Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/286

 266 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 59. Your Excellency will say that we shall be no more free than we are now we shall only be subjects of another sovereign ; and that is true, and if any one had asked me fifty years ago to which of the two empires I should prefer that Ireland should belong, I should then per- haps have answered, England. But now, as we are at present governed, to hear mass, to attend confession, to receive the sacraments of the Church, is treason, while in Spain the law not only permits these duties, but de- mands the performance of them. ' Your Excellency will say this is nothing to the pur- pose ; 1 that whoever will be King .of Ireland must sue to the Church for the crown. I acknowledge it ; and the Catholic King, I doubt not, will acknowledge it ; but your Excellency should not impute to the Irish a lack of obedience for offering themselves to his Majesty. How else, busy as he. is with other matters, could they bring him to attend to them ? And surely, such is his piety, he would never listen to us without his Holi- ness' s sanction. But your Lordship knows that unless either he or some one comes to help us, the evil will be past cure, either by Pope or King. The English are growing strong, and the question will soon be, not of Ireland only, but of Scotland, France, Flanders, and all Europe. ' If his Holiness require me to desist from this com- mission, I am a servant and I must obey. I will go home and make my neck ready for the axe, as many
 * At rursum dicet omnia hsec nihil ad rem facere,'