Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/182

162 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 58. drew a picture of the great English Catholic party one in heart, one in creed, and one in feeling, while the heretics were split into a hundred sects Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Puritans, hating each other, distrusting the Queen, and looking with dread to what would follow on her death. He sketched Elizabeth as she was represented in the Catholic imagination a woman detested for her avarice, abhorred for the infamy of her life ; setting herself up above all that was called God ; and with her married clergy and her shameless favourite who had murdered his wife at her side, pre- tending to be the Head of the Church of Christ. Don John of Austria, he said, need but land alone in an open boat upon the English shore, to be welcomed as a deliverer. The heretics, made effeminate by vice and luxury, would fly at the first shot, and God would be on his side. 1 ' The King,' wrote one of Sanders's companions, ' should remember his honour, and not allow France to take his place as the champion of the Holy See France, which by its exploit of August, had gained immortal glory with the good throughout the world/ 2 1 Doctor Sanders to Philip II., 1572. Parecer acerca las cosas de Irlanda y Inglaterra, October n, 1572. Informacion dada por Don Guerau, November, 1572 : MSS. Simancas. 2 'Es increible quanta honra y fama este solo hecho del Frances el verano pasado le ha ganado por todo, y quanta esperan^a ahora todos los buenos de todas las naciones tienen en el. Por tanto conviene cierto mucho que el Rey Catolico sobre todas las cosas hiciese algo para re- suscitar su nombre en estas partes occidentales del mundo.' to the Duchess of Feria : MSS. Si- mancas. From the rest of the letter the writer appears clearly to have been one of the English in the Low Countries, but cannot be identified more closely. It is worth observing that the only emphatic and unquali- fied admirers of the massacre were