Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/22

 8 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [en. 52. in the exultation of new-found liberty, was bursting the bounds of control. Yet with these allowances there was enough February. in the prospect which he saw before him to justify the gravest alarm ; and Cecil, who, unlike his mistress, was in favour of open measures, desired to meet the Catholic Powers by a combination like their own, and oppose to the Papal league the firm front of a Protestant confederacy. With the knife at all their throats it was no time to stand upon ' dainty ' questions of the rights of subjects and sovereign ; of the efficacy of the sacraments, or the operation of ' prevenient grace/ The remedy, so far as Cecil could see a remedy, was in an alliance between England, Sweden, Denmark, the German Princes, the Scotch Protestants, and the Calvinists in France and Flanders. He wished Eliza- beth to declare distinctly for Conde and the Prince of Orange, and to avow before Europe that England would not look calmly on a general persecution for religion. It would be found both easier and cheaper to support the Reformers abroad while they were still in arms, than to wait to encounter the enemy single-handed after they had been destroyed. With equal frankness he desired her to maintain the Earl of Murray in Scotland ; to give the Queen of Scots to understand that if she did not fulfil her engagements at once and ratify the treaty of Leith, she should be sent back over the Border to be dealt with as the Regent's Government should think proper ; and to silence with a high hand the do-