Читать книгу The Constitutional History of England - Hallam Henry - Страница 18

The two statutes enacted in the first year of Elizabeth, commonly called the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, are the main links of the Anglican church with the temporal constitution, and establish the subordination and dependency of the former; the first abrogating all jurisdiction and legislative power of ecclesiastical rulers, except under the authority of the Crown; and the second prohibiting all changes of rites and discipline without the approbation of parliament. It was the constant policy of this queen to maintain her ecclesiastical prerogative and the laws she had enacted. But in following up this principle she found herself involved in many troubles, and had to contend with a religious party, quite opposite to the Romish, less dangerous indeed and inimical to her government, but full as vexatious and determined.

Origin of the differences among the English protestants.—I have in another place slightly mentioned the differences that began to spring up under Edward VI. between the moderate reformers who established the new Anglican church, and those who accused them of proceeding with too much forbearance in casting off superstitions and abuses. These diversities of opinion were not without some relation to those which distinguished the two great families of protestantism in Europe. Luther, intent on his own system of dogmatic theology, had shown much indifference about retrenching exterior ceremonies, and had even favoured, especially in the first years of his preaching, that specious worship which some ardent reformers were eager to reduce to simplicity.266 Crucifixes and images, tapers and priestly vestments, even for a time the elevation of the host and the Latin mass-book, continued in the Lutheran churches; while the disciples of Zuingle and Calvin were carefully eradicating them as popish idolatry and superstition. Cranmer and Ridley, the founders of the English reformation, justly deeming themselves independent of any foreign master, adopted a middle course between the Lutheran and Calvinistic ritual. The general tendency however of protestants, even in the reign of Edward VI., was towards the simpler forms; whether through the influence of those foreign divines who co-operated in our reformation, or because it was natural in the heat of religious animosity to recede as far as possible, especially in such exterior distinctions, from the opposite denomination. The death of Edward seems to have prevented a further approach to the scheme of Geneva in our ceremonies, and perhaps in our discipline. During the persecution of Mary's reign, the most eminent protestant clergymen took refuge in various cities of Germany and Switzerland. They were received by the Calvinists with hospitality and fraternal kindness; while the Lutheran divines, a narrow-minded intolerant faction, both neglected and insulted them.267 Divisions soon arose among themselves about the use of the English service, in which a pretty considerable party was disposed to make alterations. The chief scene of these disturbances was Frankfort, where Knox, the famous reformer of Scotland, headed the innovators; while Cox, an eminent divine, much concerned in the establishment of Edward VI., and afterwards Bishop of Ely, stood up for the original liturgy. Cox succeeded (not quite fairly, if we may rely on the only narrative we possess) in driving his opponents from the city; but these disagreements were by no means healed, when the accession of Elizabeth recalled both parties to their own country, neither of them very likely to display more mutual charity in their prosperous hour, than they had been able to exercise in a common persecution.268

Religious inclinations of the queen.—The first mortification these exiles endured on their return was to find a more dilatory advance towards public reformation of religion, and more of what they deemed lukewarmness, than their sanguine zeal had anticipated. Most part of this delay was owing to the greater prudence of the queen's counsellors, who felt the pulse of the nation before they ventured on such essential changes. But there was yet another obstacle, on which the reformers had not reckoned. Elizabeth, though resolute against submitting to the papal supremacy, was not so averse to all the tenets abjured by protestants, and loved also a more splendid worship than had prevailed in her brother's reign; while many of those returned from the continent were intent on copying a still simpler model. She reproved a divine who preached against the real presence, and is even said to have used prayers to the Virgin.269 But her great struggle with the reformers was about images, and particularly the crucifix, which she retained, with lighted tapers before it, in her chapel; though in the injunctions to the ecclesiastical visitors of 1559, they are directed to have them taken away from churches.270 This concession she must have made very reluctantly, for we find proofs the next year of her inclination to restore them; and the question of their lawfulness was debated, as Jewel writes word to Peter Martyr, by himself and Grindal on one side, against Parker and Cox, who had been persuaded to argue in their favour.271 But the strenuous opposition of men so distinguished as Jewel, Sandys, and Grindal, of whom the first declared his intention of resigning his bishopric in case this return towards superstition should be made, compelled Elizabeth to relinquish her project.272 The crucifix was even for a time removed from her own chapel, but replaced about 1570.273

There was however one other subject of dispute between the old and new religions, upon which her majesty could not be brought to adopt the protestant side of the question. This was the marriage of the clergy, to which she expressed so great an aversion, that she would never consent to repeal the statute of her sister's reign against it.274 Accordingly, the bishops and clergy, though they married by connivance, or rather by an ungracious permission,275 saw, with very just dissatisfaction, their children treated by the law as the offspring of concubinage.276 This continued, in legal strictness, till the first year of James, when the statute of Mary was explicitly repealed; though I cannot help suspecting that clerical marriages had been tacitly recognised, even in courts of justice, long before that time. Yet it appears less probable to derive Elizabeth's prejudice in this respect from any deference to the Roman discipline, than from that strange dislike to the most lawful union between the sexes, which formed one of the singularities of her character.

Such a reluctance as the queen displayed to return in every point even to the system established under Edward, was no slight disappointment to those who thought that too little had been effected by it. They had beheld at Zurich and Geneva the simplest, and, as they conceived, the purest form of worship. They were persuaded that the vestments still worn by the clergy, as in the days of popery, though in themselves indifferent, led to erroneous notions among the people, and kept alive a recollection of former superstitions, which would render their return to them more easy in the event of another political revolution.277 They disliked some other ceremonies for the same reason. These objections were by no means confined, as is perpetually insinuated, to a few discontented persons. Except Archbishop Parker, who had remained in England during the late reign, and Cox, Bishop of Ely, who had taken a strong part at Frankfort against innovation, all the most eminent churchmen, such as Jewel, Grindal, Sandys, Nowell, were in favour of leaving off the surplice and what were called the popish ceremonies.278 Whether their objections are to be deemed narrow and frivolous or otherwise, it is inconsistent with veracity to dissemble that the queen alone was the cause of retaining those observances, to which the great separation from the Anglican establishment is ascribed. Had her influence been withdrawn, surplices and square caps would have lost their steadiest friend; and several other little accommodations to the prevalent dispositions of protestants would have taken place. Of this it seems impossible to doubt, when we read the proceedings of the convocation in 1562, when a proposition to abolish most of the usages deemed objectionable was lost only by a vote, the numbers being 59 to 58.279

In thus restraining the ardent zeal of reformation, Elizabeth may not have been guided merely by her own prejudices, without far higher motives of prudence and even of equity. It is difficult to pronounce in what proportion the two conflicting religions were blended on her coming to the throne. The reformed occupied most large towns, and were no doubt a more active and powerful body than their opponents. Nor did the ecclesiastical visitors of 1559 complain of any resistance, or even unwillingness, among the people.280 Still the Romish party was extremely numerous; it comprehended the far greater portion of the beneficed clergy, and all those who, having no turn for controversy, clung with pious reverence to the rites and worship of their earliest associations. It might be thought perhaps not very repugnant to wisdom or to charity, that such persons should be won over to the reformed faith by retaining a few indifferent usages, which gratified their eyes, and took off the impression, so unpleasing to simple minds, of religious innovation. It might be urged that, should even somewhat more of superstition remain awhile than rational men would approve, the mischief would be far less than to drive the people back into the arms of popery, or to expose them to the natural consequences of destroying at once all old landmarks of reverence—a dangerous fanaticism, or a careless irreligion. I know not in what degree these considerations had weight with Elizabeth; but they were such as it well became her to entertain.

We live however too far from the period of her accession, to pass an unqualified decision on the course of policy which it was best for the queen to pursue. The difficulties of effecting a compromise between two intolerant and exclusive sects were perhaps insuperable. In maintaining or altering a religious establishment, it may be reckoned the general duty of governments to respect the wishes of the majority. But it is also a rule of human policy to favour the more efficient and determined, which may not always be the more numerous party. I am far from being convinced that it would not have been practicable, by receding a little from that uniformity which governors delight to prescribe, to have palliated in a great measure, if not put an end for a time, to the discontent that so soon endangered the new establishment. The frivolous usages, to which so many frivolous objections were raised, such as the tippet and surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in matrimony, the posture of kneeling at the communion, might have been left to private discretion, not possibly without some inconvenience, but with less, as I conceive, than resulted from rendering their observance indispensable. Nor should we allow ourselves to be turned aside by the common reply, that no concessions of this kind would have ultimately prevented the disunion of the church upon more essential differences than these litigated ceremonies; since the science of policy, like that of medicine, must content itself with devising remedies for immediate danger, and can at best only retard the progress of that intrinsic decay which seems to be the law of all things human, and through which every institution of man, like his earthly frame, must one day crumble into ruin.

