of great importance in English history,--the Act of Supremacy
and the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer. "The former is
entitled 'An act for restoring to the crown the ancient
jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual; and
for abolishing foreign power.' It is the same for substance
with the 25th of Henry VIII. ... but the commons incorporated
several other bills into it; for besides the title of 'Supreme
Governor in all causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal,' which is
restored to the Queen, the act revives those laws of King
Henry VIII. and King Edward VI. which had been repealed in the
late reign. It forbids all appeals to Rome, and exonerates the
subjects from all exactions and impositions heretofore paid to
that court; and as it revives King Edward's laws, it repeals a
severe act made in the late reign for punishing heresy. ...
'Moreover, all persons in any public employs, whether civil or
ecclesiastical, are obliged to take an oath in recognition of
the Queen's right to the crown, and of her supremacy in all
causes ecclesiastical and civil, on penalty of forfeiting all
their promotions in the church, and of being declared
incapable of holding any public office.' ... Further, 'The act
forbids all writing, printing, teaching, or preaching, and all
other deeds or acts whereby any foreign jurisdiction over
these realms is defended, upon pain that they and their
abettors, being thereof convicted, shall for the first offence
forfeit their goods and chattels; ... spiritual persons shall
lose their benefices, and all ecclesiastical preferments; for
the second offence they shall incur the penalties of a
præmunire; and the third offence shall be deemed high
treason.' There is a remarkable clause in this act, which gave
rise to a new court, called 'The Court of High Commission.'
The words are these, 'The Queen and her successors shall have
power, by their letters patent under the great seal, to
assign, name, and authorize, as often as they shall think
meet, and for as long a time as they shall please, persons
being natural-born subjects, to use, occupy, and exercise,
under her and them, all manner of jurisdiction, privileges,
and preeminences, touching any spiritual or ecclesiastical
jurisdiction within the realms of England and Ireland, &c., to
visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all errors,
heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities
whatsoever. Provided, that they have no power to determine
anything to be heresy, but what has been adjudged to be so by
the authority of the canonical scripture, or by the first four
general councils, or any of them; or by any other general
council wherein the same was declared heresy by the express
and plain words of canonical scripture; or such as shall
hereafter be declared to be heresy by the high court of
parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.'
Upon the authority of this clause the Queen appointed a
certain number of 'Commissioners' for ecclesiastical causes,
who exercised the same power that had been lodged in the hands
of one vicegerent in the reign of King Henry VIII. And how
sadly they abused their power in this and the two next reigns
will appear in the sequel of this history. They did not
trouble themselves much with the express words of scripture,
or the four first general councils, but entangled their
prisoners with oaths ex-officio, and the inextricable mazes of
the popish canon law. ... The papists being vanquished, the
next point was to unite the reformed among themselves. ...
Though all the reformers were of one faith, yet they were far
from agreeing about discipline and ceremonies, each party
being for settling the church according to their own model. ...
{839}
The Queen ... therefore appointed a committee of divines to
review King Edward's liturgy, and to see if in any particular
it was fit to be changed; their names were Dr. Parker,
Grindal, Cox, Pilkington, May, Bill, Whitehead, and Sir Thomas
Smith, doctor of the civil law. Their instructions were, to
strike out all offensive passages against the pope, and to
make people easy about the belief of the corporal presence of
Christ in the sacraments; but not a word in favour of the
stricter protestants. Her Majesty was afraid of reforming too
far; she was desirous to retain images in churches, crucifixes
and crosses, vocal and instrumental music, with all the old
popish garments; it is not therefore to be wondered, that in
reviewing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations were made
in favour of those who now began to be called Puritans, from
their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than
had yet been established. ... The book was presented to the
two houses and passed into a law. ... The title of the act is
'An act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the
Church, and administration of the Sacraments.' It was brought
into the House of Commons April 18th, and was read a third
time April 20th. It passed the House of Lords April 28th, and
took place from the 24th of June 1559."
_D. Neal,
History of the Puritans,
volume 1, chapter 4._
ALSO IN:
_G. Burnet,
History of the Reformation of the Church of England.,
volume 2, book 3._
_P. Heylyn,
Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 1._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1559-1566.
