gly disposed
to pass an act by which Mary should be declared for ever unworthy and
incapable of the English succession: but Elizabeth, with her usual
averseness to all unqualified declarations and irrevocable decisions,
interfered to prevent the completion of a measure which most sovereigns,
under all the circumstances, would have been eager to embrace. To the
unanimous expression of the opinion of the house, that the execution of
the sentence against the duke of Norfolk ought not to be longer delayed,
she was however prevailed upon to lend a more favorable ear; and on June
2d, 1572, this nobleman received his death on Tower-hill.

Norfolk was a man of many amiable and several estimable qualities, and
much too good for the faction with which he had been enticed to act and
the cause in which he suffered. On the scaffold he acknowledged, with
great apparent sincerity, the justice of his sentence, and his peculiar
guiltiness in breaking the solemn promise which he had pledged to his
sovereign. He declared himself to have been an earnest protestant ever
since he had had any taste for religion, and in this faith he died very
devoutly. He bequeathed by his will his best George to his kinsman and
true friend the earl of Sussex, whose faithful counsels he too late
reproached himself with neglecting. By his attainder the dukedom was
lost to the family of Howard; but Philip, his eldest son, succeeded his
maternal grandfather in the earldom of Arundel; lord Thomas, his second
son, (whose mother was the daughter and heiress of lord Audley,) was
created lord Howard of Walden by Elizabeth and earl of Suffolk by James;
and lord William, the youngest, who possessed Naworth-castle in right of
Elizabeth Dacre his wife, and was known upon the West Border (of which
he was warden) by the appellation of "Belted Will," was ancestor to the
earls of Carlisle[74].

[Note 74:

"His Bilboa blade, by marchmen felt,
Hung in a broad and studded belt;
Hence in rude phrase the Borderers still
Call noble Howard Belted Will."

Lay of the Last Minstrel.]

The king of Spain had long been regarded in England as the most
implacable and formidable of the enemies of Elizabeth; and on good
grounds. It was believed to be through his procurement that Sixtus V.
had been led to fulminate his anathema against her;--it was well known
that the pope had made a donation to him of the kingdom of Ireland, of
which he was anxious to avail himself