Protestantism In England And Scotland Under James I. And Charles I. (1603-1649)

Chapter VII --Protestantism In England And Scotland Under James I. And Charles I. (1603-1649)

Right of lineage, as also the last words of Elizabeth, pointed to the Scottish King as her proper successor. Accordingly James, the sixth of that name among Scottish rulers, and the first among English, son of the murdered Darnley and the executed Mary Stuart, was welcomed to the sovereignty of the united kingdoms. It seemed a happy consummation, that the neighboring realms, which had so often been in conflict with each other, should peaceably join in acknowledging a common sceptre. But there was one serious fault in the new adjustment. James I. did not know England; and, what was worse, he showed little aptitude to acquire this most necessary knowledge. He never learned to estimate rightly the political and ecclesiastical factors with which he had to deal. Both in his foreign and in his domestic policy he ran counter to the judgment and the sympathies of a majority of the people. Herein he prefigured the course of the Stuart dynasty. It was essentially an alien dynasty, pertinaciously out of harmony with the national development, so that its ultimate expulsion appeared rather as the demand of national health and safety than as a deed of revolutionary caprice.

In his relations with the Scottish Church James had given significant indications of his ecclesiastical affinities. Still he had not carried a particular scheme so far but that opposing parties in England hoped each to derive advantage from his favor. The school of Whitgift and Bancroft found encouragement in the fact that James had shown inclinations to episcopacy. The Puritans might naturally suppose that a prince who had been nurtured in the plain Scottish Kirk would give some heed to their demand for pruning ceremonies. The Roman Catholics could refer to words and acts of James as grounds for expecting an alleviation of the burdens and legal prescription under which they labored.

A short time only was needed to show where the smile of royalty would rest. The deferential, not to say obsequious, bearing of the English prelates was in striking contrast with the boldness which James had seen in the synods and preachers of his native country. It went straight to his heart, and wonderfully gratified his enormous self-complacency. The Anglican hierarchy, he concluded, was a natural ally of monarchy, and it was not many months before he uttered his curt maxim, "No bishop, no king." The Hampton Court conference, held in January, 1604, made it clear to the Puritans that the hand of James would be quite as heavy against them as had been that of Elizabeth. Indeed, he expressly declared his intention to allow no quarter to non-conformity.

The most noted grace, perhaps, which was awarded by James to the Puritan representatives at this conference, was his endorsement of their request for a revised translation of the Bible. The project was soon taken up, and the new version was ready for publication in 1611. A full list of the translators, the rules under which they worked, etc., is given by Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain, edited by J. S. Brewer, vol. v. pp. 370-377.

To grant large indulgence to Roman Catholics, while repressing non-conforming Protestants, would have been a scandal in the face of the public. James felt compelled, therefore, by consistency, as well as by the jealousy of the nation at large towards the adherents of the Pope, to make a show of executing the laws against Romanists. There was the less motive to spare them, as the evil reputation which a restless faction had gained for them in the reign of Elizabeth was enhanced by new plots. In the first year of James, a wild project was set on foot to seize his person, and two years later was devised one of the most atrocious conspiracies known to history,--the plot to destroy King, lords, and commons, at one fell stroke. Several thousand pounds of gunpowder were stored beneath the Parliament building, and all the preparations were made for firing the train, as soon as the King and the two houses should be convened at the opening of the session. About a dozen laymen had full knowledge of the Satanic enterprise, and several priests were privy to it, though the measure of guilty encouragement which they may have given is not very clearly determined. Among these was Garnet, Superior of the Jesuits in England, who fell into the hands of the government and was sent to the scaffold.

1 Garnet claimed that he knew of the plot only under the seal of confession. A specially careful and competent historian renders this judgment: "Garnet's own statements are so mingled with known falsehoods that no reliance can be placed upon anything that he said. The whole case against him rests upon circumstantial evidence. This evidence, though it would now rightly be considered insufficient to justify an adverse verdict, was quite enough to convict a prisoner in the days when looser notions of the laws of evidence prevailed, and is of itself sufficiently strong to leave no reasonable doubt in the minds of historical inquirers." (S. R. Gardiner, History of England from 1603 to 1616, i. 258, 259.)

The result of the conspiracy was what might have been expected in an intolerant age. Punishment was not limited to the guilty few. The heavy penal yoke which already rested upon the necks of English Romanists was made still more heavy. The disabilities, the restrictions, and the liability to fines were increased, and a new oath of allegiance was devised, designed to expose to special penalties those who would not renounce the temporal pretensions of the Pope.

2 Lingard says of the new penal code: "It repealed none of the laws then in force, but added to their severity by two new bills, containing more than seventy articles, inflicting penalties on the Catholics in all their several capacities, of masters, servants, husbands, parents, children, heirs, executors, patrons, barristers, physicians." (History of England, ix. 61.).

How far this code was enforced depended much upon the temper of the sovereign. James certainly was not inclined to a persevering and rigorous enforcement. His predominant desire to ingratiate himself with the leading Roman Catholic States naturally placed him under bonds not to deal too severely with his Romish subjects. While negotiating with Spain, and then with France, to secure the hand of a Roman Catholic princess for his son, he expressly stipulated that the penal laws against the domestic practice of the Romish religion should not be executed. Still it was a poor service which James rendered to the Romanists. To say nothing of the odious custom, nourished by his lax favoritism, which permitted court parasites for their own private benefit to exact fines from the recusants, his promise of tolerance in defiance of the law, and at the dictate of a country whose name was a synonym for Roman Catholic intolerance and aggression, was the reverse of a service to the persecuted. Its inevitable result, so far as it was revealed to the public, was to strengthen the national bent to grant no standing place to the Romish religion. Charles I., like James, felt the force of opposite demands, and in his lack of settled principle leaned to one side or the other as interest or necessity seemed to dictate. At one time he indicated a disposition to keep his promises with France, and pleased his Roman Catholic wife by suspending the penal laws against her co-religionists. At another time he yielded to the national judgment and jealousy, and fulfilled his pledge to Parliament by ordering the penal laws to be executed. Such double dealing was naturally a failure. The nation at large received no lesson in religious tolerance, and the minds of zealous Protestants were embittered with the suspicion that the high-church Anglicanism of the King would eventuate in Romanism.

Whilst the Roman Catholics were in the hands of the government, to take such indulgence as might be given, the Puritans were advancing to a strength which qualified them to contend with the throne. In the course of the reigns of the first two Stuarts the name of "Puritan" acquired an enlarged significance. Several parties came under the designation. There were the political Puritans, intent upon the maintenance of national liberties, champions of the privileges of Parliament over against the prerogatives of the Crown. Another class might be called ecclesiastical Puritans, their leading interest being in the government and worship of the Church. All of these agreed in the opinion that the existing system should be modified; but as respects the nature of the changes to be introduced they differed. Some would have been content with a limited episcopacy; others were zealous for the Presbyterian system; others were advocates of a congregational polity. A large proportion of the ecclesiastical Puritans might further be described as Puritans in doctrine. Their adherence to the strict Calvinistic faith was sufficiently prominent to give the name of Puritan an association with that type of theology, and we find instances in which it was so employed at the time. One other element was included in the term: the Puritan was the advocate of an austere morality. This characteristic was no doubt shaped in very different degrees. Not every Puritan moved in an air of perpetual solemnity, or made it a duty to frown upon all forms of gayety and mirth. It is the extremists of the party whom Macaulay describes when he says: "Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. ... It was a sin to hang garlands on a May-pole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear lovelocks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophic disposition of Zwingli, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom." 1 History of England, i. 61. As a class the Puritans were undeniably chargeable with some lack of genial sympathy with the pleasurable and artistic side of life. But this with many of them was no offspring of mere poverty and narrowness of spirit. It was due largely to their moral earnestness, their sense of the seriousness of life, their intense stress upon the thought of personal responsibility to the God of judgment and justice. The creed of the Puritan forbade him to lose himself in the mass, or to take up with the easy standards which happened to have currency. He felt obliged to consult higher authority the claims of conscience, the will of God. By this disposition he lost something of the plasticity which gives smoothness and affability to social intercourse. But he secured no mean compensation in firmness of moral fibre. Moreover, if he was disposed to withhold his steps from the general circle of worldly and social pleasures, he bestowed all the more care and honor upon the home.