Puritanism taking form.
"The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a
contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together
without shedding each others' blood. It was not intended, and
it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find
in its formulas all that they required. The services were
deliberately made elastic; comprehending in the form of
positive statement only what all Christians agreed in
believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to
vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the
congregations. The management lay with the local authorities
in town or parish: where the people were Catholics the
Catholic aspect could be made prominent; where Popery was a
bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of
doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no
party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief
merit was its chief defect. ... Where the tendencies to Rome
were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered
themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the
unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the
noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had
been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn of the world, in
their passionate desire to consociate themselves in life and
death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the
Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom of the serpent,
and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove. Had they been
let alone--had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of
revolution and a return of the persecutions--they, too, were
not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable
specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton,
of what English Protestantism could become under favouring
conditions. ... The fury of the times unhappily forbade the
maintenance of this wise and prudent spirit. As the power of
evil gathered to destroy the Church of England, a fiercer
temper was required to combat with them, and Protestantism
became impatient, like David, of the uniform in which it was
sent to the battle. It would have fared ill with England had
there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish
veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an
enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic
fanaticism; and if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of
their convictions, snapped their traces and flung off their
harness, it was they, after all, who saved the Church which
attempted to disown them, and with the Church saved also the
stolid mediocrity to which the fates then and ever committed
and commit the government of it."
_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
volume 10, chapter 20._
"The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been
considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for
serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the
Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward VI. the
scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great
difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came
to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.
Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of
Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant
after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who
were warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil
days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been
hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate
at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich and
Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more
simple worship, and to a more democratical form of church
government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to
their country, convinced that the reform which had been
effected under King Edward had been far less searching and
extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it
was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from
Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it differed from her
brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were
little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human
authority. ... Since these men could not be convinced, it was
determined that they should be persecuted. Persecution
produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it
made them a faction. ... The power of the discontented
sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they
were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and
among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign
of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of
Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors been then at liberty
to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the
strife between the crown and the Parliament would instantly
have commenced. But that was no season for internal
dissensions. ... Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe
were struggling for death or life. ... Whatever might be the
faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the
fate of the realm and of all reformed churches was staked on
the security of her person and on the success of her
administration. ...
{840}
The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to which she
had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she
might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion
might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be
victorious by sea and land."
_Lord Macaulay,
History of England,
volume 1, chapter 1._
"Two parties quickly evolved themselves out of the mass of
Englishmen who held Calvinistic opinions; namely those who
were willing to conform to the requirements of the Queen, and
those who were not. To both is often given indiscriminately by
historians the name of Puritan; but it seems more correct, and
certainly is more convenient, to restrict the use of the name
to those who are sometimes called conforming Puritans. ... To
the other party fitly belongs the name of Nonconformist. ...
It was against the Nonconformist organization that Elizabeth's
efforts were chiefly directed. ... The war began in the
enforcement by Archbishop Parker in 1565 of the Advertisements
as containing the minimum of ceremonial that would be
tolerated. In 1566 the clergy of London were required to make
the declaration of Conformity which was appended to the
Advertisements, and thirty-seven were suspended or deprived
for refusal. Some of the deprived ministers continued to
conduct services and preach in spite of their deprivation, and
so were formed the first bodies of Nonconformists, organized
in England."
_H. O. Wakeman,
The Church and the Puritans,
chapter 3._
ALSO IN:
_J. Tulloch,
English Puritanism and its Leaders,
introduction._
_D. Neal,
History of the Puritans,
volume 1, chapter 4._
_D. Campbell,
The Puritan in Holland, England, and America,
chapters 8-10 (volume 1)._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1562-1567.
Hawkins' slave-trading voyages to America.
First English enterprise in the New World.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1562-1567.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1564-1565 (?).
The first naming of the Puritans.
"The English bishops, conceiving themselves empowered by their
canons, began to show their authority in urging the clergy of
their dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, ceremonies and
discipline of the Church; and such as refused the same were
branded with the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this
notion first began in this year [A. D. 1564]; and the grief
had not been great if it had ended in the same. The
philosopher banisheth the term, (which is Polysæmon), that is
subject to several senses, out of the predicaments, as
affording too much covert for cavil by the latitude thereof.
