Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/616

 letters from the Netherlands, France or Spain were always telling of burnt Protestants, nobody was burnt in England and very few people lay in prison for conscience sake. The deprived Bishops seem to have been left at large until Parpaglia's mission; then they were sent to gaoL Probably they could be lawfully imprisoned as contumacious excommunicates. Martinengo's advent induced Cecil to clap his hand on a few "mass-mongers," and on some laymen who had held office under Mary. But in these years of horror it is a small matter if a score of Catholics are kept in that Tower where Elizabeth was lately confined; and her preachers had some right to speak of an unexampled clemency.

Rightly or wrongly, but very naturally, there was one man especially odious to the Protestants. When the statute of 1563 was passed, it was said among the Catholics that Bonner would soon be done to death, and the oath that he had already refused was tendered to him a second time by Home the occupant of the see of Winchester. The tender was only valid if Home was "Bishop of the diocese." Bonner, who, it is said, had the aid of Plowden, the most famous pleader of the time, threatened to raise the fundamental question whether Home and his fellows were lawful Bishops. He was prepared to dispute the validity of the statutes of 1559: to dispute the validity of the quasi-papal power of " supplying defects " which the Queen had assumed: to attack the very heart of the new order of things. Elizabeth, however, was not to be hurried into violence. The proceedings against him were stayed; her Bishops were compelled to petition the Parliament of 1566 for a declaration that they were lawful Bishops; their prayer was not granted except with the proviso that none of their past acts touching life and property were to be thereby validated; and eleven out of some thirty-five temporal Lords were for leaving Dr Parker and his suffragans in their uncomfortably dubious position. Elizabeth allowed Lords and Commons to discuss and confirm her letters patent; she was allowing all to see that no Catholic who refrained from plots need fear anything worse than twelve-penny fines; but she had not yet been excommunicated and deposed.

A project for excommunication and deposition was sent to Trent from Louvain, where the Catholic exiles from England congregated. Like Knox and Goodman in Mary's reign, those who had fled from persecution were already setting themselves to exasperate the persecutor. The plan that found favour with them in 1563 involved the action of the Emperor's son, the Archduke Charles. He was to marry Mary Stewart (who, however, had set her heart on a grander match), and then he was to execute the papal ban. Englishmen, it was said, would never again accept as King the heir to the throne of Spain; but his Austrian kinsman would be an unexceptionable candidate or conqueror. The papal Legates at Trent consulted the Emperor, who told his ambassadors that if the Council wished to make itself ridiculous, it had better depose Elizabeth; he and his would have nothing to do with