nd some others;
and lord Loughborough, also a privy-councillor much favored and trusted
by the late queen, was brought into trouble on the same ground. Against
Waldegrave it is to be feared that much cruelty was exercised during his
imprisonment; for it is said to have occasioned his death, which
occurred in the Tower a few months afterwards. The High Commission
court now began to take cognisance of what was called recusancy, or the
refusal to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; it also
encouraged informations against such as refrained from joining in the
established worship; and numerous professors of the old religion, both
ecclesiastics and laity, were summoned on one account or other before
this tribunal. Of these, some were committed to prison, others
restricted from entering certain places, as the two universities, or
circumscribed within the limits of some town or county; and most were
bound in great penalties to be forthcoming whenever it should be
required.

As a further demonstration of zeal against popery, the queen caused all
the altars in Westminster abbey to be pulled down; and about the same
time a remarkable scene occurred between her majesty and Dr. Thomas
Sampson dean of Christ-church.

It happened that the queen had appointed to go to St. Paul's on New
Year's day to hear the dean preach; and he, thinking to gratify her on
that day with an elegant and appropriate present, had procured some
prints illustrative of the histories of the saints and martyrs, which he
caused to be inserted in a richly bound prayer-book and laid on the
queen's cushion for her use. Her majesty opened the volume; but no
sooner did the prints meet her eye, than she frowned, blushed, and
called to the verger to bring her the book she was accustomed to use. As
soon as the service was ended, she went into the vestry and inquired of
the dean who had brought that book? and when he explained that he had
meant it as a present to her majesty, she chid him severely, inquired if
he was ignorant of her proclamation against images, pictures, and Romish
reliques in the churches, and of her aversion to all idolatry, and
strictly ordered that no similar mistake should be made in future. What
renders this circumstance the more curious is, that Elizabeth at this
very time kept a crucifix in her private chapel, and that Sampson was so
far from being popishly inclined, that he had refused the bishopric of
Norwich the year before, on accoun