Unwillingness to comply with the established ceremonies.—The repugnance felt by a large part of the protestant clergy to the ceremonies with which Elizabeth would not consent to dispense, showed itself in irregular transgressions of the uniformity prescribed by statute. Some continued to wear the habits, others laid them aside; the communicants received the sacrament sitting, or standing, or kneeling, according to the minister's taste; some baptized in the font, others in a basin; some with the sign of the cross, others without it. The people in London and other towns, siding chiefly with the malcontents, insulted such of the clergy as observed the prescribed order.281 Many of the bishops readily connived at deviations from ceremonies which they disapproved. Some, who felt little objection to their use, were against imposing them as necessary.282 And this opinion, which led to very momentous inferences, began so much to prevail, that we soon find the objections to conformity more grounded on the unlawfulness of compulsory regulations in the church prescribed by the civil power, than on any special impropriety in the usages themselves. But this principle, which perhaps the scrupulous party did not yet very fully avow, was altogether incompatible with the supremacy vested in the queen, of which fairest flower of her prerogative she was abundantly tenacious. One thing was evident, that the puritan malcontents were growing every day more numerous, more determined, and more likely to win over the generality of those who sincerely favoured the protestant cause. There were but two lines to be taken; either to relax and modify the regulations which gave offence, or to enforce a more punctual observation of them. It seems to me far more probable that the former course would have prevented a great deal of that mischief which the second manifestly aggravated. For in this early stage the advocates of a simpler ritual had by no means assumed the shape of an embodied faction, whom concessions, it must be owned, are not apt to satisfy, but numbered the most learned and distinguished portion of the hierarchy. Parker stood nearly alone on the other side, but alone more than an equipoise in the balance, through his high station, his judgment in matters of policy, and his knowledge of the queen's disposition. He had possibly reason to apprehend that Elizabeth, irritated by the prevalent humour for alteration, might burst entirely away from the protestant side, or stretch her supremacy to reduce the church into a slavish subjection to her caprice.283 This might induce a man of his sagacity, who took a far wider view of civil affairs than his brethren, to exert himself according to her peremptory command for universal conformity. But it is not easy to reconcile the whole of his conduct to this supposition; and in the copious memorials of Strype, we find the archbishop rather exciting the queen to rigorous measures against the puritans than standing in need of her admonition.284

Conformity enforced by the archbishop against the disposition of others.—The unsettled state of exterior religion which has been mentioned lasted till 1565. In the beginning of that year a determination was taken by the queen, or rather perhaps the archbishop, to put a stop to all irregularities in the public service. He set forth a book called Advertisements, containing orders and regulations for the discipline of the clergy. This modest title was taken in consequence of the queen's withholding her sanction of its appearance through Leicester's influence.285 The primate's next step was to summon before the ecclesiastical commission Sampson, Dean of Christchurch, and Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, men of signal non-conformity, but at the same time of such eminent reputation that, when the law took its course against them, no other offender could hope for indulgence. On refusing to wear the customary habits, Sampson was deprived of his deanery; but the other seems to have been tolerated.286 This instance of severity, as commonly happens, rather irritated than intimidated the puritan clergy, aware of their numbers, their popularity, and their powerful friends, but above all sustained by their own sincerity and earnestness. Parker had taken his resolution to proceed in the vigorous course he had begun. He obtained from the queen a proclamation, peremptorily requiring conformity in the use of the clerical vestments and other matters of discipline. The London ministers, summoned before himself and their bishop, Grindal, who did not very willingly co-operate with his metropolitan, were called upon for a promise to comply with the legal ceremonies, which thirty-seven out of ninety-eight refused to make. They were in consequence suspended from their ministry, and their livings put in sequestration. But these unfortunately, as was the case in all this reign, were the most conspicuous, both for their general character and for their talent in preaching.287

Whatever deviations from uniformity existed within the pale of the Anglican church, no attempt had hitherto been made to form separate assemblies; nor could it be deemed necessary, while so much indulgence had been conceded to the scrupulous clergy. But they were now reduced to determine whether the imposition of those rites they disliked would justify, or render necessary, an abandonment of their ministry. The bishops of that school had so far overcome their repugnance, as not only to observe the ceremonies of the church, but, in some instances, to employ compulsion towards others.288 A more unexceptionable, because more disinterested, judgment was pronounced by some of the Swiss reformers to whom our own paid great respect—Beza, Gualter, and Bullinger; who, while they regretted the continuance of a few superfluous rites, and still more the severity used towards good men, dissuaded their friends from deserting their vocation on that account. Several of the most respectable opponents of the ceremonies were equally adverse to any open schism.289 But the animosities springing from heated zeal, and the smart of what seemed oppression, would not suffer the English puritans generally to acquiesce in such temperate counsels. They began to form separate conventicles in London, not ostentatiously indeed, but of course without the possibility of eluding notice. It was doubtless worthy of much consideration, whether an established church-government could wink at the systematic disregard of its discipline by those who were subject to its jurisdiction and partook of its revenues. And yet there were many important considerations derived from the posture of religion and of the state, which might induce cool-headed men to doubt the expediency of too much straightening the reins. But there are few, I trust, who can hesitate to admit that the puritan clergy, after being excluded from their benefices, might still claim from a just government a peaceful toleration of their particular worship. This it was vain to expect from the queen's arbitrary spirit, the imperious humour of Parker, and that total disregard of the rights of conscience which was common to all parties in the sixteenth century. The first instance of actual punishment inflicted on protestant dissenters was in June 1567, when a company of more than one hundred were seized during their religious exercises at Plummer's Hall, which they had hired on pretence of a wedding, and fourteen or fifteen of them were sent to prison.290 They behaved on their examination with a rudeness as well as self-sufficiency, that had already begun to characterise the puritan faction. But this cannot excuse the fatal error of molesting men for the exercise of their own religion.

These coercive proceedings of the archbishop were feebly seconded, or directly thwarted, by most leading men both in church and state. Grindal and Sandys, successively Bishops of London and Archbishops of York, were naturally reckoned at this time somewhat favourable to the non-conforming ministers, whose scruples they had partaken. Parkhurst and Pilkington, Bishops of Norwich and Durham, were openly on their side.291 They had still more effectual support in the queen's council. The Earl of Leicester, who possessed more power than any one to sway her wavering and capricious temper, the Earls of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Warwick, regarded as the steadiest protestants among the aristocracy, the wise and grave Lord Keeper Bacon, the sagacious Walsingham, the experienced Sadler, the zealous Knollys, considered these objects of Parker's severity, either as demanding a purer worship than had been established in the church, or at least as worthy by their virtues and services of more indulgent treatment.292 Cecil himself, though on intimate terms with the archbishop, and concurring generally in his measures, was not far removed from the latter way of thinking, if his natural caution and extreme dread at this juncture of losing the queen's favour had permitted him more unequivocally to express it. Those whose judgment did not incline them towards the puritan notions, respected the scruples of men in whom the reformed religion could so implicitly confide. They had regard also to the condition of the church. The far greater part of its benefices were supplied by conformists of very doubtful sincerity, who would resume their mass-books with more alacrity than they had cast them aside.293 Such a deficiency of protestant clergy had been experienced at the queen's accession, that for several years it was a common practice to appoint laymen, usually mechanics, to read the service in vacant churches.294 These were not always wholly illiterate; or if they were, it was no more than might be said of the popish clergy, the vast majority of whom were destitute of all useful knowledge, and could read little Latin.295 Of the two universities, Oxford had become so strongly attached to the Romish side during the late reign, that, after the desertion or expulsion of the most zealous of that party had almost emptied several colleges, it still for many years abounded with adherents to the old religion.296 But at Cambridge, which had been equally popish at the queen's accession, the opposite faction soon acquired the ascendant. The younger students, imbibing ardently the new creed of ecclesiastical liberty, and excited by puritan sermons, began to throw off their surplices, and to commit other breaches of discipline, from which it might be inferred that the generation to come would not be less apt for innovation than the present.297

A more determined opposition, about 1570, led by Cartwright.—The first period in the history of puritanism includes the time from the queen's accession to 1570, during which the retention of superstitious ceremonies in the church had been the sole avowed ground of complaint. But when these obnoxious rites came to be enforced with unsparing rigour, and even those who voluntarily renounced the temporal advantages of the establishment were hunted from their private conventicles, they began to consider the national system of ecclesiastical regimen as itself in fault, and to transfer to the institution of episcopacy that dislike they felt for some of the prelates. The ostensible founder of this new school (though probably its tenets were by no means new to many of the sect) was Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret's professor of divinity at Cambridge. He began about 1570 to inculcate the unlawfulness of any form of church-government, except what the apostles had instituted, namely, the presbyterian. A deserved reputation for virtue, learning, and acuteness, an ardent zeal, an inflexible self-confidence, a vigorous, rude, and arrogant style, marked him as the formidable leader of a religious faction.298 In 1572 he published his celebrated Admonition to the Parliament, calling on that assembly to reform the various abuses subsisting in the church. In this treatise, such a hardy spirit of innovation was displayed, and schemes of ecclesiastical policy so novel and extraordinary were developed, that it made a most important epoch in the contest, and rendered its termination far more improbable. The hour for liberal concessions had been suffered to pass away; the archbishops' intolerant temper had taught men to question the authority that oppressed them, till the battle was no longer to be fought for a tippet and a surplice, but for the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, interwoven as it was with the temporal constitution of England.

