ticles of Faith, a measure which in fact transferred the
administration of justice and public order to their Protestant
opponents, by forbidding conversions to Catholicism or the bringing into
England of Papal absolutions or objects consecrated by the Pope.
Meanwhile Ridolfi was struggling in vain against Philip's caution. The
king made no objection to the seizure or assassination of Elizabeth. The
scheme secured his fullest sympathy; no such opportunity, he held, would
ever offer again; and he longed to finish the affair quickly before
France should take part in it. But he could not be brought to send
troops to England before Elizabeth was secured. If troops were once
sent, the failure of the plot would mean war with England; and with
fresh troubles threatening Alva's hold on the Netherlands Philip had no
mind to risk an English war. Norfolk on the other hand had no mind to
risk a rising before Spanish troops were landed, and Ridolfi's efforts
failed to bring either Duke or king to action. But the clue to these
negotiations had long been in Cecil's hands; and at the opening of 1571
Norfolk's schemes of ambition were foiled by his arrest. He was
convicted of treason, and after a few months' delay executed at the
Tower.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and England.]

With the death of Norfolk and that of Northumberland, who followed him
to the scaffold, the dread of revolt within the realm which had so long
hung over England passed quietly away. The failure of the two attempts
not only showed the weakness and disunion of the party of discontent and
reaction, but it revealed the weakness of all party feeling before the
rise of a national temper which was springing naturally out of the peace
of Elizabeth's reign, and which a growing sense of danger to the order
and prosperity around it was fast turning into a passionate loyalty to
the Queen. It was not merely against Cecil's watchfulness or Elizabeth's
cunning that Mary and Philip and the Percies dashed themselves in vain;
it was against a new England. And this England owed its existence to the
Queen. "I have desired," Elizabeth said proudly to her Parliament, "to
have the obedience of my subjects by love, and not by compulsion."
Through the fourteen years which had passed since she mounted the
throne, her subjects' love had been fairly won by justice and good
government. The current of political events had drawn men's eyes chiefly
to the outer dangers of the country, to the policy