Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/452

438 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 56. other person ought to be Queen, or that the Queen was a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown/ though not followed by any overt act, should be high treason. Any person, who during the Queen's life should lay claim, to the crown, or that had already laid claim to the crown, or should not, on demand, acknow- ledge the Queen to be lawful Sovereign of England, should be declared incapable of succeeding to the crown after the Queen's decease. It should be high treason to maintain the right of any such person ; or to deny the power of Parliament to order the succession ; and 'to avoid contention of titles/ no person except the Queen's children, or not otherwise specially named and chosen by Parliament, was to be regarded or spoken of as heir to the throne, under penalties of forfeiture and outlawry. 1 Some measure of this kind the Catholics in Parlia- ment could not refuse to pass without open confession of disloyalty ; all that they could reasonably attempt was to blunt the personal application of it. The Bill was thrown like a shuttlecock from House to House, and from committee to committee. The Queen of Scots was in the mind of all and in the mouths of none. The Protestants were struggling to extinguish her and her pretensions, the Catholics to shield her without prema- turely declaring their intended treason. The argument on one side was that it was unjust to make the Act retrospective ; on the other, ' that where 13 Elizabeth, cap. i.