The Age of the Reformation Part 24

In the first place, while the daughter of Anne Boleyn was predestined by heredity and breeding to oppose Rome, yet she was brought up in the Anglican Catholicism of Henry VIII. At the age of eleven she had translated Margaret of Navarre's _Mirror of the Sinful Soul_, a work expressing the spirit of devotion joined with liberalism in creed and outward conformity in cult. The rapid vicissitudes of faith in England taught her tolerance, and her own acute intellect and practical sense inclined her to indifference. She did not scruple to give all parties, Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist, the impression, when it suited her, that she was almost in agreement with each of them. The accusation {325} that she was "an atheist and a maintainer of atheism" [Sidenote: 1601] meant no more than that her interests were secular. She once said that she would rather hear a thousand ma.s.ses than be guilty of the millions of crimes perpetrated by some of those who had suppressed the ma.s.s. She liked candles, crucifixes and ritual just as she inordinately loved personal display. And politically she learned very early to fear the republicanism of Knox.

[Sidenote: Most of people Catholic]

The conservatism of Elizabeth's policy was determined also by the consideration that, though the more intelligent and progressive cla.s.ses were Protestant, the ma.s.s of the people still clung to the Roman faith, and, if they had no other power, had at least the _vis inertiae_.

Accurate figures cannot be obtained, but a number of indications are significant. In 1559 Convocation a.s.serted the adherence of the clergy to the ancient faith. Maurice Clenoch estimated in 1561 that the majority of the people would welcome foreign intervention in favor of Mary Stuart and the old faith. Nicholas Sanders, a contemporary Catholic apologist, said that the common people of that period were divided into three cla.s.ses: husbandmen, shepherds and mechanics. The first two cla.s.ses he considered entirely Catholic; the third cla.s.s, he said, were not tainted with schism as a whole, but only in some parts, those, namely of sedentary occupation such as weavers, cobblers and some lazy "aulici," _i.e._ servants and humble retainers of the great.

The remote parts of the kingdom, he added, were least tainted with heresy and, as the towns were few and small, he estimated that less than one per cent. of the population was Protestant. Though these figures are a tremendous exaggeration of the proportion of Catholics, some support may be found for them in the information sent to the Curia in 1567 that 32 English n.o.bles were Catholic, 20 {326} well affected to the Catholics and 15 Protestants. Only slightly different is the report sent in 1571 that at that time 33 English peers were Catholic, 15 doubtful and 16 heretical. As a matter of fact, in religious questions we find that the House of Lords would have been Catholic but for the bishops, a solid phalanx of government nominees.

[Sidenote: But most powerful cla.s.s Protestants]

But if the ma.s.ses were Catholic, the strategically situated cla.s.ses were Reformed. The first House of Commons of Elizabeth proved by its acts to be strongly Protestant. The a.s.sumption generally made that it was packed by the government has been recently exploded. Careful testing shows that there was hardly any government interference. Of the 390 members, 168 had sat in earlier Parliaments of Mary, and that was just the normal proportion of old members. It must be remembered that the parliamentary franchise approached the democratic only in the towns, the strongholds of Protestantism, and that in the small boroughs and in some of the counties the election was determined by just that middle cla.s.s most progressive and at this time most Protestant.

Another test of the temper of the country is the number of clergy refusing the oath of supremacy. Out of a total number of about nine thousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, and most of these were Mary's appointees.

The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of the time. The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by the Parker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts, hymns and letters of this period. During the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther's works, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations from Melanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin.

{327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, the English Reformation at this time resumed the national character temporarily lost during Mary's reign. John Jewel's _Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae_ [Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the first methodical statement of the position of the church of England against the church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy."

Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the rising young men, were Protestants. The English sea-captains, wolves of the sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale, still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to Lutheran Germany as "a place where Christ's doctrine, the fear of G.o.d, punishment of sin, and discipline of honesty were held in special regard." Edmund Spenser's great allegory, as well as some of his minor poems, were largely inspired by Anglican and Calvinistic purposes.

