Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/528

 508 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 61. gled against for thirty years. She believed in kings, and she possessed skill to hoodwink kings less able than herself; but there was a volcanic energy in Europe, as she was about to feel, beyond the reach of her diplomacy, passions deep as the hell which the Popes mistook for heaven, which were proof against paltry artifices, and could be encountered only with other passions preternatural as themselves. Philip might ' loiter in the ford ' 1 or halt upon his foot of lead. The Yalois princes and their mother might play with Huguenot and Papist, and fish for fortune or safety in the troubled waters ; but the European Catholics were no longer to be trifled with. The first growth of the Reformation had been made possible only by the quarrel between Francis and the Emperor Charles. The political energies of the great powers were still hampered by their traditional jealousies ; but the priests and those who believed in priests were free, and they determined, before it was too late, to act while their kings diplomatized. Acute as Cecil was, he did not see the precise form in which the danger was ap- proaching. He expected political coalitions ; he had to encounter an invisible influence stealing into the heart of the realm ; a power which, when it took earthly form, appeared in the shape of pale ascetics armed but with their breviaries, yet more terrible than the galleons of Philip, or the threatened legions of the Duke of Guise. England was considered on the continent to be Mean do en vado.'