2 There is at least an element of truth in this remark of Green: "Home, as we conceive it now, was the creation of the Puritan. Wife and child rose from mere dependents on the will of husband and father, as husband and father saw in them saints like himself, souls bellowed by the touch of a divine Spirit and called with a divine calling like his own. The sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new tenderness and refinement to the common family affections." (History of the English People, iii. 19.)

Under ordinary conditions it would have been difficult to bring the different classes of Puritans into any close alliance with one another. But so great were the grievances of which each had to complain, and so serious were the evils which threatened the nation, that they were driven in large measure to make common cause.

In the administration of the State and the Church alike they saw occasion for grief and alarm. While the nation was outgrowing the Tudor regime, and was advancing to a consciousness of self-governing faculty, the Stuarts were bent upon exercising unrestricted authority. Though possessing but little of the tact of the Tudors, they claimed all their prerogatives, and more. The most extravagant assertions of the divine right of kings were received by them as acceptable sacrifices. James insulted his Parliament, and declared it an utter impertinence for subjects to say what the King cannot do. Charles early came to the conclusion to discard Parliament altogether. His ideal of monarchy was such as was then being exemplified in Spain and France; and in Thomas Wentworth, who was made Earl of Strafford, he found a congenial agent for the working out of his ideal.

While the monarch was thus challenging the hostility of every Puritan by grasping at arbitrary power, the prelates were doing the same. Men like Bancroft and Laud saw in the House of Commons, with its large Puritan element, a foe to their scheme. By policy, therefore, as well as by a natural affinity with despotic rule, they were led to make a close alliance between monarchy and prelacy. They supported the most extravagant pretensions of the Stuarts, and published canons which were designed to leaven the Church with the doctrine of passive obedience.

1 See Canons of 1604 and 1644 especially the latter. Cardwell's Synodalia, vol. i., gives the full text. The first Canon of 1640 says: "The most high and sacred order of kings is of divine right.... For subjects to bear arms against their kings, offensive or defensive, upon any pretence whatsoever, is at least to resist the powers which are ordained of God; and though they do not invade, but only resist, St. Paul tells them plainly they shall receive to themselves damnation."

Laud, who held a commanding place in the councils of Charles up to the eve of the civil war, was the conscious, energetic, persevering ally of Strafford in his project of royal absolutism.

With the political grievance there was coupled an ecclesiastical one that was very bitter to many of the Puritans. They found not only that the demand for uniformity was pressed with increased rigor, but that they were under a system which was coming into more and more undisguised affinity with Romanism. A stress was laid upon the divine right of episcopacy, which unchurched their Protestant brethren upon the Continent. The communion table was turned into an altar, and the practice of obeisance before it was promoted. Auricular confession was frequently inculcated. A doctrine of the real presence conspicuously near to the Romish theory had its advocates, and some of the bishops did not shun to commend the invocation of saints, and prayers for the dead. Such developments naturally awakened deep anxieties. Not a few suspected that Laud was secretly intent upon bringing back the English Church into the Roman communion. Even Romanists seemed to judge that he was not hopelessly remote from their standpoint, else their motive in offering him a cardinal's hat is not very intelligible. It is to be allowed, however, that Laud was misjudged upon this point. While he was devoted to a scheme which would have eaten out the heart of Protestantism, he had no desire to subject England to the Papacy. His model was Byzantine rather than Roman. The utterly Erastian theory of church government which he abetted and sustained was contradictory to the theory of papal supremacy. Only by a change analogous to that which transpired in Becket could he have welcomed the headship of the Pope.

The apprehensions of radical Protestants were rendered the more lively and painful by the fact that the management of foreign relations seemed to be of a piece with that of home affairs. They feared that the marriage with a Roman Catholic princess, which was coveted and consummated, would give England a Roman Catholic king,

1 Fuller indicates in his quaint may how the negotiations for the hand of a Spanish princess, which seemed at one time on the point of being effectual, were viewed. "The Protestants grieved thereat, fearing that this marriage would be the funerals of their religion; and their jealousies so descanted thereon, that they suspected, if taking effect, more water of Tiber than Thames would run under London Bridge." (Church History, v. 531, 532.)

--as in fact it did in the next generation. It disquieted them exceedingly, too, to see England reduced almost to a cipher in the great struggle - so ominous of loss and disaster for Protestantism-- which was going on in Germany. 2 For the foreign policy of the first two Stuarts, see especially Gardiner's histories.

The Puritans had also their doctrinal grievance. While the distinguishing features of the Calvinistic system had not the same prominence in the writings of the early Protestant theologians of England which they commanded in some of the Continental communities, Calvinism, so far as the doctrines of grace are concerned, was in general the creed of the English Church up to the reign of James I. But Laud was pronounced in favor of the Arminian tenets which the representatives of England in the synod of Dort had helped to condemn. Moreover, he gave the full force of his patronage to the spread of these tenets, so that a bishop, being asked what the Arminians held, could reply with truth as well as wit, "They hold the best bishoprics and deaneries in England." To ardent Calvinists this seemed like an apostasy from the Reformation. Moreover, they learned, to their special exasperation, that they were to be hampered in the defence of their faith by a one-sided censorship over pulpit and press, --a censorship which was virtually under the sole direction of Laud at the time of his ascendency.

In addition to all else, the strictness of the Puritans in respect of pastimes was set at naught. Especially were their scruples regarding Sunday license rudely overridden. As early as the days of Elizabeth they had begun to agitate for a more perfect sanctification of Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. A work of Dr. Bound, in 1594, which attributed to the fourth command the nature of moral precept, and taught that it is of perpetual obligation as respects the sacred use of one day in seven, found ready acceptance among them. 1 Neal, History of the Puritans, i. 208.

What then was their dismay when James, in 1618, issued his "Declaration of Sports," encouraging the people, after leaving the church doors, to fill up Sunday with jovial pranks and amusements.

1 The royal declaration has this paragraph: "As for our good people's lawful recreations, our pleasure is, that after the end of divine service our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreations; such as dancing, either of men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations; nor from having of May games, Whitsun-ales, or morris-dances, and setting up of May-poles, or other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and venient time, without impediment or let of divine service; and the women shall have leave to carry rushes to church for the decorating of it, according to their old custom. But withal we do here account as still prohibited all unlawful games to be need on Sundays only, as bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and (at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited) bowling." (Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 483; Fuller, Church History, v. 452.)

Still more obnoxious to them was the act of Charles and Laud, fifteen years later, in republishing the declaration, and requiring all ministers to read it from their pulpits on pain of deprivation.

2 Some read the declaration, and then turned at once and read with emphasis the fourth commandment; others refused outright to read it. Respecting these Fuller says, "Some were suspended from office and benefice, some deprived, and more molested in the High Commission." (Church History, vi. 100.)

Under the pressure of these multiplied grievances, many of the Puritans turned their faces toward the shores of New England. But this and all other forms of protest had no effect upon the chief agents of the government. Regardless of public feeling, moving forward with the remorseless constancy of a mechanical appliance, Laud and Strafford gave no slightest token of concession till in the final outbreak they were hurled to the prison and the scaffold.

The crisis was precipitated by the attempt to conform the Scottish Church to the Anglican model. This change was undertaken with the fatuity of the blindest despotism. No effort was made to reconcile the minds of the Scots to the innovation. Indeed, they were not so much as consulted. In 1636 a body of canons for the government and discipline of the Scottish Church was issued on the sole authority of the King.

1 "On no record of ecclesiastical council or other deliberative body is any trace of their formation or adoption to be found. A complete code of laws for the government of a church, issued by a sovereign without official consultation with the responsible representatives of that Church, is unexampled in European history." (Burton, History of Scotland, vi. 398.)