It had been the first measure adopted in throwing off the yoke of Rome to invest the sovereign with an absolute control over the Anglican church; so that no part of its coercive discipline could be exercised but by his authority, nor any laws enacted for its governance without his sanction. This supremacy, indeed both Henry VIII. and Edward VI. had carried so far, that the bishops were reduced almost to the rank of temporal officers, taking out commissions to rule their dioceses during the king's pleasure; and Cranmer had prostrated at the feet of Henry those spiritual functions which have usually been reckoned inherent in the order of clergy. Elizabeth took some pains to soften and almost explain away her supremacy, in order to conciliate the catholics; while, by means of the high commission court, established by statute in the first year of her reign, she was practically asserting it with no little despotism. But the avowed opponents of this prerogative were hitherto chiefly those who looked to Rome for another head of their church. The disciples of Cartwright now learned to claim an ecclesiastical independence, as unconstrained as the Romish priesthood in the darkest ages had usurped. "No civil magistrate in councils or assemblies for church matters," he says in his Admonition, "can either be chief moderator, over-ruler, judge, or determiner; nor has he such authority as that, without his consent, it should not be lawful for ecclesiastical persons to make any church orders or ceremonies. Church matters ought ordinarily to be handled by church officers. The principal direction of them is by God's ordinance committed to the ministers of the church and to the ecclesiastical governors. As these meddle not with the making civil laws, so the civil magistrate ought not to ordain ceremonies, or determine controversies in the church, as long as they do not intrench upon his temporal authority. 'Tis the prince's province to protect and defend the councils of his clergy, to keep the peace, to see their decrees executed, and to punish the contemners of them; but to exercise no spiritual jurisdiction."299 "It must be remembered," he says in another place, "that civil magistrates must govern the church according to the rules of God prescribed in his word, and that as they are nurses, so they be servants unto the church; and as they rule in the church, so they must remember to submit themselves unto the church, to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns before the church, yea, as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the church."300 It is difficult to believe that I am transcribing the words of a protestant writer; so much does this passage call to mind those tones of infatuated arrogance, which had been heard from the lips of Gregory VII. and of those who trod in his footsteps.301

The strength of the protestant party had been derived, both in Germany and in England, far less from their superiority in argument, however decisive this might be, than from that desire which all classes, and especially the higher, had long experienced to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For it is ever found, that men do not so much as give a hearing to novel systems in religion, till they have imbibed, from some cause or other, a secret distaste to that in which they have been educated. It was therefore rather alarming to such as had an acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, and knew the encroachments formerly made by the hierarchy throughout Europe, encroachments perfectly distinguishable from those of the Roman see, to perceive the same pretensions urged, and the same ambition and arrogance at work, which had imposed a yoke on the necks of their fathers. With whatever plausibility it might be maintained that a connection with temporal magistrates could only corrupt the purity and shackle the liberties of a Christian church, this argument was not for them to urge, who called on those magistrates to do the church's bidding, to enforce its decrees, to punish its refractory members; and while they disdained to accept the prince's co-operation as their ally, claimed his service as their minister. The protestant dissenters since the revolution, who have almost unanimously, and, I doubt not, sincerely, declared their averseness to any religious establishment, especially as accompanied with coercive power, even in favour of their own sect, are by no means chargeable with these errors of the early puritans. But the scope of Cartwright's declaration was not to obtain a toleration for dissent, not even by abolishing the whole ecclesiastical polity, to place the different professions of religion on an equal footing, but to substitute his own model of government, the one, exclusive, unappealable standard of obedience, with all the endowments, so far as applicable to its frame, of the present church, and with all the support to its discipline that the civil power could afford.302

We are not however to conclude that every one, or even the majority, of those who might be counted on the puritan side in Elizabeth's reign, would have subscribed to these extravagant sentences of Cartwright, or desired to take away the legal supremacy of the Crown.303 That party acquired strength by the prevailing hatred and dread of popery, and by the disgust which the bishops had been unfortunate enough to excite. If the language which I have quoted from the puritans breathed a spirit of ecclesiastical usurpation that might one day become dangerous, many were of opinion that a spirit not less mischievous in the present hierarchy, under the mask of the queen's authority, was actually manifesting itself in deeds of oppression. The upper ranks among the laity, setting aside courtiers, and such as took little interest in the dispute, were chiefly divided between those attached to the ancient church and those who wished for further alterations in the new. I conceive the church of England party, that is, the party adverse to any species of ecclesiastical change, to have been the least numerous of the three during this reign; still excepting, as I have said, the neutrals, who commonly make a numerical majority, and are counted along with the dominant religion.304 But by the act of the fifth of Elizabeth, Roman catholics were excluded from the House of Commons; or, if some that way affected might occasionally creep into it, yet the terror of penal laws impending over their heads would make them extremely cautious of betraying their sentiments. This contributed with the prevalent tone of public opinion, to throw such a weight into the puritanical scale in the Commons, as it required all the queen's energy to counterbalance.

Puritans supported in the Commons.—In the parliament that met in April 1571, a few days only after the commencement of the session, Mr. Strickland, "a grave and ancient man of great zeal," as the reporter styles him, began the attack by a long but apparently temperate speech on the abuses of the church, tending only to the retrenchment of a few superstitions in the liturgy, and to some reforms in the disposition of benefices. He proceeded to bring in a bill for the reformation of the common prayer, which was read a first time. Abuses in respect to benefices appear to have been a copious theme of scandal. The power of dispensation, which had occasioned so much clamour in former ages, instead of being abolished or even reduced into bounds at the reformation, had been transferred entire from the pope to the king and archbishop. And, after the Council of Trent had effected such considerable reforms in the catholic discipline, it seemed a sort of reproach to the protestant church of England, that she retained all the dispensations, the exemptions, the pluralities, which had been deemed the peculiar corruptions of the worst times of popery.305 In the reign of Edward VI., as I have already mentioned, the canon law being naturally obnoxious from its origin and character, a commission was appointed to draw up a code of ecclesiastical laws. This was accordingly compiled, but never obtained the sanction of parliament; and though some attempts were made, and especially in the Commons at this very time, to bring it again before the legislature, our ecclesiastical tribunals have been always compelled to borrow a great part of their principles from canon law: one important consequence of which may be mentioned by way of illustration; that they are incompetent to grant a divorce from the bond of marriage in cases of adultery, as had been provided in the reformation of ecclesiastical laws compiled under Edward VI. A disorderly state of the church, arising partly from the want of any fixed rules of discipline, partly from the negligence of some bishops, and simony of others, but above all, from the rude state of manners and general ignorance of the clergy, is the common theme of complaint in this period, and aggravated the increasing disaffection towards the prelacy. A bill was brought into the Commons to take away the granting of licences and dispensations by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the queen's interference put a stop to this measure."306

The House of Commons gave in this session a more forcible proof of its temper in ecclesiastical concerns. The articles of the English church, originally drawn up under Edward VI., after having undergone some alteration, were finally reduced to their present form by the convocation of 1562. But it seems to have been thought necessary that they should have the sanction of parliament, in order to make them binding on the clergy. Of these articles the far greater portion relate to matters of faith, concerning which no difference of opinion had as yet appeared. Some few however declare the lawfulness of the established form of consecrating bishops and priests, the supremacy of the Crown, and the power of the church to order rites and ceremonies. These involved the main questions at issue; and the puritan opposition was strong enough to withhold the approbation of the legislature from this part of the national symbol. The act of 13 Eliz. c. 12, accordingly enacts, that every priest or minister shall subscribe to all the articles of religion which only concern the confession of the true christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments, comprised in a book entitled Articles whereupon it was agreed, etc. That the word only was inserted for the sake of excluding the articles which established church authority and the actual discipline, is evident from a remarkable conversation which Mr. Wentworth, the most distinguished asserter of civil liberty in this reign, relates himself in a subsequent session (that of 1575), to have held on the subject with Archbishop Parker. "I was," he says, "among others, the last parliament sent for unto the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the articles of religion that then passed this house. He asked us, 'Why we did put out of the book the articles for the homilies, consecration of bishops, and such like?' 'Surely, sir,' said I, 'because we were so occupied in other matters that we had no time to examine them how they agreed with the word of God.' 'What!' said he, 'surely you mistake the matter; you will refer yourselves wholly to us therein!' 'No; by the faith I bear to God,' said I, 'we will pass nothing before we understand what it is; for that were but to make you popes: make you popes who list,' said I, 'for we will make you none.' And sure, Mr. Speaker, the speech seemed to me to be a pope-like speech, and I fear least our bishops do attribute this of the pope's canons unto themselves; Papa non potest errare."307 The intrepid assertion of the right of private judgment on one side, and the pretension to something like infallibility on the other, which have been for more than two centuries since so incessantly repeated, are here curiously brought into contrast. As to the reservation itself, obliquely insinuated rather than expressed in this statute, it proved of little practical importance, the bishops having always exacted a subscription to the whole thirty-nine articles.308

It was not to be expected that the haughty spirit of Parker, which had refused to spare the honest scruples of Sampson and Coverdale, would abate of its rigour towards the daring paradoxes of Cartwright. His disciples, in truth, from dissatisfied subjects of the church, were become her downright rebels, with whom it was hardly practicable to make any compromise that would avoid a schism, except by sacrificing the splendour and jurisdiction of an established hierarchy. The archbishop continued, therefore, to harass the puritan ministers, suppressing their books, silencing them in churches, prosecuting them in private meetings.309 Sandys and Grindal, the moderate reformers of our spiritual aristocracy, not only withdrew their countenance from a party who aimed at improvement by subversion, but fell, according to the unhappy temper of their age, into courses of undue severity. Not merely the preachers, to whom, as regular ministers, the rules of canonical obedience might apply, but plain citizens, for listening to their sermons, were dragged before the high commission and imprisoned upon any refusal to conform.310 Strange that these prelates should not have remembered their own magnanimous readiness to encounter suffering for conscience sake in the days of Mary, or should have fondly arrogated to their particular church that elastic force of resolution, which disdains to acknowledge tyrannous power within the sanctuary of the soul, and belongs to the martyrs of every opinion without attesting the truth of any!

