We Must Now Take It, And That Of Truth, Into Observation That, Until
The Tenth Of Her Reign, The Times
Were calm and serene, though
sometimes overcast, as the most glorious sun-rising is subject to
shadowings and droppings, for
The clouds of Spain, and the vapours
of the Holy League, began to disperse and threaten her felicity.
Moreover, she was then to provide for some intestine strangers,
which began to gather in the heart of her kingdom, all which had
relation and correspondency, each one to the other, to dethrone her
and to disturb the public tranquillity, and therewithal, as a
principal mark, the Established religion, for the name of Recusant
then began first to be known to the world; until then the Catholics
were no more than Church-Papists, {55} but now, commanded by the
Pope's express Catholic Church, their mother, they separate
themselves; so it seems the Pope had then his aims to take a true
number of his children; but the Queen had the greater advantage, for
she likewise took tale of her opposite subjects, their strength and
how many they were, that had given their names to Baal, who {56}
then by the hands of some of his proselytes fixed his bulls on the
gates of St. Paul's, which discharged her subjects of all fidelity
and received faith, and so, under the veil of the next successor, to
replant the Catholic religion. So that the Queen had then a new
task and work in hand that might well awake her best providence, and
required a muster of new arms, as well as courtships and counsels,
for the time then began to grow quick and active, fitter for
stronger motions than them of the carpet and measure; and it will be
a true note of her magnanimity that she loved a soldier, and had a
propensity in her nature to regard and always to grace them, which
the Court, taking it into their consideration, took it as an
inviting to win honour, together with Her Majesty's favour, by
exposing themselves to the wars, especially when the Queen and the
affairs of the kingdom stood in some necessity of the soldiers, for
we have many instances of the sallies of the nobility and gentry;
yea, and of the Court and her privy favourites, that had any touch
or tincture of Mars in their inclinations, to steal away without
licence and the Queen's privity, which had like to cost some of them
dear, so predominant were their thoughts and hopes of honour grown
in them, as we may truly observe in the exposition of Sir Philip
Sidney, my Lord of Essex and Mountjoy, and divers others, whose
absence, and the manner of their eruptions, was very distasteful
unto her, whereof I can hereunto add a true and no impertinent
story, and that of the last:
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