"I have written," he said, "many things untrue; and forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first burnt." He was hurried to the stake, and when the flames leapt up around him held his right hand steadily in the midst of them, that it might be the first burnt.' 23. Continuance of the Persecution. 1556-1558.- Immediately after Cranmer's death Pole became Archbishop of Canterbury. The persecution lasted for two years more. The number of those who suffered has been reckoned at 277. Almost all of these were burnt in the eastern and south-eastern parts of England. It was there that the Protestants were the thickest. New opinions always flourish more in towns than in the country, and on this side of England were those trading towns, from which communication with the Protestants of the Continent was most easy. Sympathy with the sufferers made these parts of the kingdom more strongly Protestant than they had been before. 24. The Queen's Disappointment. 1555-1556.-Mary was a sorrowful woman. Not only did Protestantism flourish all the more for the means which she took to suppress it, but her own domestic life was clouded. She had longed for an heir to carry on the work which she believed to be the work of God, and she had even imagined herself to be with child. It was long before she abandoned hope, and she then learnt also that her husband — to whom she was passionately attached-did not love her, and had never loved anything in England but her crown. In 1555 Philip left her. He had indeed cause to go abroad. His father, Charles V., was broken in health, and, his schemes for making himself master of Germany having ended in failure, he had resolved to abdicate. Charles was obliged to leave his Austrian possessions to his brother Ferdinand; and the German electors, who detested Philip and his Spanish ways, insisted on having Ferdinand as Emperor. Charles could, however, leave his western possessions to his son, and in 1556 he completed the surrender of them. Mary's husband then became Philip II. of Spain, ruling also over large territories in Italy, over Franche Comté, and the whole of the Netherlands, as well as over vast tracts in America, rich in mines of silver and goid, which had been appropriated by the hardihood, the cruelty, and the greed of Spanish adventurers. No prince in Europe had at his command so warlike an army, so powerful a fleet, and such an abounding revenue as Philip had at his disposal. Philip's increase of power produced a strong increase of the anti-Spanish feeling in England, and conspiracies were formed against Mary, 1557-1558 DEATH OF MARY 427 who was believed to be ready to welcome a Spanish invading army. 25. War with France and the Loss of Calais. 1557-1558.— In 1557 Philip was at war with France, and, to please a husband who loved her not, Mary declared war against Philip's enemy. She sent an English army to her husband's support, but though Philip gained a crushing victory over the French at St. Quentin, the English troops gained no credit, as they did not arrive in time to take part in the battle. In the winter, Francis, Duke of Guise, an able French warrior, threatened Calais. Mary, who, after wringing a forced loan from her subjects in the summer, had spent it all, had little power to help the governor, Lord Wentworth, and persuaded herself that the place was in no danger. Guise, however, laid siege to the town. The walls were in disrepair and the garrison too small for defence. On January 6, 1558, Guise stormed Calais, and when, a few days afterwards, he also stormed the outlying post of Guisnes, the last port held by the English in France fell back into the hands of the French. Calais was now again a French town, after having been in the hands of strangers for 211 years. 26. Death of Mary. 1558. The loss of Calais was no real misfortune to England, but it was felt as a deep mortification both by the queen and by her people. The people distrusted Mary too much to support her in the prosecution of the war. They were afraid of making Philip more powerful. Mary, hoping that Heaven might yet be gracious to her, pushed on the persecution, and sent Protestants in large numbers to the stake. Philip had visited her the year before, in order to persuade her to join him against France, and she again fancied herself to be with child. Her husband had once more deserted her, and she now knew that she was sufferingwithout hope-from dropsy. On November 17 she died, sad and lonely, wondering why all that she had done, as she believed on God's behalf, had been followed by failure on every side-by the desertion of her husband and the hatred of her subjects. Happily for himself, Pole too died two days afterwards.1 1 The 19th is the date of Machyn's contemporary diary; but other authorities make it the 17th or 18th. I. Elizabeth's Difficulties. 1558.-Elizabeth, when she received the news of her sister's death, was sitting under an oak in Hatfield Park (see p. 423). "This," she exclaimed, "is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." Her life's work was to throw down all that Mary had attempted to build up, and to build up all that Mary had thrown down. It was no easy task that she had undertaken. The great majority of her subjects would have been well pleased with a return to the system of Henry VIII.