The puritans meanwhile had not lost all their friends in the council, though it had become more difficult to protect them. One powerful reason undoubtedly operated on Walsingham and other ministers of Elizabeth's court against crushing their party; namely, the precariousness of the queen's life, and the unsettled prospects of succession. They had already seen, in the Duke of Norfolk's conspiracy, that more than half the superior nobility had committed themselves to support the title of the Queen of Scots. That title was sacred to all who professed the catholic religion, and respectable to a large proportion of the rest. But deeming, as they did, that queen a convicted adulteress and murderer, the determined enemy of their faith, and conscious that she could never forgive those who had counselled her detention and sought her death, it would have been unworthy of their prudence and magnanimity to have gone as sheep to the slaughter, and risked the destruction of protestantism under a second Mary, if the intrigues of ambitious men, the pusillanimity of the multitude, and the specious pretext of hereditary right, should favour her claims on a demise of the Crown. They would have failed perhaps in attempting to resist them; but upon resistance I make no question that they had resolved. In so awful a crisis, to what could they better look than to the stern, intrepid, uncompromising spirit of puritanism; congenial to that of the Scottish reformers, by whose aid the lords of the congregation had overthrown the ancient religion in despite of the regent Mary of Guise? Of conforming churchmen, in general, they might well be doubtful, after the oscillations of the three preceding reigns; but every abhorrer of ceremonies, every rejecter of prelatical authority, might be trusted as protestant to the heart's core, whose sword would be as ready as his tongue to withstand idolatry. Nor had the puritans admitted, even in theory, those extravagant notions of passive obedience which the church of England had thought fit to mingle with her homilies. While the victory was yet so uncertain, while contingencies so incalculable might renew the struggle, all politic friends of the reformation would be anxious not to strengthen the enemy by disunion in their own camp. Thus Sir Francis Walsingham, who had been against enforcing the obnoxious habits, used his influence with the scrupulous not to separate from the church on account of them; and again, when the schism had already ensued, thwarted as far as his credit in the council extended, that harsh intolerance of the bishops which aggravated its mischiefs.311

We should reason in as confined a manner as the puritans themselves, by looking only at the captious frivolousness of their scruples, and treating their sect either as wholly contemptible or as absolutely mischievous. We do injustice to these wise counsellors of the maiden queen, when we condemn, I do not mean on the maxims only of toleration, but of civil prudence, their unwillingness to crush the non-conforming clergy by an undeviating rigour. It may justly be said that, in a religious sense, it was a greater good to possess a well-instructed pious clergy, able to contend against popery, than it was an evil to let some prejudices against mere ceremonies gain a head. The old religion was by no means, for at least the first half of Elizabeth's reign, gone out of the minds of the people. The lurking priests had great advantages from the attractive nature of their faith, and some, no doubt, from its persecution. A middle system, like the Anglican, though it was more likely to produce exterior conformity, and for that reason was, I think, judiciously introduced at the outset, did not afford such a security against relapse, nor draw over the heart so thoroughly, as one which admitted of no compromise. Thus the sign of the cross in baptism, one of the principal topics of objection, may well seem in itself a very innocent and decorous ceremony. But if the perpetual use of that sign is one of the most striking superstitions in the church of Rome, it might be urged in behalf of the puritans, that the people were less likely to treat it with contempt, when they saw its continuance, even in one instance, so strictly insisted upon. I do not pretend to say that this reasoning is right, but that it is at least plausible, and that we must go back and place ourselves, as far as we can, in those times, before we determine upon the whole of this controversy in its manifold bearings. The great object of Elizabeth's ministers, it must be kept in mind, was the preservation of the protestant religion, to which all ceremonies of the church, and even its form of discipline, were subordinate. An indifferent passiveness among the people, a humble trust in authority, however desirable in the eyes of churchmen, was not the temper which would have kept out the right heir from the throne, or quelled the generous ardour of the catholic gentry on the queen's decease.

Prophecyings.—A matter very much connected with the present subject will illustrate the different schemes of ecclesiastical policy pursued by the two parties that divided Elizabeth's council. The clergy in several dioceses set up, with encouragement from their superiors, a certain religious exercise, called prophecyings. They met at appointed times to expound and discuss together particular texts of Scripture, under the presidency of a moderator, appointed by the bishop, who finished by repeating the substance of their debate with his own determination upon it. These discussions were in public; and it was contended that this sifting of the grounds of their faith, and habitual argumentation, would both tend to edify the people, very little acquainted as yet with their religion, and supply in some degree the deficiencies of learning among the pastors themselves. These deficiencies were indeed glaring; and it is not unlikely that the prophecyings might have had a salutary effect, if it had been possible to exclude the prevailing spirit of the age. It must however be evident to any one who had experience of mankind, that the precise clergy, armed not only with popular topics, but with an intrinsic superiority of learning and ability to support them, would wield these assemblies at their pleasure, whatever might be the regulations devised for their control. The queen entirely disliked them, and directed Parker to put them down. He wrote accordingly to Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, for that purpose. The bishop was unwilling to comply. And some privy counsellors interfered by a letter, enjoining him not to hinder these exercises, so long as nothing contrary to the church was taught therein. This letter was signed by Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Walter Mildmay, Bishop Sandys, and Sir Francis Knollys. It was, in effect, to reverse what the archbishop had done. Parker, however, who was not easily daunted, wrote again to Parkhurst, that, understanding he had received instructions in opposition to the queen's orders and his own, he desired to be informed what they were. This seems to have checked the counsellors; for we find that the prophecyings were now put down.312

Though many will be of opinion that Parker took a statesmanlike view of the interests of the church of England in discouraging these exercises, they were generally regarded as so conducive to instruction that he seems to have stood almost alone in his opposition to them. Sandys' name appears to the above-mentioned letter of the council to Parkhurst. Cox, also, was inclined to favour the prophecyings. And Grindal, who in 1575 succeeded Parker in the see of Canterbury, bore the whole brunt of the queen's displeasure rather than obey her commands on this subject. He conceived that, by establishing strict rules with respect to the direction of those assemblies, the abuses which had already appeared of disorderly debate, and attacks on the discipline of the church, might be got rid of without entirely abolishing the exercise. The queen would hear of no middle course, and insisted both that the prophecyings should be discontinued, and that fewer licences for preaching should be granted. For no parish priest could without a licence preach any discourse except the regular homilies; and this was one of the points of contention with the puritans. Grindal steadily refused to comply with this injunction; and was in consequence sequestered from the exercise of his jurisdiction for the space of about five years, till, on his making a kind of submission, the sequestration was taken off not long before his death. The queen, by circular letters to the bishops, commanded them to put an end to the prophecyings, which were never afterwards renewed.313

Whitgift.—Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester, a person of a very opposite disposition, was promoted, in 1583, to the primacy, on Grindal's decease. He had distinguished himself some years before by an answer to Cartwright's Admonition, written with much ability, but not falling short of the work it undertook to confute in rudeness and asperity.314 It is seldom good policy to confer such eminent stations in the church on the gladiators of theological controversy; who from vanity and resentment, as well as the course of their studies, will always be prone to exaggerate the importance of the disputes wherein they have been engaged, and to turn whatever authority the laws or the influence of their place may give them against their adversaries. This was fully illustrated by the conduct of Archbishop Whitgift, whose elevation the wisest of Elizabeth's counsellors had ample reason to regret. In a few months after his promotion, he gave an earnest of the rigour he had determined to adopt, by promulgating articles for the observance of discipline. One of these prohibited all preaching, reading, or catechising in private houses, whereto any not of the same family should resort, "seeing the same was never permitted as lawful under any christian magistrate." But that which excited the loudest complaints was the subscription to three points, the queen's supremacy, the lawfulness of the common prayer and ordination service, and the truth of the whole thirty-nine articles, exacted from every minister of the church.315 These indeed were so far from novelties, that it might seem rather supererogatory to demand them (if in fact the law required subscription to all the articles); yet it is highly probable that many had hitherto eluded the legal subscriptions, and that others had conceived their scruples after having conformed to the prescribed order. The archbishop's peremptory requisition passed, perhaps justly, for an illegal stretch of power.316 It encountered the resistance of men pertinaciously attached to their own tenets, and ready to suffer the privations of poverty rather than yield a simulated obedience. To suffer however in silence has at no time been a virtue with our protestant dissenters. The kingdom resounded with the clamour of those who were suspended or deprived of their benefices, and of their numerous abettors.317 They appealed from the archbishop to the privy council. The gentry of Kent and other countries strongly interposed in their behalf. They had powerful friends at court, especially Knollys, who wrote a warm letter to the archbishop.318 But, secure of the queen's support, who was now chiefly under the influence of Sir Christopher Hatton, a decided enemy to the puritans, Whitgift relented not a jot of his resolution, and went far greater lengths than Parker had ever ventured, or perhaps had desired, to proceed.

