QUEEN ELIZABETH SURROUNDED BY HER COURT, as she appeared in her progress to Hunsdon House. vellous wondering of such as knew the presenter, On the very day after her coronation the Protestants pressed her for a declaration of her intentions as to religion. They must have felt alarmed at the Popish celebrations in the Abbey; but it was some time before the cautious queen would in any Holinshed. + Even the Bishop of Carlisle reluctantly consented to put the crown on her head. At her coronation, Elizabeth, of course, partook of the mass; but it appears from one account that she had forbidden the elevation of the host, and that this was probably the cause of the bishops refusing to crown her. By the laws of the Roman church it was cause enough. way commit herself. The following anecdote is the great Bacon's :-"Queen Elizabeth on the morrow of her coronation (it being the custom to release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince) went to the chapel, and, in the great chamber, one of her courtiers, who was well known to her, either out of his own motion, or by the instigation of a wiser man, presented her with a petition, and, before a great number of courtiers, besought her, with a loud voice, that now, this good time, there might be four or five more principal prisoners released: these were the four evangelists and the apostle St. Paul, who had been long shut up in an unknown tongue, as it were in prison; so as they could not converse with the common people. The queen answered very gravely, that it was best first to inquire of themselves whether they would be released or not."* But, before this time, Elizabeth had taken the important step of authorising the reading of the Liturgy in English, and had shown at least a fixed determination to prevent the Catholics from re-lighting the fires at Smithfield. Yet, at the same time, to the scandal of all Protestants, she forbade the destruction of images, kept her crucifix and holy water in her private chapel, and strictly prohibited preaching on controversial points generally, and all preaching whatsoever at Paul's Cross, where, be it said, neither sect had been in the habit of preaching peace and good-will toward men. There was an additional Apophthegms, cause for the queen's slowness and circumspection. Upon the death of her sister the English exiles for religious opinions flocked back to their country with a zeal sharpened by persecution. Of these men many would have carried the Reformation wholly into the path of Calvin and Zuinglius, being disposed, after their theological studies in Switzerland, to dissent widely from the Anglican church as established in the reign of Edward VI.; and, what was not of less importance, some of them thought that the republican system, which they had seen to suit the little cantons among the Alps, would be a preferable form of government for England, and they were well furnished with texts of Scripture to prove the uselessness and wickedness of royalty. In a moment of indecision the queen had directed Sir Edward Carne, her sister's ambassador at Rome, to notify her accession to the pope; and the Protestants must have been delighted and re-assured when Paul IV. hastily replied that he looked upon her as illegitimate, and that she ought therefore to lay down the government, and expect what he might decide. We do not believe that this able woman, from the moment she became aware of the relative strength of the parties, ever intended to remain in the communion of the Roman church; but, if she had been so disposed, the pope certainly took the proper course to prevent it. Ten days after the coronation (on the 25th of January) Elizabeth met her first parliament, with a wise resolution of leaving them to settle the religion of the state, merely giving out, through the able Cecil, and the scarcely less able Sir Nicholas Bacon, now keeper of the seals, what were her real wishes. "The creed of parliament since the time of Henry VIII. had been always the creed of the court, either because elections had constantly been influenced, or because men of adverse principles and different notions in religion had yielded to the torrent, and had left the way clear to the partisans of power."* If this had been the case under rulers of very inferior abilities, there was not likely to be a change under such a princess as Elizabeth. Lords and Commons showed a wonderfully eager desire to adapt themselves to precisely such a church regimen as she in her wisdom might propose. They enacted that the first-fruits and tenths should be restored to the crown, that the queen, notwithstanding her sex,† should, in right of her legitimacy, be supreme head of the church,—that the laws made concerning religion in Edward's time should be re-established in full force, that his Book of Common Prayer in the mother-tongue should be restored and used to the exclusion of all others in all places of worship. The act of supremacy, though the most ridiculous or the most horrible of all to the Catholics on the continent, met with no opposition whatever; but nine temporal peers and the whole bench of bishops protested in the Lords against the bill • Hallam. The ambassador of a Catholic court wrote, with a ludicrous horror, that he had seen the supreme head of the English churchdancing! of uniformity, establishing the Anglican Liturgy, notwithstanding the pains which had been taken to qualify it, and to soften certain passages most offensive to Catholic ears. For example, a prayer, inserted in the reign of Edward, "to deliver us from the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities," was now struck out. At the same time, to conciliate all parties, the words used in distributing the elements were so contrived as neither to offend the Popish or Lutheran, nor the Calvinistic or Zuinglican communicant. A rubric directed against the doctrine of the real presence was omitted, to the avoidance of the long-standing and bitter controversies on this head.