These declarations of her intention, concurring with preceding suspicions, made the bishops foresee with certainty a revolution in religion. They therefore refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was with some difficulty that the bishop of Carlisle was at last prevailed on to perform the ceremony. When she was conducted through London, amidst the joyful acclamations of her subjects, a boy, who personated truth, was let down from one of the triumphal arches, and presented to her a copy of the Bible. She received the book with the most gracious deportment; placed it next her bosom; and declared that, amidst all the costly testimonies which the city had that day given her of their attachment, this present was by far the most precious and most acceptable.[*] Such were the innocent artifices by which Elizabeth insinuated herself into the affections of her subjects. Open in her address, gracious and affable in all public appearances, she rejoiced in the concourse of her subjects, entered into all their pleasures and amusements; and without departing from her dignity, which she knew well how to preserve, she acquired a popularity beyond what any of her predecessors or successors ever could attain. Her own sex exulted to see a woman hold the reins of empire with such prudence and fortitude: and while a young princess of twenty-five years, (for that was her age at her accession,) who possessed all the graces and insinuation, though not all the beauty of her sex, courted the affections of individuals by her civilities, of the public by her services; her authority though corroborated by the strictest bands of law and religion, appeared to be derived entirely from the choice and inclination of the people. * Heylin, p. 104. Strype, vol. i. p. 41. ** Camden, p. 371. Heylin, p. 104. Strype, vol. i. p 54. Stowe, p. 635. *** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 380. Strype, vol. i. p. 29. A sovereign of this disposition was not likely to offend her subjects by any useless or violent exertions of power; and Elizabeth, though she threw out such hints as encouraged the Protestants delayed the entire change of religion till the meeting of the parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The elections had gone entirely against the Catholics, who seem not indeed to have made any great struggle for the superiority;[*] and the houses met in a disposition of gratifying the queen in every particular which she could desire of them. They began the session with a unanimous declaration, “that Queen Elizabeth was, and ought to be, as well by the word of God, as the common and statute laws of the realm, the lawful, undoubted, and true heir to the crown, lawfully descended from the blood royal, according to the order of succession settled in the thirty-fifth of Henry VIII.”[**]