A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

19. Mary's Case before English Commissioners. 1568-1569. Elizabeth could hardly replace her rival in power, and was still less inclined to set her at liberty, lest she should go to France, and bring with her to Scotland another French army. After innumerable changes of mind Elizabeth appointed a body of commissioners to consider the case against Mary. Before them Murray produced certain letters contained in a casket, and taken after Bothwell's flight. The casket letters, as they are called, were alleged to be in Mary's handwriting, and, if genuine, place out of doubt her guilty passion for Bothwell, and her connivance in her husband's murder. They were acknowledged by the commissioners, with the concurrence of certain English lords who were politically partisans of Mary, to be in her hand. Mary – either, as her adversaries allege, because she knew that she was guilty, or as her supporters allege, because she was afraid that she could not obtain justice – withdrew her advocates, and pleaded with Elizabeth for a personal interview. This Elizabeth refused to grant, but on the other hand she denied the right of the Scots to depose their queen. Mary remained virtually a prisoner in England. She was an interesting prisoner, and in spite of all her faults there were many who saw in her claim to the English crown the easiest means of re-establishing the old Church and the old nobility.

20. The Rising in the North. 1569.– The old Church and the old nobility were strongest in the North, where the Pilgrimage of Grace had broken out in 1536 (see p. 397). The northern lords, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, longed to free Mary, to proclaim her queen of England, and to depose Elizabeth. They were, however, prepared to content themselves with driving Cecil from power, with forcing Elizabeth to acknowledge Mary as her heir, and to withdraw her support from Protestantism. Mary, according to this latter plan, was to marry the Duke of Norfolk, the son of that Earl of Surrey who had been executed in the last days of Henry VIII. (see p. 411). On October 18 Elizabeth, suspecting that Norfolk was entangling himself with the Queen of Scots, sent him to the Tower. Northumberland and Westmorland hesitated what course to pursue, but a message from the Queen requiring their presence at Court decided them, and they rose in insurrection. On November 14, with the northern gentry and yeomanry at their heels, they entered Durham Cathedral, tore in pieces the English Bible and Prayer Book, and knelt in fervour of devotion whilst mass was said for the last time in any one of the old cathedrals of England. Elizabeth sent an army against the earls. Both of them were timorous and unwarlike, and they fled to Scotland before the year was ended, leaving their followers to the vengeance of Elizabeth. Little mercy was shown to the insurgents, and cruel executions followed this unwise attempt to check the progress of the Reformation.

21. The Papal Excommunication. 1570.– Elizabeth, it seemed for all her triumph over the earls, had a hard struggle still before her. In January 1570 the regent Murray was assassinated by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, and Mary's friends began again to raise their heads in Scotland. In April Pope Pius V. excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved her subjects from their allegiance. In May, a fanatic named Felton affixed the Pope's bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London's house. Felton was eventually seized and executed, but his deed was a challenge which Elizabeth would be compelled to take up. Hitherto she had trusted to time to bring her subjects into one way of thinking, knowing that the younger generation was likely to be on her side. She had taken care to deal as lightly as possible with those who shrank from abandoning the religion of their childhood, and she had recently announced that they were free to believe what they would if only they would accept her supremacy. The Pope had now made it clear that he would not sanction this compromise. Englishmen must choose between him and their queen. On the side of the Pope it might be argued with truth that with Elizabeth on the throne it would be impossible to maintain the Roman Catholic faith and organisation. On the side of the queen it might be argued that if the Papal claims were admitted it would be impossible to maintain the authority of the national government. A deadly conflict was imminent, in which the liberty of individuals would suffer whichever side gained the upper hand. Nations, like persons, cannot attend to more than one important matter at a time, and the great question at issue in Elizabeth's reign was whether the nation was to be independent of all foreign powers in ecclesiastical as well as in civil affairs.

