the various causes of the great influence in the state which was centered in this queen's person. The aristocracy, with a few exceptions, were, as has been already remarked, at the commencement of her reign, indifferent to religion. Their

See Heylin's History of Elizabeth, p. 111, 123-4. In these two last pages we have a proof of the pomp and pageantry in worship which she proposed to establish. When a Mr. Nowel had spoken less reverently than she wished of the sign of the cross, she called aloud to him to return from that ungodly digression to his text. "On the other side, when one of her divines had preached a sermon in defence of the real presence, on the day commonly called Good-Friday, anno 1565, she openly gave him thanks for his pains and piety." P. 124. All this of course meets with the approbation of Heylin. Elizabeth was always a politician: In her sister's time the test of heresy was transubstantiation or the real presence, and Elizabeth having been asked what she thought of the words of Christ, "This is my body," -whether she believed that the true body of Christ was in the elements, is said to have answered thus:

"Christ was the word that spake it,

He took the bread and brake it,

And what the word did make it,

That I believe and take it."

In this manner she escaped from the difficulty; yet had her object been more than to secure a party, she would not have acted so differently when she became queen. But the wisest doctors amongst the protestants are justly accused by their enemies of constantly changing their opinions on this subject. "As unto Dr. Cranmer, late Archbishop of Canterbury in this realm," said Dr. Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, in Parliament, anno 1559, "How contrary was he unto himself in this matter, when, in one year, he set forth a chatechisme in English and dedicate the same unto King Edward VI. wherein he doth most constantly affirm and defend the real presence of Christ's body in the holy eucharist; and very shortly after, he did set forth another book, wherein he did most shamefully deny the same." Dr. Ridley, at one time, urged transubstantiation in the keenest manner, and then deserted it. Scott's Somers' Tracts, vol. i. p. 83. Their later doctrine seems to have been consubstantiation or impanation. Yet these doctors were ready to burn all that differed from what they happened to believe at the moment.

whole object, from the beginning of the Refor. mation, seems to have been the plunder of the church. While they framed such bloody laws against Protestants in the preceding reign, they engrossed the livings of the clergy with the most unblushing effrontery; and the same peers who had voted for king Edward's laws, passed those in Mary's reign, and now again were equally complaisant to Elizabeth. The commons were indeed changed, for elections were freer, though this queen, like her predecessors, endeavoured to procure the nomination of particular individuals by bribes and by letters directed to the high sheriffs; but the great body of the gentry are implicated in the charge of robbing the church in Elizabeth's reign, as well as in the three preceding. The patrons frequently kept churches vacant that they might draw the livings; and, says Bishop Jewel, "I speake not of the curates, but of parsonages and vicarages, that is, of the places which are the castles and towers of fence for the Lord's temple. They seldome passe now a-days from the patrone, if he be no better than a gentleman, but either for the lease or for present money. Such merchants are broken into the church of God, a great deale more intolerable than were they whom Christ whipt out of the temple. And this is done, not in one county, but thorough England. A gentleman cannot keep his house unless he haue a parsonage or two in farme for his provision." When reproached with their sacrilege, they insultingly bade the preachers of the Gospel live as the

apostles did. But the worthy Bishop shews that this could not be expected, as the preachers thought themselves too good to become the others' slaves. "Therefore," says he, "they are weary and discouraged, they change their studies, some become prentices, some turn to physic, some to law, all shun and flee the ministry;" whence he prophecies desolation to the church. Men who acted upon such principles, and yet were scarcely secure in their property, were not likely to quarrel with points of ceremony or discipline; and therefore, the compliance of Parliament, on many occasions, is not wonderful. But had it been otherwise, Elizabeth must still have had a commanding influence in public affairs. From the numbers and zeal of the Catholics, the reformers were kept in perpetual alarm; and, as they re

"The noblemen

* Jewel's Works, Sermons, p. 181, 191, 194. and gentlemen, patrons of benefices, give presentations of benefices, either to be farmers themselves, or else with exception of their own tenths, or with some other condition that is worse than this," p. 181. He says that those corrupt patrons "leaue to take charge over the people, blinde Sir Johns, not only lacke latine, but lacke honesty, and lacke conscience, and lacke religion." Id. p. 185. The state of morals was represented by this prelate as extremely corrupt. "Theft, &c. were so common, as if it were not only lawful but commendable; as if sinne were no sinne, and hell-fire a fable,” p. 221, 241. Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 509. Hayne's State Papers, p. 586. Mr. Hume has quoted a passage from this paper, which was written by Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, about the decay of obedience in civil policy, to shew that the ideas of the people, in Elizabeth's time, had become more liberal than in the more ancient; but from Cecil's words, that "it would astonish any wise and considerate person to behold the desperation of reformation," it is evident that he alluded to the non-conformists.

Ib.

garded the Queen as the bulwark of the Prote stant cause, so the Papists considered her life as the grand obstacle to their recovering the ascendancy. By joining the Romish faction, she might have dashed all the counsels of the ruling party; -and, when crossed in her measures, she, at one time, hinted the possibility of her being forced, by their perverseness, to throw herself into the arms of the Catholics,-a hint which excited the utmost dismay. The reformers themselves, though they all agreed in their hatred of the Papists, and in regarding the Queen as necessary to them against that body, were prevented by their mutual dissensions from acting in concert, to obtain a reform of what many deemed imperfect in the new establishment and creed, while the severity, which was extended to the various sects, fell short of what each would have inflicted on all its adversaries t. Though, therefore, by adopting high church principles, and favouring the Lutheran party, she disobliged the other sects, she seemed only to be in the same situation as that she would have found herself in, by making the principles of any other sect the rule of her government.

Strype's Life of Parker, p. 109. See Annals, vol. i. p. 452, 453, as to the doctrine of the English Church.

+ Neal has occasionally a remark upon the intolerance of the nonconformists or puritans themselves; but the general strain of his work, is to stigmatize, as the last degree of tyranny, all interference with the consciences of the puritans, whom he represents as harmless, while, in truth, they aimed at political and ecclesiastical ascendancy, and thirsted for an opportunity of playing the game of their oppressors,

The supremacy was immediately restored to the crown, and matters were settled nearly upon the same grounds as in her brother's reign. But, availing herself of her situation, she affected to have derived from the act of supremacy, though it conferred no such power, a discretionary right of regulating ecclesiastical affairs *. The act contained a clause, however, authorizing the erection of a new court, that of the high commission, from whence sprung many alarming evils which we shall afterwards detail.

In the course of this reign, the higher classes became imbued with a spirit of religion, to which hitherto they had been strangers. Families were now well educated; and, as the clergy were the teachers, the principles of the Reformation, which, from the nature of things, then so deeply agitated its ministers, were warmly transfused into their pupils. The majority of the clergy, however, being at that time hostile to the ceremonies retained, as well as to the church government, instilled their own ideas into the minds of the rising generation. The clergy were most interested in the nature of the ecclesiastical establishment; the people, including all ranks, in the purity of worship and doctrine. The clergy were no doubt anxious on this point too, and being well aware that, without popular support, they never could attain their object as to government, they,

In 1559, she gave this liberal interpretation of the act herself, officially. Strype's Annals, vol. i. p. 161. Heylin's Hist. of Queen Elizabeth, p. 109.