The successor of Gregory was the too famous Sixtus V., a sanguinary old man, who knew how to govern his states only by punishments, and who, without advantage to the Holy See, reanimated by bulls the troubles which disturbed other kingdoms. He professed a high esteem for Henry IV. and for Elizabeth; he excommunicated both, but in some measure for form sake alone, and because such a step seemed required in his pontifical character. He detested and dreaded Philip II.: he wished to take the kingdom of Naples from him; he supported him against England. A solemn bull gave Great Britain to Philip, declared Elizabeth a usurper, a heretic, and excommunicated; commanded the English to join the Spaniards to dethrone her, and promised rewards to those who should deliver her to the catholics to be punished for her crimes. Elizabeth with the same ceremony excommunicated the pope and the cardinals at St. Paul’s cathedral in London. Nevertheless Philip failed in his undertaking, and Sixtus was almost as well pleased as Elizabeth at it; he invited this princess to carry the war into the heart of Spain. Notwithstanding his detestation and contempt of the league, Sixtus launched his anathemas against the king of Navarre and against the prince of Conde, calling them an impious blasted race, heretics, relapsed enemies of God and of religion; loosed their present and future subjects from their oaths of allegiance, finally declaring these two princes and their descendants deprived of all rights, and incapable of ever possessing any principality. This bull commences with the most insolent display of the pontifical power: “superior to all the potentates of the earth, “instituted to hurl from their thrones infidel princes, “and precipitate them into the abyss of hell as the “ministers of the devil.”