* One of the first measures taken up by Queen Mary had been to vindicate the fame of her mother Catherine of Arragon and her own legitimacy; and it was expected that Elizabeth, if only out of filial reverence, would pursue the same course for her mother, Anne Boleyn, who, as the law stood, had never been a lawful wife; but she carefully avoided all discussion on this point, and satisfied herself with an act declaratory, in general terms, of her right of succession to the throne, in which act all the bishops agreed. Acts were passed restoring to the crown the first-fruits and tenths, and empowering the queen upon the avoidance of any bishopric to exchange her tenths and parsonages appropriate within the diocese for an equivalent portion of the landed estates belonging to the see. But the more active of the Protestants were checked and disappointed when they brought a bill into the Commons for the restoration to their sees of Bishops Barlow, Scory, and Coverdale; another, for the revival of former statutes, passed in the reign of Edward VI., authorising the crown to nominate a commission for drawing up a complete body of Church of England canon law; and a third for the restoration of all such clergymen as had been deprived for marriage during the late reign. The last bill was given up by command of Elizabeth herself, who was not Protestant enough to overcome a prejudice against married priests, and who, to the end of her days, could never reconcile herself to married bishops. The two other bills also failed, for the bishops whom it was proposed to restore were married men; and as for the commission for a canonical code, Elizabeth entertained a salutary dread of the zealots. It was not possible altogether to avoid recrimination. Nor did the Catholicsnow the weaker party-on all occasions submit in silence to such castigation. Dr. Story, who had acted as royal proctor in the proceedings against Cranmer, and who had given other proofs of his zeal and intolerance, had the boldness to lament that he and others had not been more vehement in executing the laws against heresy. "It was my counsel," said this doughty priest," that heretics of eminence should be plucked down as well as the ordinary sort, nor do I see anything in all those affairs which ought to make me feel shame or sorrow. My sole grief, indeed, is, that we laboured only about the little twigs: we should have struck at the roots." It was understood that he meant hereby-what, indeed, had been proposed by several-that Elizabeth should have been removed out of the way while her sister lived. Soon after delivering this speech Dr. Story escaped out of the kingdom, and fixed himself at Antwerp under the protection of the Spaniards. There he ought to have been left, particularly as his notions were every day becoming less dangerous; but Elizabeth caused him to be kidnapped, to be brought over to England by stratagem, and executed as a traitor-a proceeding as base as that of her sister Mary with regard to that zealous Protestant refugee Sir John Cheke. Bishop Bonner, notwithstanding the unequivocal marks of the queen's displeasure, attended at his post in parliament, and even presented to the Lord Keeper Bacon certain articles drawn up by the convocation, and endeavoured, in part by ingenious compromises, in part by more open proceedings, to limit the authority of the queen, and maintain that of the pope, in matters of faith and ecclesiastical discipline. Bacon received the said articles courteously, but no further notice was taken of them, and the convocation, after a series of adjournments, separated in dismay. The way in which the parliament had recognised her title was highly satisfactory to Elizabeth; but they were less fortunate in their treatment of another high question. In the course of this session a deputation was sent to her majesty by the Commons with an address, 'the principal matter whereof most specially was to move her grace to marriage, whereby to all their comforts they might enjoy the royal issue of her body to reign over them." Elizabeth received the deputation in the great gallery of her palace at Westminster, called the Whitehall; and when the Speaker of the House of Commons had solemnly and eloquently set forth the message, she delivered a remarkable answer-the first of her many public declarations of her intention to live and die a virgin queen" From my years of understanding, knowing myself a servitor of Almighty God, I chose this kind of life, in which I do yet live, as a life most acceptable unto him, wherein I thought I could best serve him, and with most quietness do my duty unto him. From which my choice, if either ambition of high estate offered unto me by marriages (whereof I have records in this presence), the displeasure of the prince, the eschewing the danger of mine enemies, or the avoiding the peril of death (whose messenger, the prince's indignation, was no little time continually present before mine eyes, by whose means if I knew, or do justly suspect, I will not now utter them; or, if the whole cause were my sister herself I will not now charge the dead), could have drawn or dissuaded me, I had not now remained in this virgin's estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I • Holinshed.