costs. It appears that this oath was first offered to Bonner on the 30th of May. Bonner refused to swear, upon which proceedings were instituted to deprive him of his bishopric. In the course of a few months the oath was tendered to the rest, and they all refused it most decidedly, with the single exception of Kitchen, Bishop of Llandaff, who had held that see since 1545, through all changes, and who was determined to keep it.' A considerable number of subordinate church dignitaries were also deprived by means of this test; but the great body of the clergy complied when, in the course of the summer, the queen appointed a general visitation to compel the observance of the new Protestant formularies. Before the end of 1559 the English church, so long contended for, was lost for ever to the Papists. In the course of the same year the two statutes, commouly denominated the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, were converted into the firm basis of that restrictive code of laws which, for more than two centuries, pressed so heavily upon the adherents to the Roman church. By the first, every conscientious Catholic, who refused to take it, lost the rights of citizenship, and might at any time be visited with heavy pains and penalties. The second statute trenched more on the natural rights of conscience; it prohibited, under pain of forfeiting goods and chattels for the first offence, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and imprisonment for life for the third, the using of any but the established Liturgy of the Church of England; and it moreover imposed a fine of 18, on every one that should absent himself from the only true Protestant church on Sunday and Lolidays. By this act the Catholic rites, how-pictures, and the like, were to be destroyed, nor ever privately celebrated, were interdicted. In some respects, where it was not deemed expedient to irritate persons of very high rank, the government connived at the secret or domestic exercise of the Roman religion; but such cases were rare even in the early part of Elizabeth's rign; and the restored Protestant clergy, who had learned no toleration from their own sufferings, propelled the agents of government into the paths of persecution. As early as 1561, Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady were sent to the Tower for hearing mass and keeping a Popish priest in their house. Many others were punished for the same offence about the same time. The penalty for causing mass to be said was only

100 marks for the first offence, but these cases seem to have been referred to the Protestant high commission court, and the arbitrary Star Chamber, whose violence, however illegal, was not often checked. About a year after the committal of Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady, two zealous Protestant bishops wrote to the council to inform them that a priest had been apprehended in a lady's house, and that neither he nor the servants would be sworn to answer to articles, saying that they would not accuse themselves. After which these Protestant prelates add-"Some do think that if this priest might be put to some kind of torment, and so driven to confess what he knoweth, he might gain the queen's majesty a good mass of money by the masses that he hath said; but this we refer to your lordship's wisdom." It is dishonest to deny so obvious a fact, nor can the denial now serve any purpose: it was this commencement of persecution that drove many English Catholics beyond the seas, and gave rise to those associations of unhappy and desperate exiles which continued to menace the throne of Elizabeth even down to the last years of her long reign. In the same year, 1559, which saw the enforcing of the Statutes of Supremacy and Uniformity, the queen published certain injunctions after the manner of those of her brother, and, for the better part, expressed in the very same words as those of Edward, twelve years before. There was, however, a greater decency of language in several of the clauses, and the Church of Rome was treated with more courtesy than in Edward's time. According to Edward's commands, images, shrines,

Kitchen, who was originally a Benedictine monk, always believed or professed a cording to the last act of parliament, which meant the last enunciation of the royal will. In the time of Henry VIII., when he received the see, he professed the mitigated Romanism held by that monarch; in the time of Edward VI. he became a complete Protestant; and when Mary came to the crown, he turned back to the point from which he Lad originally started, and became once more a thorough Papist. Now he turned Protestant again, and was allowed to keep the tshopric of Llandaff to the year 1563, when he died.-Soames.

was any memory of the same to be left in walls and glass windows. Elizabeth enjoined that "the walls and glass windows shall be nevertheless preserved."

Meanwhile the monastic establishments were universally broken up; three whole convents of monks and nuns were transferred from England to the Continent; many of the dispossessed clergy were conveyed to Spain in the retinue of Feria, the Spanish ambassador, and the deprived bishops were committed to safe keeping in England. The number of these prelates was not so considerable as might have been supposed. Through various circumstances, but chiefly by deaths (for the recent epidemic had been very fatal to elderly per

2 Burnet; Strype; Soames; Blunt; Hallam. It appears from the report of the ecclesiastical visitors that only about 100 dignitaries and eighty parish priests resigned their benefices or were deprived of them at this great period of change. But in the course of a few years many others resigned or were driven from their posts as much by the people as by the government.

