t he had offered her
to assassinate the queen. It appears by this that she had accepted the
offer; so that all the suppositions of Walsingham's forgery, or the
temerity or treachery of her secretaries, fall to the ground.]

[Footnote 27: NOTE AA, p 231 This parliament granted the queen a supply
of a subsidy and two fifteenths. They adjourned, and met again after
the execution of the queen of Scots; when there passed some remarkable
incidents, which it may be proper not to omit. We shall give them in
the words of Sir Simon D'Ewes, (p. 410, 411,) which are almost wholly
transcribed from Townshend's Journal. On Monday, the 27th of February,
Mr. Cope, first using some speeches touching the necessity of a learned
ministry, and the amendment of things amiss in the ecclesiastical
estate, offered to the house a bill and a book written; the bill
containing a petition, that it might be enacted, that all laws now in
force touching ecclesiastical government should be void; and that it
might be enacted, that the Book of Common Prayer now offered, and none
other, might be received into the church to be used. The book contained
the form of prayer and administration of the sacraments, with divers
rites and ceremonies to be used in the church; and he desired that the
book might be read. Whereupon Mr. Speaker in effect used this speech:
For that her majesty before this time had commanded the house not to
meddle with this matter, and that her majesty had promised to take order
in those causes, he doubted not but to the good satisfaction of all her
people, he desired that it would please them to spare the reading of
it. Notwithstanding the house desired the reading of it. Whereupon Mr.
Speaker desired the clerk to read. And the court being ready to read it,
Mr. Dalton made a motion against the reading of it, saying, that it was
not meet to be read, and it did appoint a new form of administration
of the sacraments and ceremonies of the church, to the discredit of
the Book of Common Prayer and of the whole state; and thought that this
dealing would bring her majesty's indignation against the house, thus to
enterprise this dealing with those things which her majesty especially
had taken into her own charge and direction. Whereupon Mr. Lewkenor
spake, showing the necessity of preaching and of a learned ministry, and
thought it very fit that the petition and book should be read. To this
purpose spake Mr. Hurleston and Mr. Bainbrigg; and so, th