II. BOOK Henry had left it; another parliament would be called in three or four months time; and they thought they had now opened a passage to the recognition of the obedience to the papal see.31 51 From these private and authentic letters, we learn that her majesty had at last become earnest to reestablish popery in England in all its plenitude; but perceived that she must effect this by gradual subtlety. They also exhibit her own acknowlegement, that both the parliament and nation were hostile to the restoration of the papal power. On account of this aversion, her government was resolved to obtain by degrees, and with a fraudulent simulation, such laws to be established in artful succession, as would imperceptibly wind and fasten the chain so hated, on the necks of those to whom she owed the throne, and thereby the power of thus deceiving and enslaving them. But Pole's mind, with all its imperfections, was too sincere and too zealous either to like this Machiavelian policy, or to await its tardy evolution. He first complained to her, that her letters were in Latin, and sent to him in a bundle, with others, from the court of the emperor; he did not dream that it contained any from her, until he chanced to see her name on the last page. He could not but marvel that they were not in her native language, which princes always used with their friends. If, indeed, she could have thought that banishment had taken from him the memory of it, she might have used a foreign tongue; but letters from her in 51 Quir. 122. She asked him to invent a pretext to go to Brussels, that he might be nearer to her. ib. any mode of phrase could only be gratifying. Having thus expressed his disappointment that she had not made her communication more pointedly personal, and less official and distant, he exhorts her not to delay to reunite her throne with St. Peter's, and to pray for the spirit of courage to proceed vigorously to this measure. 52 The pope also became impatient at the delay of his recognition, and, to hasten it, sent his permissive brief to Pole, allowing him to lay aside for a time his legantine name and state, and to visit England privately, in order to expedite the business.53 Pole did not think it safe or useful to risk his person, either in disguise or in his pomp, at that period of unpopularity and peril both to himself and his cause, and therefore remained in Flanders. 54 So little advance to a counter-revolution of religion had been made as the year approached its termination, that Julius, in the middle of December, declared to her how much he lamented the efforts that were making to alienate her mind from him, and to cause the name of himself and of the Holy See to become hateful to her; expressive phrases, which imply an anxious uncertainty as to what even yet, from the opposing difficulties, would be her ultimate decision. She did indeed consult Pole how the persons she meant to make bishops might be provided for, without derogation to the papal 52 Lett. from Dettingen (near Brussels), 1 Dec. 1553. Quir. 4. p. 123-6. 53 This is dated at Rome, 8 Dec. 1553. Quir. 4. p. 432. 54 Haud satis, vel mirari vel dolere possumus, horum perversitatem temporum, cum sint qui, his artibus, tuam a nobis voluntatem alienare; et nostrum atque hujus sanctæ apostolicæ sedis nomen, tuæ majestati CHAP. XIII II. BOOK authority.55 Yet she proceeded to appoint them, and, acting on the plan of gradually patronizing and preferring those who coincided most nearly with her own sentiments, she selected clergymen who were attached to the deposed system. Their regard for this, or a sense of their insecurity if the old forms were not resorted to, led them to decline their acceptance of the promotion, until it had received the sanction of the apostolic see." At this juncture the gout was disabling the pontiff;" and altho this conduct, or as he characterised it, the bonta,' the goodness of these friendly dignitaries delighted him, by such an explicit recognition from them of his long-lapsed authority, he was too ill, notwithstanding his joy, to attend then to the business." 56 58 Finding himself still so obnoxious to his countrymen, Pole dispatched an agent to her, with instructions that he hoped would influence her conduct, so voluminous as to occupy fourteen large octavo printed pages. The substance of these is, that she 59 60 should resolve to have the obnoxious laws and the crown's supremacy abolished, at every hazard; 60 that with this bold determination she should go personally to parliament, and insist upon the repeal of these and of his outlawry, and upon his admission 55 Pole's Instr. Strype, 931. 56 Lett. Card. Morone to Pole, from Rome, 28 Feb. 1554. Quir. 4. p. 128. 57 6 I have not been able, for some days, to speak with our lord, who has la gotta.' ib. 58 Ib. The cardinal adds, 'As soon as he has got rid of the gout, I will speak to him on the subject of these bishops.' ib. 130. The French king, in his letter of 6th November 1554, says of this pope Julian III. 'His actions and purposes are those of an inconstant, varying and lightminded man, with whom we can be certain of nothing.' 2 Ribier, 474. 59 They are printed in Strype's App. 921-935. 60 Ib. 923. XIII. into the country, as the legate of the pope." He CHAP. owns that her peril was at that juncture greater than when Northumberland set against her, but that she must cast away all worldly fear.62 He also confesses that there were but FEW IN THE KINGDOM Who were on the side of Rome.63 61 Strype's App. 925. 62 Ib. 929. 63 His words are, ‘And because I do not know how few there be in the realm, ALL being maculati therein, that can or will endeavor themselves to explicate the peril and shew the remedy.' p.930. BOOK II. IF But as age increases, the general capacity and diffusive benevolence of the native spirit become contracted to peculiar opinions, to personal humors, and to selected theories and bigotries of one sort or other, which cloud and distort the universal tendencies |