MARY TUDOR. (When Princess. From the Portrait by Holbein.)

CHAPTER VI.

THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.-JOHN KNOX, JOHN Fox, JOHN JEWEL, MATTHEW PARKER, EDMUND GRINDAL, JOHN AYLMER, AND OTHERS.-A.D. 1558 TO A.D. 1579.

N April, 1558, Mary Queen of Scots, aged sixteen, was married to Francis, the French Dauphin. On the 17th of November, Elizabeth, aged twenty-five, became Queen of England, and the Estates of Scotland, meeting in that month, gave to the French Dauphin the title of King Consort. The Dauphin in 1559 became King of France as Francis II., and the young queen's uncles, the two brothers, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis, Duke of Guise, became rulers in France-one of financial and civil affairs, the other of the army. Their principles of civil and religious liberty were, as set forth by the Duke of Guise, that "all Truth must proceed from Tradition, all Justice and all Authority from the Crown." Francis and Mary styled themselves King and Queen of England, and Scotland, and Ireland; and it was determined to join Scotland to France if Mary died PREACHER'S HOUR-GLASS childless in her husband's lifetime. In August of the same year, 1559, Philip II. of Spain ordered the enforce

AND STAND.'

The hour-glass, once familiar neighbour to the pulpit, measured

ment in the Netherlands of a severe edict for the extirpation of all sects and heresies. Elizabeth had dangerous neighbours, and a people divided against itself. She meant to uphold the Reformation. She desired to establish harmony within the English Church by taking a middle way between extreme opinions, and forcing all within the Church to follow that course. In the first year of her reign appeared an Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer, which restored, with some slight modification, the forms of church service established in the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Edward VI., required the use of them in all churches, and made it punishable to "preach, declare, or speak anything in the derogation or depraving" of the Book of Common Prayer. For one such offence a minister was to forfeit his clerical income for a year, and be imprisoned for six months without bail; for the second offence he was to be deprived of his church offices and imprisoned for a year, or for life upon a third conviction. An offender not beneficed was to suffer a year's imprisonment for the first offence, and for the second offence imprisonment for life. Of 9,400 clergy there were not quite two hundred who refused to hold their livings upon these conditions.

Meanwhile John Knox-whose Trumpet Blast against the Government of Women closed England against him, when he would gladly have sought the goodwill of Elizabeth-landed at Leith and preached in Perth against idolatry. A fervent zeal opposed the force of the Queen Regent. The Reforming Lords, who had been withdrawing from the churches to form congregations of their own, and were called Lords of the Congregation, entered into a second covenant for mutual support and defence. The Queen Regent was defied. Monasteries were destroyed, the Abbey of Scone was burnt, Edinburgh came into the keeping of the Reformers, and at Stirling the Lords of the Congregation signed a third covenant binding themselves not to treat with the Queen Regent separately. When the Dauphin became Francis II. of France, French soldiers landed at Leith, with a legate from the Pope and doctors from the Sorbonne. Elizabeth aided the Scots quietly with English money. In October, 1559, the Queen Regent in Scotland, Mary of Guise, was deprived of her authority by us the Nobility and Commons of

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the Protestants of the Church of Scotland." Elizabeth, for security against a French conquest of Scotland, gave more active aid, and in April, 1560, the English were besieging Leith. The Lords of the Congregation then signed a fourth covenant, binding themselves to pursue their object to the last extremity. Then the Queen Regent died. Peace was made between England and France in the affairs of Scotland, and proclaimed at the Edinburgh marketcross in July, 1560. The Estates of Scotland met on the 1st of August, and embodied on the 17th the opinions of John Knox in a Confession of Faith for

the due length of the sermon by the running of its sand. An overfervent preacher might sometimes turn it when the sand was run, and invite his hearers to "take another glass." The hour-glass above figured was in the church of St. Alban's, Wood Street, London, and the sketch of it is taken from Allen's "History of Lambeth."

the Scottish Church. On the 24th they annulled former acts for the maintenance of the Roman Church, abolished the Pope's jurisdiction, and made it criminal to say a mass or hear a mass. And so the Scottish Reformation was accomplished.

The short reign of Francis II. of France, husband of young Mary Queen of Scots, was ended by his death in December, 1560, and he was succeeded by a boy of eleven, Charles IX. The queen-mother, Catherine of Medicis, made friendly advances to Elizabeth, who said to the young king's ambassador, "Tell your master that war is only fit for poor devils of princes who have their fortunes to make, and not for the sovereigns of two great countries like France and England."

