the exchequer, and the
recent visitations of famine and pestilence, had infected the minds of
the English with despondency, and paralysed all their efforts.

In religion they were confessedly a divided people; but it is probable
that Philip, misled by his own zeal and that of the catholic clergy,
confidently anticipated the extirpation of heresy and the final triumph
of the papal system, if the measures of _salutary rigor_ which had
distinguished the reign of Mary should be persisted in by her successor;
and that he actually supposed the majority of the nation to be at this
time sincerely and cordially catholic. In offering therefore his hand to
Elizabeth, he seemed to lend her that powerful aid against her foreign
foe and rival without which her possession of the throne could not be
secure, and that support against domestic faction without which it could
not be tranquil. He readily undertook to procure from the pope the
necessary dispensation for the marriage, which he was certain would be
granted with alacrity; and before the answer of Elizabeth could reach
him, he had actually dispatched envoys to Rome for this purpose.

A princess, in fact, of a character less firm and less sagacious than
Elizabeth, might have found in these seeming benefits temptations not to
be resisted; the splendor of Philip's rank and power would have dazzled
and overawed, the difficulties of her own situation would have
affrighted her, and between ambition and alarm she would probably have
thrown herself into the arms, and abandoned her country to the mercy, of
a gloomy, calculating, relentless tyrant.

But Elizabeth was neither to be deceived nor intimidated. She well knew
how odious this very marriage had rendered her unhappy sister; she
understood and sympathized in the religious sentiments of the great
mass of her subjects; she felt too all the pride, as well as the
felicity, of independence; and looking around with a cheerful confidence
on a people who adored her, she formed at once the patriotic resolution
to wear her English diadem by the suffrage of the English nation alone,
unindebted to the protection and free from the participation of any
brother-monarch living, even of him who held the highest place among the
potentates of Europe.

Her best and wisest counsellors applauded her decision, but they
unanimously advised that no means consistent with the rejection of his
suit should be omitted, by which the friendship of the king of