red priests, while a yet greater number perished in
the filthy and fever-stricken gaols into which they were plunged. The
work of reconciliation to Rome was arrested by this ruthless energy;
but, on the other hand, the work which the priests had effected could
not be undone. The system of quiet compulsion and conciliation to which
Elizabeth had trusted for the religious reunion of her subjects was
foiled; and the English Catholics, fined, imprisoned at every crisis of
national danger, and deprived of their teachers by the prison and the
gibbet, were severed more hopelessly than ever from the national Church.
A fresh impulse was thus given to the growing current of opinion which
was to bring England at last to recognize the right of every man to
freedom both of conscience and of worship. "In Henry's days, the father
of this Elizabeth," wrote a Catholic priest at this time, "the whole
kingdom with all its bishops and learned men abjured their faith at one
word of the tyrant. But now in his daughter's days boys and women
boldly profess the faith before the judge, and refuse to make the
slightest concession even at the threat of death." What Protestantism
had first done under Mary, Catholicism was doing under Elizabeth. It was
deepening the sense of personal religion. It was revealing in men who
had till now cowered before the might of kingship a power greater than
the might of kings. It was breaking the spell which the monarchy had
laid on the imagination of the people. The Crown ceased to seem
irresistible when "boys and women" dared to resist it: it lost its
mysterious sacredness when half the nation looked on their sovereign as
a heretic. The "divinity that doth hedge a king" was rudely broken in
upon when Jesuit libellers were able to brand the wearer of the crown
not only as a usurper but as a profligate and abandoned woman. The
mighty impulse of patriotism, of national pride, which rallied the whole
people round Elizabeth as the Armada threatened England or Drake
threatened Spain, shielded indeed Elizabeth from much of the natural
results of this drift of opinion. But with her death the new sentiment
started suddenly to the front. The divine right of kings, the divine
right of bishops, found themselves face to face with a passion for
religious and political liberty which had gained vigour from the dungeon
of the Catholic priest as from that of the Protestant zealot.

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AND SPAIN

1582-1593