belief in the Roman catholic religion, under certain circumstances, to be an act of treason. But both lord Burleigh, in his "Execution of Justice," and Walsingham, in a letter published by Burnet, positively assert the contrary; and I am not aware that their assertion has been disproved. This certainly furnishes a distinction between the persecution under Elizabeth (which, unjust as it was in its operation, yet, as far as it extended to capital inflictions, had in view the security of the government) and that which the protestants had sustained in her sister's reign, springing from mere bigotry and vindictive rancor, and not even shielding itself at the time with those shallow pretexts of policy which it has of late been attempted to set up in its extenuation. But that which renders these condemnations of popish priests so iniquitous is, that the belief in, or rather the refusal to disclaim, a speculative tenet, dangerous indeed, and incompatible with loyalty, but not coupled with any overt act, was construed into treason; nor can any one affect to justify these sentences who is not prepared to maintain that a refusal of the oath of abjuration, while the pretensions of the house of Stuart subsisted, might lawfully or justly have incurred the same penalty.

An apology was always deduced for these measures, whether of restriction or punishment, adopted against all adherents to the Roman church, from the restless activity of that new militia which the Holy See had lately organized. The mendicant orders established in the thirteenth century had lent former popes a powerful aid toward subjecting both the laity and the secular priesthood, by their superior learning and ability, their emulous zeal, their systematic concert, their implicit obedience. But in all these requisites for good and faithful janizaries of the church, they were far excelled by the new order of Ignatius Loyola. Rome, I believe, found in their services what has stayed her fall. They contributed in a very material degree to check the tide of the Reformation. Subtile alike and intrepid, pliant in their direction, unshaken in their aim, the sworn, implacable, unscrupulous enemies of protestant governments, the jesuits were a legitimate object of jealousy and restraint. As every member of that society enters into an engagement of absolute, unhesitating obedience to its superior, no one could justly complain that he was presumed capable at least of committing any crimes that the policy of his monarch might enjoin. But if the jesuits by their abilities and busy spirit of intrigue promoted the interests of Rome, they raised up ene

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CHAP. III.

mies by the same means to themselves within the bosom of the church, and became little less obnoxious to the secular clergy, and to a great proportion of the laity, than to the protestants whom they were commissioned to oppose. Their intermeddling character was shown in the very prisons occupied by catholic recusants, where a schism broke out between the two parties, and the secular priests loudly complained of their usurping associates. This was manifestly connected with the great problem of allegiance to the queen, which the one side being always ready to pay, did not relish the sharp usage it endured on account of the other's disaffection. The council indeed gave some signs of attending to this distinction, by a proclamation issued in 1602, ordering all priests to depart from the kingdom, unless they should come in and acknowledge their allegiance, with whom the queen would take further order. Thirteen priests came forward on this, with a declaration of allegiance as full as could be devised. Some of the more violent papists blamed them for this; and the Louvain divines concurred in the censure. There were now two parties among the English catholics; and those who, goaded by the sense of long persecution, and inflamed by obstinate bigotry, regarded every heretical government as unlawful or unworthy of obedience, used every machination to deter the rest from giving any test of their loyalty. These were the more busy, but by much the less numerous class; and their influence was mainly derived from the laws of severity, which they had braved or endured with fortitude. It is equally candid and reasonable to believe that, if a fair and legal toleration, or even a general connivance at the exercise of their worship, had been conceded in the first part of Elizabeth's reign, she would have spared herself those perpetual terrors of rebellion which occupied all her later years. Rome would not, indeed, have been appeased, and some desperate fanatic might have sought her life; but the English catholics collectively would have repaid her protection by an attachment which even her rigor seems not wholly to have prevented.

It is not to be imagined that an entire unanimity prevailed in the councils of this reign as to the best mode of dealing with the adherents of Rome. Those temporary connivances or remissions of punishment which, though to our present view they hardly lighten the shadows of this persecution, excited loud complaints from bigoted men, were owing to the queen's personal humor, or the influence of some advisers more liberal than the rest Elizabeth herself seems always

to have inclined rather to indulgence than extreme severity. Sir Christopher Hatton, for some years her chief favorite, incurred odium for his lenity toward papists, and was, in their own opinion, secretly inclined to them. Whitgift found enough to do with an opposite party. And that too noble and high-minded spirit, so ill fitted for a servile and dissembling court, the earl of Essex, was the consistent friend of religious liberty, whether the catholic or the puritan were to enjoy it. But those councilors, on the other hand, who favored the more precise reformers, and looked coldly on the established church, never failed to demonstrate their protestantism by excessive harshness toward the old religion's adherents. That bold bad man, whose favor is the great reproach of Elizabeth's reign, the earl of Leicester, and the sagacious, disinterested, inexorable Walsingham, were deemed the chief advisers of sanguinary punishments. But, after their deaths, the catholics were mortified to discover that lord Burleigh, from whom they had hoped for more moderation, persisted in the same severities.

NOTE TO CHAPTER III.

