Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/21

I569-J ENGLISH PARTIES, f lamenting the decay of reverence and the spiritual dis- order which we now see to have been its inevitable fruits. There were some features of danger in this estimate which were overrated ; some sources of strength which were not appreciated. France and Spain were far from the triumph which Cecil believed them to have all but obtained. Triumph was not possible for them on the road which they had chosen. It might please Pius V. to give the blessing of the Church to Mary Stuart, and to make light of her crimes. As the Bishop of Ross justly argued, the orthodoxy of David had covered mis- deeds of equal turpitude; and David for twenty centuries had been held up before the religious world as the man after Grod's heart. Yet men who were most opposed to the spirit of the times, were changed by it in spite of themselves; and not orthodoxy any more, but purity of hand and heart, was thenceforth to be the test of character. The English Catholics (the great bulk of them), forced as they were by circumstances to the side of Mary Stuart, ^et never forgot Kirk o' Field, as Cecil thought they would forget it. When the moment came to strike, their arms were paralyzed ; and even Philip II. had many scruples to swallow before he could appear in public as her champion against his sister-in-law. Possibly too Cecil mistook the character of the anarchy which he deplored. He undervalued, espe- cially, those fierce children of the sea to whom, in the end, Elizabeth was to owe her safety ; and he miscon- strued into lawlessness the free English energy which,