Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/557

 1584-] THE BOA 'D OF ASSOCIATION. S4 , irritation to cool down. On the 21 at, notice was given of a six weeks' adjournment. The Queen's pleasure was again made known by Hatton, and a scene took place which reveals strikingly the sentiment of the loyal part of the nation. At the close of a long speech, on the goodness chiefly of Almighty God, Hatton proposed that the Commons, before they separated, should join with him in a prayer for the Queen's continued preserva- tion. Amidst a hum of general assent, he produced a form written, as he said, not very well, but by an honest, godly, and learned man. He read it sentence by sentence, and the four hundred members, all on their knees on the floor of the House, repeated the words after him. 1 On the 4th of February they met again, and by that time the peril for which they had been called to provide had actually appeared at their doors. Edmund Neville, having an eye perhaps on the Westmoreland earldom, and hoping to gain favour by betraying his accomplice, came forward in January and accused Parry ^85. of intending regicide. Parry, he said, had spoken to him in the past summer of killing the Queen, as an act meritorious with God and the world, and had said that he was ready to lose his life to deliver his country from tyranny. Neville naturally represented himself as having listened with abhorrence, but Parry, he declared, had continued to urge him, ' wondering he was so scrupulous, with so many wrongs of his own to D'Ewes' Journals, 1584-5.