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SOME

TRADITIONALL MEMORIALLS

ON

THE REIGN

OF

QUEENE ELIZABETH.

1. AFTER the death of Mary, eldest daughter of Henry the Eighth, had delivered this nation (for that time) from an imminent danger of becoming tributary to the Spanish king (who ownes none for a naturall subject, indued with lesse pride and austerity then may serve to face a tyranny equall to the Grand Signior's,) and left the crowne to her sister Elizabeth, not only swept and

washed from all competition or claimes by the bloud of Queene Jeane,' but garnished with the applause and consent of the people; no less amazed at the huge fires she had daily kindled to devour the enimies of the court of Rome, then jealous of the partiality shewne to the priests, whose exactions were become no lesse odious in things temporall, then their Latine Mumsimus had made them appeare in what related to the worship of God; Edward the Sixt's reigne being too short to give them a satiety, or make all the inconveniences appeare, likely to follow so totall a defection from a church reverenced by all Christian princes besides; it might be no weak motive to the new queene, so fairely to demeane her selfe at first, that though she entertained the Protestants in hope, no perswasions could tempt her to cast the papists into dispaire, till the pope (better seen in the dignity belonging to his greatnesse, then the arts his predecessors had used in

1 Jane Seymour.

their conduct to it) did, by denying her embassadors a favorable reception, reduce her to a present necessity, of renouncing the Roman miter, or her pretence to that crowne she had without any considerable opposition so happily possest. There being no way so probable to continue her in power, after the popes so publike manifestation of a blemish in her birth, as by adhering to a party, which, during the reigne of her sister, did justify, in the flames of a hot persecution, That the authority of his holinesse was spurious it self, and the owners of it no better than anti-christs, which attempt of hers might possibly have worse succeeded, but for the protection Philip the Second afforded during the infancy of her power, flattered to it in hope of marriage, no lesse then compelled out of a feare to see Eng

* The pope took his ground too early, returning an insolent answer to the English envoy, who notified the accession of Elizabeth, in which he stigmatized her with bastardy, and made his absolution and blessing depend upon her resigning the crown.

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land possessed by the Scots, a people ever in conjunction with France, and therefore likely to prove malignant to his affaires. And as these considerations had made him solicitous of her safety during his match with her sister, they continued still so prevalent, as he did not only forbeare him selfe, but restrayned others from making use of that advantage, so totall a defection could not but afford. Nor was the aspect of a councill then sitting in Trent, (to which she omitted not to send her ministers) of small consequence to her designe; because not only this nation, but all Europe were in the strongest of their labour to produce a reformation, though farre short of the pretences of Luther, to whose memory the queen had an unappeasable feud, ever since he upbrayded her father with the repudiation of Charles the Fift's sister: whose birth by this became so unhappy, as to be not only disapproved by the catholickes, but the founder of that profession she meant to establish. Nor were the religious houses

and lands, possessed promiscuously by those of both tenents, a weak shelter to this new princesse, looked upon by all as the likeliest and most obliged person to keepe them from reverting to their antient use. And therefore, in hope to be vigorously asserted by the protestants, and at worst but weakly opposed by such as had not yet quite relinquished the Roman yoake.

2. And that the penners of this story may be as free from the imputation of malice as ignorance, though they acknowledge her rather thrown, then of her selfe fallen from the obedience of Rome, is deducible from the ceremonies used at her inauguration, all purely catholike, and the retention of the ring, crosse, and surplice, contrary to the grayne of her strongest assertors: From whence her ayme may be ghest as not poynting at a greater dissent from the doctrine of Rome then her fathers proceedings had chalked her out; commanding the Common Prayer Book (which containes

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