Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/235

 1 5 70. ] EXCOMMUNICA TION OF ELIZABE TH. 22 1 subjects in rebellion, and invaded his Indian colonies, yet to keep her on the throne continued the same neces- sity to him as when ten years before he had rejected the entreaties of de Feria and de Quadra to make him- self master of England by force. The immunity indeed could not last for ever. If the Reformers were finally crushed on the Continent, the turn of England would come in the end ; and had Elizabeth understood the situation as completely as Cecil understood it, she might have struck boldly into the quarrel, and perhaps turned the scale conclusively over all Western Europe. But for such a policy she wanted courage, and probably she wanted inclination. She dipped into the whirlpool and drew out of it, she hung on the edge and promised and broke her pro- mises, and sent help to France and Flanders and denied having sent it, and did all those things which in com- mon times would have most exposed her to danger with least profit to herself. Yet here too, strangely, her star was on her side. This very conduct answered best for her own purposes, since it enabled Philip to hope to the last that she would go back to the principles of the old alliance and the old faith, and so furnished him with an excuse to himself for his own inaction. Thus time was gained, and time was everything for the consolidation of English freedom. Catholicism in England was still to appearance large and imposing, but its strength was the strength of age, which, when it is bowed or broken, cannot lift itself again. Protestantism was exuberant
 * n the freshness of youth ; if a branch was lopped away