the one creed and worship to the other as quietly as if principle and conscience had had nothing to do with the matter. present authorized translation in the reign of James I. Of course it was many times reprinted.' The church thus set up in England occupied a position that exposed it to hostility at the same time from two opposite quarters on the one hand from those who desired a further reformation, on the other from those who wanted no reformation at all. But the quarrel of both these classes of dissenters or nonconformists with the The re-establishment of the Reformed church under Elizabeth may be considered to have been completed in 1562 by the publication of the articles of religion as revised by the bishops, and adopted by the convocation. Besides the reduction of the number from forty-two to thirty-nine, the chief alteration that was made upon the ori-church, it is to be remembered, was equally a ginal articles published in the time of King Edward was in that on the Lord's Supper, in which the express denial of the corporal presence was now left out, and it was merely said that "the body of Christ was given and received after a spiritual manner, and the means by which it is received is faith." It was hoped, according to Burnet, by this reserve to retain in communion with the church some whom a distinct denial of the real presence would have scared away. A further revision of the articles took place in 1571, when, however, no alterations of any moment were made, but the articles were for the first time subscribed and set forth by the convocation in English as well as in Latin. It was now, also, that subscription to them was for the first time made imperative upon the clergy (by stat. 13 Eliz. c. 12). We may here also notice the new translation of the Bible which appeared in this reign. Since Cranmer's, or the Great Bible, Coverdale, assisted MILES COVERDALE.-From a portrait in the print-room, by others of his countrymen settled at Geneva, quarrel with the state or the government, of which the church was merely the creature and instrument. As for the case of the Roman Catholics, ample details have been given in the preceding chapters of the commencement and course of the succession of measures taken against them, from the simple prohibition of their worship in the beginning of the reign, through the disabilities and severities of subsequent times, increasing with the exasperation of both parties, till Popery came to be in a manner confounded with treason, so that most of the persons put to death for the one might almost in another view be said to be put to death for the other. We shall here merely enumerate together, and in their chronological order, the principal of the series of legislative enactments to which the followers of the ancient religion were subjected in the course of this reign. First came the two acts of 1559; the one (1 Eliz. cap. 1), entitled, "An Act restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same;" the other (1 Eliz. c. 2) entitled, "An Act for the uniformity of common prayer and divine service in the church, and the administration of the sacraments." By the former the oath of supremacy was directed to be taken by all persons holding any office, spiritual or temporal, on pain of deprivation, and also by all persons taking degrees in the universities, and by all persons sueing livery or doing homage; writing or preaching against the supremacy was made punishable, for the first offence with forfeiture of goods and one year's imprisonment, for the second with the pains of premunire, for the third as high treason; and those powers of exercising its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, through commissioners appointed for that purpose, were conferred upon the crown, which were afterwards turned into an engine of such comprehensive despotism by means of the famous Courts of High Commission. By the latter, all clergymen refusing to use King Edward's Book of Common Prayer were ordered to be punished for the first offence with forfeiture of one year's profit of their benefices and six months' imprisonment, for the second with one 1 The Geneva Bible is the same that is known by the name of the Breeches Bible, from its rendering of Genesis iii. 7. year's imprisonment and deprivation, for the third with deprivation and imprisonment for life; all persons either speaking anything against the said service book, or causing any other forms than those it prescribed to be used in any church, chapel, or other place, in the performance of prayer or the administration of the sacraments, were subjected to the penalty of 100 marks for the first offence, of 400 marks for the second, for the third to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment for life; and a fine of 18. was inflicted upon every person absent from his parish church without cause on any Sunday or holiday. Not only the deprivation of recusant clergymen, but prosecutions and punishments of private individuals, began under this act as soon as it was passed.' In 1563, by an act (5 Eliz. c. 1), “For the assurance of the queen's majesty's royal power over all estates and subjects within her highness's dominious," several of the above provisions were made still more