eason; that those who harbored or relieved them
should be guilty of felony; that those who were educated in seminaries,
if they returned not in six months after notice given, and submitted
not themselves to the queen, before a bishop or two justices, should be
guilty of treason; and that if any, so submitting themselves, should,
within ten years, approach the court, or come within ten miles of it,
their submission should be void.[**] By this law, the exercise of the
Catholic religion, which had formerly been prohibited under lighter
penalties, and which was in many instances connived at, was totally
suppressed. In the subsequent part of the queen's reign, the law was
sometimes executed by the capital punishment of priests; and though the
partisans of that princess asserted that they were punished for their
treason, not their religion, the apology must only be understood in this
sense, that the law was enacted on account of the treasonable views and
attempts of the sect, not that every individual who suffered the penalty
of the law was convicted of treason.[***] The Catholics, therefore,
might now with justice complain of a violent persecution; which we may
safety affirm, in spite of the rigid and bigoted maxims of that age, not
to be the best method of converting them, or of reconciling them to the
established government and religion.

* 27 Eliz. cap. 1.

* 27 Eliz. cap. 2.

* Some even of those who defend the queen's measures, allow
that in ten years fifty priests were executed, and fifty-
five banished Camden, p. 649.

The parliament, besides arming the queen with these powers, granted her
a supply of one subsidy and two fifteenths. The only circumstance in
which their proceedings were disagreeable to her, was an application,
made by the commons, for a further reformation in ecclesiastical
matters. Yet even in this attempt, which affected her, as well as them,
in a delicate point, they discovered how much they were overawed by her
authority. The majority of the house were Puritans, or inclined to that
sect;[*] but the severe reprimands which they had already, in former
sessions, met with from the throne deterred them from introducing any
bill concerning religion; a proceeding which would have been interpreted
as an encroachment on the prerogative: they were content to proceed by
way of humble petition, and that not addressed to her majesty, which
would have given offence, but to the house