THE OATH OF SUPREMACY (p. 71). restrains the royal supremacy established a contemporaneous exposition of the law, THE oath of supremacy was expressed as by this act, and asserted in the above oath, follows: "I, A. B., do utterly testify and in the following words: "Her majesty fordeclare, that the queen's highness is the biddeth all manner her subjects to give only supreme governor of this realm, and ear or credit to such perverse and maliall other her highness's dominions and cious persons, which most sinisterly and countries, as well in all spiritual and ec- maliciously labor to notify to her loving clesiastical things or causes as temporal; subjects how by words of the said oath it and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, may be collected that the kings or queens state, or potentate, hath or ought to have of this realm, possessors of the crown, may any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre- challenge authority and power of ministry eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or of divine service in the church; wherein spiritual, within this realm; and there- her said subjects be much abused by such fore I do utterly renounce and forsake all evil disposed persons. For certainly her foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiori- majesty neither doth, nor ever will, chalties, and authorities, and do promise that lenge any other authority than that was from henceforth I shall bear faith and true challenged and lately used by the said allegiance to the queen's highness, her noble kings of famous memory, king heirs and lawful successors, and to my Henry VIII. and king Edward VI., which power shall assist and defend all jurisdic- is, and was of ancient time, due to the imtions, pre-eminences, privileges, and au- perial crown of this realm; that is, under thorities, granted or belonging to the God to have the sovereignty and rule over queen's highness, her heirs and success- all manner of persons born within these ors, or united and annexed to the imperial her realms, dominions, and countries, of crown of this realm."

A remarkable passage in the injunctions to the ecclesiastical visitors of 1559, which may be reckoned in the nature of

what estate, either ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them. And if any person that

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NOTE TO CHAPTER III.

hath conceived any other sense of the form that several persons of that persuasion, of the said oath shall accept the same with besides peers, from whom the oath was this interpretation, sense, or meaning, her not exacted, did actually hold offices unmajesty is well pleased to accept every der the Stuarts, and even enter into parsuch in that behalf, as her good and obe- liament, and that the test act and declaradient subjects, and shall acquit them of all tion against transubstantiation were thus manner of penalties contained in the said rendered necessary to make their excluact, against such as shall peremptorily or sion certain. obstinately refuse to take the same oath." 1 Somers Tracts, edit. Scott, 73.

As to the exposition before given of the oath of supremacy, I conceive that it was This interpretation was afterward given intended not only to relieve the scruples in one of the thirty-nine articles, which of catholics, but of those who had imbibed having been confirmed by parliament, it from the school of Calvin an apprehenis undoubtedly to be reckoned the true sion of what is sometimes, though rather sense of the oath. Mr. Butler, in his Me- improperly, called Erastianism-the mergmoirs of English Catholics, vol. i., p. 157, ing of all spiritual powers, even those of enters into a discussion of the question, ordination and of preaching, in the parawhether Roman Catholics might conscien- mount authority of the state toward which tiously take the oath of supremacy in this the despotism of Henry, and obsequioussense. It appears that in the seventeenth ness of Cranmer, had seemed to bring the century some contended for the affirma- church of England.

tive; and this seems to explain the fact

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE LAWS OF ELIZABETH'S REIGN RESPECTING PROTESTANT NON-CONFORMISTS.

1. Origin of the Differences among the English Protestants. 2. Religious Inclinations of the Queen. 3. Unwillingness of many to comply with the established Ceremonies. 4. Conformity enforced by the Archbishop. § 5. Separate conventicles. 6. A more determined Opposition, about 1570, led by Cartwright. Dangerous Nature of his Tenets. § 7. Puritans supported in the Commons. § 8. And in some measure by the council. 9. Prophesyings. § 10. Archbishops Grindal and Whitgift. Conduct of the latter in enforcing Conformity. $11. High Commission Court. Lord Burleigh averse to Severity. § 12. Puritan Libels. 13. Attempt to set up Presbyterian System. § 14. House of Commons averse to Episcopal Authority. § 15. Independents liable to severe Laws. § 16. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. § 17. Spoliation of Church Revenues.

§ 1. THE two statutes enacted in the first year of Elizabeth, commonly called the acts of supremacy and uniformity, are the main links of the Anglican church with the temporal constitution, and establish the subordination and dependency of the former; the first abrogating all jurisdiction and legislative power of ecclesiastical rulers, except under the authority of the crown; and the second prohibiting all changes of rites and discipline without the approbation of parliament. It was the constant policy of this queen to maintain her ecclesiastical prerogative and the laws she had enacted. But in following up this principle she found herself involved in many troubles, and had to contend with a religious party quite opposite to the Romish, less dangerous indeed, and inimical to her government, but full as vexatious and determined.

I have in another place slightly mentioned the differences that began to spring up under Edward VI. between the moderate reformers who established the new Anglican church, and those who accused them of proceeding with too much forbearance in casting off superstitions and abuses.' These diversities of opinion were not without some relation to those which distinguished the two great families of protestantism in Europe. Luther, intent on his own system of dogmatic theology, had shown much indifference about retrenching exterior ceremonies, and had even favored, especially in the first years of his preaching, that specious worship which some ardent reformers were eager to reduce to simplicity. Cruci

1 See p. 66.