[Sidenote: War with France and Scotland]

The pacific policy of the first years of the reign did not last long.

The young king felt the need of martial glory, of emulating the fifth

Henry, of making himself talked about and enrolling his name on the

list of conquerors who, in return for plaguing mankind, have been

deified by them. It is useless to look for any statesmanlike purpose

in the war provoked with France and Scotland, but in the purpose for

which he set out Henry was brilliantly successful: the French were so

quickly routed near Guinegate [Sidenote: August 13, 1513] that the

action has been known in history as the Battle of the Spurs. While the

king was still absent in France and his queen regent in England, his

lieutenants inflicted a decisive defeat on the Scots [Sidenote:

September] and slew their king, James IV, at Flodden. England won

nothing save military glory by these campaigns, for the invasion of

France was at once abandoned and that of Scotland not even undertaken.

[Sidenote: Wolsey, c. 1475-1530]

The gratification of the national vanity redounded the profit not only

of Henry but of his minister, {280} Thomas Wolsey. A poor man, like

the other tools of the Tudor despot, he rose rapidly in church and

state partly by solid gifts of statesmanship, partly by baser arts. By

May, 1515, Erasmus described him as all-powerful with the king and as

bearing the main burden of public affairs on his shoulders, and fifteen

years later Luther spoke of him as "the demigod of England, or rather

of Europe." His position at home he owed to his ability to curry favor

with the king by shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote:

May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of

standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many

people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that

"it was a pity so noble a _buck_ should have been slain by such a

hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that

delighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice that

accumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for his

law in regard to enclosures, and the poor for not having that law

enforced, he recked little of aught, knowing himself secure under the

royal shield.

To make his sovereign abroad as great as at home, he took advantage of

the nice balance of power existing on the Continent. "Nothing pleases

him more than to be called the arbiter of Christendom," wrote

Giustiniani, and such, in fact, he very nearly was. His diplomatic

gifts were displayed with immense show during the summer of 1520, when

Henry met both Francis and Charles V, and promised each secretly to

support him against his rival. The camp where the royalties of France

and England met, near Guines, amid scenes of pageantry and chivalry so

resplendent as to give it the name of The Field of Cloth of Gold, saw

an alliance cemented by oath, only to be followed by a solemn

engagement between Henry and Charles, {281} repugnant in every

particular to that with France. When war actually broke out between

the two, England preferred to throw her weight against France, thereby

almost helping Charles to the throne of universal empire and raising up

for herself an enemy to menace her safety in many a crisis to come. In

the end, then, Wolsey's perfidious policy failed; and his personal

ambition for the papacy was also frustrated.

But while "the congress of kings," as Erasmus called it, was disporting

itself at Guines and Calais, the tide of a new movement was swiftly and

steadily rising, no more obeying them than had the ocean obeyed Canute.

More in England than in most countries the Reformation was an imported

product. Its "dawn came up like thunder" from across the North Sea.

Luther's Theses on Indulgences were sent by Erasmus to his English

friends Thomas More and John Colet little more than four months after

their promulgation. [Sidenote: March 5, 1518] By February, 1519,

Froben had exported to England a number of volumes of Luther's works.

One of them fell into the hands of Henry VIII or his sister Mary,

quondam Queen of France, as is shown by the royal arms stamped on it.

Many others were sold by a bookseller at Oxford throughout 1520, in

which year a government official in London wrote to his son in the

country, [Sidenote: March 3, 1520] "there be heretics here which take

Luther's opinions." The universities were both infected at the same

time. At Cambridge, especially, a number of young men, many of them

later prominent reformers, met at the White Horse Tavern regularly to

discuss the new ideas. The tavern was nicknamed "Germany" [Sidenote:

1521] and the young enthusiasts "Germans" in consequence. But

surprisingly numerous as are the evidences of the spread of Lutheranism

in these early years, naturally it as yet had few prominent adherents.

When Erasmus wrote Luther that he had well-wishers {282} [Sidenote:

May, 1519] in England, and those of the greatest, he was exaggerating

or misinformed. At most he may have been thinking of John Colet, whose

death in September, 1519, came before he could take any part in the

religious controversy.

At an early date the government took its stand against the heresy.

Luther's books were examined by a committee of the University of

Cambridge, [Sidenote: 1520] condemned and burnt by them, and soon

afterwards by the government. At St. Paul's in London, [Sidenote: May

12, 1521] in the presence of many high dignitaries and a crowd of

thirty thousand spectators Luther's books were burnt and his doctrine

"reprobated" in addresses by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and

Cardinal Wolsey. A little later it was forbidden to read, import or

keep such works, and measures were taken to enforce this law.

