Part 278

"When Elizabeth's first Parliament met in January 1559, Convocation, of course, met too. It at once claimed that the clergy alone had authority in matters of faith, and proceeded to pass resolutions in favour of Transubstantiation, the Mass, and the Papal Supremacy. The bishops and the Universities signed a formal agreement to this effect. That in the constitution of the English Church, Convocation, as Convocation, has no such power as this, was proved by the steps now taken. The Crown, advised by the Council and Parliament, took the matter in hand. As every element, except the Roman, had been excluded from the clerical bodies, a consultation was ordered between the representatives of both sides, and all preaching was suspended till a settlement had been arrived at between the queen and the Three Estates of the realm. The consultation broke upon the refusal of the Romanist champions to keep to the terms agreed upon; but even before it took place Parliament restored the Royal Supremacy, repealed the laws of Mary affecting religion, and gave the queen by her own desire, not the title of 'Supreme Head,' but 'Supreme Governor,' of the Church of England."

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

This first Parliament of Elizabeth passed two memorable acts of great importance in English history,—the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer. "The former is entitled 'An act for restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual; and for abolishing foreign power.' It is the same for substance with the 25th of Henry VIII. … but the commons incorporated several other bills into it; for besides the title of 'Supreme Governor in all causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal,' which is restored to the Queen, the act revives those laws of King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI. which had been repealed in the late reign. It forbids all appeals to Rome, and exonerates the subjects from all exactions and impositions heretofore paid to that court; and as it revives King Edward's laws, it repeals a severe act made in the late reign for punishing heresy. … 'Moreover, all persons in any public employs, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are obliged to take an oath in recognition of the Queen's right to the crown, and of her supremacy in all causes ecclesiastical and civil, on penalty of forfeiting all their promotions in the church, and of being declared incapable of holding any public office.' … Further, 'The act forbids all writing, printing, teaching, or preaching, and all other deeds or acts whereby any foreign jurisdiction over these realms is defended, upon pain that they and their abettors, being thereof convicted, shall for the first offence forfeit their goods and chattels; … spiritual persons shall lose their benefices, and all ecclesiastical preferments; for the second offence they shall incur the penalties of a præmunire; and the third offence shall be deemed high treason.' There is a remarkable clause in this act, which gave rise to a new court, called 'The Court of High Commission.' The words are these, 'The Queen and her successors shall have power, by their letters patent under the great seal, to assign, name, and authorize, as often as they shall think meet, and for as long a time as they shall please, persons being natural-born subjects, to use, occupy, and exercise, under her and them, all manner of jurisdiction, privileges, and preeminences, touching any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realms of England and Ireland, &c., to visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities whatsoever. Provided, that they have no power to determine anything to be heresy, but what has been adjudged to be so by the authority of the canonical scripture, or by the first four general councils, or any of them; or by any other general council wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of canonical scripture; or such as shall hereafter be declared to be heresy by the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.' Upon the authority of this clause the Queen appointed a certain number of 'Commissioners' for ecclesiastical causes, who exercised the same power that had been lodged in the hands of one vicegerent in the reign of King Henry VIII. And how sadly they abused their power in this and the two next reigns will appear in the sequel of this history. They did not trouble themselves much with the express words of scripture, or the four first general councils, but entangled their prisoners with oaths ex-officio, and the inextricable mazes of the popish canon law. … The papists being vanquished, the next point was to unite the reformed among themselves. … Though all the reformers were of one faith, yet they were far from agreeing about discipline and ceremonies, each party being for settling the church according to their own model. … {839} The Queen … therefore appointed a committee of divines to review King Edward's liturgy, and to see if in any particular it was fit to be changed; their names were Dr. Parker, Grindal, Cox, Pilkington, May, Bill, Whitehead, and Sir Thomas Smith, doctor of the civil law. Their instructions were, to strike out all offensive passages against the pope, and to make people easy about the belief of the corporal presence of Christ in the sacraments; but not a word in favour of the stricter protestants. Her Majesty was afraid of reforming too far; she was desirous to retain images in churches, crucifixes and crosses, vocal and instrumental music, with all the old popish garments; it is not therefore to be wondered, that in reviewing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations were made in favour of those who now began to be called Puritans, from their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than had yet been established. … The book was presented to the two houses and passed into a law. … The title of the act is 'An act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and administration of the Sacraments.' It was brought into the House of Commons April 18th, and was read a third time April 20th. It passed the House of Lords April 28th, and took place from the 24th of June 1559."

