A RIDDLE OF HISTORY: QUEEN ELIZABETH I and THE ALBERTUS LASKI AFFAIR
All his usefulness notwithstanding, it still remains to be explained how it was possible that as ex Protestant and a favorite of the Catholic hierarchy, Albertus Laski could so easily win the confidence of the Protestant Queen of England. Only about two months before Laski's arrival in England, King Stefan Batory asked Elizabeth to release from one of her jails a professor of the Wilno Academy, Father James Bosgrave, an English Jesuit, who was imprisoned while he was on a visit to England.56 Also, at that time the Protestant merchants of Elbing asked Elizabeth to dispel the widely spread rumor that she was persecuting the Catholics a demand which hardly pleased her.57 It seems unbelievable that at such a time Laski had not only been received by the Queen with great honors, but that he was also invited to take part in theological disputations at Oxford University, asked to attend Protestant religious ceremonies, and to accept a Protestant Bible with Elizabeth's gloves inside as a special token of her favor and sympathy.58 According to some sources, the easiness with which Laski, a convert to Catholicism, had been accepted by the Protestant Queen of England, was due, to a considerable degree, to the fact that he was a protege or a member of the so called Rosicrucian "fraternity," which had supposedly enjoyed Queen Elizabeth's confidence. The Biographical History of Eng land and other sources leave no doubt as to the pro Rosicrucian leanings