THE MONTHLY CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR. FEBRUARY, 1854. Romanism in England since the Reformation. COULD stout old Prynne, or other ponderous polemic of the olden time, join the coming throngs London-ward, to see how mundane affairs progress in the nineteenth age, it would be hard to discover, from the moral signs of the times, the large intervening flight of ancient Chronos. Material results might startle, steam appliances and crystal palaces might momentarily puzzle the aërial strangers; but a glance at signs intellectual, the Anti-Papist ire of the British lion, and the fire of the Bellona press, would at once carry conviction to the understanding that, albeit the world had grown older and wiser mechanically, it is mentally pretty much the same as when the unconquered Histrio-mastrix played his troubled part 'In politicks and State affairs.' The loud roll of the drum ecclesiastic from State-pulpit and parish platform carries us back to the days of history. We live again the times when the No-Popery war-whoop and persecution were the glad sounds and love labour of mankind. The press groans again in the nineteenth as in the seventeenth century with a monster birth of ecclesiastical ire-the pamphlet being exchanged for the broad-sheet, and the animus then in some respects self-defence and necessity, now, to a certain extent, a just indignation at the monstrous assumptions of Rome, but chiefly the jealous fear of a rival hierarchy.' This scribliomania of folly and erudition has touched and exhausted almost VOL. I. I every branch of the question of the day' but the one of chief interest and use as a lesson of philosophy-the history of the progress of the Catholic Church since it lost imperial sway in England. Were we going to write a history of the Anglican Reformation in its political aspects, it might be difficult to fix on a starting-point, if not to discover a beginning. It would be a history of glorious principles retarded by dark passions of human frailty, envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness; above all, by the selfishness of priestcraft in its most ignoble phase. It is observed in England,' says a chronologist and Scottish judge, with a pithy brevity sufficient for present edification, that in the space of twenty years, the English changed oftener their religion than all Christendom had done for fifteen hundred; for they made four mutations from 1540 to 1560. King Henry VIII. abolished the Pope's supremacy, suppressed abbeyes, but retaines the bulk of the Popish religion; his son, King Edward, brings in the Protestant religion; Queen Mary throws it out, but Queen Elizabeth brings it in again.' From the first the change was theocratic-hardly theoretic; new Presbyter was but old priest writ large.' There was hardly even a change of persons in the new hierarchy; for when Elizabeth supplanted Paul IV. as sovereign spiritual pontiff in England, scarce two hundred of the 9,400 clergy who held benefices chose to quit their preferments rather than their religion. If there was an honest change of Church principles,' then was the sudden conversion the greatest of modern miracles. Leaving other curious investigators in the obscure places of history to search out the birth-date of pure Protestantism in the Established Church, we have only to inquire what that Church lost when Popery, minus the Pope, became the Parliamentary religion of the land, and our chief magistrate the supreme head of the Church. Not to speak of her monopoly of all the offices of state and dignity prior to the quarrel of Henry VIII. with the Pope, the Church possessed, with the benefices enumerated, according to the estimate of Camden, 643 monasteries, 90 colleges, 2,374 chantries and fire chapels, and 110 hospitals. The yearly value of the lands belonging to the religious houses amounted to 161,1007. sterling, according to the rate at which they had been last let to farm; but as the monks adopted the maxim which reformed prelates and chapters have never abjured-of 'low rents and large fines,' this is a most inadequate summary, even according to the old value of money. In addition to the real property, the Crown realized large sums from church plate and other goods. Some notion of the value may be formed from the case of the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury, where 5,000 marks of gold and silver were found in bullion. The estimate for Scotland is, that nearly one-half of the wealth of the nation belonged to the clergy. Elizabeth had just taken her seat on the throne when the Parlia ment, with as ready zeal as collective wisdom had manifested on the other side in the reign preceding, proceeded to build up the Protestant hierarchy with a series of harsh statutes; the first in the line of those persecution laws, justly described as so rigorous, though not professedly of the sanguinary kind, that they do all the hurt that can possibly be done in cold blood.