extensive and stringent. The oath of supremacy was now required to be taken by all persons entering into holy orders, by all schoolmasters, barristers, benchers, and attorneys, by all officers of any court of common law or other court whatever, and by all members of the House of Commons; and the refusing it, or upholding the jurisdiction of Rome, was made punishable with the pains of premunire for the first offence, and for the second with those of high treason. In 1571, after the Earl of Northumberland's re-high treason; their abettors or concealers were bellion, a new act upon the subject of treason (stat. 13 Eliz. c. 1) was principally directed against the adherents of Popery. It was now made high treason to compass, imagine, invent, devise, or intend, the death or bodily harm of the queen, or the deposing her, or the levying war against her, or exciting foreigners to invade the realm, if such designs were uttered or declared by any printing, writing, or words, or to deny the queen's title, or to affirm her to be an heretic or usurper; any person during the queen's life claiming title to the crown, or usurping the royal title, or refusing to acknowledge the queen's right (this and the following clauses were especially levelled against the Queen of Scots and her adherents), was disabled from inheriting the crown; all claimants or pretenders to any right of succession to the crown, after the queen's proclamation had issued against them, were declared guilty of high treason; denying the power of the common law, or of this or any other act of parliament, to limit the descent of the crown, was made high treason during the queen's life, and afterwards punishable by forfeiture of goods; and the printing or publishing that any particular person not so declared by act of parliament, except her issue, was heir to the queen, was made punishable by a year's imprisonment for the first offence, and by a premunire for the second. By another statute of the same year (13 Eliz. c. 2), provoked by the pope's excommunication of Elizabeth, it was declared to be high treason to obtain or put in use any bull from Rome, or to receive absolution thereunder, and misprision of treason to conceal the offer of any such bull, and punishable with premunire to bring into the realm "any token or tokens, thing or things, called or named by the name of an Agnus Dei, or any crosses, pictures, beads, or such like vain and superstitious things from the Bishop or see of Rome." A third act (13 Eliz. 2, c. 3) sought to prevent the retirement of the Catholics beyond seas, by enacting that any of the queen's subjects leaving the realm without her license, and not returning within six months after proclamation, should forfeit all their goods and the profits of all their lands for life. But what are properly to be called the penal laws against Popery, as being expressly and directly pointed against the dissemination and profession of that faith, commence with the year 1581. By an act passed in that year (23 Eliz. c. 1), entitled "An Act to retain the queen's majesty's subjects in their due obedience," persons pretending to any power of absolving subjects from their obedience to the queen, or practising to withdraw them to the Romish religion, and all subjects so absolved or withdrawn, were declared guilty of declared guilty of misprision of treason: the saying of mass was made punishable by a year's imprisonment and a fine of 200 marks; the hearing of it by a fine of 100 marks and the same term of imprisonment; and the fine for neglecting to attend church was raised to the monstrous amount of £20 per month. This very year Campion, the Jesuit, and three other priests, were executed: and from this date to the end of the reign there was scarcely a year in which several persons of the same profession were not sent to the gibbet. It is true, indeed, that they were not put to death as Catholics; Campion and his companions were arraigned on the old treason act of the 25th of Edward III., and the others were in like manner all found guilty of some old or new treason; but as the mere teaching, and in certain circumstances even the simple profession, of the Roman Catholic faith was now converted into that capital crime, some of them at least may as correctly be said to have suffered as Catholics as they may be said to have suffered as traitors. A new act, passed in 1585, "against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons" (27 Eliz. c. 2), added some others to the list of these new Popish capital offences, by declaring that all Jesuits and other Romish priests whatsoever, made or ordained out of England, coming into or remaining in the kingdom, and all was the most distinguished; and the first distur English subjects educated in any foreign college bance occasioned in the newly founded church of Jesuits or other seminary of Romish priests, by the principles of Puritanism was when Hooper, not returning home on proclamation and taking in 1550, on being nominated to the bishopric of the oath of supremacy, should be deemed traitors; Gloucester, refused to submit to the appointed and the receivers of Romish priests so coming forms of consecration and admission. At this date, from abroad, felons without benefit of