Part 277

"The total number of those who suffered in this persecution, from the martyrdom of Rogers, in February, 1555, to September, 1558, when its last ravages were felt, is variously related, in a manner sufficiently different to assure us that the relaters were independent witnesses, who did not borrow from each other, and yet sufficiently near to attest the general accuracy of their distinct statements. By Cooper they are estimated at about 290. According to Burnet they were 284. Speed calculates them at 274. The most accurate account is probably that of Lord Burleigh, who, in his treatise called 'The Execution of Justice in England,' reckons the number of those who died in that reign by imprisonment, torments, famine and fire, to be near 400, of which those who were burnt alive amounted to 290. From Burnet's Tables of the separate years, it is apparent that the persecution reached its full force in its earliest year."

_Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England, volume 2, chapter 11._

"Though Pole and Mary could have laid their hands on earl and baron, knight and gentleman, whose heresy was notorious, although, in the queen's own guard, there were many who never listened to a mass, they durst not strike where there was danger that they would be struck in return. … They took the weaver from his loom, the carpenter from his workshop, the husbandman from his plough; they laid hands on maidens and boys 'who had never heard of any other religion than that which they were called on to abjure'; old men tottering into the grave, and children whose lips could but just lisp the articles of their creed; and of these they made their burnt-offerings; with these they crowded their prisons, and when filth and famine killed them, they flung them out to rot."

_J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 24._

Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain and his arbitrary disposition, "while it thoroughly alienated the kingdom from Mary, created a prejudice against the religion which the Spanish court so steadily favoured. … Many are said to have become Protestants under Mary who, at her coming to the throne, had retained the contrary persuasion."

_H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _J. Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, part 2, book 5._

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 7, chapter 2-3._

_J. Fox, Book of Martyrs._

_P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata, volume 2._

_J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, book 3._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1557-1559. Involved by the Spanish husband of Queen Mary in war with France. Loss of Calais.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558. Accession of Queen Elizabeth.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1588. The Age of Elizabeth: Recovery of Protestantism.

"The education of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her to favour the reformation; and she remained not long in suspense with regard to the party which she should embrace. But though determined in her own mind, she resolved to proceed by gradual and secure steps, and not to imitate the example of Mary, in encouraging the bigots of her party to make immediately a violent invasion on the established religion. She thought it requisite, however, to discover such symptoms of her intentions as might give encouragement to the Protestants, so much depressed by the late violent persecutions. She immediately recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to the prisoners who were confined on account of religion. … Elizabeth also proceeded to exert, in favour of the reformers, some acts of power, which were authorized by the extent of royal prerogative during that age. Finding that the Protestant teachers, irritated by persecution, broke out in a furious attack on the ancient superstition, and that the Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony, she published a proclamation, by which she inhibited all preaching without a special licence; and though she dispensed with these orders in favour of some preachers of her own sect, she took care that they should be the most calm and moderate of the party. She also suspended the laws, so far as to order a great part of the service, the litany, the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the gospels, to be read in English. And, having first published injunctions that all churches should conform themselves to the practice of her own chapel, she forbad the host to be any more elevated in her presence: an innovation which, however frivolous it may appear, implied the most material consequences. These declarations of her intentions, concurring with preceding suspicions, made the bishops foresee, with certainty, a revolution in religion. They therefore refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was with some difficulty that the Bishop of Carlisle was at last prevailed on to perform the ceremony. … Elizabeth, though she threw out such hints as encouraged the Protestants, delayed the entire change of religion till the meeting of the Parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The elections had gone entirely against the Catholics, who seem not indeed to have made any great struggle for the superiority; and the Houses met, in a disposition of gratifying the queen in every particular which she could desire of them. … The first bill brought into Parliament, with a view of trying their disposition on the head of religion, was that for suppressing the monasteries lately erected, and for restoring the tenths and first-fruits to the queen. This point being gained without much difficulty, a bill was next introduced, annexing the supremacy to the crown; and though the queen was there denominated governess, not head, of the church, it conveyed the same extensive power, which, under the latter title, had been exercised by her father and brother. … By this act, the crown, without the concurrence either of the Parliament or even of the convocation, was vested with the whole spiritual power; might repress all heresies, might establish or repeal all canons, might alter every point of discipline, and might ordain or abolish any religious rite or ceremony. … A law was passed, confirming all the statutes enacted in King Edward's time with regard to religion; the nomination of bishops was given to the crown without any election of the chapters. … A solemn and public disputation was held during this session, in presence of Lord Keeper Bacon, between the divines of the Protestant and those of the Catholic communion. The champions appointed to defend the religion of the sovereign were, as in all former instances, entirely triumphant; and the popish disputants, being pronounced refractory and obstinate, were even punished by imprisonment. {836} Emboldened by this victory, the Protestants ventured on the last and most important step, and brought into Parliament a bill for abolishing the mass, and re-establishing the liturgy of King Edward. Penalties were enacted as well against those who departed from this mode of worship, as against those who absented themselves from the church and the sacraments. And thus, in one session, without any violence, tumult, or clamour, was the whole system of religion altered, on the very commencement of a reign, and by the will of a young woman, whose title to the crown was by many thought liable to great objections."

