Note 588 — Chapter XV · 1588-1593

In a spirited reply (Hatfield Papers) to a remonstrance of Antony Standen, Lord Burghley insists that Catholics who were punished by death in England are “only those who profess themselves by obedience to the Pope to be no subjects of the Queen; and though their outward pretence be to be sent from the seminaries to convert people to their religion, yet without reconciling them from their obedience to the Queen they never give them absolution.” Those, he says, who still retain their allegiance to the Queen, but simply absent themselves from churches, are only fined in accordance with the law. The same contention is more elaborately stated in Lord Burghley’s essay on “The Execution of Justice.” The examinations of various spies, giving alarming accounts of the plots in Flanders at this time to kill the Queen and Burghley (State Papers, Domestic), afford ample proof that Lord Burghley’s contention as to the aims of the Spanish seminarists was correct.