clergy. however, English Puritanism-which, indeed, Persons sending money to foreign Jesuits or was not even yet known by that name-was a priests were at the same time subjected to the mere mustard-seed in comparison of what it afterpains of premunire; and all persons were pro- wards became. Accidentally, one of the most hibited from sending their children abroad, with- | remarkable and enduring consequences of the out license from her majesty, under a penalty of £100. In 1587, by an act intended to secure the more speedy and due execution of the act of 1581, all conveyances made by recusants, to avoid the penalties therein imposed, were declared void; and the fine of £20 per month, incurred for nonattendance at church, was directed in future to be levied by distress upon the property of the offenders to the extent of all their goods and two-thirds of their lands. Finally, in 1593, by another act "against Popish recusants" (35 Eliz. cap. 2), all persons above sixteen years of age, being Popish recusants convict, were ordered, within forty days, to repair to their usual place of dwelling, and forbidden for ever after, without written license from the bishop of the diocese or deputy-lieutenant of the county, to go five miles from thence on pain of forfeiture of their goods and the profits of their lands during life. This was the last act passed against the Catholics in the reign of Elizabeth. restoration of Popery in England in the reign of Mary, was the eventual introduction into the country of a new spirit of Puritanism. This was brought about through the large emigration of English Protestants to the Continent at the commencement of Mary's persecutions, and their return home on the accession of Elizabeth, fraught, many of them, with notions which they had acquired in the schools of Calvin, Zwingle, and other foreign Reformers, whose principles were on many points wholly adverse to those which prevailed in the reconstruction of the English church. Great contentions, in fact, had taken place among the exiles, while resident abroad, on the subject of the rites and ceremonies retained in King Edward's Book of Common Prayer; and at last, while the party in favour of these forms retained possession of the church at Frankfort, their opponents retired for the most part to Geneva, and there, under the eye of Calvin and the immediate pastoral care of his disciple Knox, But the other description of nonconformists, set up a new service of their own, mostly borrowed opposite as were most of their principles and ob- from that of the French Protestants, in which jects, gave, even in this early stage of their exis- there were no litany, no responses, and hardly tence, nearly as much trouble as the Catholics. any rites or ceremonies; and a directory of which The origin of the Protestant Dissenters may be they published in English under the title of traced to the very dawn of the Reformation; for the "Service, Discipline, and form of Common the principles of Wyckliffe in this country, and Prayer and Administration of Sacraments used of Huss and Jerome of Prague on the Continent, in the English Church of Geneva." Even many of were certainly much more nearly allied to what in those who had been members of the church at a later age was styled Puritanism than to the doc- Frankfort brought back with them inclinations trine of the Established church. But the first ap-in favour of a wider departure from the Popish pearance of Puritanism in England as an element worship than Elizabeth would consent to in her at variance with the spirit of the Establishment Reformed church. was in the reign of Edward VI. In some of their The Church of England, it is always to be renotions, indeed, even the original founders of the membered, no more adopts or sanctions the prinEstablishment, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and ciple of the private interpretation of Scripture their associates, may be regarded as having been than does the Church of Rome. Differing from the puritanically inclined in comparison with their Church of Rome in holding the Scripture to be successors, the restorers of the Reformed church the sole rule of faith, it still insists that the Scripin the reign of Elizabeth. Puritanism was first ture shall be received, not as any individual may imported into England after the establishment interpret it for himself, but as it is expounded of the Reformation by certain foreign divines, in the articles and other formularies of the church. Peter Martyr, Bucer, John à Lasco, and others, It may, indeed, be doubted if the Puritans themwho came over from Germany on the accession selves at this early period had arrived at what it of Edward VI., and by one or two Englishmen, has been common in later times to speak of as who had studied or travelled in that country. the great fundamental principle of Protestantismu Of these last the celebrated Dr. John Hooper the right of every individual to be his own in tablishment. The writer of their history maintains that, if they had not done this, in hopes of the removal of their grievances in more settled times, the Reformation would have fallen back into the hands of the Papists; "for it was impossible," he observes, "with all the assistance they could get from both universities, to fill up the parochial vacancies with men of learning and character." 