Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/490

470 the Court made a further blunder. Mary had become so accustomed to success, that she assured herself she could obtain all that she desired. The object of the Court was to secure the regency for Philip, with full sovereign powers, should she die leaving a child; should she die childless, to make him her successor. The first step would be Philip's coronation, which had been long talked of, and which the House of Commons was now desired to sanction. The House of Commons returned a unanimous refusal.

The effects of these cross influences on the Papal statute, though they cannot be traced in detail, must have been not inconsiderable. At length, on the 4th of January, after passing backwards and forwards for a fortnight between the two Houses, the Great Bill, as it was called, emerged, finished, in the form of a petition to the Crown:—

'Whereas,' so runs the preamble, 'since the 20th year of King Henry VIII., of famous memory, much false and erroneous doctrine hath been taught, preached, and written, partly by divers natural-born subjects of this realm, and partly being brought in hither from sundry foreign countries, hath been sown and spread abroad within the same—by reason whereof as well the