not
appear among those who exerted themselves on her behalf before the
middle of August. He was then sworn a member of the privy council like
many others who owed their promotion to their loyalty rather than to
their political abilities. Their numbers swelled the privy council and
sadly impaired its efficiency; but Mary resisted the various attempts to
get rid of them because she liked staunch friends, and regarded them as
a salutary check upon the abler but less scrupulous members who had
served Edward VI. as well as herself. Englefield sat as M.P. for
Berkshire in all Mary's parliaments except that of April 1554, but
received no higher political office than the lucrative mastership of the
court of wards.

He was an ardent believer in persecution, was present at Hooper's trial,
sought Ascham's ruin, and naturally lost his office and his seat on the
privy council at Elizabeth's succession. He retired to the continent
before May 1559, and from that time until his death was an active
participant in all schemes for the restoration of Roman Catholicism. At
first his ideas took such comparatively mild forms as inducing the pope
to send a legate to persuade Elizabeth to return to the fold; but
gradually they grew more violent and treasonable, until Englefield
became the close confidant of Cardinal Allen, Parsons and the "jesuited"
Catholics, who advocated forcible intervention by Spain and the
succession of the infanta; in 1585 Englefield thought that Mary's
succession, peaceful or other, would not be satisfactory unless it were
owing to Spanish support and she were dependent on Philip. Englefield
lived first at Rome, then in the Low Countries, and finally at
Valladolid. He was blind for the last twenty years of his life, and
received a pension of six hundred crowns from Philip. He had been
outlawed in 1564 and his estates sequestered, but they were not
forfeited until 1585, when an act of attainder was passed against
Englefield. Even then some legal difficulties stood in the way of their
appropriation by the crown, for Englefield, obviously with an eye to
this contingency, had conditionally settled them on his nephew Francis.
The long arguments on the point are given in Coke's _Reports_, and a
further act was passed in 1592 confirming the forfeiture to the crown.
The nephew, however, eventually recovered some of the family estates,
and was created a baronet in 1612. His uncle was alive in September
1596, but apparently died