For the spirit of popery, properly so called, always active, and now the more so from the ill-disguised claims of the Queen of Scots to the throne of England, had been recently recruited, it must be remembered, by the institution of the order of Jesuits, which, springing up in the age of the Reformation, aimed at directing the general movement, both in religion and politics, to the advantage of the Bishop of Rome, whose devoted servants they professed themselves. The rules, the activity, and the learning of this society rendered them formidable to any Protestant state, and added not a little to the perplexities of Elizabeth’s position, who, whilst she feared the levelling and anti-monarchical principles of the Puritans, otherwise her natural allies against these champions of the Pope, was in still greater jeopardy from a hostile order, universal in its influence, secret in its operations, sagacious as herself in its councils; and if at length her government proved that it bore not the sword in vain, but smote with somewhat of a ruthless hand, it was rather in self-defence against political agitators that it so acted, than in violation of the rights of conscience. For certainly the severity did not begin till after her subjects had been absolved from their allegiance by a Pope’s bull,[470] neither did it ever manifest itself against woman or child; a distinction this, between the punishments of Elizabeth and the persecutions of Mary, sufficient in itself to point out that it was the disloyalty, and not the creed, of the parties that drew upon them the vengeance of the Queen; and to confirm the assertion of Cecil in his “execution of justice,” that no one was put to death by Elizabeth for his religion only,[471] as well as a similar vindication of her policy advanced with much detail in a letter of Walsingham’s--a policy which, he contends, was ever regulated by two rules, “to deal tenderly with consciences, but not to suffer causes of conscience to grow to be matters of faction.”[472]