CHAPTER XXIX
ELIZABETH AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT. 1570-1587

LEADING DATES

Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603

• The Execution of the Duke of Norfolk 1572

• The foundation of the Dutch Republic 1572

• The arrival of the Jesuits 1580

• The Association 1584

• Babington's Plot 1586

• Execution of Mary Stuart 1587

1. The Continental Powers. 1566-1570.– If the Catholic powers of the Continent had been able to assist the English Catholics Elizabeth would hardly have suppressed the rising in the North. It happened, however, that neither in the Spanish Netherlands nor in France were the governments in a position to quarrel with her. In the Netherlands Philip, who burnt and slaughtered Protestants without mercy, was in 1566 opposed by the nobility, and in 1568 he sent the Duke of Alva, a relentless soldier, to Brussels with a Spanish army to establish the absolute authority of the king and the absolute authority of the Papacy. In 1569 Alva believed himself to have accomplished his task by wholesale executions, and by the destruction of the constitutional privileges of the Netherlanders. His rule was a grinding tyranny, rousing both Catholics and Protestants to cry out for the preservation of their customs and liberties from the intruding Spanish army. Alva had therefore no men to spare to send to aid the English Catholics. In France the civil war had broken out afresh in 1568, and in 1569 the Catholics headed by Henry, Duke of Guise, the son of the murdered Duke Francis (see p. 436), and by Henry, Duke of Anjou, the brother of the young king, Charles IX., won victories at Jarnac and Moncontour. Charles and his mother took alarm lest the Catholics should become too powerful for the royal authority, and in 1570 a peace was signed once more, the French king refusing to be the instrument of persecution and being very much afraid of the establishment of a Catholic government in England which might give support to the Catholics of France. Accordingly in 1570, France would not interfere in England if she could, whilst Spain could not interfere if she would.

2. The Anjou Marriage Treaty and the Ridolfi Plot. 1570-1571.– For all that, Elizabeth's danger was great. In 1570 she had done her best to embroil parties in Scotland lest they should join against herself. The bulk of the nobility in that country had thrown themselves on the side of Mary, and were fighting against the new regent, Lennox, having taken alarm at the growth of the popular Church organisation of Knox and the Presbyterians, who sheltered themselves under the title of the little James VI. At home Elizabeth expected a fresh outbreak, and could not be certain that Alva would be unable to support it when it occurred. Cecil accordingly pleaded hard with her to marry the frivolous Duke of Anjou. He thought that unless she married and had children, her subjects would turn from her to Mary, who, having already a son, would give them an assured succession. If she was to marry, an alliance with the tolerant Government of France was better than any other. Elizabeth indeed consented to open negotiations for the marriage, though it was most unlikely that she would ever really make up her mind to it. The English Catholics, in consequence, flung themselves into the arms of the king of Spain, and in March 1571, Ridolfi, a Florentine banker residing in England, who carried on their correspondence with Alva, crossed to the Netherlands to inform him that the great majority of the lay peers had invited him to send 6,000 Spanish soldiers to dethrone Elizabeth and to put Mary in her place. Norfolk, who had been released from the Tower (see p. 441), was then to become the husband of Mary, and it was hoped that there would spring from the marriage a long line of Catholic sovereigns ready to support the Papal Church.

3. Elizabeth and the Puritans.– Elizabeth's temporising policy had naturally strengthened the Calvinism of the Calvinistic clergy. In every generation there are some who ask not what is expedient but what is true, and the very fact that they aim at truth, in defiance of all earthly considerations, not merely assures them influence, but diffuses around them a life and vigour which would be entirely wanting if all men were content to support that which is politically or socially convenient. Such were the best of the English Puritans, so called because, though they did not insist upon the abolition of Episcopacy or the establishment of the Calvinistic discipline (see p. 431), they contended for what they called purity of worship, which meant the rejection of such rites and vestments as reminded them of what they termed the idolatry of the Roman Church. Elizabeth and Parker had from time to time interfered, and some of the Puritan leaders had been deprived of their benefices for refusing to wear the cap and surplice.