The next year, in precisely the same autocratic fashion, a new liturgy was assigned to the Scots. A few of their bishops, it is true, had part in its preparation; but it came without the official recommendation of any ecclesiastical body whatever. The royal fiat was its only sanction. This gave a thorny cover to the book, and naturally caused the inside to be scrutinized with suspicion. Examination showed the contents to be no more agreeable than the cover. It was the old English Prayer Book which Knox had censured as containing too much of the "dregs of Popery," with points of revision that were thought to savor of Romanism, and to have been introduced on purpose to infect the Scottish Church with the Roman virus.

2 The intent of the compilers may have been innocent enough, but some of their emendations of the Anglican Liturgy were such as could hardly fail to excite anxious inquiries. A clear statement of the objectionable points is given in Fuller's Church History, vi. 145-147.

Popular feeling was kindled to a flame of resentment. The Covenant of 1581, a national oath or pledge against Popery, was brought forward, with some modifications, and was eagerly signed. The new regulations were declared abolished, and even episcopacy itself was swept by the board.

In maintaining the ground which they had taken, the Scots resorted to arms. The King accordingly found himself in such straits that he was obliged to convene Parliament. Once assembled, Parliament became the avenger of grievances. As the King was unwilling to give satisfactory security against arbitrary rule, and moreover had earned the mortal distrust of a great part of the nation, the dispute deepened into the ordeal of civil war. Amid the excitements and exigencies of the conflict, Parliament became a revolutionary body, and usurped an authority quite as subversive of constitutional government as that which the King had claimed, until at length the instrument of its power became its master, and the army ruled England. Under this military regime, Charles I. was sent to the block, January 30th, 1649.

When Parliament assembled in 1640, a majority of its members had no design to subvert the episcopal establishment in England. But dependence upon their Scotch allies soon reconciled them to this revolutionary measure. Accordingly, they assented to the terms of the Scotch as expressed in the Solemn League and Covenant, the plain import of which was that the Presbyterian form of church government, with a uniform system of discipline and worship attached, should be established in the three kingdoms. To assist in perfecting the new model, the Westminster Assembly was convened in 1643, --an advisory body, which was invited to lay its recommendations before Parliament, but had no legislative authority. In the Assembly the Presbyterian element was largely in the ascendant. There were, however, two other parties which claimed a hearing: the Erastians, led by the learned Selden, who adhered to the theory, largely prevalent in England up to the days of Bancroft, that ecclesiastical government, instead of being a matter of divine prescription, falls properly under the regulation of the State; and the Independents, who claimed Scriptural warrant for the self-governing prerogative of the individual congregation. These parties had opportunity to defend their respective views, but further satisfaction they could not gain from the company of divines. The Assembly not only elected the Presbyterian polity, but declared it to be of divine right. This declaration was rejected by Parliament. It refused also to give as large powers to spiritual tribunals as the Assembly desired. With these modifications, it accepted the proffered scheme. Presbyterianism received legal establishment. This meant persecution for the clergy who still clung to the old Anglican system. Many hundreds were deprived of their livings in the first years of the civil war, for refusing to subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant, and the list was probably enlarged in subsequent years to an aggregate of several thousands.

The legal establishment of Presbyterianism was not followed by its actual introduction except on a limited settle. One great hindrance in its way was the intolerance of its advocates. A large proportion of the Presbyterians were scarcely more patient toward dissent than Laud himself. They insisted rigidly upon uniformity. This demand alienated the army, which had imbibed in large measure the views of the Independents. The soldiers of Cromwell had no inclination to put on a Presbyterian yoke, that promised to be as heavy as the prelatical one which they had cast off; and what they undertook to veto had small chance of enforcement.

The doctrinal scheme of the Westminster divines met with wider acceptance than their plan of church government. The Assembly was unanimous in its opposition to Arminianism, and Parliament found little difficulty in accepting the elaborate confession which it presented, the sections relating to polity alone excepted. In Scotland the entire confession was readily adopted.

It is gratifying to observe in this era, when Puritan rigor followed close upon the despotism of Laud, tokens of liberal sentiments and principles. In the very midst of the impassioned conflict there arose a plea for religious liberty more potent than had been heard before in England. This came in part from the side of the Puritans. The Independents as a class, if they did not construe the subject in the broadest and most generous manner, were for practising a larger tolerance than had been advocated either by the prelatical or the Presbyterian party.

1 Neal says, referring to the time of the Westminster Assembly: "The Independents pleaded for a toleration so far as to include themselves and the sober Anabaptists, but did not put the controversy on the most generous foundation; they were for tolerating all who agreed in the fundamentals of Christianity, but when they came to enumerate fundamentals they were sadly embarrassed, as all must be who plead the cause of liberty, and yet do not place the religions and civil rights of mankind on a separate basis." (History of the Puritans, part iii. chapter vi.)

Herein they found an ally in Selden, who joined with his theory of the supremacy of the civil power the view that its authority should be a safeguard against the persecution of one faction by another. Gardiner, Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, i. 204, 105. But the most decided voice from the ranks of the Puritans in favor of religious liberty was that of John Milton. At the beginning of his public career he was connected with the Presbyterians, and several pamphlets which he wrote in 1641 and 1642 supported the general features of their church system. But his temper was quite other than that which dominated the party. He accordingly receded from its fellowship, and went forward to represent the most ideal and individualistic side of Puritanism. Ecclesiastical structures, with whatever claims or boasts set off, were of small account in his estimate. He regarded the individual as the unit of value. For the individual he saw no worthy development or destiny save in the free use of his faculties in searching for and working out the truth. From this standpoint he wrote in 1644 his famous plea for the liberty of the press.

2 "Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." Ranke says that this "must be ranked as high in the literature of pamphlets as any of Luther's popular writings, or the Provincial Letters of Pascal." (History of England, ii. 449, 450.)

It was an eloquent and powerful treatise, and left but little room for improvement by a subsequent hand.

Whatever service to the cause of religious liberty may have come from the Puritan side, it was equaled or surpassed by that which the moderate Churchmen of the era, rendered. Here belong the names of William Chillingworth, Lord Falkland, John Hales of Eton, and Jeremy Taylor. 3 For an interesting sketch of each of these, see John Tulloch. Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, vol. i. The opinions of these writers may have taken some tinge from the Arminians in Holland, who were opposed to elaborate and exacting terms of communion, and asked only for agreement in fundamentals. In common, they limited the value and the necessity of mere orthodoxy, and found a basis for tolerance in the principle that the errors of an honest and devout inquirer involve no forfeiture of Divine favor. This is set forth with great cogency by Chillingworth in his celebrated work, "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation," published in 1637. Speaking of those who fall into mistaken beliefs, he says: "If they suffer themselves neither to be betrayed into their errors, nor kept in them by any sin of their will; if they do their best endeavor to free themselves from all errors, and yet fail of it through human frailty, so well am I persuaded of the goodness of God, that if in me alone should meet a confluence of all such errors of all the Protestants of the world that were thus qualified I should not be so much afraid of them all as I should be to ask pardon for them." Works, p. 46. With like emphasis he declares the refusal of a just latitude of opinion to be the bitter spring of contentions and schisms: "This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, -- the special senses of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men's consciences together, under the penalty of death and damnation; this vain conceit, that we can speak the things of God better than in the words of God, thus deifying our own interpretations, and tyrannous enforcing them upon others; this restraining of the Word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and the apostles left them, is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of the Church, and that which makes them immortal, the common incendiary of Christendom, and that which tears in pieces not the coat, but the bowels and members of Christ." 1 Works, p. 253.

