430 OBSERVATIONS ON A LIBEL. 



drawn upon pain of damnation from her obedience ; 

 and that thereupon, as upon a principal motive or 

 preparative, followed the rebellion in the north ; yet 

 notwithstanding, because many of those evil humours 

 were by that rebellion partly purged., and that she 

 feared at that time no foreign invasion, and much 

 less the attempts of any within the realm not backed 

 by some foreign succours from without ; she con 

 tented herself to make a law against that special 

 case of bringing in, or publishing of bulls or the like 

 instruments ; whereunto was added a prohibition* 

 not upon pain of treason, but of an inferior degree 

 of punishment, against bringing in of &quot; Agnus Dei s,&quot; 

 hallowed beads, and such other merchandise of Rome, 

 as are well known not to be any essential part of 

 the Roman religion, but only to be used in practice 

 as love-tokens, to enchant and bewitch the people s 

 affections from their allegiance to their natural sove 

 reign. In all other points her majesty continued 

 her former lenity. 



But when, about the twentieth year of her reign, 

 she had discovered in the king of Spain an intention 

 to invade her dominions, and that a principal point 

 of the plot was to prepare a party within the realm 

 that might adhere to the foreigner ; and that the 

 seminaries began to blossom and to send forth daily 

 priests and professed men, who should by vow, taken 

 at shrift, reconcile her subjects from her obedience ; 

 yea, and bind many of them to attempt against her 

 majesty s sacred person ; and that, by the poison 

 they spread, the humours of most papists were 