-Strype.-Burnet, always continued in this my determination that (although my words and youth may seem to some hardly to agree together), yet it is true that to this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present. In which state and trade of living wherewith I am so thoroughly acquainted God hath so hitherto preserved me, and hath so watchful an eye upon me, and so hath guided me and led me by the hand, as my full trust is, he will not suffer me to go alone." After these somewhat roundabout, ambiguous, and ascetic expressions-which were anti-Protestant inasmuch as they showed a preference for a single life-she gave the Commons a foretaste of that absolute and imperative tone which she soon adopted :-"The manner of your petition," said she, "I do like, and take in good part, for it is simple and containeth no limitation of place or person. If it had been otherwise I must have misliked it very much and thought it in you a very great presumption, being unfit and altogether unm.eet to require them that may command." In still plainer terms she told them that it was their duty to obey, and not to take upon themselves to bind and limit her in her proceedings, or even to press their advice upon her. As if doubting whether the Commons would rely on her determination of never marrying, she assured them that at all events she would never choose a husband but one who should be as careful for the realm and their safety as she herself was; and she made an end of a very long speech by saying," And for me it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin."* At this moment Elizabeth had received one matrimonial proposal, the strangest of the many that were made to her! When she announced to King Philip the death of his wife and her own accession, that monarch, regardless of canonical laws, made her an instant offer of his own hand; for, so long as he could obtain a hold upon England, he cared little whether it was through a Mary or an Elizabeth. With a duplicity which was the general rule of her conduct she gave Philip a certain degree of hope, for she was very anxious to recover Calais through his means, and England was still involved in a war both with France and Scotland on his account. It would besides have been dangerous to give the Spaniard any serious offence at this moment. On the 8th of May Elizabeth's first parliament was dissolved, and, on the 15th of the same month, the bishops, deans, and other churchmen of note, were summoned before the queen and her privy council, and there admonished to make themselves and their dependants conformable to the statutes which had just been enacted. Archbishop Heath replied by reminding her majesty of her sister's recent reconciliation with Rome, and of her own promise not to change the religion which she found by law established; and he told her that • Holinshed. church. The first was accompanied by an oath which no conscientious Catholic could take, all that class being bound to believe that, in spiritual matters at least, the pope and the ancient councils of the church were supreme over every lay sovereign;* and yet to refuse this oath was to forfeit all hope of rising in the state, and to lose one's rights as a citizen, while to challenge the supremacy was highly penal, and in certain cases treasonable. The second statute trenched more on the natural rights of conscience: it prohibited, under pain of forfeiting goods and chattels for the first offence, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and of imprisonment for life for the third, the using of any but the established liturgy of the church of England; and it moreover imposed a fine of 1s. on every one that should absent himself from the only true Protestant church on Sunday and holidays.+ By this act, the Catholic rites, however privately celebrated, were interdicted, and priests and monks who celebrated mass, and prayed in the old fashion, had a mark set upon them to be hunted like wild beasts. In some respects, where it was not deemed expedient to irritate persons of very high rank, the government connived at the secret or domestic exercise of the Roman religion; but such cases were rare even in the early part of Elizabeth's reign; and the restored Protestant clergy, who had learned no toleration from their own sufferings, propelled the agents of government into the paths of persecution-a persecution not fiery hot, and bloody, like that of the late reign, but petty, minute, destructive of individual liberty, household independand too often of property. ence, domestic peace, his conscience would not suffer him to obey her | pressed so heavily upon the adherents to the Roman present commands. All the bishops took precisely the same course as Heath; and