Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/299

1553.] Spaniards in authority in England, and she would have to refuse; and that he would not like. To all of which, being the fluttering of the caught fly, Renard would answer that his Highness was more like an angel than a man; his youth was in his favour, for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it used to be; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were considered at forty. Then touching the constant sore—'her Majesty,' he said, 'had four enemies, who would never rest till they had destroyed her or were themselves destroyed—the heretics, the friends of the late Duke of Northumberland, the Courts of France and Scotland, and, lastly, her sister Elizabeth. Her subjects were restless, turbulent, and changeable as the ocean of which they were so fond; the sovereigns of England had been only able to rule with a hand of iron, and with severities which had earned them the name of tyrants; they had not spared the blood royal in order to secure their thrones, and she too must act as they had