[Sidenote: Conversion of the ma.s.ses]

It was during Elizabeth's reign that the Roman Catholics lost the majority they claimed in 1558 and became the tiny minority they have ever since remained. The time and to some extent the process through which this came to pa.s.s can be traced with fair accuracy. In 1563 the policy of the government, till then wavering, became more decided, indicating that the current had begun to set in favor of Protestantism.

The failure of the Northern rising and of the papal bull in 1569-70, indicated the weakness of the ancient faith. In 1572 a careful estimate of the {328} religious state of England was made by a contemporary, [Sidenote: Carleton's estimate] who thought that of the three cla.s.ses into which he divided the population, papist, Protestant and atheist (by which he probably meant, indifferent) the first was smaller than either of the other two. Ten years later (1580-85) the Jesuit mission in England claimed 120,000 converts. But in reality these adherents were not new converts, but the remnant of Romanism remaining faithful. If we a.s.sume, as a distinguished historian has done, that this number included nearly all the obstinately devoted, as the population of England and Wales was then about 4,000,000, the proportion of Catholics was only about 3 per cent. of the total, at which percentage it remained constant during the next century. But there were probably a considerable number of timid Roman Catholics not daring to make themselves known to the Jesuit mission. But even allowing liberally for these, it is safe to say that by 1585 the members of that church had sunk to a very small minority.

Those who see in the conversion of the English people the result merely of government pressure must explain two inconvenient facts. The first is that the Puritans, who were more strongly persecuted than the papists, waxed mightily notwithstanding. The second is that, during the period when the conversion of the ma.s.ses took place, there were no martyrdoms and there was little persecution. The change was, in fact, but the inevitable completion and consequence of the conversion of the leaders of the people earlier. With the ma.s.ses, doubtless, the full contrast between the old and the new faiths was not realized.

Attending the same churches if not the same church, using a liturgy which some hoped would obtain papal sanction, and ignorant of the changes made in translation from the Latin ritual, the uneducated did not trouble themselves {329} about abstruse questions of dogma or even about more obvious matters such as the supremacy of the pope and the marriage of the clergy. Moreover, there were strong positive forces attracting them to the Anglican communion. They soon learned to love the English prayer-book, and the Bible became so necessary that the Catholics were obliged to produce a version of their own. English insularity and patriotism drew them powerfully to the bosom of their own peculiar communion.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's policy]

Though we can now see that the forces drawing England to the Reformation were decisive, the policy of Elizabeth was at first cautious. The old services went on until Parliament had spoken. As with Henry VIII, so with this daughter of his, scrupulous legality of form marked the most revolutionary acts. Elizabeth had been proclaimed "Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith &c," this "&c" being chosen to stand in place of the old t.i.tle "Supreme Head of the Church," thus dodging the question of its a.s.sumption or omission.

Parliament, however, very soon pa.s.sed supremacy and uniformity acts to supply the needed sanction. The former repealed Philip and Mary's Heresy Act and Repealing Statute, revived ten acts of Henry VIII and one of Edward VI, but confirmed the repeal of six acts of Henry VIII.

Next, Parliament proceeded to seize the episcopal lands. Its spirit was just as secular as that of Henry's Parliaments, only there was less ecclesiastical property left to grab.

The Book of Common Prayer was revised by introducing into the recension of 1552 a few pa.s.sages from the first edition of 1549, previously rejected as too Catholic. Three of the Forty-two Articles of Religion of Edward were dropped, [Sidenote: The Thirty-nine Articles 1563] thus making the Thirty-nine Articles that have ever since been the authoritative {330} statement of Anglican doctrine. Thus it is true to some extent that the Elizabethan settlement was a compromise. It took special heed of various parties, and tried to avoid offence to Lutherans, Zwinglians, and even to Roman Catholics. But far more than a compromise, it was a case of special development. As it is usually compared with the English Dissenting sects, the church of England is often said to be the most conservative of the reformed bodies. It is often said that it is Protestant in doctrine and Catholic in ritual and hierarchy. But compared with the Lutheran church it is found to be if anything further from Rome. In fact the Anglicans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries abhorred the Lutherans as "semi-papists."

[Sidenote: The Church of England]

And yet the Anglican church was like the Lutheran not only in its conservatism as compared with Calvinism, but in its political aspects.