the government, which evidently had expected to win over the majority of them, was startled at their unanimous opposition. To terrify them into compliance, certain papers, which had been sealed up in the royal closet at the death of the late queen, were produced by advice of the Earl of Sussex; and these documents, which had lain dormant during two short reigns, were found, or were made, to contain proofs that Heath, Bonner, and Gardiner, during the protectorate of Somerset, had carried on secret intrigues with Rome, with the view of overthrowing the English government of that time. But this was a weak resource: the bishops, feeling themselves screened by two general pardons from the crown, continued as firm as ever; and the council wisely determined that these papers could not fairly be acted upon, and resolved to proceed merely upon the oath of supremacy, which they saw the It prelates were determined to refuse at all costs. appears that this oath was first offered to Bonner on the 30th of May. Bonner refused to swear, upon which proceedings were instituted to deprive him of his bishopric. In the course of a few months the oath was tendered to the rest, and they all refused it most decidedly, with the single exception of Kitchen, Bishop of Landaff, who had held that see since 1545, through all changes, and who was determined to keep it." A considerable number of subordinate church dignitaries were also deprived by means of this test; but the great body of the clergy complied when, in the course of the summer, the queen appointed a general visitation to compel the observance of the new Protestant formularies. By a measure even more politic than it was liberal, pensions were reserved for those who quitted their benefices on account of religion. Many of the exiles during the Marian persecution now obtained good livings, and the vacant bishoprics were mainly filled by the more learned members of this body. Before the end of 1559 the English church, so long_contended for, was lost for ever to the Papists.† In the course of the same year the two statutes, commonly denominated the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, were converted into the firm basis of that restrictive code of laws which, for more than two centuries, • Kitchen, who was originally a Benedictine monk, always believed or professed according to the last act of parliament, which meant the last enunciation of the royal will. In the time of Henry VIII, when he received the see, he professed the mitigated Romanism held by that monarch; in the time of Edward VI. he became a complete Protestant; and when Mary came to the crown he turned back to the point from which he had originally started, and became once more a thorough Papist. Now he turned Protestant again, and was allowed to keep the bishopric of Landaff to the year 1563, when he died.-Soames. + Burnet.-Strype.-Soames.--Blunt.-Hallam. It appears from the report of the ecclesiastical visitors that only about one hundred dignitaries and eighty parish priests resigned their benefices or were deprived of them at this great period of change. But in the course of a few years many others resigned or were driven from their posts as much by the people as by the government. "It may be added, also." says Mr. Hallam, "that the visitors now restored the married clergy who had been dispossessed in the preceding reign, which would of course considerably augment the number of sufferers for popery."-Const. Hist. VOL. II. As early as 1561, Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady were sent to the Tower for hearing mass The oath of supremacy was expressed as follows:-" I, A. B., do utterly testify and declare, that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and all other her highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal; and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictious, powers, superiorities, and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the queen's highness, her heirs and lawful successors, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges, and authorities, granted or belonging to the queen's highness, her heirs and successors, or united and annexed to the imperial crown of this realm." "The Catholics said that Elizabeth was thus making herself a she lay-pope; and there were expressions in this oath of supremacy unacceptable to those English Protestants who had imbibed abroad, in the school of Calvin, an apprehension of the merging of all spiritual powers, even those of ordination and preaching, in the paramount authority of the sovereign-a state of things towards which the despotism of Henry VIII. and the obsequiousness of Cranmer had seemed to bring the reformed church of England." (Hallam, Const. Hist.) In the injunctions to the ecclesiastical visitors in the summer of 1559, some pains were taken to remove these apprehensions, and the law of supremacy was diligently expounded. Her Majesty forbade her subjects to give credit to such malicious persons as attempted to prove that, by the words of the said oath, it might be derived that she meant to challenge authority and power of ministry of divine service in the church.' The true meaning of the oath and act wasso, at least, she now asserted-" to have the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons born within these her realms, dominions, and countries, of what estate, either ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any supe. riority over them."