The same view is thus urged by Hales: "It is not the variety of opinions, but our own perverse wills, who think it meet that all should be conceited as ourselves are, which hath so inconvenienced the Church. Were we not so ready to anathematize each other, where we concur not in opinion, we might in hearts be united, though in our tongues we were divided, and that with singular profit to all sides. It is the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, 'and not identity of conceit, which the Holy Ghost requires at the hands of Christians." 2 Works,ii. 94. Hales had an emphatic conception of the rights of reason in religion, and of the impertinence of mere authority. This appears in his robust comments on the function of councils. Each individual of a council, he says, may err. Why then should a majority vote be free from all suspicion of error? "It was never heard," he pungently remarks, "in any profession, that conclusion of truth went by plurality of voices, the Christian profession only excepted ; and I have often mused how it comes to pass that the way which in all other sciences is not able to warrant the poorest conclusion should be thought sufficient to give authority to conclusions in divinity, the supreme empress of sciences." 3 Works, i. 65, 66.

Jeremy Taylor, whose silver trumpet was to be heard once and again in after years, presented in 1647 a fit companion to the Areopagitica of Milton. His "Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying" was an offering to the liberty of speech which ranks with the great Puritan's contribution to the liberty of the press. Taylor rests here upon the platform of Chillingworth and Hales, though his mind was undoubtedly of a somewhat different cast from theirs. He opposes the multiplication of dogmatic restrictions, declares the Apostles' Creed a sufficient compendium of necessary beliefs, and finds no surer path to right opinions than a diligent search of the Scriptures and a conscientious use of private judgment.

The Reformation In Scotland

Chapter VII --The Reformation In Scotland

The crisis of the Scotch Reformation occurred soon after the accession of Elizabeth. It may be located in the year 1560, when the practice of the Romish religion was made a penal offense.

In Scotland the Reformation was naturally accompanied by much of storm and violence. The government had scarcely passed beyond the feudal stage. The nobles divided the power with the throne. A commonalty possessed of any direct political significance was unknown in Scotland up to the middle of the sixteenth century. The hardy spirit and Bible doctrines of John Knox and his co-laborers first wrought into the Scotch commons the temper which made them a real factor in the State. Hitherto the mass of the people had ranked as retainers of the feudal lords, and had been rather the instrument of their jealousies and ambitions than a check upon their caprices. Civil disturbance was consequently an ever recurring event. Nearly the whole history of the Stuart dynasty down to the era of religious revolution was a history of ineffectual struggle with faction. James I. was assassinated. James II, had repeated experience of rebellion. James III. was slain in his flight from the battle-field. James V. died of chagrin and despair under the humiliations which the resentment of the nobles had brought upon him. 1 His death occurred in 1542, a few days after the birth of that most ill-fated of all the Stuarts, Mary, Queen of Scots. Thus the record continues until new causes of agitation blend with the old.

One of the incentives to a rupture with the Romish Church was the corrupt state of the clergy. In very few districts of Europe were the lower ranks of ecclesiastics equally distinguished for superstition and ignorance, while their superiors, besides grasping after a chief place in worldly grandeur and rule, set an example of unblushing profligacy. Such dignitaries as the primates Beaten and Hamilton, in brazen disregard of decency, neglected even to take the trouble to conceal their immoralities. "They dared their amours in the face of the world, as if proud of the soundness of their taste for beauty, and of the rank and birth that had become prostrate to their solicitation." 1 Burton, History of Scotland, iii. 22.

Another incentive not less powerful, at least with the nobles, was the great wealth in the hands of ecclesiastics. The clergy are said to have possessed about half the property of the realm. The nobles, with their instincts for plunder, naturally looked with covetous eyes towards this spoil. Froude's emphatic words on this point may be accepted without any great discount: "The gaunt and hungry nobles of Scotland, careless most of them of God or the devil, were eying the sleek and well-fed clergy like a pack of famished wolves." 2 History of England, vii. 108.

A third motive-power was the teaching and hearty conviction of men devoted to gospel truth. Here was the true leaven of the movement, the spiritual might which gave to Europe and to civilization a regenerated Scotland.

As in England, so also in Scotland, remnants of the Lollard sect were at hand to give a welcome to the reform movement. 3 M'Crie, Life of Andrew Melville, p. 4 Tyndale's New Testament also reached the latter country nearly as soon as the former. The beginnings thus made were improved upon by a young nobleman, Patrick Hamilton, who during a sojourn in Germany had been confirmed in an enthusiastic love for the principles of the Reformation. It was only for a brief space, however, that he was allowed to act the part of the confessor and the advocate. The fire of his martyrdom was kindled in 1528. In the midst of the flames he was heard to pronounce these words: "How long, O Lord, shall darkness cover this realm? How long wilt thou suffer the tyranny of men? Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 1 John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, edited by Laing, i. 18, Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, i. 75-80, ed. 1842. The burning took place under the auspices of Archbishop Beaten, uncle of the more famous Cardinal of the same name, who succeeded him in the see of St. Andrews. Among the rewards which the prelate gained by the transaction was a congratulatory letter from the Louvain doctors. 2 Calderwood, i 80-82. It proved to be, however, a poor discretion which dictated the congratulation. The heroic death of Hamilton awakened a wide-spread interest. Others were found equal to the fiery ordeal, and the names of about half a score of witnesses who suffered in the next fifteen years are recorded. 3 Knox's History, i. 36-66. A cessation of severities occurred during the first years of the regency of Arran, but it was soon apparent to the Protestants that it was perilous ground upon which they stood. In 1546 a distinguished evangelist, George Wishart, was sent to the stake. His cruel fate greatly stimulated the animosity which for years had been accumulating against Cardinal Beaten, as a would-be usurper, Libertine, and persecutor; and a few weeks later the ambitious primate was murdered by a band of conspirators at St. Andrews.

The castle of St. Andrews remained for a time in the hands of those who had taken vengeance upon the Cardinal. Thither, in 1547, came John Knox, expecting, as his own account indicates, to find the stronghold a refuge from molestation and danger. He was accompanied by the sons of Hugh Douglas, who had been placed under his instruction. Pressed by a very urgent summons, Knox added the office of preacher to that of teacher. But his ministrations were brought to a sudden close. The castle was taken by the French. Knox experienced the hardships of a prisoner on board a galley ship for nearly two years (1547-1549). The next ten years of his life, except an interval of less than a year in Scotland, mere divided between England and the Continent. A considerable time was spent in Geneva. It was from this place that he issued his treatise, entitled the "First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regimen of Women." As Knox afterwards explained, his publication had reference chiefly to the bloody rule of Mary in England. But no discrimination was expressed, and the only conclusion left to he drawn was that, in the view of the Reformer, the government of a country by a woman is to be accounted a monstrosity. Naturally, at a later date, such a manifesto was a poor recommendation for Knox, both to the virgin Queen of England and to the Queen of Scots.

In character Knox was well suited to the stern work of religious revolution. He was distinguished by the same vigor, decision, and determination as Calvin. With less of intellectual breadth and penetration, he combined a larger gift of popular eloquence. His bold and incisive address penetrated the minds of his countrymen much as did the burning words of Luther the minds of the Germans. As one wrote to Cecil, the single voice of Knox was more inspiriting to the Scots than five hundred trumpets blustering in their ears. He well deserved the eulogy which the Regent Morton pronounced over his grave: "Here lies one who never feared the face of a man." His conscientiousness, personal force, and undaunted courage must ever commend him to the appreciation of healthy minds. At the same time, his biography can hardly fail to produce an impression of a certain uncharitableness, intolerance, and harshness. Even so great an admirer as M'Crie writes of him: "A stranger to complimentary or smooth language, little concerned about the manner in which his reproofs were received, provided they were merited, too much impressed with the evil of the offense to think of the rank or character of the offender, he often uttered his admonitions with an acrimony and vehemence more apt to irritate than to reclaim." 1 Life of John Knox, ii. 255. He dwelt too much in the sphere of the old dispensation, and gave too literal an application to the historical precedents which he found recorded there. He was intolerant on principle. It should be stated to his credit, however, that his intolerance respected not mere trifles, but that which be had reason to regard as of serious consequence.