2 For some years the Puritans who had joined the church were winked at by the authorities in many deviations from the appointed forms which they introduced into the public service. Archbishop Parker has the chief credit of having instigated the proceedings that were taken to enforce in all the clergy a rigid compliance with the rubric. He and some of his episcopal brethren, having been constituted ecclesiastical commissioners for that purpose by the queen, sum terpreter of the Word of God; for this, when carried out, would seem to lead directly to the conclusion that the church ought to be unrestrained by any articles or formularies whatever. To this height, certainly, no class of Protestants had soared in the days of which we are speaking. The utmost that was demanded by the first dissenters from the Church of England was, that certain points about which they felt scruples should be left as matters indifferent; these being, for the present, principally such mere matters of outward or ceremonial observance as the habits of the priesthood and the forms of public worship. In one sense these things were left by the church as indifferent: they were admitted to be indifferent as matters of faith-that is to say, dissent in regard to them was not held to be heresy; but it was still held to be schism, and was made equally to exclude the individual maintaining and acting upon it from the fellow-moned the clergy of the several dioceses before ship of the church. In this respect the act of uniformity bore as hard upon the Puritans as it did upon the Papists. Nor was even the Act of Supremacy acceptable to the former any more than to the latter; for, in general, the Puritans now felt scruples as to the acknowledgment in any terms of the king or queen as the head of the church. These beginnings, too, soon led to further differences: in the words of a late writer, “the habits at first had been the only or chief matter of contention; all the rites of the church were soon attacked; and finally, its whole form and structure." The avowed object of the nonconformists, indeed, soon came to be to substitute, for the established forms of worship and discipline, the Geneva system in all its parts; nor were there wanting some of them who would have made a Geneva republic of the state as well as of the church. Throughout the present period, too, and for a long time after, it is important to remark, the Puritans equally with the church abominated and strenuously stood out against any toleration of those who differed from themselves in respect to what they considered essential points. They held that such persons ought not only to be excluded from communion with the brethren, but restrained and punished by the law of the land. If the English church, therefore, when restored in the reign of Elizabeth, had chanced to have been arranged upon Puritan principles, it is certain that the toleration of dissent would not have entered into either its principles or its practice more than it did as things were actually managed. At first, however, many of the Puritans so far overcame their scruples as to comply with the required forms and accept of livings in the Es1 Southey, Book of the Church. VOL. II. 1 them, and suspended all who refused to subscribe an agreement to submit to the queen's injunctions in regard to the habits, rites, and ceremonies. Great numbers of ministers, including many of those most eminent for their zeal and piety and their popularity as preachers, were thus ejected from both the service and the profits of their cures, and sent forth into the world in a state of entire destitution. The course pursued towards them was in some respects of the harshest and most oppressive character. It was in these circumstances that, feeling all chance of reconciliation at an end, the ejected clergymen resolved to separate themselves from the Establishment, breaking off from the public churches, and assembling, as they had opportunity, in private houses or elsewhere, to worship God in a manner that might not offend against the light of their consciences. This separation took place in 1566. The preachings of the deprived ministers in the woods and private houses gave rise to the new offence of what was called frequenting conventicles, the putting down of which now afforded abundant employment to the queen and her ecclesiastical commissioners. The Puritans were brought in great numbers before the commissioners, and fined, imprisoned, and otherwise punished, both under the authority of the act of parliament enforcing attendance upon the parish churches, and by the more ample powers of the Act of Supremacy, to which scarcely any bounds were set. Meanwhile the controversy with the church began to spread over a wider field, chiefly through the preaching of the celebrated Thomas Cartwright, fellow of Trinity College and Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, a most learned, eloquent, and courageous noncon 2 Neal, Hist. of the Puritans. formist. The university of Cambridge was a great stronghold of Puritanism, and here Cartwright was for some time protected and permitted to disseminate his opinions, while