On the same account could I wish that the word Puritan were
banished common discourse, because so various in the
acceptations thereof. We need not speak of the ancient Cathari
or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known by their heretical
opinions. Puritan here was taken for the opposers of the
hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition.
But profane mouths quickly improved this nickname, therewith
on every occasion to abuse pious people; some of them so far
from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured (according to
the instructions thereof in the preparative to the Confession)
'to accompany the minister with a pure heart,' and laboured
(as it is in the Absolution) 'for a life pure and holy.' We
will, therefore, decline the word to prevent exceptions;
which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth
that only nonconformists are thereby intended."
_T. Fuller,
Church History of Britain,
book 9, section 1._
"For in this year [1565] it was that the Zuinglian or
Calvinian faction began to be first known by the name of
Puritans, if Genebrard, Gualter, and Spondanus (being all of
them right good chronologers) be not mistaken in the time.
Which name hath ever since been appropriate to them, because
of their pretending to a greater purity in the service of God
than was held forth unto them (as they gave out) in the Common
Prayer Book; and to a greater opposition to the rites and
usages of the Church of Rome than was agreeable to the
constitution of the Church of England."
_P. Heylyn,
Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth,
Anno 7, section 6._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1568.
Detention and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1569.
Quarrel with the Spanish governor of the Netherlands.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1568-1572.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1580.
Drake's piratical warfare with Spain and his famous voyage.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1572-1580.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1603.
Queen Elizabeth's treatment of the Roman Catholics.
Persecution of the Seminary Priests and the Jesuits.
"Camden and many others have asserted that by systematic
connivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed a pretty free use of
their religion for the first fourteen years of Elizabeth's
reign. But this is not reconcilable to many passages in
Strype's collections. We find abundance of persons harassed
for recusancy, that is, for not attending the protestant
church, and driven to insincere promises of conformity. Others
were dragged before ecclesiastical commissions for harbouring
priests, or for sending money to those who had fled beyond
sea. ... A great majority both of clergy and laity yielded to
the times; and of these temporizing conformists it cannot be
doubted that many lost by degrees all thought of returning to
their ancient fold. But others, while they complied with
exterior ceremonies, retained in their private devotions their
accustomed mode of worship. ... Priests ... travelled the
country in various disguises, to keep alive a flame which the
practice of outward conformity was calculated to extinguish.
There was not a county throughout England, says a Catholic
historian, where several of Mary's clergy did not reside, and
were commonly called the old priests. They served as chaplains
in private families. By stealth, at the dead of night, in
private chambers, in the secret lurking places of an
ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that subdues the
imagination, with all the mutual trust that invigorates
constancy, these proscribed ecclesiastics celebrated their
solemn rites, more impressive in such concealment than if
surrounded by all their former splendour. ... It is my
thorough conviction that the persecution, for it can obtain no
better name, carried on against the English Catholics, however
it might serve to delude the government by producing an
apparent conformity, could not but excite a spirit of
disloyalty in many adherents of that faith. Nor would it be
safe to assert that a more conciliating policy would have
altogether disarmed their hostility, much less laid at rest
those busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar
circumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency to produce."
_H. Hallam,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 3._
{841}
"The more vehement Catholics had withdrawn from the country,
on account of the dangers which there beset them. They had
taken refuge in the Low Countries, and there Allen, one of the
chief among them, had established a seminary at Douay, for the
purpose of keeping up a supply of priests in England. To Douay
numbers of young Englishmen from Oxford continually flocked.
The establishment had been broken up by Requescens, and
removed to Rheims, and a second college of the same
description was established at Rome. From these two centres of
intrigue numerous enthusiastic young men constantly repaired
to England, and in the disguise of laymen carried on their
priestly work and attempted to revive the Romanist religion.
But abler and better disciplined workmen were now wanted.