The change of rule in England brought home from Switzerland and Germany many Reformers who had been in exile under Mary. John Fox did not return immediately. His age was forty-one in the year of Elizabeth's accession, and he was then living with a wife and two children at Basle, earning his bread as a corrector of the press. He was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, educated at Oxford, and expelled in 1545 on accusation of heresy. He was then tutor, first to the children of Sir Thomas Lucy, at Charlcote, near Stratford-on-Avon, and next to the children of the Earl of Surrey after their father's execution. Their grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk,

self to the printer Oporinus by showing him the first sketch of his "History of the Church." This, written in Latin, was published in 1554. After the death of Mary, his friends, Edmund Grindal and others, returned to England, whence they supplied Fox with ample material from the records of the bishops' courts. An enlarged version of his History, still in Latin, came from the press of Oporinus in August, 1559. Then Fox came home, and lived at first near Aldgate, at the manor place of the Duke of Norfolk, constantly busied over the production of the first English edition of his famous book, which appeared in folio in 1563 as "Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous Days touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecutions and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romish Prelates, especially in this realm of England and Scotland, from the Year of Our Lord a Thousand, unto the Time now Present. Gathered and collected according to the true copies and writings certificatory, as well, of the parties themselves that suffered, as also out of the Bishops' Registers which were the doers thereof." It is the book of a devout and zealous partisan, adorned with pictures designed to impress more vividly on readers' minds the reasons for repudiation of the Church of Rome. Fox condemned the Roman Church for persecution to the death, and honestly endeavoured to prevent, as far as he could, infliction of the penalty of death by the Reformed Church upon those whom he accounted heretics. He busied himself much to save the lives of two Anabaptists, and sought without success to do away with punishment by death in matters of religion. But in the conflict of opinion he was an eager combatant, not an impartial judge, deeply convinced of the truth of his own cause, and showing what is to be found also sometimes in a writer of more genius, the inability to know how men as honest and as earnest as himself could hold the opposite opinion.

A few records of the suffering of Englishmen in Spain were added by Fox to his narrative of English persecutions, the chief of them being this account of the burning of an English merchant, at an auto da fé, at Seville, on the 20th of December, 1560.

1 Mass. The name that had come to be used in the Church of Rome for the Communion Service was not rejected in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., where that service is headed "The Supper of the Lord, and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." But the name was soon restricted to the communion service of the Church of Rome. The Latin "Missa" first referred only to the close of service and the dismissal of the congregation, then it was applied to the church service generally, then to a special part of it.

THE CRUELL HANDLYNG AND BURNYNG OF NICHOLAS BURTON, ENGLISHMAN AND MERCHANT IN SPAYNE. Forasmuch as in our former booke of Actes and Monumentes mention was made of the martyrdome of Nicholas Burton, I thought here also not to omit y same, the story beyng such as is not unworthy to be known, as well for the profitable example of his singular constancie, as also for the notyng of the extreme bearing and cruell rauenyng of those Catholicke Inquisitours of Spayne, who under the pretensed visour of religion, do nothing but seeke their owne private gayne and commoditie, with crafty defendyng and spoylyng of other men's goodes, as by the notyng of this story may appeare.

The fift day of the moneth of Nouember, about the yeare of our Lord God 1560, this Nicholas Burton, citizen sometyme of London, and marchaunt, dwelling in the parish of

little Saint Bartlemewe, peaceably and quietly following his traffike in the trade of marchaundise, and beyng in the citie of Cadiz, in the partes of Andolazia in Spayne, there came into his lodgyng a Judas (or, as they terme them) a Familiar of the Fathers of the Inquisition, who, in askyng for the sayd Nicholas Burton, fayned that hee had a letter to deliuer to his owne handes: by whiche meanes he spake with him immediatly. And hauing no letter to deliuer to him, then the sayd Promoter or Familiar, at the motion of the Deuill his master, whose messenger he was, inuented another lye, and sayd that he would take ladyng for London in such shyppes as the sayd Nicholas Burton had frayted to lade, if he would let any whiche was partly to knowe where hee laded his goodes, that they might attache them, and chiefly to detract the tyme untill the Alguisiel, or Sergeant of the sayd Inqui

Triana, where the sayd fathers of the Inquisition proceeded agaynst him secretly accordyng to their accustomable cruell tyranny, that neuer after he could be suffered to write or speake to any of his nation: so that to this day it is unknowen who was his accuser.