_D. Hume, History of England, chapter 38, pages 375-380 (volume 3)._

"Elizabeth ascended the throne much more in the character of a Protestant champion than her own convictions and inclinations would have dictated. She was, indeed, the daughter of Ann Boleyn, whom by this time the Protestants were beginning to regard as a martyr of the faith; but she was also the child of Henry VIII., and the heiress of his imperious will. Soon, however, she found herself Protestant almost in her own despite. The Papacy, in the first pride of successful reaction, offered her only the alternative of submission or excommunication, and she did not for a moment hesitate to choose the latter. Then commenced that long and close alliance between Catholicism and domestic treason which is so differently judged as it is approached from the religious or the political side. These seminary priests, who in every various disguise come to England, moving secretly about from manor-house to manor-house, celebrating the rites of the Church, confirming the wavering, consoling the dying, winning back the lapsed to the fold, too well acquainted with Elizabeth's prisons, and often finding their way to her scaffolds,—what are they but the intrepid missionaries, the self-devoted heroes, of a proscribed faith? On the other hand, the Queen is excommunicate, an evil woman, with whom it is not necessary to keep faith, to depose whom would be the triumph of the Church, whose death, however compassed, its occasion: how easy to weave plots under the cloak of religious intercourse, and to make the unity of the faith a conspiracy of rebellion! The next heir to the throne, Mary of Scotland, was a Catholic, and, as long as she lived, a perpetual centre of domestic and European intrigue: plot succeeded plot, in which the traitorous subtlety was all Catholic—the keenness of discovery, the watchfulness of defence, all Protestant. Then, too, the shadow of Spanish supremacy began to cast itself broadly over Europe: the unequal struggle with Holland was still prolonged: it was known that Philip's dearest wish was to recover to his empire and the Church the island kingdom which had once unwillingly accepted his rule. It was thus the instinct of self-defence which placed Elizabeth at the head of the Protestant interest in Europe: she sent Philip Sidney to die at Zutphen: her sailor buccaneers, whether there were peace at home or not, bit and tore at everything Spanish upon the southern main: till at last, 1588, Philip gathered up all his naval strength and hurled the Armada at our shores. 'Afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt.' The valour of England did much; the storms of heaven the rest. Mary of Scotland had gone to her death the year before, and her son had been trained to hate his mother's faith. There could be no question any more of the fixed Protestantism of the English people."

_C. Beard, Hibbert Lectures, 1883: The Reformation, lecture 9._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1598. The Age of Elizabeth: The Queen's chief councillors.

"Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, already officially experienced during three reigns, though still young, was the queen's chief adviser from first to last—that is to say, till he died in 1598. Philip II., who also died in that year, was thus his exact contemporary; for he mounted the Spanish throne just when Elizabeth and her minister began their work together. He was not long in discovering that there was one man, possessed of the most balanced judgment ever brought to the head of English affairs, who was capable of unwinding all his most secret intrigues; and, in fact, the two arch-enemies, the one in London and the other in Madrid, were pitted against each other for forty years. Elizabeth had also the good sense to select the wisest and most learned ecclesiastic of his day, Matthew Parker, for her Primate and chief adviser in Church affairs. It should be noted that both of these sages, as well as the queen herself, had been Conformists to the Papal obedience under Mary—a position far from heroic, but not for a moment to be confused with that of men whose philosophical indifference to the questions which exercised all the highest minds enabled them to join in the persecution of Romanists and Anglicans at different times with a sublime impartiality. … It was under the advice of Cecil and Parker that Elizabeth, on coming to the throne, made her famous settlement or Establishment of religion."

