real progress in the few years of her brother's reign. The counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, which placed Mary on the throne as the lawful heir, were chiefly protestant, and experienced from her the usual gratitude and good faith of a bigot. Noailles bears witness, in many of his dispatches, to the unwillingness which great numbers of the people displayed to endure the restoration of popery, and to the queen's excessive unpopularity, even before her marriage with Philip had been resolved upon. As for the higher classes, they partook far less than their inferiors in the religious zeal of that age. Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth, found almost an equal compliance with their varying schemes of faith. Yet the larger proportion of the nobility and gentry appear to have preferred the catholic religion. Several peers opposed the bills for reformation under Edward; and others, who had gone along with the current, became active counselors of Mary. Not a few persons of family emigrated in the latter reign; but with the exception of the second earl of Bedford, who suffered a short imprisonment on account of religion, the protestant martyrology contains no confessor of superior rank. The same accommodating spirit characterized, upon the whole, the clergy and would have been far more general, if a considerable number had not availed themselves of the permission to marry granted by Edward; which led to their expulsion from their cures on his sister's coming to the throne. Yet it was not the temper of Mary's parliaments, whatever pains had been taken about their election, to second her bigotry in surrendering the temporal fruits of their recent schism. The bill for restoring first-fruits and impropriations in the queen's hands to the church passed not without difficulty; and it was found impossible to obtain a repeal of the act of supremacy without the pope's explicit confirmation of the abbey lands to their new proprietors. Even this confirmation, though made through the legate cardinal Pole, by virtue of a full commission, left not unreasonably an apprehension that, on some better opportunity, the imprescriptible nature of church property might be urged against the possessors. With these selfish considerations others of a more generous nature conspired to render the old religion more obnoxious than it had been at the queen's accession. Her marriage with Philip, his encroaching disposition, the arbitrary turn of his counsels, the insolence imputed to the Spaniards who accompanied him, the unfortunate loss of Calais through that alliance, while it thoroughly alienated the kingdom from Mary, created a prejudice against the religion 68 PERSECUTION UNDER MARY. CHAP. II. which the Spanish court so steadily favored. So violent indeed was the hatred conceived by the English nation against Spain during the short period of Philip's marriage with their queen, that it diverted the old channel of public feelings, and almost put an end to that dislike and jealousy of France which had so long existed. For at least a century after this time we rarely find in popular writers any expressions of hostility toward that country; though their national manners, so remote from our own, are not unfrequently the object of ridicule. The prejudices of the populace, as much as the policy of our councilors, were far more directed against Spain. § 12. But what had the greatest efficacy in disgusting the English with Mary's system of faith, was the cruelty by which it was accompanied. Though the privy council were in fact continually urging the bishops forward in this prosecution, the latter bore the chief blame, and the abhorrence entertained for them naturally extended to the doctrine they professed. A sort of instinctive reasoning told the people, what the learned on neither side had been able to discover, that the truth of a religion begins to be very suspicious when it stands in need of prisons and scaffolds to eke out its evidences. And as the English were constitutionally humane, and not hardened by continually witnessing the infliction of barbarous punishments, there arose a sympathy for men suf fering torments with such meekness and patience, which the populace of some other nations were perhaps less apt to display, especially in executions on the score of heresy. The theologian indeed and the philosopher may concur in deriding the notion that either sincerity or moral rectitude can be the test of truth; yet among the various species of authority to which recourse had been had to supersede or to supply the deficiencies of argument, I know not whether any be more reasonable, and none certainly is so congenial to unsophisticated minds. Many are said to have become protestants under Mary, who, at her coming to the throne, had retained the contrary persuasion. And the strongest proof of this may be drawn from the acquiescence of the great body of the kingdom in the re-establishment of protestantism by Elizabeth, when compared with the seditions and discontent on that account under Edward. The course which this famous princess steered in ecclesiastical concerns, during her long reign, will form the subject of the two ensuing chapters. CHAPTER III. ON THE LAWS OF ELIZABETH'S REIGN RESPECTING THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 1. Change of Religion on the Queen's Accession. 2. Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. 3. Restraint of Roman Catholic Worship in the first Years of Elizabeth. 4. Statute of 1562. This Act not fully enforced. § 5. Application of the Emperor in behalf of the English Catholics. 6. Persecution of this Body in the ensuing Period. § 7. Uncertain Succession of the Crown between the families of Scotland and Suffolk. S. The Queen's unwillingness to decide this, or to marry. 9. Imprisonment of Lady Catherine Grey. 10. Mary Queen of Scotland. § 11. Combination in her favor. 12. Bull of Pius V. Statutes for the Queen's Security. § 13. Catholics more rigorously treated. 14. Refugees in the Netherlands. Their Hostility to the Government. § 15. Fresh Laws against the Catholic Worship. Execution of Campian and others. § 16. Defense of the Queen by Burleigh. 17. Increased Severity of the Government. § 18. Mary. Plot in her favor. Her Execution. Remarks upon it. § 19. Continued Persecution of Roman Catholics. 