As Knox returned to Scotland, in 1559, he found the country in a state of great excitement. Repressive measures, particularly the burning, the year before, of an aged evangelist, Walter Mill, had stirred up intense feeling. Strong suspicion was entertained that French power would be used to crush altogether the friends of the Reformation. The words of Knox were in no wise calculated to calm the agitation. A storm of iconoclasm broke out, and-churches were spoiled of their ornaments, and cloisters were destroyed. Knox cannot be charged with having directly inculcated the outbreak of violence. It was the work of the "rascal multitude," to use his own phrase. But there is little ground for supposing that he lamented much more than the irregularity of the proceeding, especially if he really uttered the remark, that "the best way to keep the rooks from returning was to pull down the nests."

This rude purgation was never undone. Aid supplied from England gave the Protestant lords the advantage in the contest with the Regent (Mary of Guise, the widow of James V. ), and the French were compelled to evacuate the country. A Parliament convened in 1560, shortly after the Regent's death, abolished the Roman Catholic religion. The saying or hearing of mass was made punishable with death for a third offense.

1 Knox regarded the mass as coming under the Old Testament law against idolatry, and participation in it, therefore, worthy of a capital infliction. It should be noticed, however, that there was no haste to find victims under the law. "I never read nor heard of an instance," says M'Crie, "in the time of our Reformer, of a person being put to death for performing any part of the Roman Catholic worship." (Life of Knox, ii, 129.)

A new ecclesiastical establishment took the place of the old. It did not however become heir to more than a fragment of the accumulated wealth of the Church. The avarice of the landed gentry crowded aside the grand educational and charitable schemes of Knox, and made spoil of a great part of the property which should have been devoted to the higher needs of the nation.

Such was the theatre upon which Mary Stuart, daughter of the deceased Regent and widow of the French King, Francis II., came to act the sovereign. She arrived in 1561, in the nineteenth year of her age. Sad exchange to her for the gay and brilliant life which she had led in the polished court of France! Six years of rule passing into trouble and tragedy, an abdication in Lochleven castle, nineteen years of imprisonment in England, and death by the executioner's axe,-such were the fortunes awaiting her.

Nothing more ill adjusted than Mary Stuart to her position could well be imagined. Brought up a Roman Catholic at a Romish court, she was set over a realm in which the practice of the Romish religion was made a capital offense. Even the private exercise of her religion was regarded as a thing most offensive and alarming. Knox declared that a single mass was to him a more fearful thing than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in the realm for the express purpose of suppressing religion. 1 Knox's History, ii. 276. The manner, too, in which he addressed Mary herself, and commented on her conduct, was far from expressive of a delicate regard for her conscience and pleasure. To be told by him that he was willing to endure her rule as Paul endured that of Nero, to have it declared to her face that her Church was "a harlot, polluted with all kinds of spiritual fornication, both in doctrines and manners," 2 See Knox's account of his first interview with Mary (ii. 277-286), probably as unique a dialogue as ever occurred between subject and sovereign. to be charged from the pulpit with delighting more in fiddlers and flatterers than in the company of wise and grave men, to be remembered in public petitions, to the effect that God would deliver her from the bondage and thralldom of Satan, and thus save her and the realm from the vengeance appointed to idolatry, -- all this must have appeared to the high-spirited Queen as a strange adjunct to sovereignty. In fine, her position was as capital an irony on the principle of hereditary rule as can well be found.

It is a poor task in the historian to excuse the rudeness of Knox. At the same time, he ought not to be censured too unsparingly. He early gained the conviction that this fascinating Queen was bent upon acting the part of a Roman sorceress to charm back the nation to its cast-off idolatries and superstitions.

1 In October, 1561, Knox wrote to Cecil: "The Queen neither is, neither shall be, of our opinion; and in very deed her whole proceedings do declare that the lessons of the Cardinal [the artful Charles of Lorraine] are so deeply printed in her heart that the substance and the quality are like to perish together. I would be glad to be deceived, but I fear I shall not."

Nor can it be alleged that he was mistaken in his surmise. In her first years, it is true, under the discreet guidance of her half-brother, the Earl of Murray, she gave no open manifestation of a purpose to change the religion. While she declined to give a formal sanction to the reform measures which had been adopted in Parliament, she announced that ecclesiastical affairs were to remain undisturbed. But this much of concession was simply the dictate of necessity. Her purpose--as indicated by her correspondence with her uncles of the house of Guise, with the Pope, and with Philip II., as also by the measures to which she resorted as soon as a favorable crisis appeared--was the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion.

Ranke, History of England, i. 264-269; Mignet, Histoire de Marie Stuart, pp. ll4-119 in English translation; Burton, History of Scotland, iv. 218, 302.

This scheme too did not seem altogether a wild undertaking, considering the light scruples of many of the nobles and the promise of aid from the Roman Catholic powers on the Continent. There was need, in short, of every particle of the vigilance and decision of Knox, whatever portion of his asperity might have been dispensed with.

The opportunities of Mary were not a little enhanced by the misconduct of the nobles. In 1565, Murray and some others, complaining that the Queen, without consulting Parliament, had married Lord Darnley and entitled him King, and convinced also that this union with one whose faith, if anything, was Romanism, contained a threat against their religion, made a show of resistance to the Queen's authority. It was an ill-devised scheme, which resulted in the banishment of the discontented lords, and thus greatly strengthened the hands of Mary. A few months later a still greater offense was perpetrated against the Queen in the assassination of her secretary, the Italian Rizzio. Here the chief culprit was the royal consort. Darnley, who was a man of signal worthlessness, was displeased because Mary withheld from him the crown matrimonial, and he was also excited to jealousy by her kindness to Rizzio. Taking advantage of this ill humor, some of the more unscrupulous nobles, who hated the foreigner as an intriguer and upstart, joined with Darnley in planning his murder. The deed as executed was conspicuous for its barbarity, and was better fitted to stamp the perpetrators with infamy than to help their cause. If it weakened the Queen at the moment, and disconcerted her projects, the discredit which it brought upon the opponents of her policy might have been utilized erelong to increase her ascendancy.

But at this stage Mary forfeited her opportunity. Influences more potent than religious zeal or political ambition seem to have mastered her. Revenge and love joined in urging her on to a deed of hell. Filled with a mortal hatred of the husband who had comported himself so outrageously, and giving herself over to a mad passion for Bothwell, she became a participant in the plot for the murder of Darnley (Feb. 10, 1567). Such at least was a wide-spread belief at the time, and it is supported by a long array of historical particulars, as well as by the written evidence of the famous "casket letters."

1 Serious doubt respecting the guilt of Mary would probably never have arisen were it not that her came has been supported by two eloquent advocates, namely, her personal charms and her extreme misfortunes. In some minds religions prejudice has served as a third advocate. The best that the defenders of the Queen of Scots can do is to indulge in a piece-meal challenge of the evidence. The force of the general concurrence of particulars, upon which as historical judgment rests, they cannot break. This is well illustrated by Mignet, who, though he writes in a temper quite other than that of hostility to the Queen of Scots, finds overwhelming proof of her guilt. Compare Burton and Ranke. On the genuineness of the "casket letters," purporting to be letters of Mary to Bothwell, Ranke offers this very decided opinion: "No human being could have invented them" (History of England, i. 273).

This dark affair sealed the overthrow of the Queen of Scots. In the castle of Lochleven, where she was confined, she signed her abdication in favor of her infant son James, it being understood that during his minority Munay should act as Regent. Though escaping her prison the next year, the attempt to recover her power proved fruitless, and she took refuge in England, there to spend the remainder of her days a prisoner. Once upon English soil, Mary, as we have seen, became the centre of Roman Catholic plots, in certain of which she herself participated to the extent of her ability. That she should be got rid of in some way seemed to have become a political necessity. The chief question concerning Elizabeth's treatment of Mary antedates the execution. Was it right for her to detain, imprison, and hold responsible to her tribunals the princess of another realm?