_D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 1, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England., volume 2, book 3._

_P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 1._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1559-1566. Puritanism taking form.

"The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together without shedding each others' blood. It was not intended, and it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find in its formulas all that they required. The services were deliberately made elastic; comprehending in the form of positive statement only what all Christians agreed in believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the congregations. The management lay with the local authorities in town or parish: where the people were Catholics the Catholic aspect could be made prominent; where Popery was a bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief merit was its chief defect. … Where the tendencies to Rome were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn of the world, in their passionate desire to consociate themselves in life and death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom of the serpent, and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove. Had they been let alone—had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of revolution and a return of the persecutions—they, too, were not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton, of what English Protestantism could become under favouring conditions. … The fury of the times unhappily forbade the maintenance of this wise and prudent spirit. As the power of evil gathered to destroy the Church of England, a fiercer temper was required to combat with them, and Protestantism became impatient, like David, of the uniform in which it was sent to the battle. It would have fared ill with England had there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic fanaticism; and if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of their convictions, snapped their traces and flung off their harness, it was they, after all, who saved the Church which attempted to disown them, and with the Church saved also the stolid mediocrity to which the fates then and ever committed and commit the government of it."

_J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 10, chapter 20._

"The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward VI. the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more democratical form of church government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to their country, convinced that the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. … Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. … The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the crown and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that was no season for internal dissensions. … Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. … Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed churches was staked on the security of her person and on the success of her administration. … {840} The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land."

_Lord Macaulay, History of England, volume 1, chapter 1._

"Two parties quickly evolved themselves out of the mass of Englishmen who held Calvinistic opinions; namely those who were willing to conform to the requirements of the Queen, and those who were not. To both is often given indiscriminately by historians the name of Puritan; but it seems more correct, and certainly is more convenient, to restrict the use of the name to those who are sometimes called conforming Puritans. … To the other party fitly belongs the name of Nonconformist. … It was against the Nonconformist organization that Elizabeth's efforts were chiefly directed. … The war began in the enforcement by Archbishop Parker in 1565 of the Advertisements as containing the minimum of ceremonial that would be tolerated. In 1566 the clergy of London were required to make the declaration of Conformity which was appended to the Advertisements, and thirty-seven were suspended or deprived for refusal. Some of the deprived ministers continued to conduct services and preach in spite of their deprivation, and so were formed the first bodies of Nonconformists, organized in England."

_H. O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, chapter 3._

ALSO IN: _J. Tulloch, English Puritanism and its Leaders, introduction._

_D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 1, chapter 4._

_D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, chapters 8-10 (volume 1)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1562-1567. Hawkins' slave-trading voyages to America. First English enterprise in the New World.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1562-1567.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1564-1565 (?). The first naming of the Puritans.

"The English bishops, conceiving themselves empowered by their canons, began to show their authority in urging the clergy of their dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, ceremonies and discipline of the Church; and such as refused the same were branded with the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this notion first began in this year [A. D. 1564]; and the grief had not been great if it had ended in the same. The philosopher banisheth the term, (which is Polysæmon), that is subject to several senses, out of the predicaments, as affording too much covert for cavil by the latitude thereof. On the same account could I wish that the word Puritan were banished common discourse, because so various in the acceptations thereof. We need not speak of the ancient Cathari or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known by their heretical opinions. Puritan here was taken for the opposers of the hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But profane mouths quickly improved this nickname, therewith on every occasion to abuse pious people; some of them so far from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured (according to the instructions thereof in the preparative to the Confession) 'to accompany the minister with a pure heart,' and laboured (as it is in the Absolution) 'for a life pure and holy.' We will, therefore, decline the word to prevent exceptions; which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only nonconformists are thereby intended."

_T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, book 9, section 1._

"For in this year [1565] it was that the Zuinglian or Calvinian faction began to be first known by the name of Puritans, if Genebrard, Gualter, and Spondanus (being all of them right good chronologers) be not mistaken in the time. Which name hath ever since been appropriate to them, because of their pretending to a greater purity in the service of God than was held forth unto them (as they gave out) in the Common Prayer Book; and to a greater opposition to the rites and usages of the Church of Rome than was agreeable to the constitution of the Church of England."

