Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/23

ENGLISH PARTIES. mestic clamour for the settlement of the succession. 1 The adoption of this policy, or of anything approach- ing to it, would necessarily terminate the compromise on which Elizabeth's Government had hitherto been carried on, and force into collision the opposite parties in the council. Except in 1 562-3, when the attempt was made to recover Calais, the Queen had avoided em- barrassing combinations with the Protestants on the Continent ; and the conservative peers and country gentlemen were able to persuade themselves that they had no connection with them. The constitution of the Church of England, its apostolical government, and its formularies, which recognized a quasi real presence in the Eucharist, permitted them to believe that they were still members of the ancient corporation of Christendom ; while the Calvinists were the enemies of order, civil and divine, disobedient to rulers, deriders of authority, scorners of the Blessed Sacrament. The English peers desired to see their sovereign taking her place beside her brother urinces, maintaining; and maintained by the old alliances, disowning and refusing all interest in the revolutionary rabble who had risen out of the dirt into rebellion. At home too the progress of the Reformation was in many ways unpalatable to them. The Howards, the Talbots, the Fitzalans, the Stanleys, the Percys, the Nevilles, the princely houses, who in their several 1 Memorial of the State of the Realm, with remedies against the conspiration of the Pope and the two monarchies : Burghley Papers, vol. i. pp. 579, 588.