Another matter which touches the skirts of my subject rather than properly belongs to it, but which it is impossible entirely to omit, may be noticed here—viz., the question whether the deaths of the Jesuits and others executed under Elizabeth can rightly be used, as by Roman Catholic writers they always have been, as a set-off to the burning of the Protestants under Mary.
In considering such a question as this, in order to arrive at a reasonably fair conclusion, it is absolutely necessary to take into account the different views which prevail at different periods; and by this I mean, not only what we may be pleased to consider the moral advance which would enable us in these days to condemn all political assassination in the lump, and which has given occasion to a good deal of very ill-founded self-complacency in some modern historians, but also that more subtle result of political and religious action and reaction, which gives rise to a tendency in each successive generation to take a different, and a more or less antagonistic, view of any subject from that held by its predecessor, and this the more strongly in proportion as the previous opinion has been firm and general.
to pay the rate for the support of the ministers of the church he had left. Complaint was made to the Council, who directed a Commission of inquiry, on which were the Bishop, the Mayor, and others. The Commissioners report, and in their report request that such persons as the aforesaid L'Ermite, though born in England, shall be ordered to continue, and be of that Church, and submit to its discipline, and that 'such of them as shall not conform themselves thereunto, and shall not, in case of their Church discipline, submit themselves to be ordered therein by the Bishop of Norwich for the time being, and in case of civil government by the Mayor and justices of the peace of the said city,' may have to appear before the Council to answer for their contempt and disobedience. The report is signed by the Bishop (Harsnet), the Mayor, and others. The Council, in their reply, order that Denis l'Ermite and all others of the Walloon congregation in Norwich, although born in England, shall continue to belong to that Church, and to submit to its discipline, on bond to appear before the Council in case of disobedience.
