[254] Butler's _English Catholics_, i. 259; Hume. This is strongly confirmed by a letter printed not long after, and republished in the Harleian _Miscellany_, vol. i. p. 142, with the name of one Leigh, a seminary priest, but probably the work of some protestant. He says, "for contributions of money, and for all other warlike actions, there was no difference between the catholic and the heretic. But in this case [of the Armada] to withstand the threatened conquest, yea, to defend the person of the queen, there appeared such a sympathy, concourse, and consent of all sorts of persons, without respect of religion, as they all appeared to be ready to fight against all strangers as it were with one heart and one body." Notwithstanding this, I am far from thinking that it would have been safe to place the catholics, generally speaking, in command. Sir William Stanley's recent treachery in giving up Deventer to the Spaniards made it unreasonable for them to complain of exclusion from trust. Nor do I know that they did so. But trust and toleration are two different things. And even with respect to the former, I believe it far better to leave the matter in the hands of the executive government, which will not readily suffer itself to be betrayed, than to proscribe, as we have done, whole bodies by a legislative exclusion. Whenever, indeed, the government itself is not to be trusted, there arises a new condition of the problem. [255] Strype, vols. iii. and iv. _passim_; _Life of Whitgift_, 401, 505; Murden, 667; Birch's _Memoirs of Elizabeth_, Lingard, etc. One hundred and ten catholics suffered death between 1588 and 1603. Lingard, 513. [256] 33 Eliz. c. 2. [257] Camden, 566; Strype, iv. 56. This was the declaration of October 1591, which Andreas Philopater answered. Ribadeneira also inveighs against it. According to them, its publication was delayed till after the death of Hatton, when the persecuting part of the queen's council gained the ascendency. [258] Butler, 178. In Coke's famous speech in opening the case of the Powder-plot, he says that not more than thirty priests and five receivers had been executed in the whole of the queen's reign, and for religion not any one. _State Trials_, ii. 179.