A few words about the constitution of the Scottish Church may fitly close the section. The question of polity, which became in after times a burning question, does not seem to have occasioned much discussion in the time of Knox. His familiarity with the Genevan model naturally influenced his conceptions, and at the settlement of the Church, in 1560, an essentially Presbyterian system was inaugurated. While the country was divided into districts, and superintendents were appointed over these, their standing was not that ordinarily pertaining to bishops. The superintendents had no special prerogatives to ordain, and were under the authority of the general assembly. Their appointment was probably due to the great lack of competent ministers. The same face explains also the provision for readers, or those qualified only to read the appointed service. At first this class was much in excess of the preachers. The officers, to whom a more regular or permanent character was attached, were these four,-- pastor, teacher, ruling elder, and deacon. In the class of teachers, or doctors, the professors of the universities were included. The ruling elder assisted the pastor in government and discipline. The function of the deacon concerned the management of temporalities. The kirk session, or meeting of the officers of a single congregation, the presbytery, the provincial synod, and the general assembly, formed the ascending series of official meetings. All the factors in this scheme were not, indeed, distinctly organized at the start, but they soon made their appearance.

The first innovation in the direction of episcopacy occurred in 1572, the year that Knox died. This was dictated by temporal considerations, the main impulse being the desire of the nobles to bring within reach the revenues attached in law to the old bishoprics. Incumbents were accordingly appointed to the vacant sees, with the expectation that they would share the revenues with their patrons; and common rumor says that the noble patrons realized their expectation. The new bishops were little more than bishops in name. Popular irony compared them to stuffed calves set up to make the cow give her milk. A definite opposition to them soon began, and a party was formed with whom a Presbyterian or anti-prelatical polity was a matter of principle as well as of preference. This party found an able leader in Andrew Melville, a man superior to Knox in erudition and literary talent, and scarcely inferior to him in contagious courage and resolution. Under his influence, the assembly declared, in 1580, for the abolition of diocesan episcopacy as "unlawful and without warrant in the Word of God." From this time the drift of sentiment in the Scottish Church was no doubt averse to any affiliation with an episcopal system. But the government, in the person of James, entertained a contrary preference. After some advances and retreats, James finally succeeded, in 1610, in inaugurating in Scotland a genuine episcopacy, with such Anglican attachments as apostolic succession and a Court of High Commission. During the period under review the Scotch Confession, adopted in 1560, was in force. This shows the hand of Knox, as does also the Book of Common Order, which was the authorized prayer-book of the Scottish Church for about a hundred years. The Confession, as a whole, is more acceptable to the softened dogmatism of our time than its substitute, the elaborate doctrinal exposition by the Westminster Assembly. The prayer-book, in comparison with the English, shows the influence of the more simple liturgy of the Reformed Churches on the Continent.

Protestantism In England During The Reign Of Elizabeth

Chapter VII --Protestantism In England During The Reign Of Elizabeth

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. by Anne Boleyn, came to the throne without opposition. During the reign of her half-sister Mary her life had hung by a thread. Gardiner had a will to "go roundly to work" with her, and Mary at times was possessed with a similar inclination. But the revolt of the popular mind against the sacrifice of the princess, and the danger of aggrandizing France beyond measure by leaving Mary Stuart the nearest heir to the English crown, served as an effectual shield to Elizabeth. Severities against her were limited to imprisonment, and the demand that she should conform to the Roman Catholic mode of worship,--a demand to which Elizabeth could accede without large sacrifice of personal scruples. Though not a few may have entertained the suspicion that she would go wrong in her religious policy, the nation generally gave her a welcome.

It was not as the enthusiastic champion of any particular faith that Elizabeth began to rule. She proclaimed no purpose to revolutionize the existing order of things. For a time she even continued to attend Mass. Equally remote from the spirit of radical Protestantism and from Roman Catholic bigotry, she was more nearly akin in disposition to a Lorenzo de' Medici and other representatives of the Italian humanism than to a Calvin or a Plus V. Without ambition for speculative clearness, concerned more for æsthetics than for logic, she preferred a sort of mean between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant schemes. While superior to the grosser phases of traditional Romanism, she liked much of the old ritual, was decidedly in favor of the celibacy of the priesthood,

1 Cecil wrote to Archbishop Parker in 1561: "Her Majesty contiuneth very ill affected to the state of matrimony in the clergy; and if I were not therein very stiff, her Majesty would utterly and openly condemn and forbid it" (Strype's Parker, i. 214.)

insisted upon having a crucifix in her chapel, and would have opened the churches to images but for the resolute opposition of the bishops. Prescribed ceremony was more to her taste than free address, and on one occasion she expressed the conviction that four or five preachers were enough for a county. She disliked irregularities, and could be tyrannical in asserting her high notions of the royal prerogative. But it was only outward uniformity that she insisted upon. She had too little dogmatic zeal to be interested to force her individual creed upon her subjects. Like Cecil, her chief counselor, who served her so faithfully during her long reign, she made the political the dominant standpoint. She held that an independent style of worship would be a disorderly and disrupting factor in the realm; but with private belief, or with a moderate expression of private belief, she did not care to interfere, provided the belief was not in its very terms a challenge to the legitimacy of her rule.

However far Elizabeth might have been willing to tolerate Romanism, she was forced, by her position, to renounce its claims. The fanatical Pope, who had demanded more than even Mary was willing to concede, naturally failed to come to any agreement with Elizabeth. His requirement that she should submit her right to the crown to his decision provoked, of course, the scorn and aversion of the proud Queen, and forestalled every thought in her mind of acknowledging the papal headship.

On the demand of Paul IV., see Sarpi, Istoria del Concil. Trid., lib. v.; Pallavicino, lib. xiv. According to Sarpi, Paul IV. carried his ill-timed boldness so far as to mention the feudal dependence of England upon the Roman See.

Parliament, in 1559, restored the Act of Supremacy, by which the sovereign was made the head, or, as the new version of the title ran, Supreme Governor of the English Church. The Act included a clause empowering the Queen to name commissioners for the exercise of her ecclesiastical authority. On this clause was founded the Court of High Commission, destined to win an evil name by its arbitrary proceedings. The royal supremacy was supported by penalties ranging from forfeiture of goods and chattels to the pains of high treason, according to the number of the offense. The same year the Act of Uniformity was passed, requiring every minister to use none other than the established Liturgy, under pain, for the first offense, of forfeiting goods; for the second, of a year's imprisonment; for the third, of imprisonment during life. To secure the conformity of the laity, absence from church without reasonable excuse was made punishable by fines. Very little show of opposition was made to these measures. The bishops, indeed, with one exception, refused to comply with the demands of the government, and were deposed. But out of nine thousand and four hundred clergy only about two hundred lose their positions by a decided refusal to accept the new order of things.

Strype, Annals, i. 255; Neal, History of the Puritans, i. 82 ed. 1842. A larger number probably evaded the requirement. Not a few rendered only a partial and mixed conformity.

Some revision was made of the second Prayer Book Of Edward VI. A few items most obnoxious to Romish prejudice were omitted or modified. The Forty-two Articles which had been propounded under Edward were reduced by convocation, in 1563, to the Thirty-Nine which have held their place in the English Church down to the present. These articles were confirmed by Parliament in 1571, and subscription to them was made obligatory upon all priests and teachers of religion. By an Act of 1563 all holders of office, lay or spiritual, were required to take oath of allegiance to the Queen, and to abjure the temporal authority of the Pope. A second refusal of the oath was to be reckoned as treason. But it would seem that there was no serious intention to use all the rigor which the Act legitimated; for instructions were given that great caution should be employed in tendering the oath to Romish recusants, and that it should in no case be proffered a second time without previous consultation with the higher authorities.

