Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/570

 $$0 KRIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62. final answer was, as usual, slow in coming, and O'Neil, finding Sidney inclined to keep the peace with him, wrote privately to say that if England would help him to destroy the Scots in Antrim, he would send his Countess about her business. 1 Little confidence could be placed in allies so fickle, but another figure was now to be introduced upon the scene. Doctor Nicolas Sanders has been already men- tioned in this history as the most energetic of the Eng- lish Catholic refugees. He was now just turned fifty. He had been educated at Winchester, and was after- wards Fellow of New College, where he had resided till the accession of Elizabeth. He had witnessed the anarchy under Edward, the restoration of order with Mary, and had been probably present at the burning of Cranmer. He went abroad with the next revolution. He attended the Council of Trent, and afterwards, being a man of great practical force and energy, he became the ruling spirit among the refugees, and the most en- thusiastic preacher of a Catholic crusade against Eng- land. When Philip, to his bitter disappointment, made peace with Elizabeth, he turned to the Pope ; and he employed his leisure, till Gregory saw his way to inter- ference, in helping forward the Catholic cause by the most venomous and most successful of libels. In a his- tory of ' The English Schism/ 2 he collected into a focus every charge which malignity had imagined against Henry VIII. and his ministers ; and so skilful was his 1 Sidney to the Council, March 17, 1576 : MSS. Ireland.
 * De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani Liber.