the old laws against the Lollards; the chief impulse to it came on the contrary from the Queen. And as those laws ordered the punishment of heretics by fire, and Parliament had consented, and the orthodox bishops offered their aid, it would have seemed to her a blameable weakness, if out of feelings of compassion she had stood in the way of the execution of those laws, to the suspension of which the bishops ascribed the spread of heretical opinions. Many of the horrors which accompanied their execution may have remained concealed from her; still it cannot be doubted, that the persecutions would never have begun without her. No excuse can free her memory from the dark shade which rests on it. For that which is done in a sovereign's name, with his will and consent, determines his character in history. The conduct of the Queen and her government, without whose help ecclesiastical authority would have been null and void, had a result that extended far beyond her time: men began to inquire into the claims of the temporal power. John Knox, who had now to fly from England before a Queen, as he had previously from Scotland before a Queen-regent, and whose word was of weight, poured forth his feelings in a piercing call, which he himself named 'a blast of the trumpet,' against the right of women to the government of a country, which ought to be exercised only by men. And while Knox went no further than the immediate case, others examined into the powers of all State authority: above all, to prevent its taking part in religious persecution, they brought forward the principles according to which sovereignty issues originally from the people. Mary's government had awakened in Protestantism, and that not merely in England, the hostility of political theory. But besides no man could hide from himself, that discontent, even without theory, had grown in England in an alarming manner. The French and Imperial ambassadors both gave their courts information of it, the former with a kind of satisfaction, the latter with apprehension and pain. He laments the bad effect which the religious persecution produces, makes pressing objections to it and demands that the bloody zeal of the bishops shall be moderated; but the matter was regularly proceeding in a kind of legal way; we do not find that he effected anything.