High commission court.—The Act of Supremacy, while it restored all ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Crown, empowered the queen to execute it by commissioners appointed under the great seal, in such manner and for such time as she should direct; whose power should extend to visit, correct, and amend all heresies, schisms, abuses, and offences whatever, which fall under the cognisance and are subject to the correction of spiritual authority. Several temporary commissions had sat under this act with continually augmented powers, before that appointed in 1583, wherein the jurisdiction of this anomalous court almost reached its zenith. It consisted of forty-four commissioners, twelve of whom were bishops, many more privy-counsellors, and the rest either clergymen or civilians. This commission, after reciting the acts of supremacy, uniformity, and two others, directs them to inquire from time to time, as well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, as by witnesses and all other means they can devise, of all offences, contempts, or misdemeanours done and committed contrary to the tenor of the said several acts and statutes; and also to inquire of all heretical opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false rumours or talk, slanderous words and sayings, etc., contrary to the aforesaid laws. Power is given to any three commissioners, of whom one must be a bishop, to punish all persons absent from church, according to the Act of Uniformity, or to visit and reform heresies and schisms according to law; to deprive all beneficed persons holding any doctrine contrary to the thirty-nine articles; to punish incests, adulteries, and all offences of the kind; to examine all suspected persons on their oaths, and to punish all who should refuse to appear or to obey their orders, by spiritual censure or by discretionary fine or imprisonment; to alter and amend the statutes of colleges, cathedrals, schools, and other foundations, and to tender the oath of supremacy according to the act of parliament.319

Master of such tremendous machinery, the archbishop proceeded to call into action one of its powers contained for the first time in the present commission, by tendering what was technically styled the oath ex officio, to such of the clergy as were surmised to harbour a spirit of puritanical disaffection. This procedure, which was wholly founded on the canon law, consisted in a series of interrogations, so comprehensive as to embrace the whole scope of clerical uniformity, yet so precise and minute as to leave no room for evasion, to which the suspected party was bound to answer upon oath.320 So repugnant was this to the rules of our English law, and to the principles of natural equity, that no species of ecclesiastical tyranny seems to have excited so much indignation.

Lord Burleigh averse to severity.—Lord Burleigh, who, though at first rather friendly to Whitgift, was soon disgusted by his intolerant and arbitrary behaviour, wrote in strong terms of remonstrance against these articles of examination, as "so curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstances, as he thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their preys." The primate replied by alleging reasons in behalf of the mode of examination, but very frivolous, and such as a man determined to persevere in an unwarrantable course of action may commonly find.321 They had little effect on the calm and sagacious mind of the treasurer, who continued to express his dissatisfaction, both individually and as one of the privy council.322 But the extensive jurisdiction improvidently granted to the ecclesiastical commissioners, and which the queen was not at all likely to recall, placed Whitgift beyond the control of the temporal administration.

The Archbishop, however, did not stand alone in this impracticable endeavour to overcome the stubborn sectaries by dint of hard usage. Several other bishops were engaged in the same uncharitable course;323 but especially Aylmer of London, who has left a worse name in this respect than any prelate of Elizabeth's reign.324 The violence of Aylmer's temper was not redeemed by many virtues; it is impossible to exonerate his character from the imputations of covetousness and of plundering the revenues of his see; faults very prevalent among the bishops of that period. The privy council wrote sometimes to expostulate with Aylmer, in a tone which could hardly have been employed towards a man in his station who had not forfeited the general esteem. Thus, upon occasion of one Benison, whom he had imprisoned without cause, we find a letter signed by Burleigh, Leicester, Walsingham, and even Hatton, besides several others, urging the bishop to give the man a sum of money, since he would recover damages at law, which might hurt his lordship's credit. Aylmer, however, who was of a stout disposition, especially when his purse was interested, objected strongly to this suggestion, offering rather to confer on Benison a small living, or to let him take his action at law. The result does not appear; but probably the bishop did not yield.325 He had worse success in an information laid against him for felling his woods, which ended not only in an injunction, but a sharp reprimand from Cecil in the star-chamber.326

What Lord Burleigh thought of these proceedings may be seen in the memorial to the queen on matters of religion and state, from which I have, in the last chapter, made an extract to show the tolerance of his disposition with respect to catholics. Protesting that he was not in the least addicted to the preciser sort of preachers, he declares himself "bold to think that the bishops, in these dangerous times, take a very ill and unadvised course in driving them from their cures;" first, because it must discredit the reputation of her majesty's power, when foreign princes should perceive that even among her protestant subjects, in whom consisted all her force, strength, and power, there was so great a heart-burning and division; and secondly, "because," he says, "though they were over squeamish and nice in their opinions, and more scrupulous than they need; yet with their careful catechising and diligent preaching, they bring forth that fruit which your most excellent majesty is to desire and wish; namely, the lessening and diminishing the papistical numbers."327 But this great minister's knowledge of the queen's temper, and excessive anxiety to retain her favour, made him sometimes fearful to act according to his own judgment. "It is well known," Lord Bacon says of him, in a treatise published in 1591, "that as to her majesty, there was never a counsellor of his lordship's long continuance that was so appliable to her majesty's princely resolutions, endeavouring always after faithful propositions and remonstrances, and these in the best words and the most grateful manner, to rest upon such conclusions as her majesty in her own wisdom determineth, and them to execute to the best; so far hath he been from contestation, or drawing her majesty into any of his own courses."328 Statesmen who betray this unfortunate infirmity of clinging too fondly to power, become the slaves of the princes they serve. Burleigh used to complain of the harshness with which the queen treated him.329 And though, more lucky than most of his class, he kept the white staff of treasurer down to his death, he was reduced in his latter years to court a rising favourite more submissively than became his own dignity.330 From such a disposition we could not expect any decided resistance to those measures of severity towards the puritans which fell in so entirely with Elizabeth's temper.

There is no middle course, in dealing with religious sectaries, between the persecution that exterminates, and the toleration that satisfies. They were wise in their generation, the Loaisas and Valdes of Spain, who kindled the fires of the inquisition, and quenched the rising spirit of protestantism in the blood of a Seso and a Cazalla. But sustained by the favouring voice of his associates, and still more by that firm persuasion which bigots never know how to appreciate in their adversaries, a puritan minister set at nought the vexatious and arrogant tribunal before which he was summoned. Exasperated, not overawed, the sectaries threw off what little respect they had hitherto paid to the hierarchy. They had learned, in the earlier controversies of the reformation, the use, or, more truly, the abuse, of that powerful lever of human bosoms, the press. He who in Saxony had sounded the first trumpet-peal against the battlements of Rome, had often turned aside from his graver labours to excite the rude passions of the populace by low ribaldry and exaggerated invective; nor had the English reformers ever scrupled to win proselytes by the same arts. What had been accounted holy zeal in the mitred Bale and martyred Latimer, might plead some apology from example in the aggrieved puritan. Pamphlets, chiefly anonymous, were rapidly circulated throughout the kingdom, inveighing against the prelacy. Of these libels the most famous went under the name of Martin Mar-prelate, a vizored knight of those lists, behind whose shield a host of sturdy puritans were supposed to fight. These were printed at a movable press, shifted to different parts of the country as the pursuit grew hot, and contained little serious argument, but the unwarrantable invectives of angry men, who stuck at no calumny to blacken their enemies.331 If these insults upon authority are apt sometimes to shock us even now, when long usage has rendered such licentiousness of seditious and profligate libellers almost our daily food, what must they have seemed in the reign of Elizabeth, when the press had no acknowledged liberty, and while the accustomed tone in addressing those in power was little better than servile adulation?

A law had been enacted some years before, levelled at the books dispersed by the seminary priests, which rendered the publication of seditious libels against the queen's government a capital felony.332 This act, by one of those strained constructions which the judges were commonly ready to put upon any political crime, was brought to bear on some of these puritanical writings. The authors of Martin Mar-prelate could not be traced with certainty; but strong suspicions having fallen on one Penry, a young Welshman, he was tried some time after for another pamphlet, containing some sharp reflections on the queen herself, and received sentence of death, which it was thought proper to carry into execution.333 Udal, a puritan minister, fell into the grasp of the same statute for an alleged libel on the bishops, which had surely a very indirect reference to the queen's administration. His trial, like most other political trials of the age, disgraces the name of English justice. It consisted mainly in a pitiful attempt by the court to entrap him into a confession that the imputed libel was of his writing, as to which their proof was deficient. Though he avoided this snare, the jury did not fail to obey the directions they received to convict him. So far from being concerned in Martin's writings, Udal professed his disapprobation of them and his ignorance of the author. This sentence appeared too iniquitous to be executed even in the eyes of Whitgift, who interceded for his life; but he died of the effects of confinement.334

Attempt to set up a Presbyterian system.—If the libellous pen of Martin Mar-prelate was a thorn to the rulers of the church, they had still more cause to take alarm at an overt measure of revolution which the discontented party began to effect about the year 1590. They set up, by common agreement, their own platform of government by synods and classes; the former being a sort of general assemblies, the latter held in particular shires or dioceses, agreeably to the presbyterian model established in Scotland. In these meetings debates were had, and determinations usually made, sufficiently unfavourable to the established system. The ministers composing them subscribed to the puritan book of discipline. These associations had been formed in several counties, but chiefly in those of Northampton and Warwick, under the direction of Cartwright, the legislator of their republic, who possessed, by the Earl of Leicester's patronage, the mastership of a hospital in the latter town.335 It would be unjust to censure the archbishop for interfering to protect the discipline of his church against these innovators, had but the means adopted for that purpose been more consonant to equity. Cartwright with several of his sect were summoned before the ecclesiastical commission; where refusing to inculpate themselves by taking the oath ex officio, they were committed to the Fleet. This punishment not satisfying the rigid churchmen, and the authority of the ecclesiastical commission being incompetent to inflict any heavier judgment, it was thought fit the next year to remove the proceedings into the court of star-chamber. The judges, on being consulted, gave it as their opinion, that since far less crimes had been punished by condemnation to the galleys or perpetual banishment, the latter would be fittest for their offence. But several of the council had more tender regards to sincere, though intractable, men; and in the end they were admitted to bail upon a promise to be quiet, after answering some interrogatories respecting the queen's supremacy and other points, with civility and an evident wish to avoid offence.336 It may be observed that Cartwright explicitly declared his disapprobation of the libels under the name of Martin Mar-prelate.337 Every political party, however honourable may be its objects and character, is liable to be disgraced by the association of such unscrupulous zealots. But, though it is an uncandid sophism to charge the leaders with the excesses they profess to disapprove in their followers, it must be confessed that few chiefs of faction have had the virtue to condemn with sufficient energy the misrepresentations which are intended for their benefit.

