vigorous hand wielded the destinies of that kingdom. As Philip II. of Spain was the great champion of Roman Catholicism in Europe, so Queen Elizabeth, as the greatest of Protestant sovereigns, was looked upon by the Protestants in all lands as their protectress and leader. She was not always able to aid them to the full extent of her power, as she was menaced with perils and difficulties. which obliged her to act with discretion and caution. Nevertheless, the assistance which she furnished to the Protestants of Scotland, France and the Netherlands during the wars of religion was of great service to the cause of the Reformation; and the moral influence of the alliance of the "Virgin Queen" of England was of inestimable importance to the struggling Protestants of those countries. Thus England under Queen Elizabeth was the counterpoise to the vast power of Spain during the last half of the sixteenth century, as France under King Francis I. had been during the first half. the Church of England, Protestant Episcopal in form, almost what it is at the present time. The Act of Supremacy required all bishops, clergy and officers of the crown to take an oath acknowledging the queen as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and denying allegiance to all foreign authority. By foreign authority was meant the Pope. All the bishops of Mary's reign but one refused to take this Oath of Supremacy, and were removed from their sees, their places being filled with the Protestant bishops who had fled to foreign lands to escape Mary's wrath and who were now recalled. Dr. Matthew Parker, a man eminent for his learning and piety, was made Archbishop of Canterbury. The parish priests, with few exceptions, took the required oath, and were not disturbed. As fast as their places became vacant they were filled with Protestant clergymen, so that all the pulpits in England came to be in sympathy with the state-religion in the course of time. Parliament also passed the Act of Uni(1558-formity, requiring all the English people to England was very prosperous during Elizabeth's reign of forty-five years 1603), making great advances in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, navigation and literature; and never had that kingdom a sovereign who swayed the scepter with more ability than did this mighty queen. Indeed Elizabeth is often ranked as the greatest of English sovereigns. Elizabeth called the wisest men in England to her councils, and of these statesmen Walsingham and Burleigh enjoyed the greatest degree of her confidence. In restoring the Protestant religion Elizabeth proceeded with great prudence and caution, and effected her object without the shedding of a drop of blood or the confiscation of a single estate. On the very day that she entered London as queen the prison doors were opened wide to all who were confined for their religion, thus still further heightening the universal joy which hailed her accession. The first Parliament of Elizabeth's reign reënacted all the laws of Edward VI. in favor of the Protestant religion, and made attend the services of the Protestant State Church and to conform to its usages, and punishing with fine and imprisonment all who absented themselves from the services of that Church. Unable to submit to this law, many English Roman Catholics fled to foreign lands, where they menaced Elizabeth's throne and life by their constant plots during the whole period of her reign. The Thirty-nine Articles of Faith, which were adopted as the creed of the Church of England, became the standard of religious belief. The Book of Common Prayer, somewhat improved, was restored to its former place in the religious service. The Scriptures were ordered to be read and prayers offered in the English language. Six great Bibles were placed in different parts of St. Paul's Cathedral, and whenever a reader could be found these were always surrounded by an eager crowd. As the Anglican Church retained many of the practices and usages of the Romish Church, many English Protestants-adher ents of the Calvinistic faith-held aloof from the Established Church and organized under their presbyters and synods. They were called Dissenters and Nonconformists, because they dissented from, and refused to conform to, the doctrines and practices of the Established Church; and because they expressed their desire for a purer form of worship, and condemned all frivolous amusements as sinful, they were called, in derision, Puritans. For refusing to comply with the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, many were fined and imprisoned during Elizabeth's reign. For the causes of the rise of the Puritans we must look to Mary's reign. The cruel persecutions of that bigoted Catholic queen had driven thousands of English Protestants into exile. Many of them took refuge at Geneva, where, under Calvin and the disciples of Zwingli, the Reformation had taken a more radical type than it had under Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, or under Cranmer and Sir Thomas Cromwell in Engiand. The Calvinists utterly discarded the surplice, the liturgy, the bishops of Episcopacy, and every form of ceremony peculiar to the Church of Rome. The Calvinists even banished that beautiful symbol, the Cross, from religious worship and from the churches themselves, as that emblem was an abomination in their eyes. They also turned "Merry