1558-9.

affection to the memory of King Edward the Sixth'. The AN. REG.1,
choosing of which man to perform that service was able of
itself to give some intimation of the Queen's design to most
of the auditors; though, to say truth, the Bishops refusing to
perform the ceremony of the coronation had made themselves
incapable of a further trust. Nor could the Queen's design

be so closely carried, but that such lords and gentlemen as
had the managing of elections in their several countries re-
tained2 such men for members of the House of Commons as
they conceived most likely to comply with their intentions for a
Reformation. Amongst which none appeared more active than
Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, whom the Queen had taken
into her Council, Henry Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, whom
she continued in the office of Lord Steward, and Sir William
Cecil, whom she had restored to the place of Secretary, to
which he had been raised by King Edward the Sixth. Be-
sides, the Queen was young, unmarried, and like enough to
entertain some thoughts of an husband; so that it can be no
great marvel, not only if many of the nobility, but some even
of the gentry also, flattered themselves with possibilities of
being the man whom she might choose to be her partner in
the regal diadem. Which hopes much smoothed the way to
the accomplishment of her desires, which otherwise might have
proved more rugged and unpassable than it did at the present.
Yet notwithstanding all their care, there wanted not some
rough and furious spirits in the House of Commons, who
eagerly opposed all propositions which seemed to tend unto the
prejudice of the Church of Rome. Of which number none so
violent as Story, Doctor of the Laws, and a great instrument
of Bonner's butcheries in the former reign. Who, being ques-
tioned for the cruelty of his executions, appeared so far from
being sensible of any error which he then committed, as to
declare himself to be sorry for nothing more than that, instead
of lopping off some few boughs and branches, he did not lay
1 To whom Cox had been tutor, sup. i. 25. 2 Qu. "returned ?"
3 Camden, 372; who says that the Romanists represented this as
having been done. The very same sort of management had been used in
the preceding reign. See Queen Mary's letter to the Earl of Sussex before
the Parliament in which the reconciliation with Rome was to be moved.
Burnet, III. ii. 283. On the interference of the Court in elections to the
House of Commons in those days, see Hallam, Const. Hist. i. 45.

1558-9.

New Acts.

AN. REG.1, his axe to the root of the tree1; and though it was not hard to guess at how high a mark the wretch's malice seemed to aim, and what he meant by laying his axe to the root of the tree, yet passed he unpunished for the present, though Divine vengeance brought him in conclusion to his just reward?. Others there were-and doubtless many others also in the House of Commons, who had as great zeal as he to the Papal interess, but either had more modesty in the conduct of it, or preferred their duty and allegiance to their natural Prince before their zeal to the concernments of the Church of Rome. 11. In this Parliament there passed an Act for recognizing the Queen's just title to the Crown3; but without any Act for the validity of her mother's marriage, on which her title most depended. For which neglect most men condemned the new Lord Keeper, on whose judgment she relied especially in point of law; in whom it could not but be looked on as a great incogitancy, to be less careful of her own and her mother's honour than the Ministers of the late Queen Mary had been of hers1. But Bacon was not to be told of an old law maxim, that "the Crown takes away all defects and stops in blood, and that, from the time that the Queen did assume the Crown, the fountain was cleared, and all attainders and corruption of blood discharged 5." Which maxim, how unsafe soever it may seem to others, yet, since it goes for a known rule

1 Fox, vi. 554; Hayw. 25 ; Strype, Ann. i. 70. Camden, Annal. p. 13, ed. 1615, refers Story's speech to the reign of Mary. "Ea tempestate, dum in minoris notæ Protestantes sæviretur, J. Storius, Legum D. et alii ingenio immiti [cf. p. 261] per circulos passim dictitarunt, Haeresis radicem (illam innuentes) exscindendam, non ramusculos amputandos."

He fled to Brabant, and was appointed searcher for English goods at Antwerp. Having been decoyed on board an English vessel in 1569, he was brought back, and committed to prison. In 1571 he was tried for having conspired the Queen's death, having advised the Duke of Alva how to invade England, and other such offences. He refused to submit to a trial, declaring himself a subject not of Elizabeth, but of the king of Spain; and denying that he was accountable in England for what he had done abroad. The judges, however, condemned him, and he was executed at Tyburn. Fuller, iv. 349. Camden in Kennett, ii. 417, 437. Burnet, 11. ii. 555. Fox, viii. 743. Speed, 870.

3 1 Eliz. c. 3.

4 Camd. 25, ed. 1615.

5 "Licet jurisprudentia Anglicana jam olim pronuntiarit Coronam semel susceptam omnes omnino defectus tollere." Ibid.

