Such excessive severities under the pretext of treason, but sustained by very little evidence of any other offence than the exercise of the catholic ministry, excited indignation throughout a great part of Europe. The queen was held forth in pamphlets, dispersed everywhere from Rome and Douay, not only as a usurper and heretic, but a tyrant more ferocious than any heathen persecutor, for inadequate parallels to whom they ransacked all former history.[238] These exaggerations, coming from the very precincts of the inquisition, required the unblushing forehead of bigotry; but the charge of cruelty stood on too many facts to be passed over, and it was thought expedient to repel it by two remarkable pamphlets, both ascribed to the pen of Lord Burleigh. _Defence of the queen, by Burleigh._--One of these, entitled "The Execution of Justice in England for Maintenance of public and private Peace," appears to have been published in 1583. It contains an elaborate justification of the late prosecutions for treason, as no way connected with religious tenets, but grounded on the ancient laws for protection of the queen's person and government from conspiracy. It is alleged that a vast number of catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, among whom the deprived bishops are particularly enumerated, had lived unmolested on the score of their faith, because they paid due temporal allegiance to their sovereign. Nor were any indicted for treason, but such as obstinately maintained the pope's bull depriving the queen of her crown. And even of these offenders, as many as after condemnation would renounce their traitorous principles, had been permitted to live; such was her majesty's unwillingness, it is asserted, to have any blood spilled without this just and urgent cause proceeding from themselves. But that any matter of opinion, not proved to have ripened into an overt act, and extorted only, or rather conjectured, through a compulsive inquiry, could sustain in law or justice a conviction for high treason, is what the author of this pamphlet has not rendered manifest.[239]