<1>The first eight centuries of English history were centuries of national consolidation. Gradually petty tribes were merged in larger kingdoms, and 449–1272.National consolidation.kingdoms were merged in the nation. The Norman Conquest, which created a fresh antagonism of race, softened down territorial antagonisms. Then followed the process by which the English and the Norman races were fused into one. In the reign of Henry II. the amalgamation had been completed, and the union between classes was strengthened by the bond of a common resistance to the tyranny of John, and to the subserviency of Henry III. to foreign interests. Fortunately for England she found in the son of Henry III. a king who was a thorough Englishman and who was as capable as he was patriotic.
When Edward I. reached man’s estate, he found his countrymen prepared to rush headlong into civil war. When he died, 1272–1307.Reign of Edward I.he left England welded together into a compact and harmonious body. It was the result of the early consolidation of the state and nation that, however necessary a strong royal authority still was, the duty of directing the course of progress could be safely entrusted to <2>the nation itself. It was not here, as it was in France, that the choice lay only between a despotic king and a turbulent and oppressive baronage — between one tyrant and a thousand. A king ruling in accordance with law, and submitting his judgment to the expressed will of the national council, so that the things which concerned all might be approved of by all, was the ideal of government which was accepted by Edward I.
The materials of a Parliamentary constitution were no doubt ready to The Parliaments of Edward I.Edward’s hand. The great councils of the Norman kings were no more than the Witenagemots of earlier times in a feudal shape, as by subsequent modifications they ultimately took the form of the modern House of Lords. During the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons, they were occasionally held. Under Henry II. they met more frequently, to take part in the great questions of the time, and to give their sanction to the reforms proposed by the king. When John and his son were upon the throne, the great barons saw the necessity of uniting themselves in their opposition to the Government with the lesser knights and freeholders, and accordingly, at that time, representatives of this class began to be present at their meetings. Towards the end of the contest Simon of Montfort summoned burgesses from a few towns which were likely to support his party. The advantages to be derived from these changes did not escape the sagacious mind of Edward. Without a single afterthought, or reservation of any kind, he at once accepted the limitation of his own powers. To the Parliament thus formed he submitted his legislative enactments. He requested their advice on the most important administrative measures, and even yielded to them, though not without some reluctance, the last remnant of his powers of arbitrary taxation.
He had his reward. Great as were his achievements in peace and war, the English Parliamentary government.Parliament of England was the noblest monument ever reared by mortal man. Perhaps the day may come when that Parliament will think that the statue of Edward ought to occupy the place in Palace Yard which has been so unworthily taken possession of by the one among our long line of sovereigns who has the least <3>claim to be represented in connection either with Westminster Hall or with the Houses of Parliament. Many things have changed, but in all main points the Parliament of England, as it exists at this day, is the same as that which gathered round the great Plantagenet. It is especially the same in that which forms its chief glory, that it is the representative not of one class, or of one portion of society alone, but of every class and of every portion which, at any given time, is capable of representation. Every social force which exists in England makes its weight felt within the walls of Parliament. The various powers of intellect, of moral worth, of social position and of wealth find their expression there. Lords and prelates, knights and burgesses, join, as they have ever joined, in making laws, because each of these classes of men is capable of forming an opinion of its own, which in its turn is sure to become an element in the general opinion of the country; and because each of them is destined to share in the duty of carrying into execution the laws which have been made.
Nor was it of less importance that those who came up to Parliament should come, not on behalf of their own petty interests, but as representatives of their common country. Happily, the men who composed the Parliament of Edward I. had learned this lesson in opposition to a long course of arbitrary power, and they were not likely to forget it when they were summoned to share the counsels of a truly national king. So it was that the step which seemed to divide the powers of the State, and in the eyes of some would appear likely to introduce weakness into its government, only served to increase its strength. Edward was a far more powerful Sovereign than his father, not so much by the immeasurable superiority of his genius, as because he placed the basis of his authority on a broader footing.
Yet, wide as the basis of government had become, England in the fourteenth century 1307–1399.Necessity of a strong monarchy.could not afford to dispense with a strong monarchy. The aim of the nation was not, as it afterwards became in the seventeenth century, the restriction of the powers exercised by the Government, but the obtaining of guarantees that those powers should <4>be exercised in the interests, not of the Sovereign, but of the nation. Hence the popularity of every king of England who made it his object to fulfil the duties of his office. A Sovereign who neglected those duties, or one who made use of his high position as a means to pamper his own appetites, or those of his favourites, was alike ruinous to the fortunes of the rising nation. England needed a strong hand to hold the reins, and it knew well what its need was. At all costs a government must be obtained, or anarchy would break out in its wildest forms. What the people felt with regard to the royal office Illustration from ‘Piers Ploughman.’was admirably expressed by a writer who lived in the latter part of the reign of Edward III. After telling the well-known fable of the attempt made by the rats to bell the cat,[1] he proceeds to add a sequel of his own. In his story the cat, of course, represents the king, the rats stand for the nobles, and the mice for the common people. He informs us that after the council of the rats had broken up, a little mouse stepped forward to address the assembly, which then consisted of a large number of mice. He warned them that they had better take no part in any attempt against the life, or even against the power, of the cat. He had often been told by his father of the great misery which prevailed when the cat was a kitten. Then the rats gave the mice no rest. If the cat injured a mouse or two now and then, at all events he kept down the number of the rats.
It was difficult in a hereditary monarchy to find a worthy successor to Edward I. The later Plantagenet kings.Edward II. was deservedly deposed. His son, Edward III., kept England in peace at home by engaging it in a war of foreign conquest. Richard II. succumbed to the difficulties of his situation, augmented by his own incapacity for the task of government.
The Revolution of 1399 placed the family of 1399–1485.The Lancastrian kings.Lancaster on the throne. Ruling as it did by a Parliamentary title, it was unable to control the power of the great barons. Parliament was strong, but in Parliament the weight of the House of Lords was superior to that of the <5>House of Commons, and the lay members of the House of Lords had an interest in diminishing the power of the king, in order that they might exalt their own at the expense of the classes beneath them. Complaints that the kingdom was undone for want of governance were increasingly heard, and waxed louder than ever when the sceptre fell into the hands of a ruler so weak as Henry VI.
In the Wars of the Roses which followed, the great lords, though nominally defending the crown of their Sovereign, were in reality The Wars of the Roses.fighting for themselves. Personal considerations, no doubt, often decided the part which was taken by individuals in the wars of the Roses, but in the main the aristocracy was Lancastrian, whilst the strength of the House of York lay in the lesser gentry, and the inhabitants of the towns. To the Percies and the Cliffords it was an advantage that there was no king in the land. To the humbler classes it was a matter of life and death that a strong hand should be ever on the watch to curb the excesses of the nobility. As long as the struggle was between a Yorkist king and the incapable Henry, there was no doubt which was the popular hero. When the question narrowed itself into a merely personal struggle between two competitors of equal ability, the people stood aloof, and left it to a handful of interested persons to decide at Bosworth the disputed right to the crown of England.
With 1485–1509.Henry VII.Henry VII. the Tudor dynasty ascended the throne. He took up the work which the kings of the House of York had essayed to accomplish — that of establishing a strong monarchy, powerful enough to suppress anarchy, and to hinder the great nobles from pillaging and ill-treating the middle classes. By putting in force the The Statute of Liveries.Statute of Liveries, Henry VII. threw obstacles in the way of the formation of feudal armies wearing the uniform of their lord. By the enlarged jurisdiction which he gave to the The Star Chamber.Court of Star Chamber, he reached culprits too high to be made amenable to the ordinary processes of law. That Court, unpopular as it afterwards became, was now employed in a popular cause. It brought down <6>punishment on the heads of the great, when it was difficult to find a jury which would not be hindered by fear or affection from bringing in a verdict against them, even if it could be supported by the strongest evidence.
Such a work could not be done by a weak king. The middle class — the country gentry and the tradesmen — Strength of the Tudor Monarchy.were strong enough to give support to the sovereign, but they had not as yet that organisation which would have made them strong independently of him. In consequence, the king who gave them security was reverenced with no common reverence. Because very few wished to resist him, those who lifted hand against him fell under the general reprobation. Henry VII., and still more 1509–1547.Henry VIII.Henry VIII., were therefore able to do many things which no king had ever done before. They could wreak their vengeance on those who were obnoxious to them, sometimes under the cover of the law, sometimes without any pretext of law. Their rule was as near an approach to despotism as has ever been known in England. But heavily as the yoke pressed on individuals it pressed lightly on the nation. One word which has come down to us from those times is sufficient to point out the nature of the power which men understood to be entrusted to the Tudor kings. Even when their acts were most violent, the name by which what we should call ‘the nation’ was spoken of was ‘the commonwealth.’ Every class, even the king himself, had a position of its own; but each was expected to contribute to the well-being of the whole. Above all, the king had no standing army, still less a body of foreign mercenaries to depend on. His force rested entirely upon public opinion, and that opinion, inert as it was on questions affecting individual rights, was prompt to take alarm when general interests were at stake.