_M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 2, chapter 17._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603. The Age of Elizabeth: Parliament.

"The house of Commons, upon a review of Elizabeth's reign, was very far, on the one hand, from exercising those constitutional rights which have long since belonged to it, or even those which by ancient precedent they might have claimed as their own; yet, on the other hand, was not quite so servile and submissive an assembly as an artful historian has represented it. If many of its members were but creatures of power, … there was still a considerable party, sometimes carrying the house along with them, who with patient resolution and inflexible aim recurred in every session to the assertion of that one great privilege which their sovereign contested, the right of parliament to inquire into and suggest a remedy for every public mischief or danger. It may be remarked that the ministers, such as Knollys, Hatton, and Robert Cecil, not only sat among the commons, but took a very leading part in their discussions; a proof that the influence of argument could no more be dispensed with than that of power. This, as I conceive, will never be the case in any kingdom where the assembly of the estates is quite subservient to the crown. Nor should we put out of consideration the manner in which the commons were composed. Sixty-two members were added at different times by Elizabeth to the representation; as well from places which had in earlier times discontinued their franchise, as from those to which it was first granted; a very large proportion of them petty boroughs, evidently under the influence of the crown or peerage. The ministry took much pains with ejections, of which many proofs, remain. {837} The house accordingly was filled with placemen, civilians, and common lawyers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone of these persons, as we collect from the minutes of D'Ewes, is strikingly contrasted by the manliness of independent gentlemen. And as the house was by no means very fully attended, the divisions, a few of which are recorded, running from 200 to 250 in the aggregate, it may be perceived that the court, whose followers were at hand, would maintain a formidable influence. But this influence, however pernicious to the integrity of parliament, is distinguishable from that exertion of almost absolute prerogative which Hume has assumed as the sole spring of Elizabeth's government, and would never be employed till some deficiency of strength was experienced in the other."

_H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 5._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603. The Age of Elizabeth: Literature.

"The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours: statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers; Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and—high and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths—Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling; what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great men had something in them that savoured of the soil from which they grew: they were not French; they were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly English. They did not look out of themselves to see what they should be; they sought for truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no tinsel, and but little art; they were not the spoilt children of affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt, unobtrusive delicacy. … For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. … The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. … The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. … The immediate use or application that was made of religion to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or frequent as that which was made of the classical and romantic literature. For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. … What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairyland was realised in new and unknown worlds. … Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished forever. … Lastly, to conclude this account: What gave a unity and common direction to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend ourselves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte: for what we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers. That's something. We have had strong heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished we had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in masses. … We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for French rules and French models."

_W. Hazlitt, Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, lecture 1._

{838}

"Humanism, before it moulded the mind of the English, had already permeated Italian and French literature. Classical erudition had been adapted to the needs of modern thought. Antique authors had been collected, printed, annotated, and translated. They were fairly mastered in the south, and assimilated to the style of the vernacular. By these means much of the learning popularised by our poets, essayists, and dramatists came to us at second-hand, and bore the stamp of contemporary genius. In like manner, the best works of Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature were introduced into Great Britain together with the classics. The age favoured translation, and English readers before the close of the sixteenth century, were in possession of a cosmopolitan library in their mother tongue, including choice specimens of ancient and modern masterpieces. These circumstances sufficiently account for the richness and variety of Elizabethan literature. They also help to explain two points which must strike every student of that literature—its native freshness, and its marked unity of style. Elizabethan literature was fresh and native, because it was the utterance of a youthful race, aroused to vigorous self-consciousness under conditions which did not depress or exhaust its energies. The English opened frank eyes upon the discovery of the world and man, which had been effected by the Renaissance. They were not wearied with collecting, collating, correcting, transmitting to the press. All the hard work of assimilating the humanities had been done for them. They had only to survey and to enjoy, to feel and to express, to lay themselves open to delightful influences, to con the noble lessons of the past, to thrill beneath the beauty and the awe of an authentic revelation. Criticism had not laid its cold, dry finger on the blossoms of the fancy. The new learning was still young enough to be a thing of wonder and entrancing joy."

_J. A. Symonds, A Comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian Poetry (Fortnightly Rev., volume 45, page 56)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1559. The Act of Supremacy, the Act of Uniformity, and the Court of High Commission.