Whether the Protestants would have accepted or rejected the proposition of Elizabeth can not now be decided with positive certainty; all the probabilities indicate that they would have accepted them. One thing, however, is certain, they were rejected by the Roman Catholics under the lead of their bishops. This, of course, revived the old animosities, but with increased violence. Throughout all the departments of society passion became greatly intensified. Nevertheless, the questions involved were English questions alone. They were primarily and chiefly political, although having politico-religious aspects. But they involved only the internal and domestic condition of England. No alien or foreign power had the right, by international or other law, or consistently with what is now universal usage among civilized nations, to interfere with them. But we have seen that they were interfered with, not only by a direct attempt to make the policy of the country conform to that dictated by a foreign power, but in the threatening form of a conspiracy between the king of France and the pope, to impeach the title of Elizabeth upon the ground that she was a bastard, to which she could not have submitted without disgrace. We have also seen how this conspiracy moved stealthily forward, step by step, until she was tried at Rome by an alien tribunal, pronounced a usurper by a decree which declared her crown to have been forfeited and her subjects released from their natural and lawful allegiance. And in order that her escape from the wrath and vengeance of the pope should become impossible, swarms of incendiary Jesuits were turned loose upon the country, to fan the flames of discord, stir up rebellion and civil war, and carry into execution the judgment and sentence of the papal court at Rome. If Elizabeth erred in defending herself and her kingdom against this formidable and dangerous combination, her error was upon the side of patriotism; and she is scarcely censurable for it, inasmuch as the life of the nation, and probably her own life, were the stake for which her enemies were playing. And whether it be true or not, that the Jesuits attempted her assassination--as some historians allege--it must be accepted in her praise that, although a woman, she taught her assailants that she was "every inch a queen," and that England under her reign became enabled to convince all these rival powers that she was competent to conduct her own affairs and take care of herself--facts sufficiently demonstrated by her advanced position among the modern progressive nations.