The specially constitutional work of Henry VIII. was the admission of the House of Commons to a Increasing power of the House of Commons.preponderating influence in Parliament. No doubt he filled the House with his own creatures, and he suggested, and even put into shape, the measures adopted by it. For all that, the general tone of the House was the tone of the nation <7>outside, and before the expression of its wishes the House of Peers was compelled to give way. The submission of that which had hitherto in reality, as well as in name, been the Upper House was disguised by the exclusion of a large number of its clerical members through the dissolution of the monasteries, and by the creation of several new peerages in favour of men who had risen by the King’s favour from the middle class.
The growth of the sentiment of national unity had, during the Middle Ages, gradually weakened the hold of England and the Papacy.the Papacy on England. The refusal of Clement VII. to approve of the divorce of Henry VIII. brought the long contest to a crisis. The work commenced when the Conqueror refused to pay Peter’s Pence at the bidding of Gregory VII., and, carried on by Henry II., by Edward I., and by the authors of the statutes of Provisors and Premunire, was brought to an end by the Act of Appeals and the Act of Supremacy. Ecclesiastical independence attained.England was, in ecclesiastical as well as in civil affairs, to be a nation complete in itself. The great object for which the nation had been striving for centuries was at last attained. The supremacy of the national Government over all individual men, and over all separate classes, was achieved.
Henry had no intention of allowing any change of doctrine in the English Church, but it was impossible for him to stop the force of the currents which were influencing the thoughts of his generation. The very consolidation of national power which had weakened the papal organisation, had also sapped the spiritual basis on which it rested. Over all Western Europe Aspirations of the Middle Ages.one uniform tendency of thought was at the bottom of every movement during the whole course of the Middle Ages. To check the unruly riot of individual will, and to reach the firm ground of unity and order, was the one prevailing aspiration which manifested itself in all departments of human endeavour. The architects of those cathedrals which were springing up in their beauty in every corner of Europe took care, however irregular the ground plan of the building might be, to lead the eye to one tall spire or tower which <8>might give unity to their work. The one great poet[2] produced by the Middle Ages worshipped order and arrangement till he, a citizen of Italian Florence, was absolutely driven to call upon a German prince to bring under some kind of law, however rugged, the too luxuriant humours of the burghers of Italian cities. As it was with medieval poetry, so was it with medieval science. Proud of its new-found pre-eminence, the mind of man sat enthroned upon a height from whence it summoned all things human and divine to appear before it, and to give themselves up to the strict laws and the orderly classification which were to be imposed upon them. There were to be no obstinate questionings of the wild vagaries of nature, no reverent confession of inability to comprehend all its mysteries. The mind of man was greater than the material world, and by logic it would comprehend it all. Religion could not fail to follow in the same direction. The ideal of a people is generally composed of every element which is most opposed to the evils of their actual existence. With a people scarcely escaped from barbarism, that form of self-denial could hardly fail to be considered as the highest virtue which is shown, not in active exertion, but in bringing into obedience the unruly passions and the animal desires. The one way to the hearts of men lay through asceticism, and asceticism was only to be found in perfection in the monastery. The body was to be condemned to a living death, and the spirit alone was to live. The greatest saint was not the man who was most useful to the Church, but the man who showed the greatest mastery over all fleshly desires, and had most entirely cast off the feelings of our common nature: for it was this very power of self-restraint which was most difficult of attainment by the impetuous spirit of the ordinary layman. When kings foamed at the mouth and cursed and swore at every trivial disappointment, it was only natural that the most respected of the clergy should wear hair-shirts and live like anchorites. Religious thought followed in the wake of religious practice. There was one faith drawn out <9>with the most complete exactness to the most infinitesimal consequences, which the greatest minds might illustrate, but from which they might not vary a hairbreadth. In every land one worship ascended to God, clothed in the same holy forms, and offered in the same sacred tongue. Men and the thoughts of men might change as the changing billows of the sea, but there was that amongst them which never changed. To Englishman and Italian, to baron and serf, it told one tale, and inculcated one lesson of submission to Him whose kingdom was above all the earthly distractions and commotion in the midst of which their lives were passed.
At last a great change came. The craving for discipline found its satisfaction in the institutions of the State. Reaction against asceticism. The new learning.Everywhere there was a reaction against asceticism, which sought by crushing human nature to win a glimpse of heaven. Once more, as in the ancient world, man, and the world in which he lives, became the highest object of the thought of man. The barriers by which the old world had been hemmed in fell back, and the wonders of creation revealed themselves in all their infinite glory on every hand. The boundaries of the earth receded before the hardy mariners of Spain and Portugal, and the secret of the skies disclosed itself to Copernicus. The works of the great masters of ancient thought were once more subjected to a minute and reverent study. An architecture arose which was regardless of all religious symbolism, but which based itself on the strictest observance of mechanical law. Great artists enchanted the world by painting men and women as they lived and moved.
In Italy the new learning found itself in opposition to the dominant religion. In England, where the Church had long blended with the world around it, Course of the English Reformation.there was no such violent shock of opinion. Colet and More strove to reconcile the old world with the new, and to mingle the life of a recluse with the life of a student. It was this effort to harmonise separate modes of thought which was the distinguishing mark of the English Reformation. If More shrunk back in this path, there were others who were ready to <10>press on. Gradually, but surely, the received practices, and even received doctrines, were brought to the test of human reason and human learning. At first it was only plainly superstitious usages and impostures which were rejected. Later on the doctrines of the Church were explained in such a way as to meet logical objections, whilst Cranmer, intellectually bold if he was morally weak, was preparing himself by long study of the writings of the teachers of the early Church, to renounce transubstantiation itself as inconsistent, not with the plain words of Scripture, but with those words as interpreted by the practice of the first ages of the Church.
The spirit of the new learning had thus drifted away from the asceticism of earlier days. It found an ally in Protestantism.the spirit of Protestantism. Luther had expressed the central thought of Protestantism when he proclaimed the doctrine of Justification by Faith; it was the exact converse of the religious idea of the Middle Ages. If you would be spiritual, said the monks, put the body to death, and the spirit will see God and live. Let the spirit live in seeing God, said Luther, and the body will conform itself to His will.
This teaching of the direct personal relationship between man and his Creator, was gradually to permeate the English Church. Its introduction into England Difficulties of Henry VIII.made government a hard task. Henry VIII. found himself confronted with the duty of keeping the peace between warring parties. The bulk of his subjects detested innovations, and wished to worship and to believe as their fathers had done. The Protestants were not numerous, but they were energetic. The teaching of Luther soon gave way to the teaching of Zwingli, which was even more antagonistic to the ancient creed; its disciples attacked, sometimes with gross scurrility, principles and habits which were dear to the vast majority of Englishmen.
Amidst these warring elements, Henry felt it to be his duty to keep the peace. He sent to the scaffold those who maintained the authority of the Pope, and who, by so doing, assailed the national independence. He sent to the stake those who preached new doctrines, and, by so doing, assailed the national unity. The work was done <11>roughly and clumsily; oaths were tendered which never should have been tendered, and blood was shed which never should have been shed. With some higher motives was mingled the greed which marked out as booty the broad abbey lands, which were divided between Henry and his court. But Henry a representative ruler.Henry’s strength was, in the main, the result of his representative character. The great mass of his subjects disliked foreign interference as much as they disliked Protestant opinions. Toleration impossible.Toleration was impossible, not merely because the suppression of heresy had long been held to be the bounden duty of all who exercised authority, but because there was every reason to believe that if new opinions were allowed to take root, and to acquire strength, those who held them would at once begin to persecute the vanquished followers of the old creed.
Henry’s resolute action doubtless did much to steady the current of change, but he could not stay it. Causes beyond the control of any human being were propelling the nation forwards. The reaction against the medieval system of thought could not be checked. 1547–1553.Edward VI.When Henry died, that reaction came in as a flood. In the first, and still more in the second, Prayer-Book of Edward VI., the two tendencies of the age met. The individuality of religion was guided by the critical spirit of the new learning. It was not to be expected that such work could be carried on without giving offence. The majority of Englishmen looked on with alarm when images were torn down in the churches, and when prayers which knew nothing of the sacrifice of the mass were read in English. The selfishness and corruption of those who governed in Edward’s name did the rest; and when Edward died, Mary was welcomed as a restorer of a popular Church, and of honest government.
Five years after Mary’s accession 1553–1558.Reign of Mary.the nation had grown weary of the yoke to which it had again submitted. By her marriage with Philip she offended the national feeling of the country. By threatening to resume the abbey lands she terrified the men who had made their fortunes by the Reformation. Above all, the sufferings of the <12>martyrs warmed the hearts of the people into admiration for a faith which was so nobly attested. The seeds which had been sown by the Protestants during their brief season of prosperity in Edward’s reign were beginning to spring up into life. Patriotism, selfishness, humanity, and religious faith combined to foster the rising disgust which threatened to shake the throne of Mary, and which at last found its expression in the shout of triumphant joy which greeted the accession of her sister.