3 Statute 1 Eliz. c. 2.

4 Burghley, State Papers. We regret to say that one of these two bishops was the learned Grindal, Bishop of London, who had been an exile, for conscience sake, in the time of Mary.

Scotland, as the ally of France, was included in the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Philip of Spain did not, for the present, conceive or show any serious displeasure at Elizabeth's declining the honour of his hand: he soon after took to wife the daughter of Henry II., King of France, who had been affianced to his own son, Don Carlos; and he warmly recommended to Elizabeth, as a husband in every way suitable, his own cousin, the Archduke Charles of Austria, son of the Emperor Ferdinand.

sons), there were many vacancies at Elizabeth's | queen or her successor, upon certain conditions.' accession, so that (Kitchen of Llandaff, as already mentioned, being allowed to retain his see) all the bishops that she had to deprive were, fourteen in actual possession, and three bishops elect. For some time after their deprivation these prelates were left to themselves and their poverty; but on the 4th of December (1559) Heath, Bonner, Bourne, Tuberville, and Poole imprudently drew upon themselves the queen's attention by presenting a petition, in which, after praising her virtuous sister, Queen Mary of happy memory, who, being troubled in conscience with what her father's and brother's advisers had caused them to do, had most piously restored the Catholic faith, and extinguished those schisms and heresies for which God had poured out his wrath upon most of the malefactors and misleaders of the nation; they called upon the queen to follow her example without loss of time, and concluded by praying that God would turn her heart and preserve her life, and also make her evil advisers ashamed and repentant of their heresies.' Elizabeth replied, in great wrath, that these very memorialists, or at least Heath, Bonner, and Tuberville, with their former friend, "their great Stephen Gardiner," had advised and flattered her father in all that he did; and shortly after the deprived bishops were committed to prison. Bonner, the worst of them, was conveyed to the Marshalsea on the 20th of April, 1560, where he was kept for more than nine long years, when he was liberated by death, on the 5th of September, 1569. After passing different periods in the Tower and other prisons, all of them, with the exception of Bonner, were quartered by government, apparently from motives of economy, upon the Protestant bishops who had succeeded them, or upon rich deans or other dignified churchmen- -an arrangement which could not have been very agreeable either to hosts or guests.

The settlement of the national religion had cost Elizabeth and her council much more time and trouble than the adjustment of the difficulties in the foreign relations of the country. After a little negotiation, England was included in a general treaty of peace, signed at Cateau-Cambresis on the 2d of April, 1559, within six months after her accession. The only impediment had been in Elizabeth's earnest desire to recover possession of Calais, but, by the advice of Cecil, she wisely consented to a clause in the treaty which saved her honour, though it could not have led her to believe that any King of France would ever have either the will or the power to fulfil it. It was agreed that Calais should be retained by the French king for eight years, and that at the end of that period it should be delivered to the English

1 Strype.

According to every canonical law of the Roman church, according to the notions of nearly every Catholic in England, the claim of Mary Stuart to the English succession was far preferable to that of her cousin Elizabeth. The Guises represented that Anne Boleyn's marriage had never been lawful-that it had been pronounced null and void by a sentence of the church-that the attainder of Elizabeth's blood had never been reversed even by her own parliament, and that Mary of Scotland, though passed by in the will of Henry VIII., and overlooked by the English nation, was, by right of descent and purity of birth, indisputably entitled to the throne. In a fatal moment for Mary, she and her husband quartered the royal arms of England with their own,

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Scottish nor an English throne; and this plan | worship, and the adoration of saints and images. was acted upon through a long series of years When a priest proceeded to say mass as usual, a with consummate and wonderful art. But the boy called this act idolatry-he received a blow condition of Scotland served Elizabeth better he retaliated by throwing stones at the priest, than all the skill of her statesmen and diploma- and damaged a church picture. The iconoclastic tists, great as it was. That country was rent by fury spread like flames running over gunpowder factions and religious controversies, more fierce,pictures, statues, marble fonts were broken to more determined than ever. Mary's mother, the queen-regent, like the whole family of the Guises, was devotedly attached to the Church of Rome, and, as a Frenchwoman, she was naturally the enemy of the Scottish Reformers, who had all along leaned to England. The Reformers pillaged monasteries, burned churches, and committed other excesses; and the Catholics still cried for the stake and fagot against these sacrilegious miscreants. Mary of Guise, the queen-regent, invited or summoned all the Reformed clergy to appear at Stirling on the 10th of May, 1559, to give an account of their conduct. These Reformers went to the place appointed, but so well attended with armed friends and partizans, that their opponents were utterly daunted. The result of this meeting was, that the queen-regent, in the presence of their superior force, pledged her word that no proceedings should be instituted for deeds that were past, provided only they would remain peaceable for the future. According to the Reformers, they had scarcely dispersed when she, without any new stir or provocation on their part, caused them to be proceeded against in their absence. But it must be observed that many of the Reformers were men of the most ardent zeal, who considered the remaining quiet under the rule and dominion of Papists as an abominable connivance with Satan. Among these must certainly be included the famous John Knox, the very head and front of the Calvinistic Reformation in Scotland-the pupil and bosom friend of Wishart, who had perished at the stake in Cardinal Beaton's time. On the 11th of May, the very day after the meeting at Stirling, John Knox preached in Perth with his usual vehemence against the mass, idolatrous

