1559] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH 493 of the Queen, that nearly all the Bishops ventured to refuse to crown her. The ceremony was performed by Oglethorpe of Carlisle. On the 25th of January 1559, Parliament met. Cecil had not reckoned too much on its Protestant character. No doubt, as was usual, it was in some degree a packed Parliament. It at once proceeded to active measures. The first-fruits, which Mary had resigned, were restored to the Crown, and the necessary subsidies granted. The Lower House, headed by the Speaker, then had an audience with the Queen to entreat her to marry. It seemed to everybody the one necessary thing. Had she died, it was almost certain that Henry of France would make good the claim of his daughter-in-law Mary, and England would be annexed to France. They mentioned no particular suitor, for which she thanked them, while on the general question she replied in an ambiguous answer, saying that the kingdom was her husband, and that she hoped to die a Virgin Queen, but that if she married she would choose a husband who would be as careful of the interests of the nation as she was herself. The Commons seem to have regarded this as a favourable answer, and as implying that she would marry a subject. They then proceeded with their religious reform. A Supremacy Act was at once brought forward, by which the Queen was declared Supreme Head of the Church, and all the jurisdiction of the Papal See was done away. But at first there was considerable difficulty in introducing into it any change of dogma. The clergy had declared against all change, and it was thought decent to hold a public disputation on the matter. This was carried on before Sir Nicholas Bacon, the new Lord Keeper, Cecil's brother-in-law, who was appointed Moderator. The arrangements made told considerably in favour of the Protestants, and, on the Catholic champions refusing to continue the argument unless these arrangements were changed, they were declared vanquished, two of them committed to prison, and the rest ordered to absent themselves from the Court. Unopposed by them, the statute at length passed, declaring the Queen Supreme Head of the Church, repealing the Acts of the late reign which had revived the statutes against heresies,1 and giving the Queen power to appoint commissioners to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For the maintenance of the Act, it was ordered that an oath to accept it would be offered to all ecclesiastical persons, all temporal judges and officers, and any one receiving money of the Queen. At the same time it was made punishable to uphold by express word, deed or writing, any foreign authority in the country. 1 1 & 2 Philip and Mary, c. vi. The next measure was the reform of the Liturgy. The Prayer Book which had been prepared in secret was produced and accepted, and the Act of Uniformity ordered that it should be used in every church, and that all persons inhabiting the realm should attend church under a shilling fine. The work of the last reign was thus undone, and England was again and for ever disunited from the Roman Church. Peace with Cateau Cambrésis. The Queen's courage in refusing Philip, and in pursuing this line of policy so distasteful to him, is the more obvious when we remember that during the same time she was engaged in negotiations in which her chief reliance was on Spanish support. If Spain did not stand her friend, it was impossible for her to hope for the restoration of Calais. In the autumn of the last year, Philip and Henry II., after a fruitless campaign, had both expressed willingness to come to terms, and commissioners had met at Cercamp to discuss the terms of peace: In fact, the condition of their respective dominions1 led them both to observe that a common danger was threatening them, and that all their efforts would be wanted to suppress the rising Protestants. But although thus pacifically disposed, Philip stood honourably by his allies, and there was every chance of a final breach in the negotiations if Calais was not restored. In fact the Spaniards saw plainly that it was much for their interest that that fortress should be held by the English as a check upon France in the direction of the Netherlands. Henry II., under these circumstances, opened a private negotiation with Elizabeth, by the intervention of the Protestant and anti-Guise party in his Court. He wished the negotiations to be carried on in some private village. This Elizabeth refused, and insisted upon the treaty being publicly made, but did not hide from Philip that she intended for her own safety to make a separate peace. This peace was concluded on the 2nd of April; Calais was left in the hands of France, to be restored in eight years, provided the other articles of the peace were kept; if it was not restored, France was to pay five hundred thousand crowns, and the English claim to the throne to continue good; if the English attacked either France or Scotland, the treaty was void. Freed from his difficulties with the English, Philip could conclude his peace with France, which was to be strengthened by a marriage 1 In 1557 persecutions had already begun in France, and after the breaking-up of one Assembly in the Rue St. Jacques, had touched the nobles, while in 1558 public assemblies of five or six thousand had met in the Près-aux-Clercs. 