Christmas," the joyful anniversary of the Savior's birth, into a solemn fast, because both Cross and Christmas were so intimately associated with the Papacy. Upon Elizabeth's accession these English exiles returned to their native land, bringing with them the plainer worship and the stricter mode of life which they had learned to love abroad. The severe simplicity and purity of their religious faith became the rule and practice of their daily life, and produced a character of the type of ancient Sparta, of the mould of early republican Rome. Puritanism was a reform of Episcopacy, as Episcopacy had been a reform of Catholicism; Episcopacy thus being the mean between the two extremes-retaining 52 many of the forms and ceremonies of Romanism, while its system of faith was identical with that of the Puritans. Puritanism partook of the narrowness and bigotry of the age in which it flourished; but, notwithstanding this fact, there is a grandeur in the development of Puritanism in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as there also is in the growth of Calvinism in the neighboring countries. The painful but inspiring story of the Puritans of England, the Covenanters of Scotland and the Huguenots of Francethe story of their sublime fortitude, patience and suffering, as they obeyed the simple dictates of conscience with unquestioning faith-this story stirs the soul, ennobles our conceptions of humanity, deepens our faith in virtue and our trust in truth. Religion was to these Puritans an intensely personal matter. Though they shrank from no sacrifice, their devotion to their religion was the devotion of rational beings, not that of blind devotees. The one great fact of Puritan life was the consciousness of the Divine Presence, as nothing stood between their souls and their God. Their thoughts were occupied with questions of individual responsibility and individual duty. Life became an incessant and endless struggle to them. They displayed unconscious heroism with the deepest humility, and achieved the grandest results without thinking of worldly fame, as they were inspired by constant meditation on the sublime realities with which they came in contact, but were sobered in spirit by a sense of personal unworthiness. At first the Puritans had no desire to separate themselves from the English State. Church, but strove to ingraft their ideas in the doctrines and ritual of that Church. Some of the more radical Puritans objected to the government of the Church by bishops. When they became conscious of their inability to carry out their desires they commenced withdrawing from the Established Church and holding meetings of their own. Near the end of Elizabeth's reign they openly seceded from the Anglican Church, while Philip II. of Spain was the acknowledged champion of Roman Catholicism. Offended at Elizabeth's refusal to marry him, Philip II. became her implacable enemy. as a distinct sect, under the name of Inde- | recognized head of the Protestant interests, pendents. Queen Elizabeth appointed a Court of High Commission to enforce the Act of Uniformity; and the Puritans, or Independents, as Dissenters and Nonconformists, were punished by fine and imprisonment, but they held on to their doctrines with a constancy and a devotion inspired by a conviction of their truth. Notwithstanding the Puritan defection from the State Church of England, the English Protestants presented an unbroken front to the Pope and to their Catholic enemies both in and out of England. The Puritans never wavered in their loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, but gave their unflinching support to her in the great trials to which England was subjected by the religious and political animosity of the Pope and of Philip II. of Spain. As soon as Philip II. of Spain heard of his wife's death he proposed to marry her sister. But Elizabeth was too well aware of the aversion of her subjects to the Spanish match; and, besides, she was now in the same relation to Philip II. that her father had been to Catharine of Aragon upon the death of his brother Arthur. The very ground of her mother's claim as wife, and her own as queen, was the decision that such a marriage is unlawful. But as she did not wish to offend the most powerful monarch in Christendom, she returned a polite but evasive answer; and soon afterward she announced to Parliament her determination never to marry. She never wavered long from this decision, though many royal and princely suitors sought her hand at various times. This was perhaps a wise resolve on her part, as it enabled her to be more independent and freer to carry out her vigorous policy. The war which England, in alliance with Spain, had waged against France during Mary's reign was closed by the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, by which France retained Calais; but there was no return of good feeling; and it was thenceforth that Europe was divided between two great religious parties, Queen Elizabeth being the Mary Stuart, the young Queen of Scotland, who had spent most of her girlhood at the French court, where she was educated, became the wife of the Dauphin in 1558; and, upon the death of his father, King Henry II. of France, July 10, 1559, her young husband became King of France with the title of Francis II. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland by inheritance, Queen of France by marriage, now adopted the title and arms of Queen of England, with the approval of the Pope, who publicly denied Elizabeth's claim as queen and her mother's as wife. Mary was the next heir to the English throne after Elizabeth; and she was regarded by the Catholics both in and out of England as the rightful sovereign of that kingdom, because Elizabeth's mother had never been recognized by the Romish Church as a lawful wife of Henry VIII., and Elizabeth was therefore regarded by them as an illegitimate child and therefore as incapable of inheriting the English crown. When Francis II. and Mary Stuart, upon their accession in 1559, had by the Pope's command assumed upon their arms and equipage the title of "King and Queen of France, Scotland and England," Elizabeth remonstrated through her ambassador at Paris, but received no satisfaction. It was evident that the royal couple who wore the crowns of France and Scotland would seize the first opportunity to enforce their claim to the English crown. In the meantime the Reformation had advanced with rapid strides in Scotland under the preaching of that great, Apostle of Calvinism, the celebrated John Knox, who had returned from Geneva full of zeal for the Calvinistic doctrines. In 1557 the Scottish Reformers leagued themselves under the title of the Lords of the Congregation, and the agreement which they thus signed is known as the First Covenant. The Scottish queen's mother, Mary of Guise, was regent of Scotland; and the Guises, whose influence ruled both France and Scotland, sought to crush the Reformation in both kingdoms. French troops were accordingly sent to Scotland to sustain the regent in extirpating heresy and strengthening the French interests in that kingdom. In 1559 the Lords of the Congregation appealed to Queen Elizabeth, ordered all French troops to retire from Scotland, and required Mary of Guise to resign the regency. In 1560 Elizabeth, conscious that her own throne, as well as the Protestant religion, were menaced by the action of France, sent an English army into Scotland to aid the Reformers. The English fleet and army besieged the French army in Leith and took the city; and by the Treaty of Edinburgh, which followed, the King and Queen of France and Scotland were obliged to renounce all claims to the crown of England during the life-time of Elizabeth, the French troops were withdrawn from Scotland, and foreigners were excluded from office in that kingdom. Elizabeth's vigorous action against French influence and in support of the Reformation in Scotland raised the prestige of England's queen to a high degree throughout Europe. The Reformation now achieved its triumph in Scotland by the action of the Lords of the Congregation, who assembled the Scottish Parliament, which at once abolished the mass, cast off Scotland's allegiance to the Pope, and renewed the alliance with the Queen of England. The premature death of Francis II. of France, in 1560, ended all danger of a war between England and France on account of his widowed queen's claims to the English crown; but Mary, in accordance with the advice of her uncle, Francis, Duke of Guise, refused to surrender formally those claims; and she had not yet, as Queen of Scotland, ratified the Treaty of Edinburgh, and persisted in her refusal until near the close of her life. On the death of her husband, in 1560, Mary, although harshly treated by her 4-54.-U. H. mother-in-law, the wicked Catharine de Medici, still for a time remained in France, a land which she loved most dearly. Finally the clamors of her Scottish subjects induced Mary to leave her delightful France, and to return with great reluctance to the wild country of the Scots, which she was then to govern. When Mary was ready to sail for Scotland she asked permission of Queen Elizabeth to pass through England on her way to her native and hereditary kingdom, but Elizabeth only consented on condition that the Queen of Scots ratified the Treaty of Edinburgh, thus renouncing all claim to the English crown. Appreciating the danger with which her crown was menaced by Mary's presence in Scotland, because the Catholics considered Mary's claim to the English crown superior to her own, Elizabeth stationed a fleet in the English Channel to intercept the Queen of Scots on her voyage to her own hereditary kingdom. After embarking on her voyage to Scotland, Mary fixed her eyes on the coast of her beloved France until the darkness of night prevented her from seeing it any longer. Then she lay down to sleep on her couch on the deck of the vessel, giving orders that if the French coast was still visible on the return of daylight she should be awakened. The vessel made little progress during the night, thus enabling the Queen of Scots to have another parting view of the delightful land which she loved so well. Her regret at leaving that beautiful country was expressed in some pathetic French verses which she wrote at the time. The contrast between the country which she left and the one which she now came to govern increased her melancholy, and the rude and savage manners of the Scots filled her with disgust. Eluding the English fleet in the Channel in a dense fog, Mary reached her native Scotland in safety, August, 1561; but she came home as a French woman-gay, brilliant, accomplished, and delighting in the elegant dissipations of Paris-not at all inclined to favor the severe manners which |