Afterward the xx. day of December, in the foresayd yeare, they brought the sayd Nicholas Burton, with a great number of other prisoners, for professyng the true Christian religion, into the citie of Siuill, to a place where the sayd Inquisition sat in judgement, which they call the Awto, with a canuas coate, whereon in diuers partes was paynted the figure of an houge deuill tormentyng a soule in a flame of fire, and on his head a coppyng tanke of the same worke.

His toung was forced out of his mouth, with a clouen sticke fastened vppon it, that hee shoulde not vtter his conscience

sition, might come and apprehend the body of the sayd Nicholas Burton: whiche they did incontinently.

Who then well perceauyng that they were not able to burden nor charge him that he had written, spoken, or done any thyng there in that countrey agaynst the ecclesiasticall or temporall lawes of the same realme, boldly asked them what they had to lay to his charge, that they did so arrest hym, and bad them to declare the cause, and hee would auns were them. Notwithstanding, they aunswered nothyng, but commaunded him with cruell and threatnyng woordes to hold his peace, and not to speake one word to them.

And so they caryed him to the cruell and filthy common prison of the same towne of Cadiz, where he remained in yrons xuij. dayes amongest theeues.

All whiche tyme he so instructed the poore prisoners in the Worde of God, accordyng to the good talent whiche God had geuen him in that behalfe, and also in the Spanish toung to vtter the same, that in short space he had well reclaymed sundry of these superstitious and ignorant Spanyardes to embrace the Woorde of God, and to reiect their popish traditions.

Whiche beyng knowen vnto the officers of the Inquisition, they conueyed him, laden with yrons, from thence to a citie called Siuill, into a more cruell and straighter prison called

and fayth to the people, and so hee was set with an other Englishe man of Southampton, and diuers others condemned men for religion, as well Frenchmen, as Spanyardes, vppon a scaffold ouer agaynst the sayd Inquisition, where their sentences and judgementes were read and pronounced against them.

And immediatly after the sayd sentences geuen, they were all caryed from thence to the place of execution without the

1 In the low suburb of Seville called Triana, on the opposite bank of the Guadalquiver.

2 Judgement which they call the Auto. Auto (Latin "actus") was originally a Spanish forensic term, and meant a decree or judgment of a court. The Auto da Fé (Act of Faith) was a public gaol delivery by the Court of the Inquisition, when acquittals and convictions of those accused of crimes against religion were read, and those adjudged to death were delivered to the secular power by which sentence was immediately executed. The "Auto" ended with the delivery of the judgments; but as, in days of extreme persecution, burning of heretics immediately followed, and they were carried to the place of execution with much public ceremony, in yellow dresses painted over with suggestions of the pains of hell, to arrest attention and strike doubters dumb with fear, the term Auto da Fé was commonly associated with these public executions. Besides the general Auto da Fé, there was the private Auto, the Autillo, or little Act, and the delivery of judgment in a single case, the Auto singular.

citie, where they most cruelly burned him, for whose constant fayth God be praysed.

This Nicholas Burton, by the way, and in the flames of fire, made so chearefull a countenaunce, embracyng death with all pacience and gladnesse, that the tormentours and enemyes which stode by sayd that the deuill had his soule before he came to the fire, and therefore they sayd his senses of feelyng were past him.

It happened that after the arrest of this Nicholas Burton aforesayd, immediatly all the goodes and marchaundise whiche hee brought with him into Spayne by way of trafficke, were, accordyng to their common vsage, seised and taken into the Sequester; among the which they also rolled by much that appertained to an other Englishe marchaunt, wherewith he was credited as factour; wherof, so soone as newes was brought to the marchaunt, as well of the imprisonment of his factour as of the arrest made vppon his goodes, he sent his atturney into Spayne, with authoritie from him to make clayme to his goodes, & to demaunde them, whose name was John Fronton, citizen of Bristow.

When his atturney was landed at Siuill, and had showed all his letters and writynges to the holy house, requyring them that such goodes might bee redeliuered into his possession, aunswere was made him that he must sue by bill, and retayne an aduocate (but all was doubtlesse to delay him), and they, forsooth, of curtesie assigned hym one to frame his supplication for him, and other such billes of petition as he had to exhibite into their holy court, demandyng for eche bill viij. rials, albeit they stoode hym in no more stead than if he had put vp none at all. And for the space of three or iiij. monethes this fellow missed not twise a day, attendyng euery mornyng and afternoone at th Inquisitours Palace, prayng vnto them vppon his knees for his dispatch, but specially to the Byshop of Tarracon, who was at that very time chief in the Inquisition at Siuill, that he of his absolute authoritie would commaunde restitution to be made thereof; but the booty was so good and so great that it was very hard to come by it agayne.

