Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/519

1555.] it seemed to Renard that the Lords had only to give the signal and the Queen and the bishops would be overwhelmed.

He expected the movement in the spring. It is singular that, precisely as in the preceding winter, the deliberate intentions of moderate and competent persons were anticipated and defeated by a partial and premature conspiracy. At the end of February a confederate revealed a project for an insurrection, partly religious and partly agrarian. Placards were to be issued simultaneously in all parts of the country, declaring that the Queen's pregnancy was a delusion, and that she intended to pass upon the nation a supposititious child; the people were, therefore, invited to rise in arms, drive out the Spaniards, revolutionize religion, tear down the enclosures of the commons, and proclaim Courtenay King under the title of Edward VII. In such a scheme the lords and country gentlemen could bear no part. They could not risk a repetition of the popular rebellions of the late reign, and they resolved to wait the issue of the Queen's pregnancy, while they watched over the safety of Elizabeth. The project of the Court was now to send her to Flanders, where she was to remain under charge of the Emperor; if possible, she was to be persuaded to go thither of her own accord; if she