The Church Under the Tudors

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. On the further Persecution of Nonconformists until the death of Elizabeth in 1603. The year 1572, so memorable in the annals of civil and religious liberty for the organization of the first Presbyterian Church in England, was also signalized by an event which, as Lingard admits, " struck with astonishment all the nations of Europe, and which cannot be contemplated without horror at the present day."1 Religion has been made the pretext for innumerable crimes; but the massacre of St. Bartholomew stands alone for the diabolical craft--the hideous enormity of the bloodguiltiness, that alike characterized its conception and presided over its execution. It is an additional reproach to the memory of Elizabeth, that her studied dissimulation and treachery tended not only to instigate so dreadful a massacre, but also served to render its execution more ruthless. At home she laboured with untiring wickedness to extirpate honest Protestantism, while abroad her perfidious policy, in dealing with the Protestants of France and the Netherlands, materially contributed to the creation of such a state of exasperated fanaticism among Catholics, as made so horrible a massacre possible. Froude dwells on this. He remarks how her conduct in playing a double game with France and Spain, with the Prince of Orange and the Netherlands, by turns deceiving all alike, excited the deep distrust of the French Court, which the 1 Hist, of Eng., vi. 137. deceitful negotiations that had taken place respecting her marriage were calculated to heighten rather than to remove or mollify. The Guise faction ruled among the bigoted Paris rabble, and they were opposed to the English alliance, and the marriage of the Queen with the Duke of Anjou, which the Huguenots favoured as likely to s...