"But to speak seriously, I would not be thought such an enemy to any of the fine arts, as to rejoice at the wanton destruction of their models, ancient or modern, or to vindicate those who, from ignorance or fanatical rage, may have excited the mob to this work. At the same time, I must reprobate that spirit which disposes persons to magnify irregularities, and dwell with unceasing lamentations upon losses which, in the view of an enlightened and liberal mind, will sink and disappear in the magnitude of the incalculable good which rose from the wreck of the revolution. What! do we celebrate with public rejoicings victories over the enemies of our country, in the gaining of which the lives of thousands of our fellow-countrymen have been sacrificed!--and shall solemn masses and sad dirges, accompanied with direful execrations, be everlastingly sung, for the mangled members of statues, torn pictures, and ruined towers? I will go farther and say, that I look upon the destruction of these monuments as a piece of good policy, which contributed materially to the overthrow of the Roman Catholic religion, and the prevention of its re-establishment. It was chiefly by the magVOL II.

pieces, wherever they could be reached-"temple and tower went to the ground" with hideous crash.' The Reformers of England had rested satisfied with the destruction of the ornaments and accessories, and had, generally, left the walls of the abbeys untouched, but the zeal of the Scots was far more unsparing-they wished not to leave one stone upon another, and it was a maxim with John Knox that the best way of preventing the rooks from ever returning was to destroy their nests. The queen-regent had no means of checking this spirit of destruction. John Knox, by a single blast of his spiritual trumpet, assembled an irregular but a numerous army; and now the churches and monasteries which had escaped before fell almost as suddenly as the walls of Jericho at the trumpet of Joshua. Of late nearly the whole body of the Scottish nobility had fallen off from the queen-regent and enrolled themselves under the banner of Knox, who, after all, was the real chief and leader of this holy war. Many of the lords acted from a conscientious dislike of the old superstitions; but there were few of them whose zeal for the gospel light was not allied with a greed after worldly lucre: and as for toleration, when it was not found in England, it could scarcely be looked for in Scotland. Matters were made much worse when the queen-regent brought in fresh troops from France to support her insulted and tottering government. The rabble, however, who had not made up their minds to die martyrs, submitted in the towns and places where these disciplined troops were stationed, and the Protestant chiefs were fain to conclude another treaty, and to content themselves with toleration and freedom of conscience, without insisting upon nificence of temples, and the splendid apparatus of its worship, that the Popish church fascinated the senses and imaginations of the people. There could not, therefore, be a more successful method of attacking it than the demolition of these. There is more wisdom than many seem to perceive, in the maxim which Knox is said to have inculcated, 'That the best way to keep the rooks from returning was to pull down their nests.' In demolishing or rendering uninhabitable all those buildings which had served for the maintenance of the ancient superstition (except what were requisite for the Protestant worship), the Re formers only acted on the principles of a prudent general, who razes the castles and fortifications which he is unable to keep, and which might afterwards be seized and employed against him by the enemy. Had they been allowed to remain, the Popish clergy would not have ceased to indulge hopes, and to make efforts to be restored to them; occasions would have been taken to tamper with the credulous, and inflame the minds of the superstitious; and the Reformers might soon have found reason to repent their ill-judged forbearance."-M'Crie's Life of Knox.