1559] PEACE WITH FRANCE 495 Death of between himself and the French Princess Elizabeth. The treaty, one of the avowed objects of which was the suppression of Protestantism, is called the treaty of Cateau-Cam- Henry II. brésis. At the festivities attending the marriage, Henry July 10, 1559. II. was killed by Montgomery, a Scotch gentleman, with whom he was tilting. His death put upon the throne Francis II., weak both in body and mind; and party questions in France preventing any rapid action, postponed the steps which might otherwise have been taken in favour of Mary the Scotch Princess, now Queen of France. Oath of Before this, the Oath of Supremacy had been tendered to the clergy. All the Bishops but two had declined to accept it and been driven from their sees, which were given to the most learned of the Protestant divines which could be found-Matthew Parker being selected as Archbishop of Canterbury. The lesser clergy had General acceptbeen less scrupulous; only about eighty are said to have ance of the been displaced. So England was still full of an in- Supremacy. fluential class who were secret enemies to the Government. Elizabeth had thus far carried her point successfully. Thanks to the jealousy of France, she had freed herself from Spain without losing its support, while the change of religion in England had been carried out without difficulty. For some time to come it was France and French influence which was to be her great enemy. This she was now ready to meet. The battle was to be fought in Scotland. It is therefore necessary to observe somewhat closely the political condition of that country. From the time of the battle of Pinkie, 1547, all hopes of a friendly arrangement with Scotland had been at an end, and the state of affairs Scotch, in their anger against England, turned to their in Scotland. old alliance with France. In 1550 a peace was made between England and France in which Scotland was included, and the bitter war which had been raging ceased. The French influence was now completely paramount, the young Queen was in France and contracted with the Dauphin, and in the year 1554 Arran was persuaded to resign the regency and his son's claim to the Queen's hand, and Mary of Lorraine, the Queen-Dowager, became Regent. Arran was rewarded for his compliance with the Duchy of Chatelherault. Unable to comprehend the government of a constitutional country, Regency of the Regent relied much on Frenchmen, and tried to Mary of Guise. establish fortresses garrisoned by French in different parts of the country. She attempted also to establish a body-guard as a nucleus for a standing army. All these steps excited the jealousy of the Scotch, and tended to make them hate the French as much as they had formerly hated the English. This feeling was further strengthened by the marriage of Mary with the Dauphin, which was completed in April 1558, with secret arrangements that Scotland should become in reality the possession of the House of Valois. Little more than a year completed this work, for on the death of Henry II. (July 1559) the Dauphin became King of France under the title of Francis II., and Mary of Scotland Queen. The nobles, to whom the power of France had become an object of dread, found support in the growing power of the Reformation. A Rise of the Congregation. united opposition was formed. The party opposed to the French and the eager Reformers made common cause. In December 1557 a document was issued known as the First Covenant, and the leaders of the organization took the title of the Lords of the Congregation. An act of religious persecution brought matters to extremities. Walter M 11, an old man of eighty, was burned, and the Protestant party was roused to fury. The Regent at first temporized, and seemed inclined to give way to them, but instructions from her brothers of the House of Guise,1 now rapidly rising to the chief authority in France, decided her henceforward to oppose the Reformation with all her power. In pursuance of this policy, and in the spirit of the treaties of 1559, she issued a summons to the preachers of Perth to appear before the Privy Council, for having there introduced the Reformation, and read 1559] AFFAIRS IN SCOTLAND 497 They take arms. the service from Edward VI.'s Prayer Book. The preachers did not appear, and were outlawed; probably they offered to appear, but with so large a multitude behind them that the Regent refused to see them. There was at all events a meeting assembled, at Perth, and there John Knox, who had just arrived from France, preached a stirring sermon. A riot was the consequence, in which some religious houses were sacked. This was the work of rioters and not of Reformers, and the nobility, even the Lords of the Congregation, could not refuse to join the Regent to suppress the riot. Argyle, Lord James Stuart, Lord Semple, and other Protestant leaders, advanced against Perth. A compromise was there effected, by which it was arranged that no French troops should enter the city. The Regent evaded these stipulations, and the Lords of the Congregation who had sided with her took the opportunity of joining their old friends. The Lords of the Congregation took up arms; St. Andrews was taken, Fifeshire cleared of the French, and on the 29th of June Edinburgh was occupied. It was certain that assistance would come from France to the Regent, and for their own safety the Lords of the Congregation were obliged to seek the help of Elizabeth. It is thus that Scotland becomes of vital importance to English affairs, as affording the ground on which the interests of England and France came into immediate contact. An alliance with the Scotch malcontents was in the last degree necessary to England. They ask help Elizabeth had of her own accord severed herself from from England. Spanish support. The treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis had even formed a temporary alliance between France and Spain. It was generally expected that the re-establishment of Catholicism in Scotland would be followed by the invasion of England from that country, and the assertion of the right of Mary backed by the whole power of France. The knowledge of this scheme gave significance to the otherwise trifling point that the arms of England were habitually quartered with those of France in all the heraldic decorations of the French Court. But desirable though the alliance was, there were obstacles in the way. Elizabeth hated Knox for a book he had written against the "Regiment of Women," and moreover felt it so necessary to strengthen her possession of the Crown by every available principle, that she was very unwilling to give public countenance to rebels who were calling the Divine right of kings in question. Her Protestant advisers eagerly pressed her to waive her objections, and suggested as a means of removing her scruples that Arran should lay claim to the Scottish throne. With him no longer a rebel, but a pretender |