In general, the actual dealing with Roman Catholics in the early part of Elizabeth's reign was much milder than the laws. No doubt it was only a maimed sore of tolerance which they enjoyed, and individuals were subjected to considerable hardships. But, as has been freely allowed by Roman Catholic writers, 1 Charles Butler, Historical Memoirs of the English, Irish and Scottish Catholics, 3d ed., i. 345-347, 352, 353. there was no general and severe persecution. Elizabeth had been on the throne nearly twenty years before a single priest was capitally punished for what any one would wish to call the exercise of his religion. 2 Strype'e Parker, ii. 134. But thereafter severities were greatly multiplied, and we have the record that before the end of the reign of Elizabeth about two hundred -- a large proportion of whom were priests --had been executed, and several score had died in prison. 3 Dodd's Church History, iii. 159-170; Butler, i. 398. It is a question, however, to what extent these executions fall under the category of religious persecution. The government certainly based them on political rather than on religious grounds. It is true that the laws under which capital inflictions took place allowed any active propagation of the Roman Catholic religion to be construed as treason. This was especially the case after the year 1584, when all Jesuits, missionary priests from foreign seminaries, and priests ordained since the first year of the reign, were made liable to be adjudged traitors if found within the kingdom after a certain date. But, on the other hand, as appears from the statements of Cecil and Walsingham, the government claimed that those who suffered came to their deaths in reality as agents and abettors of an assault against the throne. 1 Hallam, Constitutional History, chap, iii. How far this claim was well founded will appear from the following facts: (1) In the year 1569 a rebellion was started under the auspices of some of the leading nobles, the avowed object of which was the restoration of the old religion. The rebellion was also in the interest of the Queen of Scots, and there is no reasonable ground to doubt that if it had come to a successful issue Elizabeth would have been dethroned in favor of the Scottish queen. (2) In 1570 Pope Pius V. declared Elizabeth deposed, proclaimed her subjects absolved from all allegiance to her, and forbade them to obey her under pain of excommunication. 2 Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 260 261; Collier, Eccl. Hist., vi. 471-474 (3) The same Pope welcomed the project which was negotiated by Ridolfi, in 1571, for dethroning Elizabeth by means of a Spanish invasion. In this plot, whether with or without the Pope's cognizance, the assassination of Elizabeth, as an advantageous preliminary to the invasion, was coolly discussed. 3 Froude, x. 208, 250; Green, ii. 382, 383. (4) The successor of Pius V., besides appointing a jubilee in honor of the Saint Bartholomew massacre, patronized an insurrection in Ireland in 1579, as a preparation for a descent upon England. (5) The attempt of Philip II. to conquer England was at the same time a papal project, and was preceded by the stipulation that Philip should hold the crown of that kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. 1 Ranke, History of England, i. 318. (6) The immediate heads of the party upon whom the capital sentence was mainly inflicted were the industrious allies of Rome and Spain in the whole series of projects for invading England and dethroning Elizabeth. We refer to William Allen, who inaugurated the scheme of foreign seminaries as training schools for Roman Catholic refugees from England,

These seminaries, with the dates of their foundation, are given as follows: Douay, 1569 (temporarily transferred to Rheims); Rome, 1579; Valladolid, 1589; Seville, 1593; St. Omer, 1596; Madrid, 1606; Louvain, 1606; Liege, 1616; Ghent, 1624.

and to Robert Persons (or Parsons), the superior of the Jesuit mission in the English realm. In 1576 the earliest of the foreign seminaries began to pour its missionary priests across the channel, and in 1580 the first contingent of Jesuits, including the eloquent and ill-fated Campian, entered the country and engaged actively in the work of reviving Romish zeal and devotion. It is probably true that the seminary priests and Jesuits were not sent out with any commission for political conspiracy, and that most of those who came to the scaffold had not been guilty of any specific effort for the overthrow of the government. But it is undoubtedly true, on the other hand, that their superiors were active agents and organizers of political revolution; 1 Butler, i. 419-422. Berington, a Roman Catholic priest, complains bitterly of Persons as a restless intriguer (Steinmetz, History of the Jesuits). that they themselves declined to render a satisfactory denial of the Pope's authority to depose the Queen; a

2 Butler, i. 429, 430; Berington, Introduction to Memoirs of Panzani, quoted by Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England, ii. 459. Berington criticises those who were arraigned as follows: "They seemed to consider themselves as the subjects of a foreign master, whose sovereignty was paramount and whose will was supreme."

and that they would have powerfully assisted any promising attempt at revolution inaugurated under the papal sanction. In their own view, indeed, they were martyrs for religion, and there is no need to deny them the honor of a self-sacrificing and heroic devotion to their cause. At the same time the government cannot be blamed for regarding them as agents for executing the revolutionary schemes of their acknowledged head the Pope of Rome, though the capital inflictions, in the absence of clear proof of direct complicity in treasonable attempts, must be condemned.

Six years after the Jesuit emissaries entered England came the culminating conspiracy. A seminary priest by the name of Ballard is supposed to have been the prime mover, though the conspiracy takes its name from Babington, a young gentleman who engaged with several companions to kill the Queen. The plot, which included in its design assassination, insurrection, and invasion, was avenged in the blood of the chief English confederates, and drew after itself a consequence no less serious than the execution of Mary Stuart. She had been a prisoner in England for a long time, and by virtue of her position as a Roman Catholic and the next claimant after Elizabeth to the English throne, was the centre, whether with or without her knowledge, of all Romish plots. Being declared guilty of complicity in the Babington conspiracy, she was brought to the scaffold in 1587. This startling act of vengeance urged to a speedy execution against England of a great project which had been under consideration, and in 1588 the Grand Armada set sail from Spain, to be destroyed by British valor and the fury of wind and wave.

The unpatriotic and treasonable course of the more zealous and bigoted section of English Romanists naturally tended to the disadvantage of the much larger number who had showed exemplary loyalty and patience, and helped greatly toward the ascendancy of Protestantism. If the majority of the older generation still inwardly maintained their preference for the old faith, a majority of the younger generation in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign were well purged of any inclination to Romanism. The instruction of the people passed gradually from the hands of priests who had reluctantly abandoned the Romish rites to those who had an inward sympathy with Protestantism, and whose influence was also aided by better morals than had characterized the old order. "By the close of the Queen's reign the moral temper as well as the social character of the clergy had greatly changed. Scholars like Hooker could now be found in the ranks of the priesthood, and the grosser scandals which disgraced the clergy as a body for the most part disappeared. . . . The influence of the new clergy was backed by a general revolution in English thought. The grammar schools were diffusing a new knowledge and mental energy through the middle classes and among the country gentry. The tone of the Universities -- no unfair test of the tone of the nation at large-changed wholly as the Queen's reign went on. At its opening Oxford was a 'nest of Papists,' and sent its best scholars to feed the Catholic seminaries; at its close the University was a hotbed of Puritanism." 1 Green, History of the English People,ii. 404, 405.

In mentioning Puritanism we have mentioned Elizabeth's thorn in the flesh. Indeed she hated the Puritans not a whit less than she did the radical Papists.

As previously indicated, the rise of the Puritans is explained by the conservative cast which the English Reformation assumed under the supervision of the crown. To ardent minds it seemed that the movement was hindered from reaching its proper goal. Familiarity with foreign models increased their dissatisfaction. Many who had been exiled in the reign of Mary, came back from Strasburg, from Geneva, or from Zurich, with a pronounced distaste for pomp and prelacy. They began to criticise, to make protests, to seek amendments of the established worship and polity. They were answered with persecution, and persecution naturally urged them to more uncompromising views. Being placed under constraint by the crown, while they commanded a large following in Parliament, they were naturally inclined to be advocates of Parliamentary privilege. Moreover, the type of government which they favored in the Church could hardly fail to suggest to their minds that civil government is best ordered where the monarchical feature, if not eliminated, is at least restricted. 1 Compare Macaulay, History of England, i. 44, 45.

In the first years of Elizabeth the feature of the establishment which was specially obnoxious to the radical reformers was the use of the surplice and other vestments which had a popular association with the Romish worship. The imposition of these habits was nothing more than a piece of governmental policy or prejudice. The people were not fond of them. The bishops with few, if any, exceptions would gladly have dispensed with them. 2 Neal, History of the Puritans, i. 92, 93; Soames, Elizabethan Religious History, chap. i.; Zurich Letters, nos. xv., lx., c., and cxi., ed. 1846. But Elizabeth was pertinacious in the demand that her servants should appear in the prescribed livery. In addition to the obnoxious vestments, there were certain ceremonies and practices which evoked censure.