Both became the strong allies of the throne; both had not only a markedly national but a markedly governmental quality. Just as the Reformation succeeded in England by becoming national in opposition to Spain, and remaining national in opposition to French culture, so the Anglican church naturally became a perfect expression of the English character. Moderate, decorous, detesting extremes of speculation and enthusiasm, she cares less for logic than for practical convenience.

Closely interwoven with the religious settlement were the questions of the heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy.

Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the people and a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race and wholly by her first marriage to Francis II, she would have been most {331} distasteful to the ruling party in England. Elizabeth was therefore desired and finally urged by Parliament to marry. Her refusal to do this has been attributed to some hidden cause, as her love for Leicester or the knowledge that she was incapable of bearing a child. But though neither of these hypotheses can be disproved, neither is necessary to account for her policy. It is true that it would have strengthened her position to have had a child to succeed her; but it would have weakened her personal sway to have had a husband. She wanted to rule as well as to reign. Her many suitors were encouraged just sufficiently to flatter her vanity and to attain her diplomatic ends. First, her brother-in-law Philip sought her hand, and was promptly rejected as a Spanish Catholic. Then, there was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, apparently her favorite in spite of his worthless character, but his rank was not high enough. Then, there were princes of Sweden and Denmark, an Archduke of Austria and two sons of Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began when Elizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote: 1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides.

Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make her flirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twice she forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwards consented to hear the pet.i.tion, she was careful not to call another Parliament for five years.

[Sidenote: Financial measures]

Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largely owing to the debas.e.m.e.nt of the currency royal expenditure had risen from L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in the last year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way, and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By the wise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543, the hardest problems were solved.

[Sidenote: Underhand war]

Towards France and Spain Elizabeth's policy was one well described by herself as "underhand war." English volunteers, with government connivance, but nominally on their own responsibility, fought in the ranks of Huguenots and Netherlanders. Torrents of money poured from English churches to support their fellow-Protestants in France and Holland. English sailors seized Spanish galleons; if successful the queen secretly shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might be hanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now, was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very idea of neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying to harm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan England the anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possible this buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizes themselves been enough to attract the adventurous. Doubtless far more energy went into privateering than into legitimate commerce.

Peace was officially made with France, recognizing the surrender of Calais at first for a limited period of years. Though peace was still nominally kept with Spain for a long time, the s.h.i.+ft of policy from one of hostility to France to one of enmity to Spain was soon manifest. As long, however, as the government relied chiefly on the commercial interests of the capital and other large towns, and as long as Spain controlled the Netherlands, open war was nearly impossible, for it would have been extremely unpopular with the merchants of both London and the Low Countries. In times of crisis, however, [Sidenote: 1569]

an embargo was laid on all trade with Philip's dominions.

Elizabeth's position was made extremely delicate by {333} the fact that the heiress to her throne was the Scotch Queen Mary Stuart, who, since 1568, had been a refugee in England and had been kept in a sort of honorable captivity. On account of her religion she became the center of the hopes and of the actual machinations of all English malcontents.

In these plots she partic.i.p.ated as far as she dared.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Powers]

Elizabeth's crown would have been jeoparded had the Catholic powers, or any one of them, acted promptly. That they did not do so is proof, partly of their mutual jealousies, party of the excellence of Cecil's statesmans.h.i.+p. Convinced though he was that civil peace could only be secured by religious unity, for five years he played a hesitating game in order to hold off the Catholics until his power should be strong enough to crush them. By a system of espionage, by permitting only n.o.bles and sailors to leave the kingdom without special licence, by welcoming Dutch Protestant refugees, he clandestinely fostered the strength of his party. His scheme was so far successful that the pope hesitated more than eleven years before issuing the bull of deprivation. For this Elizabeth had also to thank the Catholic Hapsburgs; in the first place Philip who then hoped to marry her, and in the second place the Emperor Ferdinand who said that if Elizabeth were excommunicated the German Catholics would suffer for it and that there were many German Protestant princes who deserved the ban as much as she did.

