Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/534

 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 67. of person or causes, or for fear or reward, separate ourselves from this association, or fail in the prosecution thereof during our lives, on pain of being by the rest of us prosecuted and suppressed as perjured persons and public enemies to Grod, our Queen, and country to which punishment and pains we voluntarily submit ourselves and every of us, without benefit of any colour or pretence;' 1 The alarm was but too well founded, the anxiety but too natural, which dictated so unexampled a movement. The assassination of Elizabeth was the first idea of the most devout of the Catholic priests. The priests held the conscience of every ardent youth who desired a short road to Paradise, and in those days the distance be- tween the imagination and execution of a desperate deed was less remote than it is at present. 2 The privy councillors, the judges, the magistrates of Middlesex, every one in or about London who held office under the Crown, gave their signatures immedi- 1 Act of Association, November, 1584 : Printed in the first volume of the State Trials. 2 Among Walsingham's loose papers of this year, preserved by accident and probably one of a thou- sand, is an account, unsigned, of a ' speech of a friar in Dunkirk.' ' On All Saints Eve a friar of the Order of St Francis, being vicar of the said Friary, entering into talk with me in the said Friary touching the Queen, said unto me that if her Majesty was once dispatched and gone, that then all Christendom would be in peace and quietness; and taking me with him into his cham- ber, he showed me the pictures of the Prince of Orange and the Bur- gundian which killed him, with the manner of his cruel execution. The friar said to me, Do you behold and see this picture? Look how this Burgundian did kill this Prince. In such manner there will not want another Burgundian to kill that wicked woman, and that before long free the common wealth of all Chris- tendom.' MSS. Domestic, 1584.