me at the Puritans. It was popularly reported that the
King "loved no Puritans," as it was now usual to term those Churchmen
who declined to walk in the Ritualistic ways of the High Church party.
To restrict the term Puritan to Nonconformists is a modern mistake.
When, therefore, James began his reign by large remittances of fines to
his Romish subjects, issued a declaration against toleration, revived
the Star Chamber, and appointed Lord Henry Howard, a Roman Catholic, to
the Privy Council, the Papists were encouraged, and the Puritans took
alarm. The latter prepared to emigrate on a large scale to the American
plantations, where no man could control them in religious matters; the
former raised their heads and ventured on greater liberties than they
had dared to take during the reign of the dead Queen. The French
Ambassador, however, curled his lip contemptuously, and informed his
master that James was a hypocrite.

The position of the English Roman Catholics at this time was peculiar
and not agreeable. But in order to understand it, we must go back for
thirty-five years--to the close of that halcyon period, the earliest ten
years of Elizabeth, when the few Romanists then left in England
generally came to church like other good citizens, and if they chose to
practise the rites of their own faith in private, no notice was taken of
it. It was not the Protestant Government, but the Papal See, which was
responsible for the violent ending of this satisfactory state of things,
when it was perceived at Rome that the Reformation was so thoroughly
settled, and the nation so completely severed from Latin control, that
(in the words of one of those who attempted the Queen's life) "unless
Mistress Elizabeth were suddenly taken away, all the devils in Hell
should not be able to shake it." In 1568, therefore, Pope Pius the
Fifth put forth a Bull which excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed
her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed
them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of
course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper--the private spleen
of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England.
But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed
Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first visible
effect of the Bull was that they all "did forthwith refrain the church,"
and joined no more with their fellow-subjects in