Persecution of the catholics in the ensuing period.—It is my thorough conviction that the persecution, for it can obtain no better name,181 carried on against the English catholics, however it might serve to delude the government by producing an apparent conformity, could not but excite a spirit of disloyalty in many adherents of that faith. Nor would it be safe to assert that a more conciliating policy would have altogether disarmed their hostility, much less laid at rest those busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar circumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency to produce. This remarkable posture of affairs affected all her civil, and still more her ecclesiastical policy. Her own title to the crown depended absolutely on a parliamentary recognition. The act of 35 H. 8, c. 1 had settled the crown upon her, and thus far restrained the previous statute, 28 H. 8, c. 7, which had empowered her father to regulate the succession at his pleasure. Besides this legislative authority, his testament had bequeathed the kingdom to Elizabeth after her sister Mary; and the common consent of the nation had ratified her possession. But the Queen of Scots, niece of Henry by Margaret, his elder sister, had a prior right to the throne during Elizabeth's reign, in the eyes of such catholics as preferred an hereditary to a parliamentary title, and was reckoned by the far greater part of the nation its presumptive heir after her decease. There could indeed be no question of this, had the succession been left to its natural course. But Henry had exercised the power with which his parliament, in too servile a spirit, yet in the plenitude of its sovereign authority, had invested him, by settling the succession in remainder upon the house of Suffolk, descendants of his second sister Mary, to whom he postponed the elder line of Scotland. Mary left two daughters, Frances and Eleanor. The former became wife of Grey, Marquis of Dorset, created Duke of Suffolk by Edward; and had three daughters—Jane, whose fate is well known, Catherine, and Mary. Eleanor Brandon, by her union with the Earl of Cumberland, had a daughter, who married the Earl of Derby. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, or rather after the death of the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Catherine Grey was by statute law the presumptive heiress of the crown; but according to the rules of hereditary descent, which the bulk of mankind do not readily permit an arbitrary and capricious enactment to disturb, Mary Queen of Scots, granddaughter of Margaret, was the indisputable representative of her royal progenitors, and the next in succession to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth's unwillingness to decide the succession, or to marry.—This reversion, indeed, after a youthful princess, might well appear rather an improbable contingency. It was to be expected that a fertile marriage would defeat all speculations about her inheritance; nor had Elizabeth been many weeks on the throne, before this began to occupy her subjects' minds.182 Among several who were named, two very soon became the prominent candidates for her favour, the Archduke Charles, son of the Emperor Ferdinand, and Lord Robert Dudley, sometime after created Earl of Leicester; one recommended by his dignity and alliances, the other by her own evident partiality. She gave at the outset so little encouragement to the former proposal, that Leicester's ambition did not appear extravagant.183 But her ablest counsellors who knew his vices, and her greatest peers who thought his nobility recent and ill acquired, deprecated so unworthy a connection.184 Few will pretend to explore the labyrinths of Elizabeth's heart; yet we may almost conclude that her passion for this favourite kept up a struggle against her wisdom for the first seven or eight years of her reign. Meantime she still continued unmarried; and those expressions she had so early used, of her resolution to live and die a virgin, began to appear less like coy affectation than at first. Never had a sovereign's marriage been more desirable for a kingdom. Cecil, aware how important it was that the queen should marry, but dreading her union with Leicester, contrived, about the end of 1564, to renew the treaty with the Archduke Charles.185 During this negotiation, which lasted from two to three years, she showed not a little of that evasive and dissembling coquetry which was to be more fully displayed on subsequent occasions.186 Leicester deemed himself so much interested as to quarrel with those who manifested any zeal for the Austrian marriage; but his mistress gradually overcame her misplaced inclinations; and from the time when that connection was broken off, his prospects of becoming her husband seem rapidly to have vanished away. The pretext made for relinquishing this treaty with the archduke was Elizabeth's constant refusal to tolerate the exercise of his religion; a difficulty which, whether real or ostensible, recurred in all her subsequent negotiations of a similar nature.187
In every parliament of Elizabeth the House of Commons was zealously attached to the protestant interest. This, as well as an apprehension of disturbance from a contested succession, led to those importunate solicitations that she would choose a husband, which she so artfully evaded. A determination so contrary to her apparent interest, and to the earnest desire of her people, may give some countenance to the surmises of the time, that she was restrained from marriage by a secret consciousness that it was unlikely to be fruitful.188 Whether these conjectures were well founded, of which I know no evidence, or whether the risk of experiencing that ingratitude which the husbands of sovereign princesses have often displayed, and of which one glaring example was immediately before her eyes, outweighed in her judgment that of remaining single, or whether she might not even apprehend a more desperate combination of the catholic party at home and abroad, if the birth of any issue from her should shut out their hopes of Mary's succession, it is difficult for us to decide.
Though the queen's marriage were the primary object of these addresses, as the most probable means of securing an undisputed heir to the crown, yet she might have satisfied the parliament in some degree by limiting the succession to one certain line. But it seems doubtful whether this would have answered the proposed end. If she had taken a firm resolution against matrimony, which, unless on the supposition already hinted, could hardly be reconciled with a sincere regard for her people's welfare, it might be less dangerous to leave the course of events to regulate her inheritance. Though all parties seem to have conspired in pressing her to some decisive settlement on this subject, it would not have been easy to content the two factions, who looked for a successor to very different quarters.189 It is evident that any confirmation of the Suffolk title would have been regarded by the Queen of Scots and her numerous partisans as a flagrant injustice, to which they would not submit but by compulsion: and on the other hand, by re-establishing the hereditary line, Elizabeth would have lost her check on one whom she had reason to consider as a rival and competitor, and whose influence was already alarmingly extensive among her subjects.
Imprisonment of Lady Catherine Grey.—She had, however, in one of the first years of her reign, without any better motive than her own jealous and malignant humour, taken a step not only harsh and arbitrary, but very little consonant to policy, which had almost put it out of her power to defeat the Queen of Scots' succession. Lady Catherine Grey, who has been already mentioned as next in remainder of the house of Suffolk, proved with child by a private marriage, as they both alleged, with the Earl of Hertford. The queen, always envious of the happiness of lovers, and jealous of all who