Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/515

I57I-3 THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY. 501 handed, the duties in which every baptized prince had once sought and claimed his share. Philip II. was the one Crusader that survived in Europe ; but change of times had not left even Spain untouched by the modern spirit. Popes had more than once shifted sides in the long war with France, and an unconditional recognition of their claims to dispose of kingdoms was no longer convenient. The border could not be denned precisely of that cloudy debateable land where the temporal and spiritual powers passed one into the other ; but the Ca- tholic King himself could not allow the two provinces to be co- extensive, or seem to sanction the pretensions of the Holy See to depose sovereigns or absolve subjects from their allegiance. The Bull had been issued with- out Philip's knowledge ; it had not yet been published in Philip's dominions ; and, as the Duke of Feria ob- served, some Pope of the future might trouble Spain with similar assumptions. 1 Even the Cardinal Spinosa preferred national to ultramontane interests, and the Nuncio's proposal was politely waived on the plea that it would needlessly complicate the problem ; that it would defeat the plan of the Duke of Norfolk, and be a signal for a general league between all the heretics in the world. The justification, it was soon concluded, should and could be only the Queen of Scots' claim on the succession to the crown, which the Queen of Eng- land unjustly refused to recognize. Even the wrongs of Spain were to be passed over in silence. The King 1 ' Peligroso hacer la empresa en I lo de adelante vendria otro Papa quo nombre de su Saiitidad, porque para | quisiese mezclarse con nosotros.'