* All preaching was forbidden by royal proclamation without special license under the Great Seal. Catholic worship was virtually suppressed, and persecution commenced by statutory ukase, directing all persons to resort to their parish church or chapel every Sunday and holyday on pain of Church censures and forfeiture of twelvepence to the use of the poor for every offence. Royal supremacy over the people's faith was carefully guarded by statute, and the modern Pope Joan empowered to place her infallibility in any hands she pleased. This was the occasion of the establishment of the infamous High Court of Commission, to reform, order, and correct the ecclesiastical state and persons, and all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities. Though the court was an instrument of Puritan, rather than of Catholic, persecution, it may be remarked that no errors or enormities, as history subsequently proves, could exceed those committed by this despotic tribunal during the eighty years of its existence.‡ The Pope made efforts to induce Elizabeth to return within the pale of the Church, with an offer, as it is said, to confirm the Liturgy and permit the English to communicate in both kinds, and she was even pressed to send the bishops to the Council of Trent; but the Queen refused to receive a nuncio, coldly answering that she had no business with the Pope. From that time, foiled in her attempt at bribery, Rome became an open foe, the virgin Queen was excommunicated, and John Felton, who posted the bull on the Bishop of London's gate, was hanged for his feat. Parliament made it high treason to put in use any bull or Papal writing touching allegiance to the Sovereign.§ The Queen, probably a sincere Protestant, was not personally intolerant of the Catholic faith; she was more hostile to Puritanism. Perhaps she had learned wisdom from experience-if not the injustice and inconsistency with the great distinctive principle of Protestantism, at least the impolicy, in unsettled times, of persecution for conscience" sake. Be this as it may, Elizabeth did not use the sword without some reason of policy, real or pretended. But mild, comparatively, as was her early treatment of the Catholics, their religion was suppressed, and they could only worship in secret. The universal truth, that persecution of opinion is the surest course to propagate opinion, receives some of the strongest proofs from these times. Persecution not only retarded the development of Protestant principles, but kept alive a Catholic flame. Ultra-montane Romanism would probably have died out in time; but persecution laws gave the Jesuits a power over Catholic Englishmen fatal to this hope. Seminaries, established by Montesquieu-De l'Esprit des Loix, xix. 27. 1 Eliz. c. 2. The penalty was subsequently increased by 23 Eliz. c. 1, to 201. to the queen. Abolished by 16 Car. I. c. 11. A previous statute, 5 Eliz. c. 1, had attached the penalty of præmunire to the act of maintaining the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. the English Catholics abroad, repaid Government persecution by years of turmoil and intrigue. On the establishment of the Protestant Church of England, several of the Catholic priests who were driven out of the country, headed by Allen, a scholar of Oxford, afterwards Cardinal Allen, established a college at Douay, whence they sent priests, by tacit permission, to minister to the faithful' in England. Some time afterwards the Governor of the Low Countries ordered the refugees to depart from Douay; whereupon some went to Rome, others to Rheims, and founded collegiate establishments, under the protection of the Pope and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims. These places became the strongholds of the seminary priests,' so frequently mentioned in the history of this period. In 1579, four priests, Hanse, Nelson, Maine, and Sherwood, were executed for publicly maintaining that the Queen had been lawfully deposed by the bull of Pius V. But the example' failed to deter other zealous propagandists from coming over, accompanied by the Jesuits Parsons and Campian, with a new bull. People were now forbid to entertain or harbour any Jesuits or seminary priests, on pain of rebellion; and all persons having children beyond sea were commanded to call them home. 6 The projected marriage of the Queen with the Duke of Anjou raised the hopes of the Catholics. Priests and Jesuits suddenly appeared everywhere, like storm-birds of the sea; but their zeal brought down a sharp punishment. Campian and three other priests were tried for endeavouring to raise commotions in the kingdom, and on conviction executed. Severer laws were enacted. Parliament, in 1582, made