the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk--and sending them forth into the
far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts and with savages more
ferocious than beasts; fearing and hating the Catholics as the sworn
enemies of his realm; his race, and himself, trampling on them as much as
he dared, forcing them into hypocrisy to save themselves from persecution
or at least pecuniary ruin--if they would worship God according to their
conscience; at deadly feud, therefore, on religious grounds, with much
more than half his subjects--Puritans or Papists--and yet himself a
Puritan in dogma and a Papist in Church government, if only the king
could be pope; not knowing, indeed, whether a Puritan, or a Jesuit whom
he called a Papist-Puritan, should be deemed the more disgusting or
dangerous animal; already preparing for his unfortunate successor a path
to the scaffold by employing all the pedantry, both theological and
philosophical at his command to bring parliaments into contempt, and to
place the royal prerogative on a level with Divinity; at the head of a
most martial, dauntless, and practical nation, trembling, with
unfortunate physical timidity, at the sight of a drawn sword; ever
scribbling or haranguing in Latin, French, or broad Scotch, when the
world was arming, it must always be a special wonder that one who might
have been a respectable; even a useful, pedagogue, should by the caprice
of destiny have been permitted, exactly at that epoch to be one of the
most contemptible and mischievous of kings.

But he had a most effective and energetic minister. Even as in Spain and
in France at the same period, the administration of government was
essentially in-one pair of hands.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, ever since the termination of the
splendid triumvirate of his father and Walsingham, had been in reality
supreme. The proud and terrible hunchback, who never forgave, nor forgot