Matters were clarified by the calling of the Council of Trent. Asked to send an emba.s.sy to this council Elizabeth refused for three reasons: (1) because she had not been consulted about calling the council; (2) because she did not consider it free, pious and Christian; (3) because the pope sought to stir up sedition in her realms. The council replied to this snub by excommunicating her, but it is a significant sign of the {334} times that neither they nor the pope as yet dared to use spiritual weapons to depose her, as the pope endeavored to do a few years later.

[Sidenote: Anti-Catholic laws]

Whether as a reply to this measure or not, Parliament pa.s.sed more stringent laws against Catholics. Cecil's policy, inherited from Thomas Cromwell, to centralize and unify the state, met with threefold opposition; first from the papists who disliked nationalizing the church, second from the holders of medieval franchises who objected to their absorption in a centripetal system, and third from the old n.o.bles who resented their replacement in the royal council by upstarts. All these forces produced a serious crisis in the years 1569-70. The north, as the stronghold of both feudalism and Catholicism, led the reaction. The Duke of Norfolk, England's premier peer, plotted with the northern earls to advance Mary's cause, and thought of marrying her himself. Pope Pius V warmly praised their scheme which culminated in a rebellion. [Sidenote: Rebellion, 1561] The n.o.bles and commons alike were filled with the spirit of crusaders, bearing banners with the cross and the five wounds of Christ. At the same time they voiced the grievance of the old-fas.h.i.+oned farmer against the new-fangled merchant.

Their banners inscribed "G.o.d speed the plough" bear witness to the agrarian element common to so many revolts. Their demands were the restoration of Catholicism, intervention in Scotland to put Mary back on her throne, and her recognition as heiress of England, and the expulsion of foreign refugees. Had they been able to secure Mary's person or had the Scotch joined them, it is probable that they would have seceded from the south of England.

But the new Pilgrimage of Grace was destined to no more success than the old one. Moray, Regent of Scotland, forcibly prevented a.s.sistance going to the {335} rebels from North Britain. Elizabeth prepared an overwhelming army, but it was not needed. The rebels, seeing the hopelessness of their cause, dispersed and were pursued by an exemplary punishment, no less than eight hundred being executed. Three years later Norfolk trod the traitor's path to the scaffold. His death sealed the ruin of the old n.o.bility whose privileges were incompatible with the new regime. In the same year a parliamentary agitation in favor of the execution of Mary witnessed how dead were medieval t.i.tles to respect.

[Sidenote: Papal Bull, February 25, 1570]

Too late to have much effect, Pius V issued the bull _Regnans in excelsis_, declaring that whereas the Roman pontiff has power over all nations and kingdoms to destroy and ruin or to plant and build up, and whereas Elizabeth, the slave of vice, has usurped the place of supreme head of the church, has sent her realm to perdition and has celebrated the impious mysteries of Calvin, therefore she is cut off from the body of Christ and deprived of her pretended right to rule England, while all her subjects are absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The bull also rea.s.serted Elizabeth's illegitimacy, and echoed the complaint of the northern earls that she had expelled the old n.o.bility from her council. The promulgation of the bull, without the requisite warning and allowance of a year for repentance, was contrary to the canon law.

The fulmination was sent to Alva to the Netherlands and a devotee was found to carry it to England. Forthwith Elizabeth issued a masterly proclamation vouchsafing that,

her majesty would have all her loving subjects to understand that, as long as they shall openly continue in the observation of her laws, and shall not wilfully and manifestly break them by open actions, her majesty's means is not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or {336} examination of their consciences in causes of religion, but to accept and entreat them as her good and obedient subjects.

But to obviate the contamination of her people by political views expressed in the bull, [Sidenote: Anti-papal laws] and to guard against the danger of a further rising in the interests of Mary Stuart, the Parliament of 1571 pa.s.sed several necessary laws. One of these forbade bringing the bull into England; another made it treasonable to declare that Elizabeth was not or ought not to be queen or that she was a heretic, usurper or schismatic.

The first seventeen years of Elizabeth's reign had been blessedly free from persecution. The increasing strain between England and the papacy was marked by a number of executions of Romanists. A recent Catholic estimate is that the total number of this faith who suffered under Elizabeth was 189, of whom 128 were priests, 58 laymen and three women; and to this should be added 32 Franciscans who died in prison of starvation. The contrast of 221 victims in Elizabeth's forty-five years as against 290 in Mary's five years, is less important than the different purpose of the government. Under Mary the executions were for heresy; under Elizabeth chiefly for treason. It is true that the whole age acted upon Sir Philip Sidney's maxim that it was the highest wisdom of statesmans.h.i.+p never to separate religion from politics.