Soon after Elizabeth ascended the throne the second Prayer Book of Edward VI. was, with some not unimportant amendments, 1558–1603.Elizabeth suppresses the Roman Catholic worship.declared to be the only form of prayer to be used in churches. Opinion, it was announced, was to be practically free, but all must go to church, and the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship was rigidly suppressed.[3] The Queen had no wish to deal hardly with those who remained steadfast in the religion of their fathers, and she trusted to time and the dying out of the old generation to make the whole nation unanimous in accepting the new worship. She herself took no interest in theological reasoning, and she miscalculated the power which it still exercised in the world.
It was not long before Conspiracies supported by the Pope and the King of Spain.conspiracies broke out within the realm, and from without the tidings came that the Pope had excommunicated the Queen, and had absolved her subjects from their allegiance. In the background appeared Philip of Spain, the champion of the Holy See. For us, who know the issue of the conflict, it is almost impossible to realise the feeling of dismay with which that mighty potentate was regarded by the greatest of the Powers of Europe. There did not exist a nation which was not overawed by the extent of his territories. By means of Naples and the Milanese he held Italy in a grasp of iron. Franche Comté <13>and the Low Countries served him to keep both France and Germany in check. The great mercantile cities of Flanders — the Manchesters and Liverpools of the sixteenth century — paid him tribute. His hereditary dominions furnished him with the finest infantry which had been seen in Europe since the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Whatever life and intellectual vigour still remained in Italy was put forth in furnishing officers for armies which fought in causes that were not her own, and those officers England is threatened by the vast powers in the hands of Philip II.were at the disposal of the King of Spain. Nor was his power, like that of Napoleon, limited by the shore. His fleet had won the victory which checked the Turkish navy at Lepanto. The New World was, as yet, all his own; and, as soon as Portugal had been added to his dominions, all that that age knew of maritime enterprise and naval prowess was undertaken under the flag of Spain. Great as his power was in reality, it was far greater to the imagination. It is no wonder that the English people, when they found themselves exposed to the attacks of such an adversary, The growing respect for toleration gives way.gradually forgot those new principles of partial toleration which had not yet settled deeply into the national mind. The doctrine put forth at the accession of Elizabeth was, that conscience was free, although the public exercise of any other than the established religion was to be suppressed. Unsatisfactory as this was, it was yet an immense advance upon the opinions which had prevailed thirty years before. By degrees, however, the Government and the Parliament alike receded from this position. As early as in 1563 an Act was passed by which the bishops were empowered to tender the oath of supremacy, not only to persons holding Church preferment or official positions in the State, but to large bodies of men; and it was enacted that all who refused the oath should be visited with severe penalties.
The position of Elizabeth was still further complicated by the untoward occurrence of the flight of Mary Stuart in England.Mary Stuart into England. She did not come, as has been often imagined, as a humble suppliant in search of a refuge from her enemies. She came breathing vengeance upon the <14>nation by which she had been deposed, and demanding either an English army to replace her on the throne, or permission to seek similar assistance from the King of France. Elizabeth hesitated long. She could not, even if she had wished it, grant her the assistance of an English force; and to look on while she was being restored by a French army was equally impossible in the condition in which European politics were at the time. With Mary’s claims to the English crown, a French conquest of Scotland would only have been the precursor of a French attempt to conquer England.
After long deliberation, Elizabeth chose the alternative which for the time seemed to be most prudent. Her imprisonment and execution.She must have come at last to doubt the wisdom of her decision. While Mary was lying within the walls of an English prison, her name became a tower of strength to the Papal party throughout Europe. The tale of her life, told as it was in every Catholic society, was listened to as if it had been one of the legends of the Saints. Every tear she dropped put a sword into the hands of the Pope and the Spaniard. There was not a romantic youth in Catholic Europe who did not cherish the hope of becoming the chosen instrument by whose hands deliverance might reach the victim of heretical tyranny. Jesuits and missionary priests swarmed over from the Continent, and whispered hopes of victory in the ears of their disciples. Incessant attempts were made to assassinate Elizabeth. At last the end drew near; the only end which could well have come of it. Louder and louder the voice of England rose, demanding that the witch who had seduced so many hearts should not be suffered to live. After a long struggle, Elizabeth gave way. The deed was done which none of those had contemplated who, nineteen years before, had joined in recommending the detention of the Scottish Queen, although it was only the logical consequence of that fatal error.
If the Government and people of England dealt thus with Mary herself, they were Ill-treatment of the Catholics.not likely to treat with mildness the supporters of her claims. Act after Act was passed, each harsher than the last, against priests who should attempt to reconcile any subject of the Queen to the <15>See of Rome, or should even be found engaged in the celebration of mass. The laity were visited with fines, and were frequently subjected to imprisonment. Harsh as these proceedings were, the mere fact that it was thought necessary to justify them shows the change which had taken place since Henry VIII. was upon the throne. Neither the arguments put forward by the Government, nor those by which they were answered, were by any means satisfactory. We shake our heads incredulously when we hear a priest from Douai urging that he was merely a poor missionary, that he was a loyal subject to the Queen, and that, if success attended his undertaking, it would be followed by no political change.[4] We are no less incredulous when we hear Burghley asserting that the Government contented itself with punishing treason, and that no religious question was involved in the dispute.
The old entanglement between the temporal and the spiritual powers was far too involved to be set loose by argument.[5] Such questions can be decided by the sword alone. The nation was in no mood to listen to scholastic disputations. Every year which passed by swept away some of the old generation which had learnt in its infancy to worship at the Catholic altars. Every threat uttered by a Spanish ambassador rallied to the national government hundreds who, in quieter times, would have looked with little satisfaction on the changed ceremonies of the Elizabethan Church. With stern confidence in their cause and in their leaders, the English people prepared for the struggle which awaited them. Leagued with the rising republic of the United Netherlands, they bade defiance to Philip and all his power. The Armada.At last the storm which had been for so many years gathering on <16>the horizon burst upon the English Channel. When the smoke of battle cleared away England was still unharmed, riding at anchor safely amidst the swelling billows.
As long as the great struggle lasted it could not but exercise a powerful influence upon the mental growth of those who witnessed it. Effects of the conflict.On the one hand it favoured the growth of national consciousness, of the habit of idealising English institutions, and above all of the great Queen who was loved and reverenced as an impersonation of those institutions. On the other hand it drove those in whom the religious element predominated to accentuate the differences which separated them far more than they would have done in time of peace. The Catholic whose zeal had been stirred up by the new missionaries was far more hostile to Protestantism, and to the Government which supported Protestantism, than his father had been in the generation before him. The Protestant caught eagerly at doctrines diametrically opposed to those which found favour at Rome. He opposed principle to principle, discipline to discipline, infallibility to infallibility.
If, by the doctrine of justification by faith, Luther had expressed the central thought of Protestantism, The Calvinistic systemit was reserved to Calvin to systematise the Protestant teaching and to organise the Protestant Church.
It was well that discipline was possible in the Protestant ranks. The contest which was approaching called for compared with the asceticism of the Middle Ages.a faith which was formed of sterner stuff than that of which Lutheranism was made. It was necessary that the ideas of self-restraint and of self-denial should again resume their prominence. There is in many respects a close resemblance between the Calvinistic system and that of the medieval Church. Both were characterised by a stern dislike to even innocent pleasures, and by a tendency to interfere with even the minute details of life. The law of God, to which they called upon men to conform, was regarded by both rather as a commandment forbidding what is evil than as a living harmony of infinite varieties. The form of Church government which was adopted in either system was regarded <17>as not only of Divine institution, but as being the one mould in which every Christian Church should be cast. But here the resemblance ended. The pious Catholic regarded close communion with God as the final object of his life, after he had been delivered from all selfish passions by strict obedience to external laws and by the performance of acts commanded by an external authority. The pious Calvinist regarded this communion as already attained by the immediate action of the Holy Spirit upon his heart. The course of the former led him from the material to the spiritual. The course of the latter led him from the spiritual to the material. One result of this difference was that the Calvinist was far more independent than the Catholic of all outward observances, and of all assistance from his fellow-men. He stood, as it were, alone with his God. He lived ‘ever in his Great Taskmaster’s eye.’ His doctrine of predestination was the strong expression of his belief that the will of God ruled supreme amidst the changes and chances of the world. His doctrine of the Atonement was replete with his faith, that it is only by an act of God that the world can be restored to order. His doctrine of conversion was the form in which he clothed his assurance that it was only when God Himself came and took up His abode in his heart that he could do His will. There was that in these men which could not be conquered. They were not engaged in working out their own salvation; they were God’s chosen children. In their hands they had the Word of God, and, next to that, they had His oracles written in their own hearts. They were liable to mistakes, no doubt, like other men, and in all good faith they complained of the corruption of their hearts; but it was not wonderful that in all critical conjunctures they fancied themselves infallible, because they imagined that their own thoughts were signs to them of the voice of God. If He were for them, who could be against them? Anchored on the Rock of Ages, they could safely bid defiance to all the menaces of the Pope and to all the armies of the mightiest potentates of Europe.
