"And yet this great profusion of their prince did so smally serve their hungry guts, like starven tikes that were never content with more than enough; at all their collations, assemblies, and sermons, they never left yelling and yelping in pursuit of their prey, Restore! Restore! These devout deacons nothing regarded how some for long service and travail abroad, while they sat at home—some for shedding his blood in defence of his prince's cause and country, while they with safety, all careless in their cabins, in luxe and lewdness, did sail in a sure port—some selling his antient patrimony for purchase of these lands, while they must have all by gift a God's name—they nothing regarding, I say, what injury to thousands, what undoing to most men, what danger of uproar and tumult throughout the whole realm, and what a weakening to the State, should thereby arise; with none of these matters were they moved a whit, but still held on their cry, Restore! Restore!"
"And that ye may be sure they meant nothing more than how to have all, and that with all haste; after that their Pope, this seditious Paul IV., that now is, had sent hither his bulls and his thunderbolts for that cause, and other (and yet little restored, because the world, indeed, would not be so faced out of their livelihood) sundry of our prelates, like hardy champions, slacke not a whit themselves to thrust lords out of their lands, and picked quarrels to their lawful possessions. Well. Let nobility consider the case as they list; but, as some think, if the clergy come to be masters again, they will teach them a school point. Christ taught the young man that perfection was in vade, vende, et da, not in mane, acquire, accumula."—Grace to be said at the Accession of Elizabeth: Tannes MSS., Bodleian Library.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 521: Noailles.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 522: Michele, the Venetian ambassador, in his curious but most inaccurate account of England during this reign, states that the queen had it in her power to cut off Elizabeth from the succession, but that she was prevented from doing it by Philip. Michele's information suffered from the policy of Venice. Venice held aloof from the complications of the rest of Europe, and her representatives were punished by exclusion from secrets of state. The letters of Noailles might be suspected, but the correspondence of Renard with Charles V. leaves no doubt whatever either as to the views of the Spaniards towards Elizabeth, of their designs on the crown, or of the causes by which they were baffled.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 523: Noailles to the King of France, December 16.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 524: The witty Katherine Brandon, widow of Henry VIII.'s Charles Brandon, married to Richard Bertie. She was a lady of advanced opinions, between whom and the Bishop of Winchester there were some passages-at-arms. She dressed a dog in a rochet on one occasion, and called it Bishop Gardiner.
Gardiner himself said that he was once at a party at the Duke of Suffolk's, and it was a question who should take the duchess down to dinner. She wanted to go with her husband; but as that could not be, "My lady," said Gardiner, "taking me by the hand, for that my lord would not take her himself, said that, forasmuch as she could not sit down with my lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom she loved worst."—Holinshed.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 525: Et de mesme fust rejetté audict parlement à la grande confusion de ladicte dame ung aultre bill, par lequel elle vouloit confisquer les personnes et biens de ceulx qui sont transfuges de ce royaulme despuis son advènement à la couronne.—Noailles to the King of France, December 16: Ambassades, vol. v.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 526: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. 17.[(Back to Main Text)]
Footnote 527: François de Noailles to Madame de Roye: Ambassades, vol. v.[(Back to Main Text)]