most of his brethren were silenced; but he, too, was at last reached by the ecclesiastical commissioners; and, on the interference of Cecil, the chancellor, was, in 1570, deprived of his professorship. He was afterwards also deprived of his fellowship, and expelled from the university. The temper, however, of a formidable minority in the new parliament which met in 1571 showed that the principles of Puritanism, though expelled from the church, and almost driven from the face of day, were still making progress in the nation. Notwithstanding all the efforts of the government, the nonconformists found means to maintain the defence of their opinions through the press; numerous books and pamphlets were published by them, printed it could not be discovered by whom or where; nor was it possible to prevent them from being bought and read. Archbishop Parker died in 1575; and if his successor Grindal had been allowed to follow his own inclinations, or had been left in the real government of the church over which he nominally presided, the Puritans would have had a breathing-time from their sufferings during the ten years of his occupation of the metropolitan dignity. But the circumstances in which he was himself placed, and the activity of some of his brethren of another spirit and temper-especially of Sandys, Bishop of London, who, from a violent professor, had become a still more violent persecutor of puritanic principles-prevented Grindal from being able to do anything to change the course of rigour and severity that had been begun under his predecessor. When, in the second year of his primacy, he ventured to write to the queen, recommending milder measures, her majesty answered his letter by an order from the Star Chamber, confining him to his house, and suspending him from his archiepiscopal functions altogether; and so suspended he remained till within about a year of his death. It was by this sort of boldness and decision that Elizabeth throughout her reign kept the nonconformists at bay. The House of Commons which met in 1581 was more puritanic than ever, and actually began its proceedings by voting that the members should, on the second Sunday after, meet together in the Temple Church, there to have preaching and to join together in prayer, with humiliation and fasting, for the assistance of God's Spirit in all their consultations! But when the queen was informed of this extraordinary proceeding, she instantly took measures to check it. Hatton, her vicechamberlain, was sent down with a message to the effect, that "she did much admire at so great a rashness in that house as to put in execution such an innovation without her privity and pleasure first made known to them." Upon which it was forthwith moved and agreed to, "That the house should acknowledge their offence and contempt, and humbly crave forgiveness, with a full purpose to forbear committing the like for the future." It was during this very session that the act was passed raising the penalty for non-attendance upon the parish church to £20 per month; and also another act (23 Eliz. c. 2), intitled, "An Act against seditious words and rumours uttered against the queen's most excellent majesty," by which the devising and speaking seditious rumours against her majesty was made punishable with the pillory and loss of both ears; the reporting of such rumours, with the pillory and loss of one ear; the second offence in either case being made felony without clergy; and by which the printing, writing, or publishing any manner of book, rhyme, ballad, letter, or writing containing any false, seditious, and slanderous matter, to the defamation of the queen, &c., were constituted capital crimes. This last act was especially levelled at the Puritans, whose complaints and remonstrances from the press were daily growing sharper as well as more abundant, and several of them were put to death under its provisions. To this date is assigned the rise of what has been designated the third race of Puritans-the Brownists-afterwards softened down into the Independents-whose founder was Robert Brown, a preacher in the diocese of Norwich, descended of a good family. "These people," says Neal, "were carried off to a total separation, and so far prejudiced as not to allow the Church of England to be a true church, nor her ministers true ministers; they renounced all communion with her, not only in the prayers and ceremonies, but in hearing the Word and the sacraments." ”1 Archbishop Grindal, dying in 1583, was succeeded by Dr. Whitgift, who held the primacy during the remainder of the reign, and proved a ruler of the church altogether to her majesty's mind. As soon as he was seated in his place of eminence and authority he commenced a vigorous crusade against the nonconformists. Within a few weeks after he became archbishop, he suspended many hundreds of the clergy in all parts of his province for refusing subscription to a new set of articles or regulations he thought proper to issue. He then procured from the queen a new ecclesiastical commission, drawn up in terms much more comprehensive than had ever before been employed, conveying, indeed, powers of inquisition and punishment in regard to every de Hist. Puritans, vol. i. p. 245. |