Church and state were practically one and the same body, and opinions repugnant to established religion naturally resulted in acts inimical to the civil order. But the broad distinction is plain. Cecil put men to death not because he detested their dogma but because he feared their politics.

Nothing proves more clearly the purposes of the English government than its long duel with the Jesuit mission. [Sidenote: Jesuit mission] It is unfair to say that the primary purpose {337} of the Curia was to get all the privileges of loyalty for English Catholics while secretly inciting them to rise and murder their sovereign. But the very fact that the Jesuits were instructed not to meddle in politics and yet were unable to keep clear of the law, proves how inextricably politics and religion were intertwined. Immediately drawing the suspicion of Burghley, they were put to the "b.l.o.o.d.y question" and illegally tortured, even while the government felt called upon to explain that they were not forced to the rack to answer "any question of their supposed conscience" but only as to their political opinions. But one of these opinions was whether the pope had the right to depose the queen.

[Sidenote: Character of Jesuits]

The history of these years is one more example of how much more accursed it is to persecute than to be persecuted. The Jesuits sent to England were men of the n.o.blest character, daring and enduring all with fort.i.tude, showing charity and loving-kindness even to their enemies.

But the character of their enemies correspondingly deteriorated. That sense of fair play that is the finest English quality disappeared under the stress of fanaticism. Not only Jesuits, but Catholic women and children were attacked; one boy of thirteen was racked and executed as a traitor. The persecution by public opinion supplied what the activity of the government overlooked. In fact it was the government that was the moderating factor. The act pa.s.sed in 1585 banis.h.i.+ng the Jesuits was intended to obviate sterner measures. In dealing with the ma.s.s of the population Burghley made persecution pay its way by resorting to fines as the princ.i.p.al punishment. During the last twenty years of the reign no less than L6,000 per annum was thus collected.

The helpless rage of the popes against "the Jezebel of the north" waxed until one of them, Gregory XIII, {338} sanctioned an attempt at her a.s.sa.s.sination. [Sidenote: Conspiracies] In 1580 there appeared at the court of Madrid one Humphrey Ely, later a secular priest. He informed the papal nunciature that some English n.o.bles, mentioned by name, had determined to murder Elizabeth but wished the pope's own a.s.surance that, in case they lost their lives in the attempt, they should not have fallen into sin by the deed. After giving his own opinion that the bull of Pius V gave all men the right to take arms against the queen in any fas.h.i.+on, the nuncio wrote to Rome. From the papal secretary, speaking in the pope's name, he received the following reply:

As that guilty woman of England rules two so n.o.ble realms of Christendom, is the cause of so much harm to the Catholic faith, and is guilty of the loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that any one who puts her out of the world with the proper intention of serving G.o.d thereby, not only commits no sin but even wins merit, especially seeing that the sentence of the late Pius V is standing against her. If, therefore, these English n.o.bles have really decided to do so fair a work, your honor may a.s.sure them that they commit no sin.

Also we may trust in G.o.d that they will escape all danger.

As to your own irregularity [caused to the nuncio as a priest by conspiracy to murder] the pope sends you his holy blessing.[1]

A conspiracy equally unsuccessful but more famous, because discovered at the time, was that of Anthony Babington. Burghley's excellent secret service apprised the government not only of the princ.i.p.als but also of aid and support given to them by Philip II and Mary Queen of Scots. Parliament pet.i.tioned for the execution of Mary. Though there was no doubt of her guilt, Elizabeth hesitated to give the dangerous example of sending a crowned head to the block. {339} With habitual indirection she did her best to get Mary's jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to put her to death without a warrant. Failing in this, she finally signed the warrant, [Sidenote: Mary beheaded, February 8, 1587] but when her council acted upon it in secret haste lest she should change her mind, she flew into a rage and, to prove her innocence, heavily fined and imprisoned one of the privy council whom she selected as scapegoat.