Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/242

 228 REIGN OP ELIZABETH. [CH. 54. the vacillation of the Great Powers, and unite France and Spain upon what, by the voice of their Church, would be consecrated into a Crusade, Pius Y. determined to wait no longer for Philip's approbation. The Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland had themselves written to desire him to speak out in their favour. On the 25th of February therefore, suddenly, that there might be no remonstrance, he drew up a Bull, by which he declared Elizabeth to be cut off, as the minister of iniquity, from the communion of the faithful. He re- leased her subjects from their allegiance, and he forbade them, under pain of incurring the same sentence as her- self, to recognize her any longer as their sovereign. 1 Deeply though Elizabeth had injured the King of Spain, the Pope was conscious that it would be vain for him to hope that the Bull could be published in Flanders. Philip, he was well aware, would entreat or command him to restore the leA 7 in bolt to his spiritual armoury. He therefore sent it to the Cardinal of Lor- raine, to be issued at a favourable moment ; and, ig- norant as yet of the completeness of the collapse of the insurrection in England, or believing that the work could be recommenced from the Scottish Border, he wrote at the same time a letter of encouragement and gratitude to the two Earls. It was couched in the usual language of the Apostolic missives. The Pope expressed and assured them of the peculiar love with which he regarded his English flock. ' He was grieved,' he said, 1 Bull of excommunication against i Domestic, Rolls House. Printed bij Elizabeth, February 25, 1570: JlfSS. CAMDEN, BURNET, etc.