Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/76

 6o REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 63. and gentlemen detected in hearing mass were thrown into loose confinement. 1 Two proclamations were issued, one requiring every one who had sons or relations abroad to recall them to England, and declaring that whoever harboured Jesuits and seminary priests would be prosecuted as a maintainer of rebels ; 2 the other, a noble appeal from the Queen to her well- affected sub jects, to judge between her and those who were now seeking to overthrow her throne. Confident in the just moderation of her past government, she told them that she relied upon their loyalty, to support her against her enemies domestic or foreign. 3 1 Mendoza to Philip, June 26. Mendoza says they were imprisoned. The meaning of the word will be presently seen. 2 CAMDEN. 3 ' The Queen's Majesty findeth the continuance or rather increase of traitorous and malicious purposes, labours and solicitations of such rebels and traitors as justly have been condemned by law, and do live in foreign parts, and the joining to them certain others that are fled out of the realm, as persons refusing to live here in their natural country like natural subjects ; both which of long time have wandered from place to place, and from one prince's Court to another ; T)ut especially to Rome ; and there have falsely and traitor- ously slandered the good govern- ment of the realm by the Queen's Majesty, who in very deed, and that most notably to be recorded, hath so graciously, favourably, and with that [indifferency (MS. in- jured)] ministered justice to all her subjects, high and low, as [in no] age by any history can be recounted such a long and peaceable continu- ance of quietness and rest as in her time hitherto hath been. And if the foresaid traitors and their complices had not for their private ambition and rancour sought at one or two times to have interrupted the same in one or two corners of the realm, it might have been pronounced of her Majesty's qaiet government, by the goodness of God for these twenty years, that could not have been re- corded by any history for these thousand years, either of England or any kingdom in Christendom. And yet, it may be truly said, notwith- standing their said interruptions at home by their open rebellion, and their traitorous labours, practices,