The Queen might be indifferent to her own danger,
but on the Queen's life hung the peace of the whole realm. A stroke of a
poniard, a touch of a trigger, and swords would be flying from their
scabbards in every county; England would become, like France, one wild
scene of anarchy and civil war. No successor had been named. The Queen
refused to hear a successor declared. Mary Stuart's hand had been in
every plot since she crossed the Border. Twice the House of Commons had
petitioned for her execution. Elizabeth would neither touch her life nor
allow her hopes of the crown to be taken from her. The Bond of
Association was but a remedy of despair, and the Act of Parliament would
have passed for little in the tempest which would immediately rise. The
agony reached a height when the fatal news came from the Netherlands
that there at last assassination had done its work. The Prince of
Orange, after many failures, had been finished, and a libel was found in
the Palace at Westminster exhorting the ladies of the household to
provide a Judith among themselves to rid the world of the English
Holofernes.
One part of Elizabeth's subjects, at any rate, were not disposed to sit
down in patience under the eternal nightmare.
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