Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 13

[258] Butler, 178. In c.o.ke's famous speech in opening the case of the Powder-plot, he says that not more than thirty priests and five receivers had been executed in the whole of the queen's reign, and for religion not any one. _State Trials_, ii. 179.

Dr. Lingard says of those who were executed between 1588, and the queen's death, "The butchery, with a few exceptions, was performed on the victim while he was in full possession of his senses." Vol. viii. p.

356. I should be glad to think that the few exceptions were the other way. Much would depend on the humanity of the sheriff, which one might hope to be stronger in an English gentleman than his zeal against popery. But I cannot help acknowledging that there is reason to believe the disgusting cruelties of the legal sentence to have been frequently inflicted. In an anonymous memorial among Lord Burleigh's papers, written about 1586, it is recommended that priests persisting in their treasonable opinion should be hanged, "and the manner of drawing and quartering forborne." Strype, iii. 620. This seems to imply that it had been usually practised on the living. And Lord Bacon, in his observations on a libel written against Lord Burleigh in 1592, does not deny the "bowellings" of catholics; but makes a sort of apology for it, as "less cruel than the wheel or forc.i.p.ation, or even simple burning."

Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 534.

[259] Burnet, ii. 418.

[260] "Though no papists were in this reign put to death purely on account of their religion, as numberless protestants had been in the woeful days of Queen Mary, yet many were executed for treason."

Churton's _Life of Nowell_, p. 147. Mr. Southey, whose abandonment of the oppressed side I sincerely regret, holds the same language; and a later writer, Mr. Townsend, in his _Accusations of History against the Church of Rome_, has laboured to defend the capital, as well as other, punishments of catholics under Elizabeth, on the same pretence of their treason.

Treason, by the law of England, and according to the common use of language, is the crime of rebellion or conspiracy against the government. If a statute is made, by which the celebration of certain religious rites is subjected to the same penalties as rebellion or conspiracy, would any man, free from prejudice, and not designing to impose upon the uninformed, speak of persons convicted on such a statute as guilty of treason, without expressing in what sense he uses the words, or deny that they were as truly punished for their religion, as if they had been convicted of heresy? A man is punished for religion, when he incurs a penalty for its profession or exercise, to which he was not liable on any other account.

This is applicable to the great majority of capital convictions on this score under Elizabeth. The persons convicted could not be traitors in any fair sense of the word, because they were not charged with anything properly denominated treason. It certainly appears that Campian and some other priests about the same time were indicted on the statute of Edward III. for compa.s.sing the queen's death, or intending to depose her. But the only evidence, so far as we know or have reason to suspect, that could be brought against them, was their own admission, at least by refusing to abjure it, of the pope's power to depose heretical princes.

I suppose it is unnecessary to prove that, without some overt act to show a design of acting upon this principle, it could not fall within the statute.

[261] Watson's _Quodlibets_. True relation of the faction begun at Wisbech, 1601. These tracts contain rather an uninteresting account of the squabbles in Wisbech castle among the prisoners, but cast heavy reproaches on the jesuits, as the "firebrands of all sedition, seeking by right or wrong simply or absolutely the monarchy of all England, enemies to all secular priests, and the causes of all the discord in the English nation."--P. 74. I have seen several other pamphlets of the time relating to this difference. Some account of it may be found in Camden, 648, and Strype, iv. 194, as well as in the catholic historians, Dodd and Lingard.

[262] Rymer, xv. 473, 488.

[263] Butler's _Engl. Catholics_, p. 261.

[264] Ribadeneira says, that Hatton, "animo Catholicus, nihil perinde quam innocentem illorum sanguinem adeo crudeliter perfundi dolebat." He prevented Cecil from promulgating a more atrocious edict than any other, which was published after his death in 1591. _De Schismate Anglic._ c.

9. This must have been the proclamation of 29th Nov. 1591, forbidding all persons to harbour any one, of whose conformity they should not be well a.s.sured.

[265] Birch, i. 84.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE LAWS OF ELIZABETH'S REIGN RESPECTING PROTESTANT NONCONFORMISTS

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 const.i.tution, 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 superst.i.tions 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s-book, continued in the Lutheran churches; while the disciples of Zuingle and Calvin were carefully eradicating them as popish idolatry and superst.i.tion. 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 c.o.x, an eminent divine, much concerned in the establishment of Edward VI., and afterwards Bishop of Ely, stood up for the original liturgy. c.o.x 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 c.o.x, 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 superst.i.tion 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 s.e.xes, 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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 superst.i.tions, 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 c.o.x, 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 wors.h.i.+p of their earliest a.s.sociations. 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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.s 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 r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of that intrinsic decay which seems to be the law of all things human, and through which every inst.i.tution 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 a.s.sumed 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 _Advertis.e.m.e.nts_, containing orders and regulations for the discipline of the clergy. This modest t.i.tle 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 a.s.semblies; 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s-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 dest.i.tute 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 superst.i.tious 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tuted, 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.s 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.serting 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 a.s.semblies 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 princ.i.p.al direction of them is by G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.ses, and especially the higher, had long experienced to emanc.i.p.ate 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 abolis.h.i.+ng the whole ecclesiastical polity, to place the different professions of religion on an equal footing, but to subst.i.tute 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 superst.i.tions 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 ill.u.s.tration; 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 ent.i.tled _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 a.s.serter 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d.' 'What!'

said he, 'surely you mistake the matter; you will refer yourselves wholly to us therein!' 'No; by the faith I bear to G.o.d,' said I, 'we will pa.s.s 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 a.s.sertion 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 hara.s.s 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.bility had committed themselves to support the t.i.tle of the Queen of Scots. That t.i.tle 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 mult.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sive 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 princ.i.p.al 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 superst.i.tions 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 pa.s.siveness 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.semblies 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. c.o.x, 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 establis.h.i.+ng strict rules with respect to the direction of those a.s.semblies, the abuses which had already appeared of disorderly debate, and attacks on the discipline of the church, might be got rid of without entirely abolis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.o.ne 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sed, 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.