[206] Strype, i. 546, 553, 556.
[207] Id. 578; Camden, 428; Lodge, ii. 45.
[208] Strype, ii. 88; Life of Smith, 152.
[209] Strype, i. 502. I do not give any credit whatever to this league, as printed in Strype, which seems to have been fabricated by some of the queen's emissaries. There had been, not perhaps a treaty, but a verbal agreement between France and Spain at Bayonne some time before; but its object was apparently confined to the suppression of protestantism in France and the Netherlands. Had they succeeded, however, in this, the next blow would have been struck at England. It seems very unlikely that Maximilian was concerned in such a league.
[210] Strype, vol. ii.
[211] The college of Douay for English refugee priests was established in 1568 or 1569. Lingard, 374. Strype seems, but I believe through inadvertence, to put this event several years later. Annals, ii. 630. It was dissolved by Requesens, while governor of Flanders, but revived at Rheims in 1575, under the protection of the cardinal of Lorrain, and returned to Douay in 1593. Similar colleges were founded at Rome in 1579, at Valladolid in 1589, at St. Omer in 1596, and at Louvain in 1606.
[212] 13 Eliz. c. 1. This act was made at first retrospective, so as to affect every one who had at any time denied the queen's title. A member objected to this in debate as "a precedent most perilous." But Sir Francis Knollys, Mr. Norton, and others defended it. D'Ewes, 162. It seems to have been amended by the Lords. So little notion had men of observing the first principles of equity towards their enemies! There is much reason from the debate to suspect that the ex post facto words were levelled at Mary.
[213] Strype, ii. 133; D'Ewes, 207.
[214] Strype, ii. 135.
[215] Life of Parker, 354.