20. General Observations. § 1. THE accession of Elizabeth, gratifying to the whole nation on account of the late queen's extreme unpopularity, infused peculiar joy into the hearts of all well-wishers to the Reformation. Child of that famous marriage which had severed the connection of England with the Roman see, and trained betimes in the learned and reasoning discipline of protestant theology, suspected and oppressed for that very reason by a sister's jealousy, and scarcely preserved from the death which at one time threatened her, there was every ground to be confident that, notwithstanding her forced compliance with the catholic rites during the late reign, her inclinations had continued steadfast to the opposite side. Nor was she long in manifesting this disposition sufficiently to alarm one party, though not entirely to satisfy the other. Her great prudence, and that of her advisers, which taught her to move slowly, while the temper of the nation was still uncertain, and her government still embarrassed with a French war and a Spanish alliance, joined with a certain tendency in her religious sentiments not so thoroughly protestant as had been expected, produced some complaints of delay from the ardent reformers just returned from exile. But she began to make alterations, though not very essential, in the church service; and the bishops must have been well aware of the course she designed to pursue, when they adopted the violent and impolitic resolution of refusing to officiate at her coronation. Her council was formed of a very few 70 FIRST PARLIAMENT OF ELIZABETH. CHAP. III. catholics, of several pliant conformists with all changes, and of some known friends to the protestant interest. But two of these, Cecil and Bacon, were so much higher in her confidence, and so incomparably superior in talents to the other councilors, that it was evident which way she must incline. The parliament met about two months after her accession. The creed of parliament from the time of Henry VIII. had been always that of the court; whether it were that elections had constantly been influenced, as we know was sometimes the case, or that men of adverse principles, yielding to the torrent, had left the way clear to the partisans of power. This first, like all subsequent parliaments, was to the full as favorable to protestantism as the queen could desire; the first-fruits of benefices, and, what was far more important, the supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, were restored to the crown; the laws made concerning religion in Edward's time were re-enacted. These acts did not pass without considerable opposition among the lords; nine temporal peers, besides all the bishops, having protested against the bill of uniformity establishing the Anglican liturgy, though some pains had been taken to soften the passages most obnoxious to catholics. But the act restoring the royal supremacy met with less resistance; whether it were that the system of Henry retained its hold over some minds, or that it did not encroach, like the former, on the liberty of conscience, or that men not overscrupulous were satisfied with the interpretation which the queen caused to be put upon the oath. Several of the bishops had submitted to the Reformation under Edward VI. But they had acted, in general, so conspicuous a part in the late restoration of popery, that, even amidst so many examples of false profession, shame restrained them from a second apostasy. Their number happened not to exceed sixteen, one of whom was prevailed on to conform; while the rest, refusing the oath of supremacy, were deprived of their bishoprics by the court of ecclesiastical high commission. In the summer of 1559 the queen appointed a general ecclesiastical visitation, to compel the observance of the protestant formularies. It appears from their reports that only about one hundred dignitaries, and eighty parochial priests, resigned their benefices, or were deprived. Men eminent for their zeal in the protestant cause, and most of them exiles during the persecution, occupied the vacant sees. And thus, before the end of 1559, the English church, so long contended for as a prize by the two religions, was lost forever to that of Rome. §2. These two statutes, commonly denominated the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity,' form the basis of that restrictive code of laws, deemed by some one of the fundamental bulwarks, by others the reproach of our constitution, which pressed so heavily for more than two centuries upon the adherents to the Romish church. By the former all beneficed ecclesiastics, and all laymen holding office under the crown, were obliged to take the oath of supremacy, renouncing the spiritual as well as temporal jurisdiction of every foreign prince or prelate, on pain of forfeiting their office or benefice; and it was rendered highly penal, and for the third offense treasonable, to maintain such supremacy by writing or advised speaking. The latter statute trenched more on the natural rights of conscience; prohibiting, under pain of forfeiting goods and chattels for the first offense, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and of imprisonment during life for the third, the use by a minister, whether beneficed or not, of any but the established liturgy; and imposed a fine of one shilling on all who should absent themselves from church on Sundays and holydays.* §3. This act operated as an absolute interdiction of the catholic rites, however privately celebrated. It has frequently been asserted, that the government connived at the domestic exercise of that religion during these first years of Elizabeth's reign. This may possibly have been the case with respect to some persons of very high rank whom it was inexpedient to irritate. But we find instances of severity toward catholics, even in that early period; and it is evident that their solemn rites were only performed by stealth, and at much hazard. This commencement of persecution induced many catholics to fly beyond the sea, and gave rise to those reunions of disaffected exiles, which never ceased to endanger the throne of Elizabeth. It can not, as far as appears, be truly alleged that any greater provocation had as yet been given by the catholics than that of pertinaciously continuing to believe and worship as their fathers had done before them. I request those who may hesitate about this, to pay some attention to the order of time, before they form their opinions. The master mover, that became afterward so busy, had not yet put his wires into action. Every prudent man at Rome (and we shall not at least deny that there were such) condemned the precipitate and insolent behavior of Paul IV. toward Elizabeth, as 11 Eliz., c. 1. See NOTE at end of chapter, "The Oath of Supremacy." |