When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the Calvinistic system <18>of belief had penetrated with more or less completeness into the minds of the great majority of English Protestants. It is favourably received in England at Elizabeth’s accession.It owed its success in part to the circumstance that, during the Marian persecution, so many of the English Protestants had come under the influence of the leading minds of the countries in which they passed the time of their exile; but still more to its logical completeness, and to the direct antagonism in which it stood to the doctrines of the Roman Church.
As a system of belief, therefore, Calvinism had gained a footing in England. Its system of Church government, and its mode of carrying on the public worship of the congregation, were likely to meet with more opposition. The English Reformation had been carried out under the control of the lay authorities. Such a Reformation was not likely to be conducted according to strict logical rules. Feelings and prejudices which could not be recognised by a thinker in his study necessarily had a large share in the work which had been done. The Calvinistic Reformation, on the other hand, was, above all things, a clerical Reformation. During the greater part of the sixteenth century the thought of Europe was to be found, almost exclusively, in the ranks of the Protestant clergy, and by far the greater part of the Protestant clergy grouped themselves instinctively round the banner of Calvin, the most severe and logical thinker of them all.
The first difference was caused by the revival of the The Vestiarian Controversy.Vestiarian Controversy, as it was called, which had already given rise to much confusion during the reign of Edward VI. The vestments which were finally adopted by the Church of England, together with certain other ceremonies, displeased the Calvinistic ministers, not only as relics of Popery, but also as bringing ideas before their minds which were incompatible with the logical perfection of their system. They believed that the operations of Divine grace, so far as they were carried on through human agency at all, were attached to the action either of the written Word or of the preaching of the Gospel upon the mind. To imagine that the heart could be influenced by outward forms and ceremonies, <19>or that the spirit could be reached through the bodily organs, was an idea which they were unable to grasp.[6]
The laity, on the other hand, as a body, did not trouble themselves to consider whether or not such things fitted into the religious theory which they had adopted. Certain ceremonies and certain vestments had been abolished because they were understood to be connected with imposture or falsehood. But they were unable to comprehend why a man could not wear a surplice because he believed the doctrines of predestination and justification by faith, or why he could not reverently kneel during the administration of the Communion because he was certain that that which he took from the hands of the minister had not ceased to be veritable bread and wine.
With all these feelings Elizabeth was inclined to sympathise. Herself fond of outward pomp and show, Elizabeth decides against the Nonconformists.she would have been glad to see in use rather more of the old forms than those which she found it advisable to retain. But there were grave reasons which justified her during the earlier years of her reign, in her opposition to those who clamoured for a simpler ritual. The great mass of the clergy themselves were at heart opposed to Protestantism. Of the laity, a very large number looked coldly even upon moderate deviations from the forms to which, excepting for a few years, they had been so long accustomed. Even those who, from horror at the excesses of Mary, sympathised with <20>the overthrow of priestly domination, were by no means inclined to part with the decent forms and reverent ceremonies which remained. If Elizabeth had carried out the Reformation in the spirit of Cartwright and Humphreys, many years would hardly have passed before the House of Commons would have been found supporting the principles which had been maintained by Gardiner and Bonner in her father’s reign. What the tendency of those principles was, England had learned only too well by a bitter experience.
It speaks volumes in favour of the conciliatory effects of English institutions that Elizabeth was able to find amongst the Calvinist clergy men who would assist her as bishops in carrying out the settlement upon which she had determined. They would themselves have preferred to see alterations made to which she was unwilling to assent, but they were ready to give up points which they judged to be comparatively unimportant, rather than to put the fortunes of Protestantism itself in jeopardy. If, so late as in 1571, Archbishop Parker had to write that ‘the most part of the subjects of the Queen’s Highness disliketh the common bread for the sacrament,’[7] we may be sure that any general attempt to adopt the simple forms of the Genevan ritual would have met with similar disfavour. Even if Elizabeth had been inclined to try the experiment, she could not have afforded to run the risk. There was, probably, not more than a very little pardonable exaggeration in the words which, in 1559, were addressed by Granvelle to the English Ambassador. “It is strange,” he said, “that you believe the world knoweth not your weakness. I demand, what store of captains or men of war have you? What treasure, what furniture for defence? What hold in England able to endure the breath of a cannon for one day? Your men, I confess, are valiant, but without discipline. But, admit you had discipline, what should it avail in division? The people a little removed from London are not of the Queen’s religion. The nobles repine at it, and we are not ignorant that of late some of them conspired against her.”[8]
<21>Strong, however, as the reasons were which urged all prudent men to caution, it is not to be wondered at that there were Some of the clergy resist.some of the Calvinistic clergy who refused to give way. Amongst their ranks were to be found some of the most learned men and the ablest preachers in England. To them these trifles were of the utmost importance, because in their eyes they were connected with a great principle. To Elizabeth they were nothing but trifles, and her anger was proportionately excited against those who upon such slight grounds were bringing disunion into the Church, and were troubling her in the great work which she had undertaken.
For some years she bore with them, and then demanded obedience, The Queen takes active steps against them.on pain of dismissal from the offices which they held. At the same time she repressed with a strong hand a little company of Nonconformists who held their meetings in a private house, and committed to prison those persons who had been present at these gatherings.
Those who know what the subsequent history of England was are able to perceive at a glance that she had brought herself into a position which could not be permanently maintained. As yet, however, the hope that all Englishmen would continue to hold the same faith, and to submit to the same ecclesiastical regulations, was still too lively for any earnest men to see with indifference a separation of which none could foretell the end. And, at least until the generation had died out which remembered the enticements of the Roman Catholic ceremonial, it was only with extreme caution, if at all, that the resisting clergy could be allowed to take their places in the different parishes. At a later time the wisest statesmen, with Burghley at their head, were in favour of a gradual relaxation of the bonds which pressed upon the clergy. Excepting perhaps in a few parishes in large towns, the time had not yet come when this could be done with impunity.
It is unnecessary to say that Elizabeth was influenced by other motives in addition to these. She regarded with suspicion all movements which were likely to undermine the power of the Crown. She saw with instinctive jealousy that <22>opposition might be expected to arise from these men on other questions besides the one which was on the surface at the time. This feeling of dislike was strengthened in her as soon as she discovered that the controversy had assumed a new phase. In her eyes Nonconformity was bad enough, but Presbyterianism was infinitely worse.
Calvinism was, as has been said, a clerical movement; and it was only to be expected that Presbyterian system of church government.the system of Church government and discipline which Calvin had instituted at Geneva should be regarded with favourable eyes by large numbers of the Protestant clergy. There is not the smallest reason to doubt that these men honestly believed that the government of the Church by presbyters, lay-elders, and deacons was exclusively of Divine appointment. But it cannot be denied that such a system was more likely to find acceptance among them than any other in which a less prominent position had been assigned to themselves. The preacher was the key-stone of Calvin’s ecclesiastical edifice. Completely freed from any restraint which the authorities of the State might be inclined to place upon him, he was to be supreme in his own congregation. This supremacy he was to obtain, it is true, by the force of eloquence and persuasion combined with the irresistible power of the great truths which it was his privilege to utter. His hearers would choose lay-elders to assist him in maintaining discipline, and in the general superintendence of the congregation, and deacons who were to manage the finances of the Church. But as long as he had the ear of his congregation he stood upon an eminence on which he could hardly be assailed with impunity. Whatever matters involved the interests of more than a single congregation were to be debated in synods, in which, although laymen were allowed to take no inconsiderable share, the influence of the ministers was certain to predominate.
In Scotland, where this scheme was carried out, there were few obstacles to its success. Presbyterianism unacceptable in England.There the aristocracy who had taken part in the Reformation were satisfied, for the time, with plundering the Church of its property, and were far too backward in civilisation to originate any <23>ecclesiastical legislation of their own. As a spiritual and intellectual movement, the Scottish Reformation had been entirely in the hands of the preachers, and it followed as a matter of course, that the system of Church government which was adopted by the nation was that which assigned the principal part to those who were the chief authors of the change. It is true that, in theory, a considerable influence was assigned to the laity in the Presbyterian system; but it was to the laity regarded as members of a congregation, not as members of a State. In the eye of the Presbyterian clergy, the king and the beggar were of equal importance, and ought to be possessed of only equal influence, as soon as they entered the church doors. Noble as this idea was, it may safely be said that this organised ecclesiastical democracy could not flourish upon English soil. England has been Papal, Episcopal, and Liberal; she has shouted by turns for the authority of Rome, for the Royal Supremacy, and for the Rights of Conscience. One thing she has steadily avoided: she has never been, and it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction that she never will be, Presbyterian.
