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 of the time, that conformity was not so strictly enforced as the law required, or as Elizabeth wished, and that irregularities in both directions were winked at.

In 1581 the 'English Mission' organised by Cardinal Allen and his abettors had borne its sufficient fruit in treason and plots of assassination and gave occasion to the passing of another Act (23 Eliz. c. 1) 'to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their due obedience.' This Act makes it treason to convert or to be converted from the established religion to that of Rome, and involves all abettors of such conversions in the guilt of misprision of treason. It also enacts penalties for the saying or hearing of Mass, and reiterates and strengthens the penalties against persons absenting themselves from church, and against Nonconformists in general. It was followed some few years later by a still more stringent Act (27 Eliz. c. 2) called, 'An Act against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and other such like disobedient persons,' in which the persons named were forbidden the realm, or, if remaining in or returning to it, treated as traitors, and persons harbouring or relieving such subjected to the penalties of præmunire; and other penalties are denounced against those who send their children to be educated in foreign seminaries, or who, knowing of the presence of Jesuits or the like in the country, conceal the facts. There is a saving clause for such, if they should submit and take the oath prescribed in 1 Eliz. c. 1, provided that they do not come within ten miles of the place in which the Queen happens to be.

A still further enactment of a somewhat similar character followed in this year, 1587 (viz. 29 Eliz. c. 6), called 'An Act for the more speedy and due execution of certain branches of the statutes made in the twenty-