-Somers's Tracts, Scott's Edit. Stat. 1st Eliz. c. 2. 4 A and keeping a Popish priest in their house. Many others were punished for the same offence about the same time. The penalty for causing mass to be said was only a hundred marks for the first offence, but these cases seem to have been referred to the Protestant high commission court, and the arbitrary Star Chamber, whose violence, however illegal, was not often checked. About a year after the committal of Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady, two zealous Protestant bishops wrote to the council to inform them that a priest had been apprehended in a lady's house, and that neither he nor the servants would be sworn to answer to articles, saying they would not accuse themselves. After which these Protestant prelates add,-" Some do think that if this priest might be put to some kind of torment, and so driven to confess what he knoweth, he might gain the queen's majesty a good mass of money by the masses that he hath said; but this we refer to your lordship's wisdom."* It is to the greatly increasing puritanism of the country, did not actually eject organs, and forbid the use of music and of all psalmody whatever, except such as was strictly congregational; but it discarded the graces and high ornaments of the science, and reduced church music to a very naked simplicity. Another of the injunctions seems to prove, what might have been expected, that the learning of the parochial clergy had not increased under the changes and spoliations of the church, for it expressly enjoins that "such as are but mean readers shall peruse over before hand, once or twice, the chapters and homilies, to the intent they may read to the better understanding of the people, and the more encouragement of godliness." Meanwhile the monastic establishments were universally broken up; three whole convents of monks and nuns were transferred from England to the continent; many of the dispossessed clergy were conveyed to Spain in the retinue of Feria, the Spanish ambassador, who exerted himself in their favour, and the deprived bishops were committed to safe keeping in England. The number of these prelates was not so considerable as might have been supposed. Through various circumstances, but chiefly by deaths, (for the recent epidemic had been very fatal to elderly persons,) there were many vacancies at Elizabeth's accession, so that (Kitchen, of Landaff, as already mentioned, being allowed to retain his see) all the bishops that she had to deprive were, fourteen in actual possession, and three bishops elect. For some time after their deprivation these prelates were left to themselves, and their poverty; but on the 4th of December (1559) Heath, Bonner, Bourn, Tuberville, and Poole imprudently drew upon themselves the queen's attention by presenting a petition, in which, after praising her virtuous sister, Queen Mary of dishonest to deny so obvious a fact, nor can the denial now serve any purpose: it was this commencement of persecution that drove many English Catholics beyond the seas, and gave rise to those associations of unhappy and desperate exiles which continued to endanger the throne of Elizabeth even down to the last years of her long reign. But that persecution would most assuredly have been ten-fold more fierce than it was, had it not been checked by the wise policy of the queen, Cecil, Bacon, Walsingham, and others, her great ministers and advisers, who had repeatedly to bear from the Protestants the taunt of being lukewarm in the true faith. In the same year, 1559, which saw the enforcing of the statutes of supremacy and uniformity, the queen published certain injunctions after the manner of those of her brother, and, for the better part, expressed in the very same words as those of Edward, twelve years before. There was, how-happy memory, who, being troubled in conscience ever, a greater decency of language in several of the clauses, and the church of Rome was treated with more courtesy than in Edward's time. The vulgar expression" of kissing and licking of images" was altered, the word "licking" being expunged. The words which declared the power of the pope in England to be "justly rejected, extirpated, and taken away utterly," were softened to "justly rejected and taken away." According to Edward's commands, images, shrines, pictures, and the like, were to be destroyed, nor was any memory of the same to be left in walls and glass windows. Elizabeth enjoined that "the walls and glass windows shall be nevertheless preserved." In the supplementary clauses added to the injunctions of Edward, there was one sufficiently violent against the growth of heresies, one against disturbing the congregation by disputation or otherwise in sermon-time, and a third for the better regulation of singing in churches. This last clause, which has been considered as a concession • Burleighe, State Papers. We regret to say that one of these two bishops was the learned Grindal, Bishop of London, who had been an exile for conscience' sake in the time of Mary. with what her father's and brother's advisers had These injunctions are printed at length in Bishop Sparrow's |