advanced as against the absolute claim of the hereditary monarchy. In the course of the development of events this was to be the case in a still higher degree. Mary rejected with horror the suspicion that she could take part in an attempt on Elizabeth's life: she wished to enrol herself in the Association for her security.[257] And who could have failed to believe at least that the threats against her own right and life, in case of a second attempt at assassination, would deter her partisans as well as herself from any thought of it! For they well understood the energy with which the Parliament knew how to vindicate its laws. But it is vain to try to bridle men's passions by showing them their results. If the attempt on the Queen's life succeeded, this Parliament of course would be annihilated as well as the Queen herself, and another order of things begin. In the seminary at Rheims the priests persuaded an English emigrant, called Savage, who had served in the army of the Prince of Parma, that he could not better secure himself eternal happiness than by ridding the world of the enemy of religion who was excommunicated by the holy father. Another English emigrant, Thomas Babington, a young man of education and ambition, in whom throbbed the pulse of chivalrous devotion to Mary, was informed of this design by a priest of the seminary, and was fired with a kind of emulation which has something highly fantastic about it. Thinking that so great an enterprise ought not to be confided to one man, he sought and found new confederates for it; when the murder was effected, and the Spanish troops landed, he was to be the man who with a hundred sturdy comrades would free his Catholic Queen from prison and lead her to her throne. Mendoza at that time (and indeed by Mary's recommendation, as she tells us) was Spanish ambassador in France: he was in communication with Babington and strengthened him in his purpose. Of all the distinguished men of the age Mendoza is perhaps the one who took up most heartily the idea of uniting the French and Spanish interests, and advocated it most fervently. King Philip II was also informed of the design. He now, as he had done fifteen years before, declared his intention, if it succeeded, of making the invasion simultaneously from Spain and Flanders. The Queen's murder, the rising of the Catholics, and at the same moment a twofold invasion with trained troops would have certainly been enough to produce a complete revolution. The League was still victorious in France: Henry III would have been forced to join it: the tendencies of the strictest Catholicism would have gained a complete triumph.