4. Elizabeth and Parliament. 1566.– From 1566 to 1571 Elizabeth abstained from summoning a Parliament, having been far more economical than any one of the last three sovereigns. Early in her reign she had restored the currency, and after the session of 1566 had actually returned to her subjects a subsidy which had been voted to her and which had been already collected.¹⁶ Her reason for avoiding Parliaments was political. Neither of the Houses was likely to favour her ecclesiastical policy. The House of Lords wanted her to go backwards – to declare Mary her successor and to restore the mass. The House of Commons wanted her to go forwards – to marry, and have children of her own, and to alter the Prayer Book in a Puritan direction. In 1566, if the House of Commons had really represented the average opinion of the nation, she would have been obliged to yield. That it did not was partly owing to the imposition in 1562 of the oath of supremacy upon its members, by which all who favoured the Pope's authority were excluded from its benches, but still more on account of the difficulty of packing a Parliament so as to suit the queen's moderate ideas. Those who admired the existing Church system were but few. The majority of the nation, even if those who refused to accept the Royal supremacy were left out of account, was undoubtedly sufficiently attached to the old state of things to be favourable at least to Mary's claim to be acknowledged as heir to the throne. To Elizabeth it was of the first importance that the influence of the Crown should be used to reduce the numbers of such men in the House of Commons. If, however, they were kept out, there was nothing to be done but to favour the election of Puritans, or at least of those who had a leaning towards Puritanism. The queen, therefore, having to make her choice between those who objected to her proceedings as too Protestant and those who objected to them as not Protestant enough, not unnaturally preferred the latter.

5. A Puritan Parliament. 1571.– In 1571 Elizabeth had to deal with a Puritan House of Commons. The House granted supplies, and wanted to impose new penalties on the Roman Catholics and to suppress ecclesiastical abuses. One of the members named Strickland, having proposed to ask leave to amend the Prayer Book, the Queen ordered him to absent himself from the House. The House was proceeding to remonstrate when Elizabeth, too prudent to allow a quarrel to spring up, gave him permission to return. She had her way, however, and the Prayer Book remained untouched. She was herself a better representative of the nation than the House of Commons, but as yet she represented it only as standing between two hostile parties; though she hoped that the time would come when she would have a strong middle party of her own.

6. The Duke of Norfolk's Plot and Execution. 1571-1572. For the present Elizabeth's chief enemies were the conspirators who were aiming at placing Mary on her throne. In April 1571 Ridolfi reached the Netherlands, and urged Alva to send a Spanish army to England. Alva was cautious, and thought the attempt dangerous unless Elizabeth had first been killed or captured. Philip was consulted, gave his approval to the murder, but afterwards drew back, though he ordered Alva to proceed with the invasion. In the meanwhile Cecil, who had just been made Lord Burghley, came upon traces of the plot. Norfolk was arrested, and before the end of the year everything was known. Though the proposal of a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou had lately broken down, she now, in her anxiety to find support in France against Spain, entered into a negotiation to marry Anjou's brother, the Duke of Alençon, a vicious lad twenty-one years younger than herself. Then she was free to act. She drove the Spanish ambassador out of England, and Norfolk was tried and convicted of treason. A fresh Parliament meeting in 1572 urged the queen to consent to the execution of Mary. Elizabeth refused, but she sent Norfolk to the block.

7. The Admonition to Parliament. 1572.– The rising in the North and the invitation to bring a Spanish army into England could not but fan the zeal of the Puritans. At the beginning of the reign they had contented themselves with calling for the abolition of certain ceremonies. A more decided party now added a demand for the abolition of episcopacy and the establishment of Presbyterianism and of the complete Calvinistic discipline. The leader of this party was Thomas Cartwright, a theological professor at Cambridge, the university which had produced the greater number of the reformers, as it now produced the greater number of Puritans. In 1570, Cartwright was expelled from his Professorship. He sympathised with An Admonition to Parliament written in 1572 by two of his disciples, and himself wrote A Second Admonition to Parliament, to second their views. Cartwright was far from claiming for the Puritans the position of a sect to be tolerated. He had no thought of establishing religious liberty in his mind. He declared the Presbyterian Church to be the only divinely appointed one, and asked that all Englishmen should be forced to submit to its ordinances. The civil magistrate was to have no control over its ministers. All active religious feeling being enlisted either on the Papal or the Puritanical side, Elizabeth's reformed, but not Puritan, Church seemed likely to be crushed between two forces. It was saved by the existence of a large body of men who cared for other things more than for religious disputes, and who were ready to defend the Queen as ruler of the nation without any special regard for the ecclesiastical system which she maintained.

