Исторический факультет МГУ
Образец вступительного задания по английскому языку

Вариант 3. Исторический факультет лето (2005)

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Elizabeth had to choose, then, between 'Catholicism with its Pope and the creed for which Cranmer and Ridley died'. She was well aware of the benefits which would flow from a decision for Catholicism. At home, everything and everybody could be left practically undisturbed; the burnings would have to stop, but that would gratify all but a few bigoted bishops. Abroad, she would be free to make her peace with the Pope (and doubtless have the little matter of her legitimacy set right), to bind Philip of {Spain firmly to her cause, and to extort a favourable peace from Henry II - might she not even recover Calais? - as the price of Mary Stuart's succession. It was a prospect with which a Catholic Queen might hope to seduce all but the staunchest Protestant. The loss of Calais, it was said, had emptied English churches; a diplomatic triumph on this scale would help to refill them. Why did Elizabeth turn away from these tempting vistas? We know, of course, that she did her shameless best not to lose sight of them altogether. But she had to choose, and she chose against Rome. Elizabeth always hated medicine of any kind, and Papal Supremacy, however diluted, would have been a bitter draught, too bitter, perhaps, for this daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, to swallow. The doctrinal issue was less clear-cut. But there a staunch heart might have overborne a neutral conscience. For Elizabeth, too, had suffered under Mary. She had been the Protestants' hope then, and some of them were dangerously near to making her their idol now. She could not desert them. Pride and loyalty, two fundamentals of Elizabeth's nature, were thus engaged, and both fought against Catholicism. So did a third - courage. To conciliate the Catholic Powers might have seemed then, as to conciliate the Axis was to seem later, the way to pluck the flower safety from the nettle danger. But what would this safety cost, and what would it be worth ?