454 CHARGE AGAINST WILLIAM TALBQT. 



The offence therefore wherewith I charge this 

 Talbot, prisoner at the har, is this in brief and in 

 effect : That he hath maintained, and maintaineth 

 under his hand, a power in the Pope for deposing 

 and murdering of kings. In what sort he doth this, 

 when I come to the proper and particular charge, I 

 will deliver it in his own words without pressing or 

 straining. 



But before I come to the particular charge of 

 this man, I cannot proceed so coldly ; but I must 

 express unto your lordships the extreme and immi 

 nent danger wherein our dear and dread sovereign 

 is, and in him we all ; nay, all princes of both reli 

 gions, for it is a common cause, do stand at this day, 

 by the spreading and inforcing of this furious and 

 pernicious opinion of the pope s temporal power : 

 which though the modest sort would blanch with the 

 distinction of &quot; in ordine ad spiritualia,&quot; yet that is 

 but an elusion ; for he that maketh the distinction, 

 will also make the case. This peril, though it be in 

 itself notorious, yet because there is a kind of dul- 

 ness, and almost a lethargy in this age, give me leave 

 to set before you two glasses, such as certainly the 

 like never met in one age ; the glass of France, and 

 the glass of England. In that of France the trage 

 dies acted and executed in two immediate kings ; in 

 the glass of England, the same, or more horrible, 

 attempted likewise in a queen and king immediate, 

 but ending in a happy deliverance. In France, 

 Henry III. in the face of his army, before the walls 

 of Paris, stabbed by a wretched Jacobine friar. 



