So That The Strangeness Of
The Observation, And The Difference Of Those Latter Reigns, Is That
The Queen Took Up
Much BEYOND the power of law, which fell not into
the murmur of people; and her successors took nothing but
By warrant
of the law, which nevertheless was received, THROUGH DISUSE, to be
injurious to the liberty of the kingdom.
Now before I come to any mention of her favourites, for hitherto I
have delivered but some oblivious passages, thereby to prepare and
smooth a way for the rest that follows:
It is necessary that I touch on the religiousness of the other's
reign, I mean the body of her sister's {38} Council of State, which
she retained entirely, neither removing nor discontenting any,
although she knew them averse to her religion, and, in her sister's
time, perverse to her person, and privy to all her troubles and
imprisonments.
A prudence which was incompatible to her sister's nature, for she
both dissipated and presented the major part of her brother's
Council; but this will be of certain, that how compliable and
obsequious soever she found them, yet for a good space she made
little use of their counsels, more than in the ordinary course of
the Board, for she had a dormant table in her own privy breast; yet
she kept them together and in their places, without any sudden
change; so that we may say of them that they were then of the Court,
not of the Council; for whilst she AMAZED {39} them by a kind of
promissive disputation concerning the points controverted by both
Churches, she did set down her own gests, without their privity, and
made all their progressions, gradations; but for that the tenents of
her secrets, with the intents of her establishments, were pitched
before it was known where the Court would sit down.
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