At the length, after he had spent whole iiij. monethes in sutes and requestes, and also to no purpose, he receaued this auns were from them, that he must shew better euidence and bryng more sufficient certificates out of England for proofe of his matter then those whiche he had already presented to the Court; whereupon the partie forthwith posted to London, and with all speede returned to Siuill agayne with more ample and large letters, testimonials, and certificates, accordyng to their request, and exhibited them to the Court. Notwithstandyng, the Inquisitours still shifted him off, excusing themselues by lacke of leasure, and for that they were occupyed in greater and more weighty affaires, and with such aunsweres delayed him other foure monethes after.

At the last, when the partie had wellnygh spent all his money, and therefore sued the more earnestly for his dispatch, they referred the matter wholy to the Byshoppe; of whom, when he repayred unto him, he had this aunswere: that for him selfe hee knew what hee had to do; how beit hee was but one man, and the determination of the matter appertained vnto the other Commissioners as well as vnto him: and thus, by postyng and passyng it from one to an other, the partie could obtaine no ende of his sute. Yet for his importunitie sake, they were resolued to dispatche him, but it was on this sorte: one of the Inquisitours called Gasco, a man very well experienced in these practices, willed the partie to resorte vnto him after dinner.

The fellow being glad to heare these newes, and supposing that his goodes should be restored vnto him, and that he was called in for that purpose, to talke with the other that was in

prison, to conferre with him about their accomptes;-the rather thorough a little misunderstandyng, hearyng the Inquisitor cast out a word, that it should be needefull for hym to talke with the prisoner;-and beyng therevpon more then halfe persuaded that at the length they ment good fayth, did so, and repayred thether about the euening. Immediatly vpon his commyng, the jayler was foorthwith charged with hym, to shut hym vp close in such a certain prison, where they appointed him.

The partie hopyng at the first that hee had bene called for about some other matter, and seyng him selfe, contrary to his expectation, cast into a darke dungeon, perceaued at the length that the world went with him farre otherwise then he supposed it would haue done.

But within two or three dayes after, he was brought forth into the Court, where he began to demaunde his goodes; and because it was a deuise that well serued their turne, without any more circumstaunce they had hym say his Aue Maria. The partie began & sayd it after this maner: Aue Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Amen.

The same was written worde by worde as he spake it; and without any more talke of claymyng his goodes because it was booteles, they commaunde hym to prison agayne, and enter an action agaynst hym as an hereticke, forasmuch as he did not say his Aue Maria after the Romish fashion, but ended it very suspiciously, for he should haue added, moreouer, Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, by abbreuiatyng whereof it was euident enough (sayd they) that he did not allow the mediation of saintes.

Thus they picked a quarell to detaine him in prison a longer season, and afterwardes brought hym forth into their stage, disguised after their maner, where sentence was geuen that he should lose all the goodes whiche he sued for, though they were not his owne, and besides this, suffer a yeares imprisonment.

In August, 1561, Mary Queen of Scots, aged nineteen, widow of Francis II. of France, returned to Scotland, and heard mass on the first Sunday after her arrival. In the same year John Bodley obtained in England a seven years' patent for the version of the Bible which had been prepared and printed at his cost in Geneva, and was known as the Geneva Bible. Few men of any creed were at that time free from faith in the use of force and violence for the advancement of the highest truth they knew. In its preface and short annotations the Geneva Bible was not without trace of desire to hew Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Some shadow of this form of zeal was even upon that society established by the influence of Calvin at Geneva, which Knox held to be more truly Christian than anything that had been seen elsewhere since the days of the Apostles.

Jean Cauvin, or John Calvin, was born at Noyon in 1509. At the age of twenty-three, after a liberal education at Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, he had completely adopted such reformed opinions as prevented him from entering the ministry within the Church of Rome, for which he was to have been trained. He found a friend in Margaret of Navarre, and while still young produced in Latin, at Basle. a first outline, developed afterwards more fully, of the principles of his faith, and of the faith

