separation from the Papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful political party. Her injuries had deprived the King and the nation of a right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of the Pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old faith, and to whom the measures of the Government appeared a sacrilege. Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a correspondence was conducted which brought the Courts of the continent into connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all the remaining faction of the White Rose. And so first the great party of sedition began to shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the shortlived interlude of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and steadily organizing itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings, till at length it overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland, exploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in check by the tact and firmness of the Government, and by the inherent loyalty of the English to the land of their birth. There was a proverb then current that 'the treasons of England should never cease.'[1] It was perhaps fortunate
- ↑ Also it is a proverb of old date—'The pride of France, the treason of