It was imputed to the puritan faction with more or less of truth, that, not content with the subversion of episcopacy and of the whole ecclesiastical polity established in the kingdom, they maintained principles that would essentially affect its civil institutions. Their denial indeed of the queen's supremacy, carried to such lengths as I have shown above, might justly be considered as a derogation of her temporal sovereignty. Many of them asserted the obligation of the judicial law of Moses, at least in criminal cases; and deduced from this the duty of putting idolaters (that is, papists), adulterers, witches and demoniacs, sabbath-breakers, and several other classes of offenders, to death.338 They claimed to their ecclesiastical assemblies the right of determining "all matters wherein breach of charity may be, and all matters of doctrine and manners, so far as appertaineth to conscience." They took away the temporal right of patronage to churches, leaving the choice of ministers to general suffrage.339 There are even passages in Cartwright's Admonition, which intimate that the commonwealth ought to be fashioned after the model of the church.340 But these it would not be candid to press against the more explicit declarations of all the puritans in favour of a limited monarchy, though they grounded its legitimacy on the republican principles of popular consent.341 And with respect to the former opinions, they appear to have been by no means common to the whole puritan body; some of the deprived and imprisoned ministers even acknowledging the queen's supremacy in as full a manner as the law conferred it on her, and as she professed to claim it.342

The pretensions advanced by the school of Cartwright did not seem the less dangerous to those who cast their eyes upon what was passing in Scotland, where they received a practical illustration. In that kingdom, a form of polity very nearly conforming to the puritanical platform had become established at the reformation of 1560; except that the office of bishop or superintendent still continued, but with no paramount, far less arbitrary dominion, and subject even to the provincial synod, much more to the general assembly of the Scottish church. Even this very limited episcopacy was abolished in 1592. The presbyterian clergy, individually and collectively, displayed the intrepid, haughty, and untractable spirit of the English puritans. Though Elizabeth had from policy abetted the Scottish clergy in their attacks upon the civil administration, this connection itself had probably given her such an insight into their temper as well as their influence, that she must have shuddered at the thought of seeing a republican assembly substituted for those faithful satraps, her bishops, so ready to do her bidding, and so patient under the hard usage she sometimes bestowed on them.

House of Commons averse to episcopal authority.—These prelates did not however obtain so much support from the House of Commons as from their sovereign. In that assembly a determined band of puritans frequently carried the victory against the courtiers. Every session exhibited proofs of their dissatisfaction with the state of the church. The Crown's influence would have been too weak without stretches of its prerogative. The Commons in 1575 received a message forbidding them to meddle with religious concerns. For five years afterwards the queen did not convoke parliament, of which her dislike to their puritanical temper might in all probability be the chief reason. But, when they met again in 1580, the same topic of ecclesiastical grievances, which had by no means abated during the interval, was revived. The Commons appointed a committee, formed only of the principal officers of the Crown who sat in the house, to confer with some of the bishops, according to the irregular and imperfect course of parliamentary proceedings in that age, "touching the griefs of this house for some things very requisite to be reformed in the church, as the great number of unlearned and unable ministers, the great abuse of excommunications for every matter of small moment, the commutation of penances, and the great multitude of dispensations and pluralities, and other things very hurtful to the church."343 The committee reported that they found some of the bishops desirous of a remedy for the abuses they confessed, and of joining in a petition for that purpose to her majesty; which had accordingly been done, and a gracious answer, promising all convenient reformation, by laying the blame of remissness upon some prelates, had been received. This the house took with great thankfulness. It was exactly the course which pleased Elizabeth, who had no regard for her bishops, and a real anxiety that her ecclesiastical as well as temporal government should be well administered, provided her subjects would intrust the sole care of it to herself, or limit their interference to modest petitioning.

A new parliament having been assembled, soon after Whitgift on his elevation to the primacy had begun to enforce an universal conformity, the lower house drew up a petition in sixteen articles, to which they requested the Lords' concurrence, complaining of the oath ex officio, the subscription to the three new articles, the abuses of excommunication, licences for non-residence, and other ecclesiastical grievances. The Lords replied coolly, that they conceived many of those articles, which the Commons had proposed, to be unnecessary, and that others of them were already provided for; and that the uniformity of the common prayer, the use of which the Commons had requested to leave in certain respects to the minister's discretion, had been established by parliament. The two archbishops, Whitgift and Sandys, made a more particular answer to each article of the petition, in the name of their brethren.344 But, in order to show some willingness towards reformation, they proposed themselves in convocation a few regulations for redress of abuses, none of which, however, on this occasion, though they received the royal assent, were submitted to the legislature;345 the queen in fact maintaining an insuperable jealousy of all intermeddling on the part of parliament with her exclusive supremacy over the church. Excluded by Elizabeth's jealousy from entertaining these religious innovations, which would probably have met no unfavourable reception from a free parliament, the Commons vented their ill-will towards the dominant hierarchy in complaints of ecclesiastical grievances, and measures to redress them; as to which, even with the low notions of parliamentary right prevailing at court, it was impossible to deny their competence. Several bills were introduced this session of 1584–5 into the lower house, which, though they had little chance of receiving the queen's assent, manifest the sense of that assembly, and in all likelihood of their constituents. One of these imported that bishops should be sworn in one of the courts of justice to do nothing in their office contrary to the common law. Another went to restrain pluralities, as to which the prelates would very reluctantly admit of any limitation.346 A bill of the same nature passed the Commons in 1589, though not without some opposition. The clergy took so great alarm at this measure, that the convocation addressed the queen in vehement language against it; and the archbishop throwing all the weight of his advice and authority into the same scale, the bill expired in the upper house.347 A similar proposition in the session of 1601 seems to have miscarried in the Commons.348 In the next chapter will be found other instances of the Commons' reforming temper in ecclesiastical concerns, and the queen's determined assertion of her supremacy.

The oath ex officio, binding the taker to answer all questions that should be put to him, inasmuch as it contravened the generous maxim of English law that no one is obliged to criminate himself, provoked very just animadversion. Morice, attorney of the court of wards, not only attacked its legality with arguments of no slight force, but introduced a bill to take it away. This was on the whole well received by the house; and Sir Francis Knollys, the stanch enemy of episcopacy, though in high office, spoke in its favour. But the queen put a stop to the proceeding, and Morice lay some time in prison for his boldness. The civilians, of whom several sat in the lower house, defended a mode of procedure that had been borrowed from their own jurisprudence. This revived the ancient animosity between them and the common lawyers. The latter had always manifested a great jealousy of the spiritual jurisdiction, and had early learned to restrain its exorbitances by writs of prohibition from the temporal courts. Whitgift, as tenacious of power as the most ambitious of his predecessors, murmured like them at this subordination, for such it evidently was, to a lay tribunal.349 But the judges, who found as much gratification in exerting their power as the bishops, paid little regard to the remonstrances of the latter. We find the reports of this and the succeeding reign full of cases of prohibition. Nor did other abuses imputed to these obnoxious judicatures fail to provoke censure, such as the unreasonable fees of their officers, and the usage of granting licences, and commuting penances for money.350 The ecclesiastical courts indeed have generally been reckoned more dilatory, vexatious, and expensive than those of the common law. But in the present age that part of their jurisdiction, which, though coercive, is professedly spiritual, and wherein the greatest abuses have been alleged to exist, has gone very much into disuse. In matrimonial and testamentary causes, their course of proceeding may not be open to any censure, so far as the essential administration of justice is concerned; though in the latter of these, a most inconvenient division of jurisdictions, following not only the unequal boundaries of episcopal dioceses, but the various peculiars or exempt districts which the church of England has continued to retain, is productive of a good deal of trouble and needless expense.