Commissions searched for the said pamphlets; stationers and merchants

were put under bond not to trade in them; and the German merchants of

the Steelyard were examined. When it was discovered [Sidenote: 1526]

that these foreigners had stopped "the mass of the body of Christ,"

commonly celebrated by them in All Hallows' Church the Great, at

London, they were haled before Wolsey's legatine court, forced to

acknowledge its jurisdiction, and dealt with.

With one accord the leading Englishmen declared against Luther.

Cuthbert Tunstall, a mathematician and diplomatist, and later Bishop of

London, wrote Wolsey from Worms of the devotion of the Germans to their

leader, and sent to him _The Babylonian Captivity_ with the comment,

"there is much strange opinion in it near to the opinions of Boheme; I

pray God keep that book out of England." [Sidenote: January 21, 1521]

Wolsey himself, biassed perhaps by his ambition for the tiara, labored

to suppress the heresy. Most important of all, Sir Thomas More was

promptly and decisively alienated. {283} It was More, according to

Henry VIII, who "by subtle, sinister slights unnaturally procured and

provoked him" to write against the heretic. His _Defence of the Seven

Sacraments_, in reply to the _Babylonian Captivity_, though an

extremely poor work, was greeted, on its appearance, as a masterpiece.

[Sidenote: July, 1521] The handsome copy bound in gold, sent to Leo X,

was read to the pope and declared by him the best antidote to heresy

yet produced. In recognition of so valuable an arm, or of so valiant a

champion, the pope granted an indulgence of ten years and ten periods

of forty days to the readers of the book, and to its author the long

coveted title Defender of the Faith. Luther answered the king with

ridicule and the controversy was continued by Henry's henchmen More,

Fisher, and others. Stung to the quick, Henry, who had already urged

the emperor to crush the heretic, now wrote with the same purpose to

the elector and dukes of Saxony and to other German princes.

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism]

But while the chief priests and rulers were not slow to reject the new

"gospel," the common people heard it gladly. The rapid diffusion of

Lutheranism is proved by many a side light and by the very

proclamations issued from time to time to "resist the damnable

heresies" or to suppress tainted books. John Heywood's _The Four P's:

a merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary and a Pedlar_,

written about 1528 though not published until some years later, is full

of Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time,

Simon Fish's _Supplication of Beggars_. John Skelton's _Colyn Clout_,

[Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment of the clergy, mentions that

Some have smacke

Of Luther's sacke,

And a brennyng sparke

Of Luther's warke.

{284} [Sidenote: William Tyndale's Bible]

But the acceptance of the Reformation, as apart from mere grumbling at

the church, could not come until a Protestant literature was built up.

In England as elsewhere the most powerful Protestant tract was the

vernacular Bible. Owing to the disfavor in which Wyclif's doctrines

were held, no English versions had been printed until the Protestant

divine William Tyndale highly resolved to make the holy book more

familiar to the ploughboy than to the bishop.

Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale imbibed the doctrines

first of Erasmus, then of Luther, and finally of Zwingli. Applying for

help in his project to the bishop of London and finding none,

[Sidenote: 1524] he sailed for Germany where he completed a translation

of the New Testament, and started printing it at Cologne. Driven hence

by the intervention of Cochlaeus and the magistrates, he went to Worms

and got another printer to finish the job. [Sidenote: 1526] Of the

six thousand copies in the first edition many were smuggled to England,

where Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, tried to buy them all up,

"thinking," as the chronicler Hall phrased it, "that he had God by the

toe when he indeed had the devil by the fist." The money went to

Tyndale and was used to issue further editions, of which no less than

seven appeared in the next ten years.

The government's attitude was that

Having respect to the malignity of this present time,

with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions,

the translation of the New Testament should rather be the

occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the

said people than any benefit or commodity towards the

weal of their souls.

But the magistrates were unable to quench the fiery zeal of Tyndale who

continued to translate parts of the Old Testament and to print them and

other tracts at Antwerp and at Cologne, until his martyrdom at {285}

Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6, 1536. In 1913 a monument was

erected on the place of his death.

Under the leadership of Tyndale on the one side and of More on the

other the air became dark with a host of controversial tracts.

[Sidenote: Controversial tracts] They are half filled with theological

metaphysic, half with the bitterest invective. Luther called Henry

VIII "a damnable and rotten worm, a snivelling, drivelling swine of a

sophist"; More retorted by complaining of the violent language of "this

apostate, this open incestuous lecher, this plain limb of the devil and

manifest messenger of hell." Absurd but natural tactic, with a sure

effect on the people, which relishes both morals and scandal! To prove

that faith justifies, the Protestants pointed to the debauchery of the

friars; to prove the mass a sacrifice their enemies mocked at "Friar

Martin and Gate Callate his nun lusking together in lechery." But with

all the invective there was much solid argument of the kind that

appealed to an age of theological politics. In England as elsewhere

the significance of the Reformation was that it was the first issue of

supreme importance to be argued by means of the press before the bar of

a public opinion sufficiently enlightened to appreciate its importance

and sufficiently strong to make a choice and to enforce its decision.