The nation saw at once that the system cut at the root of the cardinal principle of the English Reformation, the subjection of the clergy to the lay courts. The Queen occupied her position as trustee for the laity of England. She expressed the feelings of the great body of her subjects when she refused to assent to a change which would have brought an authority into the realm which would soon have declared itself to be independent of the laws, and which would have been sadly subversive of individual freedom, and of the orderly gradations of society upon which the national constitution rested.
For it is not to be supposed that the Presbyterian clergy in the sixteenth century claimed only those moderate powers which are exercised with general satisfaction in Scotland at the present day. Regarded by Bacon as unfavourable to liberty.The Genevan discipline was a word of fear in the ears of English laymen. The system which led to its introduction would, in the opinion of many besides Bacon, be ‘no less prejudicial to the liberties of private men than to the <24>sovereignty of princes,’ although it would be ‘in first show very popular.’[9]
As a religious belief for individual men, Calvinism was eminently favourable to the progress of liberty. Reasons which justify his opinion.But the Calvinistic clergy, in their creditable zeal for the amelioration of the moral condition of mankind, shared to the full with the national statesmen their ignorance of the limits beyond which force cannot be profitably employed for the correction of evil. Their very sincerity made it more injurious to the true cause of virtue to intrust them with the power of putting into force measures for the repression of vice than it was to leave similar powers in the hands of the statesmen of the day. The thousand feelings by which restraints were laid upon men of the latter class, their prejudices, their weaknesses, and occasionally even their profligacy itself, combined with their practical sagacity in diminishing the extent to which they were willing to punish actions which should never have been punished at all. With the Calvinistic clergy these feelings were totally inoperative. Penetrated with the hatred of vice, and filled with the love of all that was pure and holy, they saw no better way of combating evils which they justly dreaded than by directing against them the whole force of society, in the vain hope of exterminating them by a succession of well-directed blows. Of the distinction between immorality and crime they knew nothing. If they had been true to their own principles they would have remembered that, whenever in cases of immorality they failed to purify by admonition and exhortation the corruption of the heart, they had nothing more to do. If it was contrary to spiritual religion to attract the mind by outward forms, it was far more contrary to it to force the mind by external penalties. By an intelligible inconsistency, they allowed this argument to drop out of sight. They did not, indeed, themselves claim to inflict these punishments; in theory they had drawn the line too distinctly between the spheres of the ecclesiastical and the secular jurisdiction to admit of that. They contented themselves with pronouncing <25>excommunication against offenders. But in their hands excommunication was not merely the merciful prohibition of the partaking of a Christian sacrament; it carried with it the exposure of the guilty person to an intolerable isolation amongst his fellows, and it finally necessitated a public and degrading ceremonial before he could again be received into favour.
They went further still. The penalties which they shrunk from inflicting themselves, should be, in their opinion, Assistance of the civil magistrate expected to maintain discipline.carried into execution by the civil power. Once more offenders were to be delivered to the secular arm. The Scottish second Book of Discipline distinctly enumerates among the functions of the civil magistrate the duty of asserting and maintaining ‘the discipline of the kirk,’ and ‘of punishing them civilly that will not obey the censure of the same,’ though it takes care to add, that this is to be done ‘without confounding always the one jurisdiction with the other.’[10] The same opinion was expressed by Cartwright, the leader of the English Presbyterians, when he urged that ‘the civil magistrate’ would do well to provide ‘some sharp punishment for those that contemn the censure and discipline of the Church.’[11]
A reservation was expressed of the rights of the civil authorities. But it is plain that Cartwright and his friends regarded it as the duty of the authorities to inflict punishment on those who resisted the decrees of the Church, without assigning to them any right of revising those decrees. It was also possible, that when the civil powers refused to put their decisions in execution, the ministers might think themselves justified in stirring up a democratic resistance against a system of government which received the approval of the wiser and more practical portion of the laity.
In taking her stand, as she did, against the abolition of Episcopacy, Elizabeth was on the whole acting on behalf of the liberty of her subjects. The simple expedient of allowing the Presbyterians to introduce their system wherever they could find congregations who would voluntarily submit to the <26>discipline, on condition of their renunciation of all the emoluments and privileges of their former position, would have been as repulsive to the ministers themselves, as it certainly was to the Queen. They asked for no position which was to be held on sufferance; their claim was, that their system was directly commanded by the Word of God, and that, without grievous sin, not a moment could be lost in delivering the whole Church of England into their hands.
At all costs, if England was not to be thrown into confusion from one end to the other, some measures must be taken by which such consequences might be averted, and the only contrivance that presented itself to the mind of the Queen was English Episcopacy.the maintenance of the Episcopal Constitution. Episcopacy was indeed looked upon in a very different light from that in which it had been regarded in the days of Becket and from that in which it was afterwards regarded in the days of Laud. To all outward appearance, the position of the Bishops in the Church of England was the same as that which they occupied in the following century. The same forms were observed in their consecration: the functions which they were called on to fulfil were identical with those which devolved upon their successors. But whereas in the seventeenth century they were looked upon as the heads of an ecclesiastical system in alliance with the King, in the sixteenth century they were mainly regarded as forming the principal part of the machinery by which the clergy were kept in subordination to the State. The powers vested in the Crown by the Acts of the first Parliament of Elizabeth were sufficient to keep the Church down with a strong hand; but it was thought desirable, if possible, to keep the clergy in order by means of members of their own body. It is no wonder that the Bishops, who were regarded by statesmen as guarantees of peace and order, were looked upon by Presbyterians as traitors to the cause of Christ and of the Church. All this obloquy they were ready to endure in order to save the nation from falling away once more to the Pope. Many of them were probably careless whether the Church was to be governed by bishops or by presbyters; almost all of them were ready to agree with those who <27>urged the modification of the ceremonies. But they saw in the state of public feeling enough to make them distrust extreme measures, and, at the risk of being considered faithless to the cause which they had most at heart, they offered their services to the Queen.
The cardinal principle of the English Reformation from a political point of view, is the doctrine of The Royal Supremacy.the Royal Supremacy. If we regard the Sovereign as the representative of the State, the declaration that he is supreme over all persons and all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, may be justly spoken of as one of the corner-stones of the liberties of England. It meant, that there should be no escape from submission to the law of the land, and that justice alone, and not privilege, was to rule the relations which existed between the clergy and the people. It was only by a slow process, however, that the nation could learn what justice really was, and it was not at a moment when the Queen was bent upon her great task of smoothing away differences amongst supporters of the national cause, that she would be likely to look with favour upon those whose principles threatened to rend the country asunder, and perhaps to embark it upon such a civil war as was at that time desolating France. We may sympathise with Elizabeth, provided that we sympathise also with those who defied her by raising the standard of the rights of conscience, and who refused to allow their religious convictions to be moulded by considerations of political expediency.
It was inevitable that strife, and not peace, should be the ultimate result of what Elizabeth had done. Whitgift’s argument against Cartwright.When Cartwright, at that time Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, stood forth to defend the Presbyterian government, he was met by Whitgift with the argument that there was no reason to imagine that the forms of Church government were prescribed in the Scriptures. Christ, he said, having left that government uncertain, it might vary according to the requirements of the time. He then proceeded to argue that the existing constitution of the Church of England was most suitable to the country in the reign of Elizabeth.
It might be supposed that a principle such as that announced <28>by Whitgift would have inspired the men who held it with conciliatory sentiments. This, unfortunately, was not the case. Whitgift and those who thought with him seemed to regard their opponents as enemies to be crushed, rather than as friends whose misdirected energies were to be turned into some beneficial channel. Even the good and gentle Grindal had no other remedy for Presbyterianism than to send half a dozen of its most attached disciples to the common gaol at Cambridge, and another half-dozen to the same destination at Oxford.
But if Grindal forgot himself for a moment, he was soon able to vindicate his claim to respect as Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury.the occupant of the highest seat in the English Church. In one of the gravest crises through which that Church ever passed he stood forth as her champion, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger. It was plain that the energies of the Government could not long continue to be occupied with merely repressive means, without serious detriment to the Church, the interest of which those measures were intended to protect. It was all very well to enact rules for the regulation of questions in dispute; but unless the conforming clergy could put forth some of the energy and ability which were to be found on the opposite side, the Bishops and their regulations would, sooner or later, disappear together. The Bishops themselves were not in fault. They had long grieved over Low condition of the clergy.the condition of the clergy. In most parishes, the very men who had sung mass in the days of Mary now remained to read the service from the Book of Common Prayer. The livings were generally so small that they offered no inducement to anyone to accept them who was above a very humble station in life. It was well if the incumbents could blunder through the prescribed forms, and could occasionally read a homily.
