[245] Facultates concessae Rob. Personio et Edm. Campiano 14 April 1580. 'Catholicos tum demum obliget, quando publica ejusdem bullae executio fieri poterit.'
[246] Execution of Justice in England. Somers Tracts i.
[247] Lettre a Don Bernardino de Mendoza 6-8 April 1582. 'La grande aparence, qu'il ha de pourvenir (parvenir) maintenant au dict restablissement de la religion en ceste isle, començant pour la Scotia (par l'Ecosse).' In Mignet App. 522.
[248] According to the Venetian accounts (Dispaccio di Spagna, Marzo 1584) the King had sent an experienced soldier as a spy to England to investigate the possibility of a landing, 'havendo pensato di concertarsi bene con il re di Scotia, perche ancora egli a un tempo medesimo si movesse da quella parte.'
[249] The Lord Treasurers advise in matters of Religion and State. Somers Tracts i. 164.
CHAPTER V.
How completely the circumstances of these times are misunderstood, when they are measured by the rules of an age of peace! Rather they were filled with hostilities in which politics and religion were mingled; foreign war was at the same time a domestic one. The religious confessions were at the same time political programmes.
The Queen took up arms not to make conquests, but to secure her very existence against a daily growing power that openly threatened her, before it had become completely an overmatch for her: she provoked an open war: but she had not done enough when she now, as is necessary in such cases, took into consideration the training of soldiers, securing the harbours, fortifying strong places, improving the navy: the most pressing anxiety arose from the general Catholic agitation in the country.