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the immediate and total suppression of Papistry; | plained, she assured them that the measure was but this they only considered as a temporary sacri- necessary for the preservation of her daughter's fice of principle to expediency-as a connivance throne, and that she could not, and would not, which was not to last; and headed by the Earls desist until the lords should dismiss their armed of Argyle, Morton, and Glencairn, the Lord Lorn, men. The Lords of the Congregation had of Erskine of Dun, and others, they formed a gene- course less intention than ever of laying down ral Protestant league, entered privately into the sword-their party was daily increasing, and agreements, and, styling themselves the Lords that of the queen-dowager was as rapidly declinof the Congregation, published a solemn protest ing. At this crisis it seems to have fallen prinagainst the abominations and corruptions of cipally to the preachers to expound the lawfulPopery. Among those who went over to the ness of resistance to constituted authorities; and Lords of the Congregation, was the Earl of Arran, in so doing some of them occasionally broached formerly regent, who had now for some years re- doctrines, which, however sound in themselves, joiced in his French title of Duke of Chatelle- and adopted in later times, were exceedingly rault, and whose religion was of a very elastic odious to all the royal ears of Europe, whether nature. But their principal leader—a man of ex- Catholic or Protestant. But the Scotch Protestraordinary abilities, whatever we may think of tants soon found that the Catholics were still his honour or virtue was James Stuart, prior, powerful-that many, even of their own comor commendator, of the monastery of St. Andrews, munion, disapproved of their extreme measures, a natural son of the late king, the unfortunate and looked upon their conduct as rebellion-that James V., and half-brother of the beautiful the foreign troops were formidable from the exMary Stuart. This man professed a wonderful | cellent state of their discipline and appointments zeal for the new religion, whereby, not less than -that the chief fortresses of the kingdom were by his talents, he attached to himself what was in their hands-that money was pouring in from now most decidedly the popular and the stronger France, and that the Lords of the Congregation party. were, as usual, excessively needy. In this emergency, they resolved to apply for assistance to the Queen of England. Elizabeth was solemnly bound by the recent treaty of Cateau-Cambresis to do nothing in Scotland to the prejudice of Mary's rights and authority; but then Mary, since the signing of that treaty, had behaved disrespectfully to one of Elizabeth's servants; and it was known or shrewdly suspected that the Catholic fanatics, who mainly ruled the councils of the French court, were determined, on the first favourable opportunity, to assert the Scottish queen's rights and strike a blow in England for Mary, God, and church. We will not pretend to say that, if all these provocations had been wanting, Elizabeth would not have adopted precisely the same line of conduct, which was nothing but a drawing out of the old line of Henry VIII, which fell to her as a political heir-loom. When the matter was debated in the English council, there was, however, some difference of opinion, and a strong repugnance on the part of the queen, to what was deemed the anarchical polity of John Knox. The Scottish lords, or rather the great English statesmen who espoused their cause, putting aside the delicate question of rebellion and aiding of rebels, represented that the French were keeping and increasing an army in Scotland, and aiming at nothing less than the entire possession or mastery of the country; that Scotland would only prove a step to England; that when the Protestants there were overpowered. the French and Catholics would undoubtedly try to place Mary Stuart on the throne of England,

At this critical moment the absent Mary Stuart had become Queen of France, a transitory grandeur, which only lasted as it were for a moment, and which tended still further to increase the jealousies of the Scots and to embarrass her friends in her native country. Her father-inlaw, Henry II. of France, had not been very happy since the signing of the (to him) disadvantageous treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, but the immediate cause of his death was an accidental wound in the eye from a broken lance while tilting. He expired on the 10th of July, 1559, in the forty-first year of his age, and was succeeded by his eldest son, the husband of Mary, under the title of Francis II. In this manner the Scots became more and more confirmed in their idea that their country was to be held and treated as a French province or dependence; and hence every Frenchman, every ship, every bale of goods that arrived from France was looked upon with a jealous eye. Nor did Francis and Mary, on their accession to the French throne, neglect to take measures for the re-establishment of the royal power in the northern kingdom. In the end of July, 1000 French soldiers landed at Leith; and that the spiritual interests might not be neglected, Francis and Mary sent with these menat-arms a certain number of orthodox divines from the Sorbonne. With these reinforcements, and giving out that more were coming, the queenregent took possession of Leith and quartered the odious Papistical and foreign soldiers on the townspeople. When the citizens of Leith com

