Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/310

 296 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 54. Lord Morley accused Cecil and Bacon of ruining the country, persecuting the nobility, and introducing into England the wildest and worst of the revolutionary passions of the Continent. He said that the ancient order, the honourable traditions of the realm, were set at nought by them. They had maintained ' that the opinions of the Peers were of no importance/ ' that her Highness and the Commons might make laws without the Nobles/ ' How a prince could stand without a body of nobility, he recommended her Highness to con- sider ; ' and he trusted that a time would come when ' she would discover their practices and weigh them and others as they had deserved/ l It was not the way to work upon Elizabeth. South- ampton was at once arrested, and also Sir Thomas Cornwallis, Queen Mary's old minister. Elizabeth sent for La Mothe, and began moodily to talk to him of the Bull, and of the name by which the Pope had de- scribed her as ' the servant of iniquity.' The world looked so wild, she said, that she thought the last day must be near. With one of her odd unearthly laughs she told him of Morley 's flight, and how when he landed at Dunkirk he had described himself as one of the greatest Lords in England. She ran over the pretty doings of the Queen of Scots. She said she had promised the French King to send her back, and if she was let alone she meant to do it, but if France sent one man to Scotland she would hold herself acquitted of Lord Morley to Elizabeth from Bruges, June 8 : JlfSS. Domestic.