Allen and his friends therefore opened negotiations with
Mercuriano, the head of the Jesuit order, in which many
Englishmen had enrolled themselves. In 1580, as part of a
great combined Catholic effort, a regular Jesuit mission,
under two priests, Campion and Parsons, was despatched to
England. ... The new missionaries were allowed to say that
that part of the Bull [of excommunication issued against
Elizabeth] which pronounced censures upon those who clung to
their allegiance applied to heretics only, that Catholics
might profess themselves loyal until the time arrived for
carrying the Bull into execution; in other words, they were
permitted to be traitors at heart while declaring themselves
loyal subjects. This explanation of the Bull was of itself
sufficient to justify severity on the part of the government.
It was impossible henceforward to separate Roman Catholicism
from disloyalty. Proclamations were issued requiring English
parents to summon their children from abroad, and declaring
that to harbour Jesuit priests was to support rebels. ...
Early in December several priests were apprehended and closely
examined, torture being occasionally used for the purpose. In
view of the danger which these examinations disclosed,
stringent measures were taken. Attendance at church was
rendered peremptorily necessary. Parliament was summoned in
the beginning of 1581 and laws passed against the action of
the Jesuits. ... Had Elizabeth been conscious of the full
extent of the plot against her, had she known the intention of
the Guises [then dominant in France] to make a descent upon
England in co-operation with Spain, and the many ramifications
of the plot in her own country, it is reasonable to suppose
that she would have been forced at length to take decided
measures. But in ignorance of the abyss opening before her
feet, she continued for some time longer her old temporizing
policy." At last, in November, 1583, the discovery of a plot
for the assassination of the queen, and the arrest of one
Throgmorton, whose papers and whose confession were of
startling import, brought to light the whole plan and extent
of the conspiracy. "Some of her Council urged her at once to
take a straightforward step, to make common cause with the
Protestants of Scotland and the Netherlands, and to bid
defiance to Spain. To this honest step, she as usual could not
bring herself, but strong measures were taken in England.
Great numbers of Jesuits and seminary priests were apprehended
and executed, suspected magistrates removed, and those
Catholic Lords whose treachery might have been fatal to her
ejected from their places of authority and deprived of
influence."
_J. F. Bright,
History of England,
period 2, pages 546-549._
"That the conspiracy with which these men were charged was a
fiction cannot be doubted. They had come to England under a
prohibition to take any part in secular concerns, and with the
sole view of exercising the spiritual functions of the
priesthood. ... At the same time it must be owned that the
answers which six of them gave to the queries were far from
satisfactory. Their hesitation to deny the opposing power (a
power then indeed maintained by the greater number of divines
in Catholic kingdoms) rendered their loyalty very
problematical, in case of an attempt to enforce the bull by
any foreign prince. It furnished sufficient reason to watch
their conduct with an eye of jealousy ... but could not
justify their execution for an imaginary offence."
_J. Lingard,
History of England,
volume 8, chapter 3._
"It is probable that not many more than 200 Catholics were
executed, as such, in Elizabeth's reign, and this was ten
score too many. ... 'Dod reckons them at 191; Milner has
raised the list to 204. Fifteen of these, according to him,
suffered for denying the Queen's supremacy, 126 for exercising
their ministry, and the rest for being reconciled to the
Romish church. Many others died of hardships in prison, and
many were deprived of their property. There seems,
nevertheless [says Hallam], to be good reason for doubting
whether anyone who was executed might not have saved his life
by explicitly denying the Pope's power to depose the Queen.'"
_J. L. Motley,
History of the United Netherlands,
chapter 17, with foot-note._
ALSO IN:
_J. Foley,
Records of the English Province of the Society of
Jesus._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1574.
Emancipation of villeins on the royal domains.
Practical end of serfdom.
See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: ENGLAND.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1575.
Sovereignty of Holland and Zealand offered to Queen Elizabeth,
and declined.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1581.
Marriage proposals of the Duke of Anjou declined by Queen
Elizabeth.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1583.
The expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Formal possession taken of Newfoundland.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1583.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1584-1590.
Raleigh's colonizing attempts in America.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1584-1586; and 1587-1590.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1586.
Leicester in the Low Countries.
Queen Elizabeth's treacherous dealing with the
struggling Netherlanders.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.
Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic conspiracies.
Her trial and execution.