and renew the tyranny of Mary Tudor; that the | Scotland. Sir Ralph soon reported progress to safety of the queen, the state, the church, the the cool and circumspect Cecil, telling him that liberty of England, depended essentially on the if the Lords of the Congregation were properly turn which affairs might take in Scotland.' The encouraged and comforted, there was no doubt correctness of these views was undeniable, and as to the result. On his arrival at Berwick he it was therefore resolved to support the Protes- had found in that town a secret messenger sent tant nobility in their struggle with the queen- from Knox to Sir James Croft (who appear to regent; but with such secrecy as neither to bring have been old friends), and by means of this upon the Lords of the Congregation the odium of messenger they signified to Knox that they wished being the friends and pensioners of England, nor that Mr. Henry Balnaves, or some other discreet to engage Elizabeth in an open war with her and trusty Scotsman, might repair "in secret sister and rival. Elizabeth had not far to look manner" to such place as they had appointed, to for an agent competent to manage this business: the intent that they might confer touching affairs. our old friend Sir Ralph Sadler, who knew Scot-Sir James Croft had understood from Knox that land better than any Englishman, who had been in old times the bosom friend of the Scottish lords in the pay of Henry VIII., many of whom figured in the new movements, had quitted his rural retirement at Hackney on the accession of her present majesty, who had forth with appointed him to a seat in her privy council. He was full of energy, and he entered on his new duties with a happy anticipation of success. In the course of the month of August, Cecil issued a commis, sion to Sir Ralph to settle certain disputes concerning Border matters, and to superintend the repairs which it was proposed to make in the fortifications of Berwick and other English fortresses on or near to the Borders. Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Sir James Croft, the governor of Berwick, were joined in the commission, but more for form than for anything else; for Northumberland, as a Papist himself, was suspected-and the whole business was, in fact, intrusted to Sadler. The repairs which were actually begun on a large scale at Berwick seemed a very sufficient reason to account for Sadler's protracted stay; and Elizabeth had "thought necessary to provoke the queen-regent, her good sister, to appoint some of her ministers of like qualities to meet with the said earl (Northumberland) and the said Sir Ralph and Sir James." Sadler was thus brought into contact with Scottish commissioners, whom he was instructed to bribe. By his private powers and instructions, in Cecil's hand-writing, he was authorized to confer, treat, or practise with any manner of person of Scotland, either in Scotland or England, for his purposes and the furthering of the queen's service; to distribute money to the disaffected Scots, as he should think proper, to the amount of £3000, but he was always to proceed with such discretion and secrecy, that no part of his doings should awaken suspicion or impair the peace lately concluded between Elizabeth and

Memorial written by my lord-treasurer (Cecil) with his own band, 5th August, 1559; Sadler's State Papers: Raumer.

* Walter Scott's Biographical Memoir of Sir Ralph Sadler, prefred to the State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, Knight Bannera, edited by Arthur Clifford.

his party would require aid of the queen's majesty for the entertainment and wages of 1500 arquebusiers and 300 horsemen, which, if they might have, then France (as Knox said) should “soon understand their minds." To this demand for aid, Sadler had so answered as not to leave them without hope: but he is anxious "to understand the queen's majesty's pleasure in that part, wishing, if it may be looked for that any good effect shall follow, that her majesty should not, for the spending of a great deal more than the charge of their demand amounteth unto, pretermit such an opportunity." But it was money, ready money, that the Scottish Reformers needed. "And to say our poor minds unto you," continues Sir Ralph, "we see not but her highness must be at some charge with them; for of bare words only, though they may be comfortable, yet can they receive no comfort." This letter was written on the 20th of August (1559), immediately after Sadler's arrival at the scene of intrigue, and on the same day John Knox was requested to send his secret agent to Holy Isle. By a letter dated on the 24th of the same month, Elizabeth told Sadler that he should immediately deal out "in the secretest manner" the money committed to him at his departure from London, "to such persons and to such intents as might most effectually further and advance that service which had been specially recommended unto him." And on the same day Cecil addressed to Arran, or Chatellerault, a much more remarkable letter, which it should appear Sir Ralph was to forward to its destination. From some expressions used by Cecil, it should almost seem that Elizabeth entertained the notion of uniting the two kingdoms under her own dominion, without any reference to the rights of Mary; but the Scottish nation was certainly not prepared for any such measure, nor did the fastest pace of the Lords of the Congregation come up with it. On the 28th of August the Queen-regent of Scotland, in the name of Francis and Mary, King and Queen of the French and Scots, appointed Scottish commissioners to treat with Sadler and Northumberland for the