8. Mariners and Pirates.– Of all Elizabeth's subjects there were none who stood their country in such good stead in the impending conflict with Spain and the Papacy as the mariners. Hardy and reckless, they cared little for theological distinctions or for forms of Church government, their first instinct being to fill their own purses either by honest trade if it might be, or by piracy if that seemed likely to be more profitable. Even before Elizabeth's accession, the Channel and the seas beyond it swarmed with English pirates. Though the pirates cared nothing for the nationality of the vessels which they plundered, it was inevitable that the greatest loss should fall on Spain. Spain was the first maritime power in the world, and her galleons as they passed up to Antwerp to exchange the silks and spices of the East for the commodities of Europe, fell an easy prey to the swift and well-armed cruisers which put out from English harbours. The Spaniards retaliated by seizing English sailors wherever they could lay their hands upon them, sometimes hanging them out of hand, sometimes destroying them with starvation and misery in fetid dungeons, sometimes handing them over to the Inquisition – a court the function of which was the suppression of heresy – in other words, to the torture-room or the stake.

9. Westward Ho!– Every year the hatred between the mariners of Spain and England grew more bitter, and it was not long before English sailors angered the king of Spain by crossing the Atlantic to trade or plunder in the West Indies, where both the islands and the mainland of Mexico and South America were full of Spanish settlements. In those days a country which sent out colonies claimed the sole right of trading with them; besides which the king of Spain claimed a right of refusing to foreigners an entrance into his American dominions because, towards the end of the fifteenth century, Pope Alexander VI. being called on to mediate between Spain and Portugal, had drawn a line on the map to the east of which was to be the Portuguese colony of Brazil, whilst all the rest of America to the west of it was to be Spanish. From this the Spaniards reasoned that all America except Brazil was theirs by the gift of the Pope – which in their eyes was equivalent to the gift of God. English sailors refusing to recognise this pretension, sailed to the Spanish settlements to trade, and attacked the Spanish officials who tried to prevent them. The Spanish settlers were eager to get negro slaves to cultivate their plantations, and Englishmen were equally eager to kidnap negroes in Africa and to sell them in the West Indies. A curious combination of the love of gain and of Protestantism sprang up amongst the sailors, who had no idea that to sell black men was in any way wrong. One engaged in this villanous work explained how he had been saved from the perils of the sea by 'Almighty God, who never suffers his elect to perish!' There was money enough to be got, and sometimes there would be hard fighting and the gain or loss of all.

10. Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572.– The noblest of these mariners was Francis Drake. Sickened by one experience of the slave trade, and refusing to take any further part in it, he flew at the wealth of the Spanish Government. In 1572 he sailed for Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus of Panama. Thither were brought once a year gold and silver from the mines of Peru. In the governor's house Drake found a pile of silver bars. "I have now," he said to his men, "brought you to the mouth of the treasury of the world." He himself was wounded, and his followers, having little spirit to fight without their leader, were beaten off. "I am resolved," he said somewhat later to a Spaniard, "by the help of God, to reap some of the golden harvest which you have got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble the earth." It was his firm conviction that he was serving God in robbing the king of Spain. Before he returned some Indians showed him from a tree on the isthmus the waters of the Pacific, which no civilised people except the Spaniards had ever navigated. Drake threw himself on his knees, praying to God to give him life and to allow him to sail an English vessel on those seas.

11. The Seizure of Brill, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 1572.– Exiles from the Netherlands took refuge on the sea from Alva's tyranny, and plundered Spanish vessels as Englishmen had done before. In 1572 a party of these seized Brill and laid the foundations of the Dutch Republic. They called on Charles IX. of France to help them, and he (being under the influence of Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots) was eager to make war on Spain on their behalf. Charles's mother, Catherine de Medicis, was, however, alarmed lest the Huguenots should grow too powerful, and frightened her son with a tale that they were conspiring against him. He was an excitable youth, and turned savagely on the Huguenots, encouraging a fearful butchery of them, which is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, because it took place on August 24, which was St. Bartholomew's day. Coligny himself was among the victims.

