or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part
of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his
cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from
him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily
passed off, or at least shows itself in a milder and rarer form.

Foolish as it appears to us, there were some solid reasons to account
for it. You have read doubtless how, a century before I was born, the
great kingdom of Spain waxed and prospered. Her ships covered every
sea. Her troops were victorious wherever they appeared. In letters, in
learning, in all the arts of war and peace they were the foremost nation
in Europe. You have heard also of the ill-blood which existed between
this great nation and ourselves; how our adventurers harried their
possessions across the Atlantic, while they retorted by burning such
of our seamen as they could catch by their devilish Inquisition, and by
threatening our coasts both from Cadiz and from their provinces in the
Netherlands. At last so hot became the quarrel that the other nations
stood off, as I have seen the folk clear a space for the sword-players
at Hockley-in-the-Hole, so that the Spanish giant and tough little
England were left face to face to fight the matter out. Throughout all
that business it was as the emissary of the Pope, and as the avenger of
the dishonoured Roman Church, that King Philip professed to come. It
is true that Lord Howard and many another gentleman of the old religion
fought stoutly against the Dons, but the people could never forget that
the reformed faith had been the flag under which they had conquered, and
that the blessing of the Pontiff had rested with their opponents. Then
came the cruel and foolish attempt of Mary to force upon them a creed
for which they had no sympathy, and at the heels of it another great
Roman Catholic power menaced our liberty from the Continent. The growing
strength of France promoted a corresponding distrust of Papistry in
England, which reached a head when, at about the time of which I write,
Louis XIV. threatened us with invasion at the very moment when, by
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he showed his intolerant spirit
towards the faith which we held dear. The narrow Protestantism of
England was less a religious sentiment than a patriotic reply to
the aggressive bigotry of her enemies. Our Catholic countrymen were
unpopular, not so much because