—that is to say, with the retention of the mass, together with its accompanying system of doctrine, under the protection of the royal supremacy, in complete disregard of the threats or warnings of the Pope. Elizabeth was shrewd enough to see that this could not be. On the one hand, the Protestants, few as they were, were too active and intelligent to be suppressed, and, if Mary's burnings had been unavailing, it was not likely that milder measures would succeed. On the other hand, the experience of the reign of Edward VI. had shown that immutability in doctrine and practice could only be secured by dependence upon the immutable Papacy, and Elizabeth had made up her mind that she would depend on no one but herself. She would no more place herself under the Pope than she would place herself under a husband. She cared nothing for theology, though her inclinations drew her to a more elaborate ritual than that which the Protestants had to offer. She was, however, 1558-1559 ECCLESIASTICAL UNITY 429 intensely national, and was resolved to govern so that England might be great and flourishing, especially as her own greatness would depend upon her success. For this end she must establish national unity in the Church, a unity which, as she was well aware, could only be attained if large advances were made in the direction of Protestantism. There must be as little persecution as possible, but extreme opinions must be silenced, because there was a danger lest those who came under their influence would stir up civil war in order to make their own beliefs predominant. The first object of Elizabeth's government was internal peace. 2. The Act of Uniformity and Supremacy. 1559.-Elizabeth marked her intentions by choosing for her secretary Sir William Cecil, a cautious supporter of Protestantism, the best and most faithful of her advisers. As Convocation refused to hear of any change in the Church services, she appointed a commission composed of divines of Protestant tendencies, who recommended the adoption, with certain alterations,' of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI. Elizabeth's first Parliament, which met in 1559, passed an Act of Uniformity forbidding the use of any form of public prayer other than that of the new Prayer Book. The same Parliament also passed a new Act of Supremacy, in which the title of Supreme Head of the Church was abandoned, but all the ancient jurisdiction of the Crown over ecclesiastical persons was claimed. This Act imposed an oath in which the queen was acknowledged to be the Supreme Governor of the Realm 'as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as temporal'; but this oath, unlike that imposed by Henry VIII., was only to be taken by persons holding office or taking a university degree, whilst a refusal to swear was only followed by loss of office or degree. The maintenance of the authority of any foreign prince or prelate was to be followed by penalties increased upon a repetition of the offence, and reaching to a traitor's death on the third occasion. 3. The new Bishops and the Ceremonies. 1559-1564.—All the bishops except one refusing to accept the new order of things, new ones were substituted for them, the old system of election by the chapters on a royal congé d'élire being restored (see pp. 391, 415). Matthew Parker, a moderate man after Elizabeth's own heart, became Archbishop of Canterbury. Very few of the old clergy who had said mass in Mary's reign refused to use the new Prayer 1 The most noteworthy of these alterations was the amalgamation of the forms used respectively in the two Prayer Books of Edward VI. at the administration of the Communion (see p. 418). Book, and as Elizabeth prudently winked at cases in which persons of importance had mass said before them in private, she was able to hope that, by leaving things to take their course, a new generation would grow up which would be too strong for the lovers of the old ways. The main difficulty of the bishops was with the Protestants. Many of those who had been in exile had returned with a strengthened belief that it was absolutely unchristian to adopt any vestments or other ceremonies which had been used in the Papal Church, and which they, therefore, contumeliously described as rags of Antichrist. A large number even of the bishops sympathised with them, and opposed them only on the ground that, though it would have been better if surplices and square caps had been prohibited, still, as such matters were indifferent, the queen ought to be obeyed in all things indifferent. To Elizabeth refusal to wear the surplice was not only an act of insubordination, but likely to give offence to lukewarm supporters of the Church system which she had established, and had, therefore, a tendency to set the nation by the ears. In Parker she found a tower of strength. He was in every sense the successor of Cranmer, with all Cranmer's strength but with none of Cranmer's weakness. He fully grasped the principle that the Church of England was to test its doctrines and practices by those of the Church of the first six hundred years of Christianity, and he, therefore, claimed for it catholicity, which he denied to the Church of Rome; whilst he had all Cranmer's feeling for the maintenance of external rites which did not directly imply the existence of beliefs repudiated by the Church of England. 4. Calvinism. The returning exiles had brought home ideas even more distasteful to Elizabeth than the rejection of ceremonies. The weak point of the Lutherans in Germany, and of the reformers in England, had been their dependence upon the State. This dependence made them share the blame which fell upon rulers who, like Henry VIII., were bent on satisfying their passions, or, like Northumberland, on appropriating the goods of others. Even Elizabeth thought first of what was convenient for her government, and secondly, if she thought at all, of the quest after truth and purity. In Geneva the exiles had found a system in full working order which appeared to satisfy the cravings of their minds. It had been founded by a Frenchman, John Calvin, who in 1536 had published The Institution of the Christian Religion, in which he treated his subject with a logical coherence which impressed itself on all Protestants who were in need of a definite creed. He had soon after |