Independents liable to severe laws.—Notwithstanding the tendency towards puritanism which the House of Commons generally displayed, the court succeeded in procuring an act, which eventually pressed with very great severity upon that class. This passed in 1593, and enacted the penalty of imprisonment against any person above the age of sixteen, who should forbear for the space of a month to repair to some church, until he should make such open submission and declaration of conformity as the act appoints. Those who refused to submit to these conditions were to abjure the realm, and if they should return without the queen's licence, to suffer death as felons.351 As this, on the one hand, like so many former statutes, helped to crush the unfortunate adherents to the Romish faith, so too did it bear an obvious application to such protestant sectaries as had professedly separated from the Anglican church. But it is here worthy of remark, that the puritan ministers throughout this reign disclaimed the imputation of schism, and acknowledged the lawfulness of continuing in the established church, while they demanded a further reformation of her discipline.352 The real separatists, who were also a numerous body, were denominated Brownists or Barrowists, from the names of their founders, afterwards lost in the more general appellation of Independents. These went far beyond the puritans in their aversion to the legal ministry, and were deemed in consequence still more proper subjects for persecution. Multitudes of them fled to Holland from the rigour of the bishops in enforcing this statute.353 But two of this persuasion, Barrow and Greenwood, experienced a still severer fate. They were indicted on that perilous law of the 23rd of the queen, mentioned in the last chapter, for spreading seditious writings, and executed at Bury. They died, Neal tells us, with such expressions of piety and loyalty that Elizabeth regretted the consent she had given to their deaths.354

Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." Its character.—But, while these scenes of pride and persecution on one hand, and of sectarian insolence on the other, were deforming the bosom of the English church, she found a defender of her institutions in one who mingled in these vulgar controversies like a knight of romance among caitiff brawlers, with arms of finer temper and worthy to be proved in a nobler field. Richard Hooker, master of the Temple, published the first four books of his Ecclesiastical Polity in 1594; the fifth three years afterwards; and dying in 1600, left behind three which did not see the light till 1647. This eminent work may justly be reckoned to mark an æra in our literature. For if passages of much good sense and even of a vigorous eloquence are scattered in several earlier writers in prose, yet none of these, except perhaps Latimer and Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia, can be said to have acquired enough reputation to be generally known even by name, much less are read in the present day; and it is indeed not a little remarkable that England, until near the end of the sixteenth century, had given few proofs in literature of that intellectual power which was about to develop itself with such unmatchable energy in Shakspeare and Bacon. We cannot indeed place Hooker (but whom dare we to place?) by the side of these master spirits; yet he has abundant claims to be counted among the luminaries of English literature. He not only opened the mine, but explored the depths, of our native eloquence. So stately and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in sentences, so grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vulgarity in his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that I know not whether any later writer has more admirably displayed the capacities of our language, or produced passages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity. If we compare the first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity with what bears perhaps most resemblance to it of any thing extant, the treatise of Cicero de Legibus, it will appear somewhat perhaps inferior, through the imperfection of our language, which with all its force and dignity does not equal the Latin in either of these qualities, and certainly more tedious and diffuse in some of its reasonings, but by no means less high-toned in sentiment, or less bright in fancy, and far more comprehensive and profound in the foundations of its philosophy.

The advocates of a presbyterian church had always thought it sufficient to prove that it was conformable to the apostolical scheme as deduced merely from the scriptures. A pious reverence for the sacred writings, which they made almost their exclusive study, had degenerated into very narrow views on the great themes of natural religion and the moral law, as deducible from reason and sentiment. These, as most of the various families of their descendants continue to do, they greatly slighted, or even treated as the mere chimeras of heathen philosophy. If they looked to the Mosaic law as the standard of criminal jurisprudence, if they sought precedents from scripture for all matters of temporal policy, much more would they deem the practice of the apostles an unerring and immutable rule for the discipline of the Christian church.355 To encounter these adversaries, Hooker took a far more original course than the ordinary controvertists, who fought their battle with conflicting interpretations of scriptural texts or passages from the fathers. He enquired into the nature and foundation of law itself as the rule of operation to all created beings, yielding thereto obedience by unconscious necessity, or sensitive appetite, or reasonable choice; reviewing especially those laws that regulate human agency, as they arise out of moral relations, common to our species, or the institutions of politic societies, or the inter-community of independent nations; and having thoroughly established the fundamental distinction between laws natural and positive, eternal and temporary, immutable and variable, he came with all this strength of moral philosophy to discriminate by the same criterion the various rules and precepts contained in the scriptures. It was a kind of maxim among the puritans, that scripture was so much the exclusive rule of human actions, that whatever, in matters at least concerning religion, could not be found to have its authority, was unlawful. Hooker devoted the whole second book of his work to the refutation of this principle. He proceeded afterwards to attack its application more particularly to the episcopal scheme of church government, and to the various ceremonies or usages which those sectaries treated as either absolutely superstitious, or at least as impositions without authority. It was maintained by this great writer, not only that ritual observances are variable according to the discretion of ecclesiastical rulers, but that no certain form of polity is set down in scripture as generally indispensable for a Christian church. Far, however, from conceding to his antagonists the fact which they assumed, he contended for episcopacy as an apostolical institution, and always preferable, when circumstances would allow its preservation, to the more democratical model of the Calvinistic congregations. "If we did seek," he says, "to maintain that which most advantageth our own cause, the very best way for us and the strongest against them were to hold, even as they do, that in scripture there must needs be found some particular form of church polity which God hath instituted, and which for that very cause belongeth to all churches at all times. But with any such partial eye to respect ourselves, and by cunning to make those things seem the truest, which are the fittest to serve our purpose, is a thing which we neither like nor mean to follow."

The richness of Hooker's eloquence is chiefly displayed in his first book; beyond which perhaps few who want a taste for ecclesiastical reading are likely to proceed. The second and third, however, though less brilliant, are not inferior in the force and comprehensiveness of reasoning. The eighth and last returns to the subject of civil government, and expands, with remarkable liberality, the principles he had laid down as to its nature in the first book. Those that intervene are mostly confined to a more minute discussion of the questions mooted between the church and puritans; and in these, as far as I have looked into them, though Hooker's argument is always vigorous and logical, and he seems to be exempt from that abusive insolence to which polemical writers were then even more prone than at present, yet he has not altogether the terseness or lucidity, which long habits of literary warfare, and perhaps a natural turn of mind, have given to some expert dialecticians. In respect of language, the three posthumous books, partly from having never received the author's last touches, and partly, perhaps, from his weariness of the labour, are beyond comparison less elegantly written than the preceding.

The better parts of the Ecclesiastical Polity bear a resemblance to the philosophical writings of antiquity, in their defects as well as their excellencies. Hooker is often too vague in the use of general terms, too inconsiderate in the admission of principles, too apt to acquiesce in the scholastic pseudo-philosophy, and indeed in all received tenets; he is comprehensive rather than sagacious, and more fitted to sift the truth from the stores of accumulated learning than to seize it by an original impulse of his own mind; somewhat also impeded, like many other great men of that and the succeeding century, by too much acquaintance with books, and too much deference for their authors. It may be justly objected to some passages, that they elevate ecclesiastical authority, even in matters of belief, with an exaggeration not easily reconciled to the protestant right of private judgment, and even of dangerous consequence in those times; as when he inclines to give a decisive voice in theological controversies to general councils; not indeed on the principles of the church of Rome, but on such as must end in the same conclusion, the high probability that the aggregate judgment of many grave and learned men should be well founded.356 Nor would it be difficult to point out several other subjects, such as religious toleration, as to which he did not emancipate himself from the trammels of prejudice. But, whatever may be the imperfections of his Ecclesiastical Polity, they are far more than compensated by its eloquence and its reasoning, and above all by that deep pervading sense of the relation between man and his Creator, as the groundwork of all eternal law, which rendered the first book of this work a rampart, on the one hand against the puritan school who shunned the light of nature as a deceitful meteor; and on the other against that immoral philosophy which, displayed in the dark precepts of Machiavel, or lurking in the desultory sallies of Montaigne, and not always rejected by writers of more apparent seriousness, threatened to destroy the sense of intrinsic distinctions in the quality of actions, and to convert the maxims of state-craft and dissembling policy into the rule of life and manners.

Nothing perhaps is more striking to a reader of the Ecclesiastical Polity than the constant and almost excessive predilection of Hooker for those liberal principles of civil government, which are sometimes so just and always so attractive. Upon these subjects, his theory absolutely coincides with that of Locke. The origin of government, both in right and in fact, he explicitly derives from a primary contract; "without which consent, there were no reason that one should take upon him to be lord or judge over another; because, although there be, according to the opinion of some very great and judicious men, a kind of natural right in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to govern them which are of servile disposition; nevertheless, for manifestation of this their right, and men's more peaceable contentment on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed seemeth necessary." "The lawful power," he observes elsewhere, "of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority received at first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not, therefore, which public approbation hath not made so. But approbation not only they give, who personally declare their assent by voice, sign, or act; but also when others do it in their names, by right originally, at the least, derived from them. As in parliaments, councils, and the like assemblies, although we be not personally ourselves present, notwithstanding our assent is by reason of other agents there in our behalf. And what we do by others, no reason but that it should stand as our deed, no less effectually to bind us, than if ourselves had done it in person." And in another place still more peremptorily: "Of this thing no man doubteth, namely, that in all societies, companies, and corporations, what severally each shall be bound unto, it must be with all their assents ratified. Against all equity it were that a man should suffer detriment at the hands of men, for not observing that which he never did either by himself or others mediately or immediately agree unto."

These notions respecting the basis of political society, so far unlike what prevailed among the next generation of churchmen, are chiefly developed and dwelt upon in Hooker's concluding book, the eighth; and gave rise to a rumour, very sedulously propagated soon after the time of its publication, and still sometimes repeated, that the posthumous portion of his work had been interpolated or altered by the puritans.357 For this surmise, however, I am persuaded that there is no foundation. The three latter books are doubtless imperfect, and it is possible that verbal changes may have been made by their transcribers or editors; but the testimony that has been brought forward to throw a doubt over their authenticity consists in those vague and self-contradictory stories, which gossiping compilers of literary anecdote can easily accumulate; while the intrinsic evidence arising from the work itself, on which, in this branch of criticism, I am apt chiefly to rely, seems altogether to repel every suspicion. For not only the principles of civil government, presented in a more expanded form by Hooker in the eighth book, are precisely what he laid down in the first; but there is a peculiar chain of consecutive reasoning running through it, wherein it would be difficult to point out any passages that could be rejected without dismembering the context. It was his business in this part of the Ecclesiastical Polity, to vindicate the queen's supremacy over the church: and this he has done by identifying the church with the commonwealth; no one, according to him, being a member of the one who was not also a member of the other. But as the constitution of the Christian church, so far as the laity partook in its government, by choice of pastors or otherwise, was undeniably democratical, he laboured to show, through the medium of the original compact of civil society, that the sovereign had received this, as well as all other powers, at the hands of the people. "Laws being made among us," he affirms, "are not by any of us so taken or interpreted, as if they did receive their force from power which the prince doth communicate unto the parliament, or unto any other court under him, but from power which the whole body of the realm being naturally possessed with, hath by free and deliberate assent derived unto him that ruleth over them so far forth as hath been declared; so that our laws made concerning religion do take originally their essence from the power of the whole realm and church of England."