12. The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578.– By this time the provinces of Holland and Zeeland had risen against Spain. They placed at their head the Prince of Orange with the title of Stadtholder or Lieutenant, as if he had been still the lieutenant of the king of Spain whom he resisted. The rebels had but a scanty force wherewith to defend themselves against the vast armies of Spain. Alva took town after town, sacked them, and butchered man, woman and child within. In 1574 Leyden was saved from his attack. Holland is below the sea-level, and the Dutch cut the dykes which kept off the sea, and when the tide rushed in, sent flat-bottomed vessels over what had once been land, and rescued the town from the besiegers. Alva, disgusted at his failure, returned to Spain. In 1576 his successor Requesens died. Spain, with all the wealth of the Indies pouring into it, was impoverished by the vastness of the work which Philip had undertaken in trying to maintain the power of the Roman Catholic Church in all western Europe. The expenses of the war in the Netherlands exhausted his treasury, and on the death of Requesens, the Spanish army mutinied, plundered even that part of the country which was friendly to Spain, and sacked Antwerp with barbarous cruelty. Then the whole of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands drove out the Spaniards, and bound themselves by the Pacification of Ghent into a confederate Republic. In 1578 Alexander, duke of Parma, arrived as the Spanish governor. He was a great warrior and statesman, and he won over the Catholic provinces of the southern Netherlands to his side. By the Union of Utrecht the Prince of Orange formed a new confederate republic of the seven northern provinces, which were mainly Protestant.

13. Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577.– The Spaniards were no longer able to interfere in England. Elizabeth was equally safe from the side of France. In 1574 Charles IX. died, and was succeeded by Elizabeth's old suitor Anjou as Henry III. There were fresh civil wars which gave him enough to do at home. In 1573 Elizabeth sent aid to the party of the young king in Scotland, and suppressed the last remnants of Mary's party there. In England she pursued her old policy. Men might think what they would, but they must not discuss their opinions openly. There must be as little preaching as possible, and when the clergy began to hold meetings called prophesyings for discussion on the Scriptures, she ordered Grindal, who had succeeded Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, to suppress them, and on his refusal in 1577 suspended him from his office, and put down the prophesyings herself.

14. Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580.– Elizabeth had no sympathy with the heroic Netherlanders, who fought for liberty and conscience, but she had sympathy with the mariners who by fair means or foul brought treasure into the realm. In 1577 Drake sailed for that Pacific which he had long been eager to enter. Passing through the Straits of Magellan, he found himself alone on the unknown ocean with the 'Pelican,' a little ship of 100 tons. He ranged up the coast of South America, seizing treasure where he landed, but never doing any cruel deed. The Spaniards, not thinking it possible that an English ship could be there, took the 'Pelican' for one of their own vessels, and were easily caught. At Tarapaca, for instance, Drake found a Spaniard asleep with bars of silver by his side. At another landing place he found eight llamas laden with silver. So he went on, till he took a great vessel with jewels in plenty, thirteen chests of silver coin, eighty pounds' weight of gold, and twenty-six tons of silver. With all this he sailed home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in England in 1580, being the first commander who had circumnavigated the globe.¹⁷ The king of Spain was furious, and demanded back the wealth of which his subjects had been robbed. Elizabeth gave him good words, but not a penny of money or money's worth.

15. Ireland and the Reformation. 1547.– Since the death of Henry VIII. the management of Ireland had been increasingly difficult. An attempt had been made in the reign of Edward VI. to establish the reformed religion. All that was then done had been overthrown by Mary, and what Mary did was in turn overthrown by Elizabeth. As yet, however, the orders of the English Government to make religious changes in Ireland were of comparatively little importance. The power of the Government did not reach far, and even in the districts to which it extended there was none of that mental preparation for the reception of the new doctrines which was to be found in England. The Reformation was accepted by very few, except by English officials, who were ready to accept anything to please the Government. Those who clung to the old ways, however, were not at all zealous for their faith, and there was as yet no likelihood that any religious insurrection like the Pilgrimage of Grace or the rising in the North would be heard of in Ireland. The lives of the Celtic chiefs and the Anglo-Norman lords were passed in blood-shedding and looseness of life, which made them very unfit to be champions of any religion whatever.

16. Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558.– The real difficulty of the English Government in Ireland lay in its relations with the Irish tribes, whether under Celtic chiefs or Anglo-Norman lords. At the end of the reign of Edward VI. an attempt had been made to revert to the better part of the policy of Henry VIII., and the heads of the tribes were entrusted by the government with powers to keep order in the hope that they would gradually settle down into civilisation and obedience. Such a policy required almost infinite patience on the part of the Government, and the Earl of Sussex, who was Lord Deputy under Mary, began again the old mischief of making warlike attacks upon the Irish which he had not force or money enough to render effectual. It was Mary and not a Protestant sovereign who first sent English colonists to occupy the lands of the turbulent Irish in King's County and Queen's County – then much smaller than at present. A war of extermination at once began. The natives massacred the intruders and the intruders massacred the natives, till – far on in Elizabeth's reign – the natives had been all slaughtered or expelled. There was thus introduced into the heart of Ireland a body of Englishmen who, no doubt, were far more advanced in the arts of life than the Irish around them, but who treated the Irish with utter contempt, and put them to death without mercy.

17. Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578.– From the time of the settlement of King's and Queen's Counties all chance of a peaceable arrangement was at an end. Elizabeth had not money enough to pay an army capable of subduing Ireland, nor had the Irish tribes sufficient trust in one another to unite in national resistance. There was, in fact, no Irish nation. Even Shan O'Neill, the most formidable Irish opponent of the English Government, who was predominant in the North during the early part of Elizabeth's reign, failed because he tried to reduce the other Ulster chiefs to subjection to himself, and in 1567 was overthrown by the O'Donnells, and not by an English army. When the English officials gained power, they were apt to treat the Irish as if they were vermin to be destroyed. New attempts at colonisation were made, but the Irish drove out the colonists, and Ireland was in a more chaotic state than if it had been left to its own disorder.

18. The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising. 1579-1583.– Elizabeth's servants were the more anxious to subdue Ireland by the process of exterminating Irishmen, because they believed that the Irish would welcome Spaniards if they came to establish a government in Ireland hostile to Elizabeth. On the other hand, the English Catholics, and especially the English Catholic clergy in exile on the Continent, fancied, wrongly, that the Irish were fighting for the papacy, and not for tribal independence, or, rather, for bare life, which tribal independence alone secured. In 1579 Sir James Fitzmaurice landed with a few men at Dingle, under the authority of the Pope, but was soon defeated and slain. In 1580 a large number of Spaniards and Italians landed at Smerwick, but was overpowered and slaughtered by Lord Grey, the Lord Deputy. Then the Earl of Desmond, the head of a branch of the family of Fitzgerald, all-powerful in Munster, rose. The insurrection was put down, and Desmond himself slain, in 1583. It is said that in 1582 no less than 30,000 perished – mostly of starvation – in a single year. It is an English witness who tells us of the poor wretches who survived, that 'out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them.'

19. The Jesuits in England. 1580.– In England the landing of a papal force at Smerwick produced the greater alarm because Parma (see p. 450) had been gaining ground in the Netherlands, and the time might soon come when a Spanish army would be available for the invasion of England. For the present what the Government feared was any interruption to the process by which the new religion was replacing the old. In 1571 there had been an act of Parliament in answer to the Papal Bull of Deposition (see p. 442), declaring all who brought Bulls into the country, and all who were themselves reconciled to the see of Rome, or who reconciled others to be traitors, but for a long time no use was made by Elizabeth of these powers. The Catholic exiles, however, had witnessed with sorrow the gradual decay of their religion in England, and in 1568 William Allen, one of their number, had founded a college at Douai (removed in 1578 to Reims) as a seminary for missionaries to England. It was not long before seminary priests, as the missionaries were called, began to land in England to revive the zeal of their countrymen, but it was not till 1577 that one of them, Cuthbert Mayne, was executed, technically for bringing in a copy of a Bull of a trivial character, but really for maintaining that Catholics would be justified in rising to assist a foreign force sent to reduce England to obedience to the Papacy. There were, in fact, two rival powers inconsistent with one another. If the Papal power was to prevail, the Queen's authority must be got rid of. If the Queen's power was to prevail, the Pope's authority must be got rid of. In 1580 two Jesuits, Campion and Parsons, landed. They brought with them an explanation of the Bull of Deposition, which practically meant that no one need act on it till it was convenient to do so. They went about making converts and strengthening the lukewarm in the resolution to stand by their faith.