The consequence of this state of things was, that whilst churches where sermons were preached were crowded, those where they were not were deserted.[12] The only hope of a better state of things lay in the prospect of obtaining the services of <29>the young men of ability and zeal who were growing up to manhood in the Universities. But such men were generally found among the Puritans, as the Nonconformists and the Presbyterians began to be alike called in derision. Unless some means were employed to attract such men to the existing order, the cause which Elizabeth had done so much to sustain was inevitably lost.
About the time that the Presbyterian controversy was at its height, an attempt was made at Northampton Proceedings at Northampton.to introduce a more vigorous life into the Church. The incumbent of the parish, in agreement with the mayor of the town, organised an association for religious purposes. Many of their regulations were extremely valuable, but they allowed themselves to inquire too closely into the private conduct of the parishioners, and the mayor even lent his authority to a house-to-house visitation, for the purpose of censuring those who had absented themselves from the communion. Together with these proceedings, which may well have been regarded as inquisitorial, sprang up certain meetings, The Prophesyings.which were termed Prophesyings. These exercises, which, in some respects resembled the clerical meetings of the present day, were held for the purpose of discussing theological and religious subjects, and were regarded as a means by which unpractised speakers might be trained for the delivery of sermons. Care was to be taken that the meeting did not degenerate into a debating society.
These Prophesyings spread like wildfire over the kingdom. They were too well fitted to meet the wants of the time not to The Prophesyings are generally adopted with good effect.become rapidly popular. Abuses crept in, as they always will in such movements; but, on the whole, the effect was for good — men who had before been unable to preach, acquired a facility of expression. The lukewarm were stirred up, and the backward encouraged, by intercourse with their more active brethren. Ten Bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the venerable Grindal himself at their head, encouraged these proceedings, which, as they fondly hoped, would restore life and energy to a <30>Church which was rapidly stiffening into a mere piece of state machinery.
The Archbishop drew up rules by which the abuses which had occurred might be obviated for the future. Grindal draws up rules to prevent abuses.The meetings were to be held only under the direction of the Bishop of the diocese, by whom the moderator was to be appointed. The Bishop was to select the subject for discussion, and without his permission no one was to be allowed to speak. This permission was never, on any account, to be accorded to any layman, or to any deprived or suspended minister. Any person attacking the institutions of the Church was to be reported to the Bishop, and forbidden to take part in the exercises on any future occasion.
Under such regulations these meetings deserved to prosper. They were undoubtedly, as Bacon long afterwards said, when he urged their resumption, ‘the best way to frame and train up preachers to handle the Word of God as it ought to be handled.’[13]
Unfortunately for herself and for England, the Queen looked upon these proceedings from a Elizabeth regards these meetings with suspicion.totally opposite point of view. She had sagacity enough to leave unnoticed opinions which differed from her own, provided they would be content to remain in obscurity, and were not paraded before the eye of the public; but for the clash of free speech and free action she entertained feelings of the deepest antipathy. Even preaching itself she Her dislike of preaching.regarded with dislike. Very carefully chosen persons from amongst the clergy, on rare occasions, might be allowed to indulge a select audience with the luxury of a sermon; but, in ordinary circumstances, it would be quite enough if one of the Homilies, published by authority, were read in the hearing of the congregation. There would be no fear of any heretical notions entering into the minds of men who, from one year’s end to another, never listened to anything but those faultless <31>compositions. If two preachers were to be found in a county, it was enough and to spare.
With such opinions on the subject of preaching, she at once took fright when she heard what was going on in different parts of the kingdom. She takes fright, and orders the suppression of the Prophesyings.She determined to put a stop to the Prophesyings. Like an anxious mother, who is desirous that her child should learn to walk, but is afraid to allow it to put its foot to the ground, she conjured up before her imagination the overthrow of authority which would ensue if these proceedings were allowed. She issued a letter to the Bishops, commanding them to suppress the Prophesyings.
In spite of the storm which was evidently rising, the brave old Archbishop took his stand manfully in Grindal protests,opposition to the Queen. Firmly, but respectfully, he laid before her, in its true colours, a picture of the mischief she was doing. He begged her to think again before she committed an act which would be the certain ruin of the Church. As for himself, he would never give his consent to that which he believed to be injurious to the progress of the Gospel. If the Queen chose to deprive him of his archbishopric, he would cheerfully submit, but he would never take part in sending out any injunction for the suppression of the Prophesyings.
Grindal’s remonstrances were unavailing. He himself was and is suspended.suspended from his functions, and died in deep disgrace. The Prophesyings were put down, and all hope of bringing the waters of that free Protestantism which was rapidly becoming the belief of so many thoughtful Englishmen, to flow within the channels of Episcopacy was, for the present, at an end.
In 1571, shortly before the commencement of the Prophesyings, the The House of Commons takes part in the controversy.House of Commons stepped into the arena. Twelve years had done much to change the feelings of the laity. Old men had dropped into the grave, and it was to the aged especially that Protestantism had been found distasteful. The country gentlemen, of whom the House was almost entirely composed, if they adopted Protestant opinions at all, could hardly find any living <32>belief in England other than the Calvinism which was accepted by the ablest and most active amongst the clergy. The Queen’s regulations were, after all, a mere lifeless body, into which the spirit of religious faith had yet to be breathed. The struggle against Rome, too, was daily assuming the proportions of a national conflict. Men, who in ordinary times would have taken little interest in the dislike of some of the clergy to use certain forms, were ready to show them favour when they were declaiming against the adoption of the rags of an anti-national Church. Nor was the growing feeling of dissatisfaction with the restraint put upon personal liberty by the Government, adverse to the claims of the ministers as long as they were on the persecuted side; although the same feeling would have undoubtedly manifested itself on the side of the Crown, if Cartwright had ever succeeded in putting the Presbyterian system in operation.
Bills were accordingly brought in for amending the Prayer Book, and for retrenching in some degree the administrative powers of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the most remarkable monument of the temper of the House was an Act,[14] which was often appealed to in later times, in which confirmation was given to the Thirty-nine Articles. It was enacted that all ministers should be compelled to subscribe to those articles only which concerned the Christian faith and the doctrine of the Sacraments. By the insertion of the word ‘only,’ the House of Commons meant it to be understood that no signature was to be required to the Articles which related to points of discipline and Church government.
Thus a breach was opened between the two greatest powers known to the constitution, never to be again closed till the Breach between the Crown and the Commons on the ecclesiastical question.monarchy had itself disappeared for a time in the waters of the conflict. The English Reformation was, as has been said, the work of the laity of England, headed by the Sovereign. The House of Commons now threatened to go one way, while the Queen was determined to go another. No doubt, the <33>proposals of the Lower House could not always have been accepted without important modifications. There were portions of society which found a truer representation in the Queen than in the House of Commons. During the greater part of Elizabeth’s reign, the House of Commons was by no means the representative body which it afterwards became. Every member was compelled to take the oath of supremacy, and a large number of the gentry refused to sit at Westminster on such terms. If the liberty which the Commons required for the clergy had been granted, it would have been necessary to devise new guarantees, in order that the incumbent of a parish should not abuse his position by performing the duties of his office in such a manner as to offend his parishioners. In proportion as the checks imposed by the Government were diminished, it would have been necessary to devise fresh checks, to proceed from the congregation, whilst the Government retained in its hands that general supervision which would effectually hinder the oppression of individuals by a minister supported by a majority of his parishioners.
With a little moderation on both sides, such a scheme might possibly have been resolved upon. But it was not so to be. Evil consequences of Elizabeth’s determination.Elizabeth has a thousand titles to our gratitude, but it should never be forgotten that she left, as a legacy to her successor, an ecclesiastical system which, unless its downward course were arrested by consummate wisdom, threatened to divide the nation into two hostile camps, and to leave England, even after necessity had compelled the rivals to accept conditions of peace, a prey to theological rancour and sectarian hatred.
Matters could not long remain as they were; unless the Queen was prepared to make concessions, she must, of necessity, She appoints Whitgift as Grindal’s successor.have recourse to sterner measures. On the death of Grindal, in 1583, she looked about for a successor who would unflinchingly carry her views into execution. Such a man she found in John Whitgift, the old opponent of Cartwright. Honest and well-intentioned, but narrow-minded to an almost incredible degree, the one thought which filled his mind was the hope of bringing the ministers of <34>the Church of England at least to an outward uniformity. He was unable to comprehend the scruples felt by sincere and pious men. A stop was to be put to the irregularities which prevailed, not because they were inconsistent with sound doctrine, or with the practical usefulness of the Church, hut because they were disorderly. He aimed at making the Church of England a rival to the Church of Rome, distinct in her faith, but equalling her in obedience to authority and in uniformity of worship.
In order to carry these views into execution, the machinery of the Court of High Commission Formation of the High Commission Court.was called into existence. Several temporary commissions had, at various times, been appointed by virtue of the Act of Supremacy, but these powers were all limited in comparison with those assigned to the permanent tribunal which was now to be erected. The Parliament which had, four and twenty years before, passed the Act under which the Court claimed to sit, would have shrunk back with horror if it had foreseen the use which was to be made of the powers entrusted by them to the Queen for a very different purpose; and, since the accession of Elizabeth, opinion had undergone considerable changes, in a direction adverse to the principles which were upheld by the new Archbishop.