of many whom his genius made afterwards his followers, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was in 1536, when twenty-seven years old, that Calvin first settled at Geneva, but all his reforms had not acceptance then, and in 1538 he was compelled to leave. In 1541 he was recalled, and then established at Geneva that "yoke of Christ" by which he sought to enforce Christian life, as well as Christian doctrine. A girl was whipped for singing a song to a psalm-tune; three children were punished for waiting outside the church to eat cakes in sermon-time; a child was beheaded for having struck her parents; and a lad of sixteen was condemned to death for only threatening to strike his mother. The unreformed Church had its ecclesiastical courts, which took cognisance of offences against minor morals, and their summoners made them occasion of much petty oppression and cruelty. Calvin also was following traditional customs when he sought unity of faith by burning the learned Spaniard, Michael Servetus, in October, 1553, for blasphemy and heresy, because he was a Christian who could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin died in 1564, leaving his mind strongly impressed on the Reformed Church of England, and yet more strongly, through John Knox, on the Reformed Church of Scotland. In Elizabeth's reign, Calvin's interpretation of the doctrines of the Christian Faith was that commonly accepted by the English clergy. In 1561, while Calvin was still living, his body of Church Doctrine, the "Institutio Christianæ Religionis," was published in a translation by Thomas Norton, who was about the same time joint author with Thomas Sackville of "Gorboduc," the first English tragedy. "The Institution of Christian Religion, written in Latine by M. John Calvine, translated into English according to the author's last edition," by Thomas Norton, appeared as a solid folio in 1561; a new edition of it was required in 1562, and other editions in 1572, 1574, 1580, and 1582. Calvin's "Institutes," in its first edition, was a short book, but it grew with his life. Every point of doctrine newly treated by him, in sermons or otherwise, had its treatment presently incorporated with the "Institutes," so that the whole body of Calvin's religious opinions had come at last to be therein contained.

In 1562, under the regency in France of Catherine of Medicis, the Huguenots rose in civil war after the massacre of Vassy. In March, 1563, there was peace between Catherine and the Huguenots by the edict of Amboise. In that year Queen Elizabeth authorised the issue of a second "Book of Homilies," to secure uniformity of teaching in the English Church. She had already adopted, in 1559, the "Book of Homilies" first issued in 1547. In the year 1564-year of the birth of Shakespeare-the queen's Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, began the preparation of a Bible which was to secure the utmost accuracy of text by direct reference to the Hebrew and Greek. So many bishops were among the scholars engaged in producing it, that it was called the Bishops' Bible. This was published

in 1568, the year in which the seven years' patent for the printing of the Geneva Bible expired, and it became from that date the authorised version for use of the Church of England, until 1611, the date of the first edition of the version authorised by James I.

Matthew Parker, born at Norwich in 1504, was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of which he became master in 1544. He was chaplain to Anne Boleyn, to Henry VIII. and to Edward VI., and took such part in the early education of Elizabeth as won her heartiest goodwill, and gave him great influence over her in after life. Mary deprived him of his preferments, but Elizabeth made him, somewhat against his will, her first Archbishop of Canterbury, called him for his lightness of body, "her little archbishop," and gladly took counsel with him for his weight of mind. Matthew Parker was very, learned, and partly out of reverence for the past, partly out of desire to take a middle way of peace, he was unwilling to make those great changes in the outward form of worship which were sought by the most uncompromising of those who had put away the Church of Rome. In country places the great majority of the people were still Roman Catholic, and everywhere the less educated would associate familiar forms of worship with their religious life. Archbishop Parker and the Queen desired to change only what they accounted evil in itself, because associated with false doctrines or practices that had crept into the Church; and the Archbishop sought to show that the Reformed Church of England was not, as to essentials, a new Church, but the old restored. He encouraged research into Church Antiquities; himself published in 1572 a Latin book on the Antiquities of the British Church and Privileges of the Church of Canterbury; and desired to promote a study of First English, that in Ælfric's sermons Englishmen might find record of opinions held by the first Church of England, which were not those of the Church of Rome, but those to which the Church of England in Elizabeth's day had reverted.

Bishop Jewel worked with Parker in the same direction. John Jewel, born in Devonshire in 1522, was educated at Merton and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. While a student he was lamed for life by an illness. When he had taken his B.A. degree he lived by teaching, and was for seven years reader of Latin and Rhetoric in his college. In 1544 he commenced M.A. In 1548 Peter Martyr was called from Germany to teach divinity at Oxford, and Jewel became one of his foremost friends and followers. In 1551 John Jewel became Bachelor of Divinity, and took a poor living at Sunningwell, near Oxford, to which, lame as he was, he walked to preach once a fortnight. At Mary's accession Jewel was expelled from his college as a follower of Peter Martyr, and a Lutheran. The last words of his last lecture, given in Latin, to his college were these: :

In my last Lectures I have (said he) imitated the custom of famished men, who when they see their meat likely to be suddenly and unexpectedly snatched from them, devour it with the greater haste and greediness. For whereas I intended thus to put an end to my Lectures, and perceived