Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/241

 1570.] EXCOMMUNICATION OF ELIZABETH. 227 The allusion ' to curses and fulminations ' might seem prophetic. That Elizabeth had not been formally excommunicated had been one of the difficulties which had embarrassed the Northern insurgents. An English gentleman instinctively recoiled from the name of trai- tor ; and so long as they were unabsolved from their oath of allegiance, the most earnest Catholics could not feel with certainty that they were released from their obliga- tion of obedience. The Popes would long before have relieved their consciences could they have followed their own discretion ; but the Catholic princes, and especially Philip, were not so blinded by fanaticism as to sanction so audacious a precedent. Charles Y. had refused to recognize the excommunication of Henry VIII. ; he had received English ambassadors, and gone back into an alliance with the English, as if Paul III. had been but a mortal like himself. Philip had been less openly disrespectful to Paul's successors ; but he had escaped only by preventing them from forcing him into the same situation, and by interposing to forbid their often- meditated violence. Many reasons made him un- willing to quarrel with Elizabeth. Many reasons made him reluctant, even if an opportunity should present itself, to permit her to be deposed by revolution ; and as a Sovereign, he declined to recognize even by silent acquiescence the insolent pretensions of the Roman Pontiff. Confronted however by the avowed embarrassment of the English Catholics, privately instigated by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and perhaps believing that by the open exercise of his authority he might put an end to