because she was in all probability innocent of anything worse than a qualified acquiescence in Seymour's improprieties and a girlish admiration for his handsome face. He or his tragic fate may have touched a deeper chord, but it was carefully concealed; and although in later years Elizabeth seems to have cherished his memory, and certainly showed no love for his brother's children, at the time she only showed resentment at the indignities inflicted on herself. For the rest of Edward's reign Elizabeth's life was less tempestuous. She hardly rivalled Lady Jane Grey as the ideal Puritan maiden, but she swam with the stream, and was regarded as a foil to her stubborn Catholic sister. She thus avoided the enmity and the still more dangerous favour of Northumberland; and some unknown history lies behind the duke's preference of the Lady Jane to Elizabeth as his son's wife and his own puppet for the throne. She thus escaped shipwreck in his crazy vessel, and rode by Mary's side in triumph into London on the failure of the plot. For a time she was safe enough; she would not renounce her Protestantism until Catholicism had been made the law of the land, but she followed Gardiner's advice to her father when he said it was better that he should make the law his will than try to make his will the law. As a presumptive ruler of England she was, like Cecil, and for that matter the future archbishop Parker also, too shrewd to commit herself to passive or active resistance to the law; and they merely anticipated Hobbes in holding that the individual committed no sin in subordinating his conscience to the will of the state, for the responsibility for the law was not his but the state's. Their position was well enough understood in those days; it was known that they were heretics at heart, and that when their turn came they would once more overthrow Catholicism and expect a similar submission from the Catholics.