summoned to meet the new danger, and
declared by formal statute the landing of these priests and the
harbouring of them to be treason. The Act proved no idle menace; and the
execution of Cuthbert Mayne, a young priest who was arrested in Cornwall
with the Papal Bull of Deposition hidden about him, gave a terrible
indication of the character of the struggle upon which Elizabeth was
about to enter.

[Sidenote: Don John of Austria.]

The execution of Cuthbert Mayne was far from being purposed as the
opening of a religious persecution. To modern eyes there is something
even more revolting than open persecution in a policy which branded
every Catholic priest as a traitor and all Catholic worship as
disloyalty; but the first step towards toleration was won when the Queen
rested her system of repression on purely political grounds. If
Elizabeth was a persecutor, she was the first English ruler who felt the
charge of religious persecution to be a stigma on her rule. Nor can it
be denied that there was a real political danger in the new
missionaries. Allen was a restless conspirator, and the work of his
seminary priests was meant to aid a new plan of the Papacy for the
conquest of England. In 1576, on the death of Requesens, the Spanish
governor of the Low Countries, a successor was found for him in Don John
of Austria, a natural brother of Philip, the victor of Lepanto, and the
most famous general of his day. The temper of Don John was daring and
ambitious; his aim was a crown; and he sought in the Netherlands the
means of winning one. His ambition lent itself easily to the schemes of
Mary Stuart and of Rome; and he resolved to bring about by quick
concessions a settlement in the Low Countries, to cross with the Spanish
forces employed there to England, to raise the Catholics in revolt, to
free and marry Mary Stuart, and reign in her right as an English king.
The plan was an able one; but it was foiled ere he reached his post. The
Spanish troops had mutinied on the death of Requesens; and their sack of
Antwerp drew the States of the Netherlands together in a "Pacification
of Ghent." All differences of religion were set aside in a common
purpose to drive out the stranger. Baffled as he was, the subtlety of
Don John turned even this league to account. Their demand for the
withdrawal of the Spanish troops, though fatal to Philip's interests in
the Low Countries, could be made to serve the interests of Don John
across the seas. I