A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures

sought wherein something has not been attempted against her Majesty and the kingdom, from her first coming to the throne to this present time. I will only point at those former times as I come along to our time of this tragedy of devils.

Her Highness was no sooner come to the crown than Mary, then wife to the King of France, was declared in Paris to be the lawful Queen of England, and the Year 1558. arms of both her Majesty's kingdoms, England and Ireland, were commanded to be set in vasis, et tapetibus regis, et reliquis utensilibus Latin: "on vessels, tapestries of the king, and remaining utensils.". The Popish Bishops, lately before deprived in the second year of her Majesty's reign, purposed to lose no time, when presently after their said deposition: plerique eorum excommunicationis censuram, adversus reginam aliosque nonnullos adhibendam censuerunt Latin: "most of them thought that the censure of excommunication should be applied against the Queen and others." 1559. It was no long time after this when it should have been a canon set down in the Council of Trent, by the instigation of his Holiness’s agents there present: de Elizabetha haeretica declaranda Latin: "concerning the declaring of Elizabeth as a heretic", if the Emperor had not interposed to stay that course. 1562. It was time well employed when the same his Holiness, contriving her Majesty's utter destruction (as appears in the life of Pius V, published in Italian) and drawing the King of Spain into the same, he sent over one Robert Ridolphi, a Florentine, under the color of merchandise, hither into England, to excite a rebellion, and furnished him with 15,000 crowns towards the same. By whose cunning persuasion, the Noblemen in the North parts having risen in arms, forth comes the Pope's Bull, blanched with a fair, goodly face of pastoral zeal and love to the Catholic religion, excommunicating of pure devotion (God knows) the Queen's Majesty, and discharging her subjects from their allegiance unto her, being indeed nothing else save a devilish engine to strengthen the rebellion. Which being dissolved, and the heads thereof dispersed, the time was plied on still with consolatory 1567. 1569.