1558-9.

amongst our lawyers, could not be questioned at that present. AN. REG. 1, 3 And possible it is that he conceived it better for the mar) riage of the Queen's mother to pass unquestioned, as a matter justly subject unto no dispute, than to build the validity of it on no better ground than an Act of Parliament, which might be as easily reversed as it was agreed to. There passed an Act also for restoring to the Crown the tenths and firstfruits', first settled thereon in the time of King Henry the Eighth, and afterwards given back by Queen Mary, as before was said. For the better drawing on of which concession, it was pretended that the patrimony of the Crown had been much dilapidated, and that it could not be supported with such honour as it ought to be, if restitution were not made of such rents and profits as were of late dismembered from it. Upon which ground they also passed an Act for the dissolution of all such monasteries, convents, and religious orders, as had been founded and established by the Queen deceased3. By virtue of which Act the Queen was repossessed again of all those lands which had been granted by her sister to the Monks of Westminster and Shene, the Knights Hospitalers, the Nuns of Sion, together with the mansion-houses re-edified for the Observants at Greenwich, and the Black Friars in Smithfield. Which last, being planted in a house near the dissolved Priory of Great St Bartholomew's, had again fitted and prepared the church belonging thereunto for religious offices; but had scarce fitted and prepared it when dissolved again, and the church afterwards made a parochial church for the use of the Close and such as lived within the verge and precincts thereof. How she disposed of Sion House, hath been shewn already; and what she did with the rich Abbey of Westminster, we shall see hereafter".

4

3 1 Eliz. c. 24. Stow, 640. Holinshed, iv. 185.

Sup. 191. The nuns of Sion retired to the continent, and, after various movements, settled at Lisbon. Fuller, iii. 493. There the convent was kept up until 1810, when its members were driven from Portugal by the war, and sought a refuge in England. "Two or three, advanced in years, were in 1825 living in the vicinity of the Potteries in Staffordshire, the last remnant of an English community dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII." Monast. Angl. vi. 540.

5 Eliz. ii. 26.

AN. REG. 1, 1558-9.

Act of Supremacy.

12. In the passing of these Acts there was little trouble; in the next, there was. For when the Act of the Supremacy1 came to be debated, it seemed to be a thing abhorrent even in nature and polity, that a woman should be declared to be the Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England. But those of the reformed party meant nothing less than to contend about words and phrases, so they might gain the point they aimed at, which was the stripping of the Pope of all authority within these dominions, and fixing the supreme power over all persons and estates, of what rank soever, in the Crown Imperial, -not by the name of Supreme Head, which they perceived night be made liable to some just exceptions; but, which comes all to one, of the Supreme Governess2. Which, when it gave occasion of discourse and descant amongst many of the captious Papists, Queen Mary helped her sister unto one good argument for her justification, and the Queen helped herself to another, which took off the cavil. In the third Session of Parliament in Queen Mary's time, there passed an Act declaring, "That the Regal power was in the Queen's Majesty, as fully as it had been in any of her predecessors3." In the body whereof it is expressed and declared, “That the law of the realm is, and ever hath been, and ought to be, understood, that the kingly or regal office of the realm, and all dignities, prerogatives royal, power, preeminences, privileges, authorities, and jurisdictions thereunto annexed, united, or belonging, being invested either in male or female, are, be, and ought to be, as fully, wholly, absolutely and entirely, deemed, adjudged, accepted, invested, and taken, in the one as1 in the other. So that whatsoever statute or law doth limit or appoint that the King of this realm may or shall have, execute, and do any thing as King, &c., the same the Queen (being Supreme Governess, possessor, and inheritor to the Imperial Crown of this realm) may by the same power have and execute, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, without

1 Eliz. c. 1. Fuller, iv. 264.

Rishton (in Sanders, 275) will not admit that there was any real amendment. Sandys states, in a letter to Parker, that a scruple as to the title of Supreme Head' was put into the Queen's mind by Lever. Burnet, 11. ii. 465.

31 Mar. Sess. iii. c. 1.

4

* Edd. 1, 2, "or."

1559.

doubt, ambiguity, scruple, or question, any custom, use, or any AN. REG. 1, other thing to the contrary notwithstanding." By the very tenor of which Act Queen Mary grants unto her sister as much authority in all Church-concernments as had been exercised and enjoyed by her father and brother according to any Act or Acts of Parliament in their several times. Which Acts of Parliament, as our learned lawyers have declared upon these occasions, were not to be considered as introductory of a new power which was not in the Crown before, but only declaratory 09 of an old, which naturally belonged to all Christian princes, and 281 amongst others to the Kings and Queens of the realm of England'.

13. And to this purpose it is pleaded by the Queen in her
own behalf. Some busy and seditious persons had dispersed
a rumour, that by the Act for recognizing of the Queen's su-
premacy there was something further ascribed unto the Queen,
her heirs, and successors, a power of administering divine
service in the Church, which neither by any equity or true sense
of the words could from thence be gathered; and thereupon
she makes this declaration unto all her subjects :-" That
nothing was or could be meant or intended by the said Act,
than was acknowledged to be due to the most noble King of
famous memory, King Henry the Eighth, her Majesty's father,
or King Edward the Sixth, her Majesty's brother." And fur-
ther she declareth, "That she neither doth nor will challenge
any other authority by the same than was challenged and lately
used by the said two Kings, and was of ancient time due unto
the Imperial Crown of this realm; that is, under God to have
the sovereignty and rule over all persons born within her realms
or dominions, of what estate (either ecclesiastical or temporal)
soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to
have any superiority over them." Which explication, published
in the Queen's Injunctions, anno 15592, not giving such a gene-
ral satisfaction to that groundless cavil as was expected and
intended, the Bishops and Clergy in their Convocation of the
year 1562, by the Queen's authority and consent, declared more
plainly; that is to say, "That they gave not to their Princes3,
1 Coke's 5th Report, p. 8. ed. 1727. (Cawdrey's case.) Comp. Gibson,
Codex, p. 48.
3 Edd."Princess."

2 Wilkins, iv. 188.