3 The petition presented to James I. at his accession indicates the points relating to the church service upon which most stress was laid. Neal gives them thus: "That the cross in baptism, the interrogatories to infants, baptism by women, and confirmation may be taken away; that examination may go before the communion; that the ring in marriage may be dispensed with; that the service may be abridged; church songs and music moderated to better edification; that the Lord's day may not be profaned, nor the observation of other holidays strictly enjoined; that ministers may not be charged to teach their people to bow at the name of Jesus; and that none but canonical scriptures be read in the Church" (i. 228).

Between 1570 and 1572 the controversy advanced to a more serious stage, and the constitution of the Church, as well as its fashions, was called in question. Under the lead of Thomas Cartwright, whose views caused his ejection from Cambridge University, it began to be asserted that the Scriptures gave no warrant either for the name or the function of archbishop or archdeacon, and that the powers of the bishops ought to be greatly retrenched. In fact, a distinct attack was made upon prelacy, and the leaning of the Puritans to an essentially Presbyterian type of church government was made manifest. Cartwright, in his controversy with Whitgift, maintained at once the binding obligation of the New Testament model, the parity of the original bishops among themselves, and the limitation of their oversight to a single congregation. 1 a convenient summary of his arguments is given in B. Brook's Memoir of Cartwright, chaps. iii, and v.

While the Puritans considered themselves justified in a measure of non-conformity, they were not for the most part separatists. Some of their number, it is true, withdrew into separate congregations. We read of one of their assemblies in London being broken up by the authorities in 1567, and a hundred of its members being put under arrest. Separation, however, was not the approved policy. The more distinguished representatives of the Puritan party thought it better to remain in the Church and to labor for its reformation. The advocacy of separation, as a matter of principle, became especially characteristic of those who held the most democratic views of church government, who contended for the self-governing faculty of each individual congregation, and thus became the fathers of the Independents or Congregationalists. Such were Robert Brown, Barrowe, Greenwood, and Robinson. As refusing communion with the Established Church and sharply assailing its constitution, they were treated with great severity. Some found refuge in Holland. Several,including Barrowe and Greenwood, were sentenced to death under a harsh and forced construction of the Libel Act. 1 The feeling of the authorities had been exasperated against the sectaries by a series of violent tracts, dating from 1588, and known as the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts.

From the year 1564 to the end of the reign of Elizabeth the work of disciplining the Puritans was one of the constant tasks of the government. If the zeal of the bishops relaxed in this work, the Queen's sceptre became a goad to urge them forward. Parker, her first archbishop, served her as a faithful instrument, though not without some inward reluctance. Grindal, who followed, earned her displeasure by too great a leaning to liberty. Her third archbishop, the energetic and dogmatic Whitgift, needed no spur. Under his administration the Court of High Commission became an effective instrument of ecclesiastical rigor. With unlimited prerogative of inquiry it combined the right to fine and imprison. Being largely determined in its operations by the archbishop, it had the odious character which attaches to a personal despotism. But if Whitgift did not save his reputation, he gained his immediate aim. He had the satisfaction of seeing the Puritans checked and non-conformity greatly restrained. His satisfaction however, would have been much less,could he have foreseen that the check was only as a dam to heap up waters whose accumulated force would soon loosen the foundation stones of the ecclesiastical structure.

While the Puritans suffered from the intolerance of their opponents, they were not themselves advocates of tolerance. They believed generally in an established religion, and in substantial penalties for offenses against religion. As respects the relations of Church and State, they contended not for a divorce, but for an adjustment which should leave the Church in a less servile relation to the civil power.

It is noteworthy that throughout the first stages of the Puritan controversy the upholders of the established polity took a moderate ground as respects its sanctions. They were content to maintain that it was agreeable to Scripture and to Christian history, and, as being introduced by the lawful authority of the realm, should be accepted by all loyal subjects. They did not dream of asserting for it an exclusive validity. The arbitrary and sectarian notion that the New Testament authoritatively prescribes a specific form of church government came from the Puritan rather than from the prelatical party. A high Presbyterian preceded a high episcopal theory. Cranmer and his associates had no thought of the divine right of episcopacy. To unchurch those who were living under a Presbyterian economy, or to dispute the proper ministerial character of those who had received only Presbyterian ordination, did not enter the heads of the great body of Elizabethan divines. 1 Macaulay, i. 56, 57. Even a man of such controversial and high-church instincts as Whitgift, made episcopacy nothing more than an admissible and desirable institute. He used language involving an unqualified denial of its necessity, in that he declared against the necessity of any one specific type of polity. "I find," he says, "no one certain and perfect kind of government prescribed or commanded in the Scriptures to the Church of Christ.... Notwithstanding government, or some kind of government, may be a part of the Church, touching the outward form and perfection of it, yet it is not such a part of the essence and being, but that it may be the Church of Christ, without this or that kind of government." 1 Works, i. 184, 185, Parker Society edition. Richard Hooker, who took up the controversy, and in his "Laws Of Ecclesiastical Polity" made the most celebrated reply to the teachings of Cartwright, argued from the same standpoint. He remarks: "He which affirmeth speech to be necessary among all men throughout the world, doth not thereby import that all men must necessarily speak one kind of language; even so the necessity of polity and regiment in all Churches may be held without holding anyone certain form to be necessary in them all." 2 Book iii. chap. ii. - Hooker, to be sure, thinks the Scriptures favorable, rather than otherwise, to episcopacy. "If we did seek," he says, "to maintain that which most advantageth our own cause, the very best way for us and strongest against them were to hold even as they do, that in Scripture there must needs be some particular form of church polity which God hath instituted, and which for that very cause belongeth to all churches, to all times." 3 Book iii, chap, x. That Hooker refused to proceed in this way, which he regarded as controversially most advantageous, shows the clearness of his conviction that it was a way of falsehood. The advantage, however, which the gifted author declined to use, men of a different calibre were beginning to seize upon. A sermon by Bancroft in 1589 (or February, 1588, by the old reckoning) announced the divine right of episcopacy.

1 So the sermon has commonly been interpreted, though Hallam fails to find in it so large a meaning. G. G. Perry regards the sermon as marking a new era in the controversy by asserting for episcopacy that divine right which the opposing party had claimed for presbytery (History of the Church of England, pp. 343, 344. Compare Hook, Archbishops, x. 195).

This was novel doctrine at that time, and was far from claiming general acceptance even among those not infected with Puritanism. It appears also that the first advocates of the doctrine hesitated to carry it to its extreme consequences. Early in the reign of James I. the Convocation of Canterbury, under the presidency of Bancroft, adopted a canon which was plainly meant to recognize the Scottish Church--then without any regular episcopacy -- as a part of "Christ's holy Catholic Church." 2 Grub, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland. ii. 282. Again, in 1610, at the consecration of the Scottish bishops, Archbishop Bancroft declined the suggestion of Andrews, Bishop of Ely, that the candidates, as not having received episcopal ordination, should first be ordained presbyters, maintaining "that thereof there was no necessity, seeing where bishops could not be had, the ordination given by the presbyters must be esteemed lawful, otherwise it might be doubted if there were any lawful vocation in most of the reformed churches." 3 Spottiswood, History of the Church of Scotland, iii. 209, ed. 1851. It was not to be expected, however, that the subject would rest at this point. The claim of divine right must be followed by more intolerant pretensions, else we should observe here an exception to the general tendency of ecclesiastical hierarchies, Christian or pagan, to forget moderation, when once started on the road to self-deification. We shall find Bancroft's doctrine bearing fruit in the time of Laud. Nor is it a barren doctrine in our own day; for the whole scheme of sacramental magic which is taught by modern ritualism hangs upon the doctrine of the divine right and unbroken succession of bishops, as channels of authority and grace.

While the Puritan controversy ruffled the ecclesiastical surface, the general condition of the English nation, during the later years of Elizabeth, was one of peace and prosperity. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada the danger of foreign invasion, which had hung as a threatening cloud upon the horizon, was no longer a cause of serious apprehension. In this time of lessened tension English talent reached its opportunity to anglicize the Renaissance, and the era was begun which is immortalized by the names of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Bacon.