_P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 7, section 6._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1568. Detention and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1569. Quarrel with the Spanish governor of the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1568-1572.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1580. Drake's piratical warfare with Spain and his famous voyage.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1572-1580.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1603. Queen Elizabeth's treatment of the Roman Catholics. Persecution of the Seminary Priests and the Jesuits.

"Camden and many others have asserted that by systematic connivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed a pretty free use of their religion for the first fourteen years of Elizabeth's reign. But this is not reconcilable to many passages in Strype's collections. We find abundance of persons harassed for recusancy, that is, for not attending the protestant church, and driven to insincere promises of conformity. Others were dragged before ecclesiastical commissions for harbouring priests, or for sending money to those who had fled beyond sea. … A great majority both of clergy and laity yielded to the times; and of these temporizing conformists it cannot be doubted that many lost by degrees all thought of returning to their ancient fold. But others, while they complied with exterior ceremonies, retained in their private devotions their accustomed mode of worship. … Priests … travelled the country in various disguises, to keep alive a flame which the practice of outward conformity was calculated to extinguish. There was not a county throughout England, says a Catholic historian, where several of Mary's clergy did not reside, and were commonly called the old priests. They served as chaplains in private families. By stealth, at the dead of night, in private chambers, in the secret lurking places of an ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that subdues the imagination, with all the mutual trust that invigorates constancy, these proscribed ecclesiastics celebrated their solemn rites, more impressive in such concealment than if surrounded by all their former splendour. … It is my thorough conviction that the persecution, for it can obtain no better name, carried on against the English Catholics, however it might serve to delude the government by producing an apparent conformity, could not but excite a spirit of disloyalty in many adherents of that faith. Nor would it be safe to assert that a more conciliating policy would have altogether disarmed their hostility, much less laid at rest those busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar circumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency to produce."

_H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 3._

{841}

"The more vehement Catholics had withdrawn from the country, on account of the dangers which there beset them. They had taken refuge in the Low Countries, and there Allen, one of the chief among them, had established a seminary at Douay, for the purpose of keeping up a supply of priests in England. To Douay numbers of young Englishmen from Oxford continually flocked. The establishment had been broken up by Requescens, and removed to Rheims, and a second college of the same description was established at Rome. From these two centres of intrigue numerous enthusiastic young men constantly repaired to England, and in the disguise of laymen carried on their priestly work and attempted to revive the Romanist religion. But abler and better disciplined workmen were now wanted. Allen and his friends therefore opened negotiations with Mercuriano, the head of the Jesuit order, in which many Englishmen had enrolled themselves. In 1580, as part of a great combined Catholic effort, a regular Jesuit mission, under two priests, Campion and Parsons, was despatched to England. … The new missionaries were allowed to say that that part of the Bull [of excommunication issued against Elizabeth] which pronounced censures upon those who clung to their allegiance applied to heretics only, that Catholics might profess themselves loyal until the time arrived for carrying the Bull into execution; in other words, they were permitted to be traitors at heart while declaring themselves loyal subjects. This explanation of the Bull was of itself sufficient to justify severity on the part of the government. It was impossible henceforward to separate Roman Catholicism from disloyalty. Proclamations were issued requiring English parents to summon their children from abroad, and declaring that to harbour Jesuit priests was to support rebels. … Early in December several priests were apprehended and closely examined, torture being occasionally used for the purpose. In view of the danger which these examinations disclosed, stringent measures were taken. Attendance at church was rendered peremptorily necessary. Parliament was summoned in the beginning of 1581 and laws passed against the action of the Jesuits. … Had Elizabeth been conscious of the full extent of the plot against her, had she known the intention of the Guises [then dominant in France] to make a descent upon England in co-operation with Spain, and the many ramifications of the plot in her own country, it is reasonable to suppose that she would have been forced at length to take decided measures. But in ignorance of the abyss opening before her feet, she continued for some time longer her old temporizing policy." At last, in November, 1583, the discovery of a plot for the assassination of the queen, and the arrest of one Throgmorton, whose papers and whose confession were of startling import, brought to light the whole plan and extent of the conspiracy. "Some of her Council urged her at once to take a straightforward step, to make common cause with the Protestants of Scotland and the Netherlands, and to bid defiance to Spain. To this honest step, she as usual could not bring herself, but strong measures were taken in England. Great numbers of Jesuits and seminary priests were apprehended and executed, suspected magistrates removed, and those Catholic Lords whose treachery might have been fatal to her ejected from their places of authority and deprived of influence."

_J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, pages 546-549._