816 The Party of Jnsurrectdan. [Ch. TV

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

^he was not slow to perxjeive. Rapidly every one

rallied to her who adhered to the old faith, and to

fv^hom the measures of the government appeared a sac-

Juiy rilege. Through herself, or through her sec-

ond iiia- °. , ^ ^j

mateiyofth* rotanos and confessors, a correspondenot was

rametioii. couducted which brought the courts of the
continent into connexion with the various disaffected
parties in England, with the Nun of Kent and her
fiiars, 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 tnumph under Catherine's daughter, held the
nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this
faction slowly and steadily organi2dng itself^ starting
from scattered and small beginnings, till at length it
overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland, ex-
ploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet
ever held in check by the tact and firmness of the gov-
ernment, and by the inherent loyalty of the English to
Perilous the land Of their birth. There was a proverb

position of ^

W»nd. then current that ^^ the treasons of England
should never cease." ^ It was perhaps fortunate that
the papal cause was the cause of a foreign power, and
could only be defended by a betrayal of the indepen-
dence of the country. In Scotland and Ireland the

1 Also it is a proverb of old date — **Tlie pride of France, the treason of
Kngland, and the war of Ireland, shall never have end.** — SiaU Pcg^en
Vol. II. p. 11.
