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 POLITICAL HISTORY miserably in the mischievous enterprise of stirring up the unfortunate Irish into fanaticism, which was not their previous character, and into rebellion which was unjustifiable because it was hopeless. The Saun- ders, Copley and Gage families were all connected, more or less, and the Copleys in the third generation below Sir Thomas intermarried with the Westons of Button. The Westons of Button, new comers of the reign of Henry VIII., are not to be confounded with the old Surrey family of Weston of Albury and elsewhere in the county. Sir Henry Weston, the representative of the Surrey family under Elizabeth, is a probable example of the numerous class who would have been recusants if they had dared, or cared suffi- ciently for anything but their safety and comfort. He was a friend of Copley. His house, as we have said, was searched for a priest. His grandson was certainly a recusant. He himself, after being appointed to a command of levies in 1584, begged to be excused on the ground of business in the north. It is less likely that he, formerly a soldier and certainly not a fanatical Romanist, backed out of the office than that the Government, on second thoughts, preferred to let him honourably retire in order to appoint a man more trusted by their supporters. He was one of the men whose attitude Elizabeth thought fit to wink at. The memory maybe of his young father, who was involved in the fate of her mother, may have made the queen inclined towards him. Lord Mon- tague was another man whose notorious religious attitude did not prevent his keeping trust as well as favour. He had spoken boldly in Parliament against the imposition of the oath of royal supremacy. There was no doubt which way his sympathies lay in religion. He was an extensive holder however of abbey lands, and his political so far outwent his ecclesiastical allegiance as to enable him to sit as a judge of Mary Queen of Scots as well as to take arms against the Armada. Lord Howard of Effingham was not a Romanist at all, and certainly must have taken the oath of supremacy as a Privy Councillor. He sat on several commissions for the discovery of priests and Jesuits. Yet no doubt he would have gone contentedly to mass, as he had done in his youth, if Elizabeth had done the same. As some of the great men were, so were a great number of the Surrey people, not differing from those of many other counties. Political out- weighed ecclesiastical or religious interests. Of the last in the true sense they had little. They were not enthusiastic for services of this kind or of that, but they were supporters of the national sovereign re- presenting national independence. Every year that she maintained what had been so precarious a throne made them still more thoroughly her supporters in the cause of settled government and order. Surrey, like other counties, had to arm herself in defence of the Government, and, being a bulwark of London towards the south, was perhaps a more special care to the authorities than some others. There was a general obligation upon all persons to provide them- selves with arms for the public defence, and the forces thus available 387