The Commission consisted of forty-four persons, of whom twelve were to be Bishops. Its powers were enormous, and united both those forms of oppression which were repulsive to all moderate Englishmen. It managed to combine the arbitrary tendencies by which the lay courts were at that time infected with the inquisitorial character of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The new Court succeeded in loading itself with the burden of the dislike which was felt against oppression in either form. In two points alone it was distinguished from the Inquisition of Southern Europe. It was incompetent to inflict the punishment of death, and it was not permitted to extract confessions by means of physical torture.
Still, as the case stood, it was bad enough. The Court was empowered to inquire into all offences against the Acts of Parliament, Powers of the Court.by which the existing ecclesiastical system had <35>been established; to punish persons absenting themselves from church; to reform all errors, heresies, and schisms which might lawfully be reformed according to the laws of the realm; to deprive all beneficed clergy who held opinions contrary to the doctrinal articles, and to punish all incests, adulteries, fornications, outrages, misbehaviours, and disorders in marriage, and all grievous offences punishable by the ecclesiastical laws.
The means which were at the disposal of the Commission, for the purpose of arriving at the facts of a case, Means of obtaining evidence.were even more contrary to the spirit of English law than the extent of its powers. It was, in theory, a principle of our law that no man was bound to accuse himself, it being the business of the Court to prove him guilty if it could; and, although in practice this great principle was really disregarded, especially in cases where the interests of the country or of the Government were at stake, the remembrance of it was certain to revive as soon as it was disregarded by an unpopular tribunal. The Commission, drawing its maxims from the civil and canon law, conducted its proceedings on a totally opposite principle. Its object was to bring to punishment those who were guilty of disobedience to the laws, either in reality, or according to the opinion of the Court. In the same spirit as that by which the ordinary judges were actuated in political cases, the framers of the regulations of the new Court thought more of bringing the guilty to punishment than of saving the innocent. But whilst the judges were forced to content themselves with straining existing forms against unpopular delinquents, the Commission, as a new tribunal, was authorised to settle new forms, in order to bring within its power men who enjoyed the sympathies of their countrymen.
It would have been almost impossible to have constituted an English court without assigning to it the power of arriving at the truth by the ordinary mode, ‘the oaths of twelve good and lawful men.’ But, homage having been thus done to this time-honoured institution, the Commission proceeded to direct that recourse might be had to witnesses alone, and even that <36>conviction might be obtained by ‘all other ways and means’ which could be devised.
The meaning of this vague clause was soon evident to all. The Court began to make use of a method of extracting information from unwilling witnesses, which was known as the ex-officio oath. It was an oath tendered to an accused person, that he would give true answers to such questions as might be put to him. He was forced not only to accuse himself, but he was liable to bring into trouble his friends, concerning whom the Court was as yet possessed of no certain information.
The Archbishop, having thus arranged the constitution of his Court, drew up twenty-four Articles drawn up to be presented to all suspected clergymen.interrogatories of the most inquisitorial description, which he intended to present to all suspected persons among the clergy. They were not confined to inquiries into the public proceedings of the accused, but reached even to his private conversation. If the unhappy man refused to take the oath, he was at once to be deprived of his benefice, and committed to prison for contempt of the Court.
The unfortunate clergy appealed to the Privy Council. Whitgift was unable to find a single statesman who approved of his proceedings. Burghley, with all the indignation of which his calm and equable temperament was capable, remonstrated against the tyranny of which the Archbishop was guilty. He told him that his own wishes were in favour of maintaining the peace of the Church, but that these proceedings savoured too much of the Romish Inquisition, and were ‘rather a device to seek for offenders than to reform any.’ But Burghley’s remonstrances were in vain. Whitgift was not the man to give way when he had once decided upon his course, and unhappily he received the thorough and steady support of Elizabeth. When even these harsh measures failed to effect their object, recourse was had to the ordinary tribunals, and men were actually sent to execution for writing libels against the Bishops, on the plea that any attack upon the Bishops was an instigation to sedition against the Queen.
It is remarkable that, at the very time when these atrocities <37>were at their worst, the House of Commons, which had never let slip The marprelate libels.an opportunity of protesting against the ecclesiastical measures of the Queen, began to grow cool in its defence of the Puritans. This may be attributed in part to the great popularity which Elizabeth enjoyed in consequence of the defeat of the Armada, but still more to the licence which the authors of a series of Puritan libels allowed themselves.
Moderate men who were startled by these excesses, were still more disgusted by the spread of what were at that time known as Spread of Brownist opinions.Brownist opinions, from the name of Robert Brown, from whom they had first proceeded. His principles were very much those which were afterwards held by the Independents. His followers considered that every Christian congregation was in itself a complete church, and they denied that either the civil government, or any assembly of clergy, possessed the right of controlling it in its liberty of action. No other body of men had so clear an idea of the spiritual nature of religion, and of the evils which resulted from the dependence of the Church upon the State. Far from being content, like the old Puritans, with demanding either a reformation of the Church, or a relaxation of its laws, the Brownists, or Separatists as they called themselves, were ready to abandon the Church to its fate, and to establish themselves in complete independence of all constituted authorities. If they had stopped here, they would have been unpopular enough. But some of them, at least, goaded by the persecution to which they were exposed, went to far greater lengths than this. Holding that ministers ought to be supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, they too declared that the whole national Church was anti-Christian, and to remain in its communion for an instant was to be guilty of a sin of no common magnitude. From this some of them proceeded to still more offensive declarations. Whilst disclaiming all wish to take the law into their own hands, they called upon the Queen to ‘forbid and exterminate all other religions, worship, and ministers within her dominions.’[15] She <38>ought further, as they said, to seize all the property of the Church, from the wide domain of the Bishop down to the glebe land of the incumbent of a country parish.
Terrified by these opinions, the Presbyterian Cartwright wrote in denunciation of their wickedness. Reaction in favour of the Church system.Parliament allowed itself, in 1593, for the first time since the accession of Elizabeth, to pass a statute against Protestants of any kind.
The latter years of Elizabeth were quieter than the storms which followed upon the appointment of the High Commission had indicated. Perhaps the sweep which had been made from amongst the clergy had left a smaller number of persons upon whom the Court could exercise its authority; perhaps, also, the dissatisfied, certain that there was no hope of any change of system as long as Elizabeth lived, reserved themselves for the reign of her successor. Such causes, however, whatever their effect may have been, were not in themselves of sufficient importance to account for the undoubted reaction against Puritanism which marked the end of the sixteenth century.
As, one by one, the men who had sustained the Queen at her accession dropped into the grave, a generation arose which, Causes of this reaction.excepting in books of controversy, knew nothing of any religion which differed from that of the Church of England. The ceremonies and vestments which, in the time of their fathers, had been exposed to such bitter attacks, were to them hallowed as having been entwined with their earliest associations. It required a strong effort of the imagination to connect them with the forms of a departed system which they had never witnessed with their eyes; but they remembered that those ceremonies had been used, and those vestments had been worn, by the clergy who had led their prayers during those anxious days when the Armada, yet unconquered, was hovering round the coast, and who had, in their name, and in the name of all true Englishmen, offered the thanksgiving which ascended to heaven after the great victory had been won. By many of them these forms were received with pleasure for their own sake. In every age there will be a <39>large class of minds to whom Puritanism is distasteful, not merely because of the restraint which it puts upon the conduct, but because it refuses to take account of a large part of human nature. Directing all its energies against the materialism which followed the breaking up of the medieval system, it forgot to give due weight to the influences which affect the spiritual nature of man through his bodily senses. Those, therefore, to whom comely forms and decent order were attractive, gathered round the institutions which had been established in the Church under the auspices of Elizabeth. In the place of her first Bishops, who were content to admit these institutions as a matter of necessity, a body of prelates grew up, who were ready to defend them for their own sake, and who believed that, at least in their main features, they were framed in accordance with the will of God. Amongst the laity, too, these opinions met with considerable support, especially as the Protestant ranks had been recruited by a new generation of converts, which had in its childhood been trained in the old creed, and thus had never come under the influence of Calvinism. They found expression in the great work of Hooker, from which, in turn, they received no small encouragement.
