Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/74

54 their issue, and the people of this realm in great danger of destruction.'

It was no light matter to pronounce the King to be in the position of Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The speaker herself was in correspondence with the Pope; she had attested her divine commission by miracles, and had been recognized as a saint by an Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission recollected that the King was threatened further with dying 'a villain's death;' and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out, and were in private circulation through the country, the matter assumed a dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and among what classes of the State, these things had penetrated. The Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege of vagrancy without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in England was intimately known to them. No movement, therefore, could be securely overlooked in which these orders had a share; the country might be undermined in secret; and the Government might only learn their danger at the moment of explosion.