it high treason either to reconcile or be reconciled to Rome; provided fine and imprisonment for those who should say or hear mass; and compelled all persons to attend the parish church on pain of a heavy fine. The noble resistance made by the Puritans to these rigid measures is well known, and the fear of statutes and proclamations did not deter the Catholics. The country abounded with spies, and the frantic zeal of some of the Catholics was a ready pretext for persecution. That great harshness was used is manifest from the apology of the judges to a royal rebuke for the severity with which they had treated some of the offenders; they admitted that Father Campian had been tortured on the rack, and Brian, one of his accomplices, denied food till such time as he asked it in writing.' The general defence of these learned inquisitors, that no person had been made to suffer for his religion, but only for dangerous practices against the Queen and State,' may indeed be taken as the common pretext for all the persecutions in this country, whether of Puritans or Catholics. It may cover the religious persecution of any age or country, and may be urged as a legal plea to justify the hanging, drawing, and quartering of more than two hundred Catholic victims in this reign, not to speak of Anabaptists and Puritans, who suffered at the instance of the bishops, but cannot satisfy justice and the true Protestant principles of religious freedom, or palliate the inconsistency of Anglican reproof to Rome as the Church of persecution. The Queen expressly 6 4 forbade the use of torture, but on that occasion transported about seventy priests who were in prison, some under sentence of death. The judicial murder of the Queen of Scots was the crowning atrocity of this reign for the security of the Church and State.' Of the numberless plots, real and pretended, of which that unhappy lady was the object and victim, we need not further speak than to say, that they served as excuses for increasing the severity of anti-Catholic legislation. In 1584, the severest laws yet enacted were passed, expelling all priests, with the penalties of high treason should they return; making it felony to harbour priests; high treason in the refusal of any one to return from a foreign seminary; fine and imprisonment, at the Queen's pleasure, for non-discovery of lurking priests, and other exterminating provisions, which rendered the practice of the Catholic religion almost impossible. New hopes were raised by the pretensions of Philip of Spain to the English throne, and soon crushed by the failure of the Armada. The time had come when there was to be no toleration. A double blow was dealt in 1592 for the safety of Church and State.' All who refused to conform to the Established Church were to be imprisoned till conformity, or abjuration of the realm on refusal, with the penalty of felony, without benefit of clergy in case of return. Popish recusants were confined within five miles of their dwellings on forfeiture of all their goods, chattels, and lands. The rage of persecution could go no further without the torture-machinery of an Inquisition; but there was still a regard, even in a Tudor government, for that noble common law which declares that all torture or torments of persons accused are against the common laws of England. Papists and Puritans, heretofore antagonistic, were now common sufferers: a stern lesson which would seem to have been lost on posterity. When James I. came to the throne oppressors and oppressed waited anxiously or hopefully the issue of events. Presbyterian by education, a Church-of-England-man by interest, and, as was strongly suspected, Catholic by sentiment, the Catholics confidently petitioned for toleration. James replied that he was bound to support what he found established in the kingdom. The farce of the Hampton Court Conference, when Archbishop Whitgift, with blasphemous sycophancy, told the King, in reference to a pedantic answer to the remonstrants, that he verily believed his Majesty spoke by the Spirit of God,' told the Puritans the value of their hopes. In the following year all Jesuits and priests having foreign orders were ordered by proclamation to depart the kingdom; but it was so worded as to make the King appear not absolutely hostile to the Catholic faith. And this is the spirit which pervades all the repressive measures of his government. In the first Parliamentary harangue he delivered, which is hardly rivalled in length by a modern Presidential message, he said- I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our Mother Church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions, as the Jews were before they crucified Christ. And as I am no enemy to the life of a sick man because I would have his body purged of ill humours; no more am I an enemy to their |