In this system of Hooker and Locke, for it will be obvious to the reader that their principles were the same, there is much, if I am not mistaken, to disapprove. That no man can be justly bound by laws which his own assent has not ratified, appears to me a position incompatible with the existence of society in its literal sense, or illusory in the sophistical interpretations by which it is usual to evade its meaning. It will be more satisfactory and important to remark the views which this great writer entertained of our own constitution, to which he frequently and fearlessly appeals, as the standing illustration of a government restrained by law. "I cannot choose," he says, "but commend highly their wisdom, by whom the foundation of the commonwealth hath been laid; wherein though no manner of person or cause be unsubject unto the king's power, yet so is the power of the king over all, and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule. The axioms of our regal government are these: 'Lex facit regem'—the king's grant of any favour made contrary to the law is void;-'Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest'—what power the king hath, he hath it by law: the bounds and limits of it are known, the entire community giveth general order by law, how all things publicly are to be done; and the king, as the head thereof, the highest in authority over all, causeth, according to the same law, every particular to be framed and ordered thereby. The whole body politic maketh laws, which laws give power unto the king; and the king having bound himself to use according to law that power, it so falleth out, that the execution of the one is accomplished by the other." These doctrines of limited monarchy recur perpetually in the eighth book; and though Hooker, as may be supposed, does not enter upon the perilous question of resistance, and even intimates that he does not see how the people can limit the extent of power once granted, unless where it escheats to them, yet he positively lays it down, that usurpers of power, that is, lawful rulers arrogating more than the law gives to them, cannot in conscience bind any man to obedience.

It would perhaps have been a deviation from my subject to enlarge so much on these political principles in a writer of any later age, when they had been openly sustained in the councils of the nation. But as the reigns of the Tudor family were so inauspicious to liberty that some have been apt to imagine its recollection to have been almost effaced, it becomes of more importance to show that absolute monarchy was, in the eyes of so eminent an author as Hooker, both pernicious in itself, and contrary to the fundamental laws of the English commonwealth. Nor would such sentiments, we may surely presume, have been avowed by a man of singular humility, and whom we might charge with somewhat of an excessive deference to authority, unless they had obtained more currency, both among divines and lawyers, than the complaisance of courtiers in these two professions might lead us to conclude; Hooker being not prone to deal in paradoxes, nor to borrow from his adversaries that sturdy republicanism of the school of Geneva which had been their scandal. I cannot indeed but suspect that his whig principles, in the last book, are announced with a temerity that would have startled his superiors; and that its authenticity, however called in question, has been better preserved by the circumstance of a posthumous publication than if he had lived to give it to the world. Whitgift would probably have induced him to suppress a few passages incompatible with the servile theories already in vogue. It is far more usual that an author's genuine sentiments are perverted by means of his friends and patrons than of his adversaries.

Spoliation of church revenues.—The prelates of the English church, while they inflicted so many severities on others, had not always cause to exult in their own condition. From the time when Henry taught his courtiers to revel in the spoil of monasteries, there had been a perpetual appetite for ecclesiastical possessions. Endowed by a prodigal superstition with pomp and wealth beyond all reasonable measure, and far beyond what the new system of religion appeared to prescribe, the church of England still excited the covetousness of the powerful, and the scandal of the austere.358 I have mentioned in another place how the bishoprics were impoverished in the first reformation under Edward VI. The catholic bishops who followed made haste to plunder, from a consciousness that the goods of their church were speedily to pass into the hands of heretics.359 Hence the alienation of their estates had gone so far that in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign statutes were made, disabling ecclesiastical proprietors from granting away their lands, except on leases for three lives, or twenty-one years.360 But an unfortunate reservation was introduced in favour of the Crown. The queen, therefore, and her courtiers, who obtained grants from her, continued to prey upon their succulent victim. Few of her council imitated the noble disinterestedness of Walsingham, who spent his own estate in her service, and left not sufficient to pay his debts. The documents of that age contain ample proofs of their rapacity. Thus Cecil surrounded his mansion-house at Burleigh with estates, once belonging to the see of Peterborough. Thus Hatton built his house in Holborn on the Bishop of Ely's garden. Cox, on making resistance to this spoliation, received a singular epistle from the queen.361 This bishop, in consequence of such vexations, was desirous of retiring from the see before his death. After that event, Elizabeth kept it vacant eighteen years. During this period we have a petition to her from Lord Keeper Puckering, that she would confer it on Scambler, Bishop of Norwich, then eighty-eight years old, and notorious for simony, in order that he might give him a lease of part of the lands.362 These transactions denote the mercenary and rapacious spirit which leavened almost all Elizabeth's courtiers.

The bishops of this reign do not appear, with some distinguished exceptions, to have reflected so much honour on the established church as those who attach a superstitious reverence to the age of the reformation are apt to conceive. In the plunder that went forward, they took good care of themselves. Charges against them of simony, corruption, covetousness, and especially destruction of their church estates for the benefit of their families, are very common—sometimes no doubt unjust, but too frequent to be absolutely without foundation.363 The council often wrote to them, as well as concerning them, with a sort of asperity which would astonish one of their successors. And the queen never restrained herself in treating them on any provocation with a good deal of rudeness, of which I have just mentioned an egregious example.364 In her speech to parliament on closing the session of 1584, when many complaints against the rulers of the church had rung in her ears, she told the bishops that if they did not amend what was wrong, she meant to depose them.365 For there seems to have been no question in that age but that this might be done by virtue of the Crown's supremacy.

The church of England was not left by Elizabeth in circumstances that demanded applause for the policy of her rulers. After forty years of constantly aggravated molestation of the nonconforming clergy, their numbers were become greater, their popularity more deeply rooted, their enmity to the established order more irreconcilable. It was doubtless a problem of no slight difficulty, by what means so obstinate and opinionated a class of sectaries could have been managed; nor are we perhaps, at this distance of time, altogether competent to decide upon the fittest course of policy in that respect.366 But it is manifest that the obstinacy of bold and sincere men is not to be quelled by any punishments that do not exterminate them, and that they were not likely to entertain a less conceit of their own reason when they found no arguments so much relied on to refute it as that of force. Statesmen invariably take a better view of such questions than churchmen; and we may well believe that Cecil and Walsingham judged more sagaciously than Whitgift and Aylmer. The best apology that can be made for Elizabeth's tenaciousness of those ceremonies which produced this fatal contention I have already suggested, without much express authority from the records of that age; namely, the justice and expediency of winning over the catholics to conformity, by retaining as much as possible of their accustomed rites. But in the latter period of the queen's reign, this policy had lost a great deal of its application; or rather the same principle of policy would have dictated numerous concessions in order to satisfy the people. It appears by no means unlikely that, by reforming the abuses and corruption of the spiritual courts, by abandoning a part of their jurisdiction, so heterogeneous and so unduly obtained, by abrogating obnoxious and at best frivolous ceremonies, by restraining pluralities of benefices, by ceasing to discountenance the most diligent ministers, and by more temper and disinterestedness in their own behaviour, the bishops would have palliated, to an indefinite degree, that dissatisfaction with the established scheme of polity, which its want of resemblance to that of other protestant churches must more or less have produced. Such a reformation would at least have contented those reasonable and moderate persons who occupy sometimes a more extensive ground between contending factions than the zealots of either are willing to believe or acknowledge.

General remarks.—I am very sensible that such freedom as I have used in this chapter cannot be pleasing to such as have sworn allegiance to either the Anglican or the puritan party; and that even candid and liberal minds may be inclined to suspect that I have not sufficiently admitted the excesses of one side to furnish an excuse for those of the other. Such readers I would gladly refer to Lord Bacon's "Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England;" a treatise written under Elizabeth, in that tone of dispassionate philosophy which the precepts of Burleigh sown in his own deep and fertile mind had taught him to apply. This treatise, to which I did not turn my attention in writing the present chapter, appears to coincide in every respect with the views it displays. If he censures the pride and obstinacy of the puritan teachers, their indecent and libellous style of writing, their affected imitation of foreign churches, their extravagance of receding from everything formerly practised, he animadverts with no less plainness on the faults of the episcopal party, on the bad example of some prelates, on their peevish opposition to every improvement, their unjust accusations, their contempt of foreign churches, their persecuting spirit.367

Letter of Walsingham in defence of the queen's government.—Yet that we may not deprive this great queen's administration, in what concerned her dealings with the two religious parties opposed to the established church, of what vindication may best be offered for it, I will refer the reader to a letter of Sir Francis Walsingham, written to a person in France, after the year 1580.368 It is a very able apology for her government; and if the reader should detect, as he doubtless may, somewhat of sophistry in reasoning, and of mis-statement in matter of fact, he will ascribe both one and the other to the narrow spirit of the age with respect to civil and religious freedom, or to the circumstances of the writer, an advocate whose sovereign was his client.