But whilst the gradual rise of these sentiments reduced the Presbyterians to despair, it soon became plain that the Episcopal party was not of one mind with respect to the course which should be pursued towards the Nonconformists. Hooker, indeed, had maintained that the disputed points being matters which were not ordained by any immutable Divine ordinance, were subject to change from time to time, according to the circumstances of the Church. For the time being, these questions had been settled by the law of the Church of England, to which the Queen, as the head and representative of the nation, had given her assent. With this settlement he was perfectly content, and he advised his opponents to submit to the law which had been thus laid down. Upon looking closely, however, into Hooker’s great work, it becomes evident that his conclusions are based upon two distinct arguments, which, although they were blended together in his own mind at some sacrifice of logical <40>precision, were not likely in future to find favour at the same time with any one class of reasoners. When he argues from Scripture, and from the practice of the early Church, the as yet undeveloped features of Bancroft and Laud are plainly to be discerned. When he proclaims the supremacy of law, and weighs the pretensions of the Puritans in the scales of reason, he shows a mind the thoughts of which are cast in the same mould with those of that great school of thinkers of whom Bacon is the acknowledged head. Hooker’s greatness indeed, like the greatness of all those by whom England was ennobled in the Elizabethan age, consisted rather in the entireness of his nature than in the thoroughness with which his particular investigations were carried out. He sees instinctively the unity of truth, and cannot fail to represent it as a living whole. It is this which has made him, far more than others who were his superiors in consistency of thought, to be regarded as the representative man of the Church of England.
It soon appeared that the desire to hold a middle course between the rival ecclesiastical parties was not confined to a few advanced thinkers. There was a Growing feeling in favour of toleration.large and increasing number of the laity who regarded the problem in Hooker’s spirit, though they were dissatisfied with his solution of it. Even men who themselves admired the forms of worship prescribed by the Church, and who felt all Hooker’s dislike of Presbyterianism, nevertheless, without any very deep reasoning, came to a precisely opposite conclusion. They were not yet the partisans that their children came to be, and they were more anxious to preserve the unity of the English Church than the forms which were rapidly making that unity impossible. If these ceremonies were only imposed by the law of the land for the sake of uniformity, without its being pretended that they were otherwise than of merely human origin, ought not that law to be relaxed? Everywhere there was a cry for preachers. Whilst bishops and ministers were wrangling about points of mere detail, thousands of their fellow-countrymen were living like heathens. It was to be regretted that so many of those who were capable of preaching should be so scrupulous about <41>matters of little consequence; but was it necessary, on account of these scruples, to disturb the peace of the Church by the expulsion of those who felt them? Was it well that faithful and pious men who preached the same doctrine as that which was held by their conforming brethren, and whose lives gave at least as good an example as that of any bishop in England, should be cut short in their career of usefulness merely in order that the clergyman who officiated in one parish might not scandalise the sticklers for uniformity by wearing a surplice, whilst the clergyman who officiated in the next parish wore a gown?
Hooker’s great work had more than a theological significance. It was the sign of the reunion of Protestantism with the Protestantism and the Renaissance.new learning of the Renaissance. In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the current of thought had not filled the forms of the Elizabethan Church. In the end of the reign it was flowing in steadily, basing itself on large enquiry, and on distrust of dogmatic assertion. Religion began to partake of the many-sidedness of the world around it, and Hooker was a worthy peer of Spenser and of Shakespeare.
Those last fifteen years of Elizabeth, in truth, were years in which many opposing elements were being fused together into harmonious co-operation. Those who wish to understand the position which England occupied during these years of our history would do well to place side by side the three great works of the imagination in which three men of genius embalmed the chivalric legends of the Middle Ages.
The work of the Italian Ariosto stands distinguished for the distance at which it lies from all contemporary life. The poet of The ‘Orlando Furioso.’the ‘Orlando Furioso’ wanders in an ideal realm of courtesy and valour of which the world around him knew nothing. If his Italian readers ever thought of Italy, it could only be to sigh over the downfall of so many hopes.
Far different is the work of Cervantes. To him the legends which seemed so bright in the eyes of the Italian ‘Don Quixote.’had become ridiculous. He could see nothing but the absurdity of them. Regarded from this point of view, ‘Don Quixote’ becomes the saddest book which was ever written. <42>It is the child mocking at his father’s follies, whilst he closes his eyes to his nobleness and his chivalry.
Shortly before the appearance of ‘Don Quixote’ another book saw the light amongst a very different people. To The ‘Faëry Queen’ the mirror of the Elizabethan age.Spenser, nursed as he had been amongst the glories of the reign of Elizabeth, all that was noble in the old tales of chivalry had become a living reality. The ideal representations of the knights and damsels who pass before our view in his immortal poem, bring into our memory, without an effort, the champions who defended the throne of the virgin Queen. In England no great chasm divided the present from the past. Englishmen were not prepared to find matter for jesting in the tales which had delighted their fathers, and they looked upon their history as an inheritance into which they themselves had entered.
Great achievements do not make easy the task of the men who succeed to those by whom they have been accomplished. Difficulties bequeathed by Elizabeth to her successor.The work of the Tudors had been to complete the edifice of national independence by nationalising the Church. In the course of the arduous struggle they had claimed and had obtained powers greater than those possessed by any former English kings. The very success which they had attained rendered those powers unnecessary. The institutions established by them had outlived their purpose. The strong vindication of the rights of the State which had been necessary when religious differences threatened civil war, had ceased to be necessary when peace was assured. The prerogative of the Crown would need to be curtailed when it was applied to less important objects than the maintenance of national unity. Yet such changes, desirable in themselves, were not easy to accomplish. The mental habit by which institutions are supported does not readily pass away. As Elizabeth grew old, it was generally felt that great changes were impending.
She herself knew that it must be so. The very success of her career must have made it appear to have been almost a failure. Men were everywhere asking for greater relaxation than she had been willing to give to them.
<43>Whatever was to come of it, the next age must take care of itself. Of one thing she felt sure, that no puppet of Spain or of the Jesuits Elizabeth’s death.would ever wear the crown of England. “My seat hath been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me,” she said, as she lay dying. When she was pressed to explain her meaning, she declared that her wish was that a king should follow her. “And who should that be,” she added, “but our cousin of Scotland?” Her last act was to hold her hands over her head in the form of a crown, with the intention, as it was thought, of conveying to the bystanders the impression that she would be followed by one who was already a King.[16] So, early on the morning of March 24, 1603, the great Queen passed away from amongst a people whom she had loved so well, and over whom, according to the measure of human wisdom, she had ruled so wisely.
Her forebodings were realised. Evil times were at hand. They followed her death, as they had followed the death of her father.
When such sovereigns as the two great Tudors die, it seems as if the saying which the poet has put into the mouth of the crafty Antony were the rule which prevails in the world —
The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones.
Errors and follies soon produce their accustomed fruits. But when the error has been but the accompaniment of great and noble deeds, the fruit of those deeds is not long in making its way into the world. Henry VIII. must be judged by the great men who supported his daughter’s throne, and who defended the land which he set free when ‘he broke the bonds of Rome.’ Elizabeth must be judged by the Pyms and Cromwells, who, little as she would have approved of their actions, yet owed their strength to the vigour with which she headed the resistance of England against Spanish aggression. She had cleared the way for liberty, though she understood it not.
[1] Piers Ploughman, l. 361–413.
[2] Chaucer not being a medieval poet at all, except in point of time, but standing in the same relation to Shakspere as that in which Wycliffe stands to Luther.
[3] The best defence of Elizabeth’s treatment of the Catholics is to be found in Bacon’s tract, In felicem memoriam Elizabethæ (Works, vi. 298). It must, of course, be received with some allowance; but it is remarkable as proceeding from a man who was himself inclined to toleration, and written after all motives for flattering the Queen had ceased to exist.
[4] In the letters of the priests amongst the Roman Transcripts in the R.O., written in the beginning of James’s reign, Elizabeth is usually styled the ‘Pseudo-Regina.’
[5] Bacon speaks of ‘matters of religion and the Church, which in these times by the confused use of both swords are become so intermixed with considerations of estate, as most of the counsels of sovereign princes or republics depend upon them.’ — The Beginning of the History of Great Britain. Works, vi. 276
[6] Of course they could not reject the two sacraments, but they connected them with preaching as much as possible. In the Scottish Confession of Faith of 1560 we find: “That sacraments be rightly ministrate we judge two things requisite; the one, that they be ministrate by lawful ministers, whom we affirm to be only those that are appointed to the preaching of the word, into whose mouth God hath put some sermon of exhortation,” &c. (Art. xxii.) On the other hand, their hatred of formality made them say: “We utterly condemn the vanity of those that affirm sacraments to be nothing else but naked and bare signs” (Art. xxi.) Bacon remarked the prevalence of the same idea amongst the English Puritans: “They have made it almost of the essence of the sacrament of the supper to have a sermon precedent.” — Bacon on the Controversies of the Church, Letters and Life, i. 93.
[7] Parker Correspondence, p. 373.
[8] Wright’s Queen Elizabeth, i. 24.
[9] Writing in Walsingham’s name, Bacon’s Letters and Life, i. 100.
[10] Chap. x.
[11] Second Admonition to Parliament, p. 49.
[12] Hooker, Eccl. Pol., v. xxii. 16.
[13] Certain Considerations for the better Establishment of the Church of England.
[14] 13 Eliz. cap. 12.
[15] H. Barrow’s Platform.
[16] The fullest and apparently the most authentic account is that published in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature (1849), iii. 364.