The party of the Reformation in England at first consisted of two

classes, London tradesmen and certain members of what Bismarck long

afterward called "the learned proletariat." In 1532 the bishops were

able to say:

In the crime of heresy, thanked be God, there hath no

notable person fallen in our time. Truth it is that

certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt

merchants, vagabonds and lewd, idle fellows of corrupt

nature have embraced the abominable and erroneous

{286}

opinions lately sprung in Germany and by them have

been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance.

[Sidenote: Anti-clerical feeling]

But though both anti-clerical feeling and sympathy with the new

doctrines waxed apace, it is probable that no change would have taken

place for many years had it not been for the king's divorce. The

importance of this episode, born of the most strangely mingled motives

of conscience, policy, and lust, is not that, as sometimes said, it

proved the English people ready to follow their government in religious

matters as sheep follow their shepherd. Its importance is simply that

it loosed England from its ancient moorings of papal supremacy, and

thus established one, though only one, of the cardinal principles of

the Protestant revolt. The Reformation consisted not only in a

religions change but in an assertion of nationalism, in a class revolt,

and in certain cultural revolutions. It was only the first that the

government had any idea of sanctioning, but by so doing it enabled the

people later to take matters into their own hands and add the social

and cultural elements. Thus the Reformation in England ran a course

quite different from that in Germany. In the former the cultural

revolution came first, followed fast by the rising of the lower and the

triumph of the middle classes. Last of all came the successful

realization of a national state. But in England nationalism came

first; then under Edward the economic revolution; and lastly, under the

Puritans, the transmutation of spiritual values.

[Sidenote: Divorce of Catherine of Aragon]

The occasion of the breach with Rome was the divorce of Henry from

Catharine of Aragon, who had previously married his brother Arthur when

they were both fifteen, and had lived with him as his wife for five

months until his death. As marriage with a brother's widow was

forbidden by Canon Law, a {287} dispensation from the pope had been

secured, to enable Catharine to marry Henry. The king's scruples about

the legality of the act were aroused by the death of all the queen's

children, save the Princess Mary, in which he saw the fulfilment of the

curse denounced in Leviticus xx, 21: "If a man shall take his brother's

wife . . . they shall be childless." Just at this time Henry fell in

love with Anne Boleyn, [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] and this further

increased his dissatisfaction with his present estate.

He therefore applied to the pope for annulment of marriage, but the

unhappy Clement VII, now in the emperor's fist, felt unable to give it

to him. He writhed and twisted, dallied with the proposals that Henry

should take a second wife, or that his illegitimate son the Duke of

Richmond should marry his half sister Mary; in short he was ready to

grant a dispensation for anything save for the one horrible crime of

divorce--as the annulment was then called. His difficulties in getting

at the rights of the question were not made easier by the readiness of

both parties to commit a little perjury or to forge a little bull to

further their cause.

Seeing no help in sight from Rome Henry began to collect the opinions

of universities and "strange doctors." The English, French, and

Italian universities decided as the king wished that his marriage was

null; Wittenberg and Marburg rendered contrary opinions. Many

theologians, including Erasmus, Luther, and Melanchthon, expressed the

opinion that bigamy would be the best way to meet the situation.

But more was needed to make the annulment legal than the verdict of

universities. Repulsed by Rome Henry was forced to make an alliance,

though it proved but a temporary one, with the Reforming and

anti-clerical parties in his realm. At Easter, 1529, Lutheran books

began to circulate at court, books {288} advocating the confiscation of

ecclesiastical property and the reduction of the church to a state of

primitive simplicity. To Chapuis, the imperial ambassador, Henry

pointedly praised Luther, whom he had lately called "a wolf of hell and

a limb of Satan," remarking that though he had mixed heresy in his

books that was not sufficient reason for reproving and rejecting the

many truths he had brought to light. To punish Wolsey for the failure

to secure what was wanted from Rome, [Sidenote: November 4, 1530] the

pampered minister was arrested for treason, but died of chagrin before

he could be executed. "Had I served my God," said he, "as diligently

as I have served my king, he would not have given me over in my grey

hairs."

[Sidenote: Reformation Parliament, November 3, 1529]

In the meantime there had already met that Parliament that was to pass,

in the seven years of its existence, the most momentous and

revolutionary laws as yet placed upon the statute-books. The elections

were free, or nearly so; the franchise varied from a fairly democratic

one in London to a highly oligarchical one in some boroughs.

Notwithstanding the popular feeling that Catharine was an injured woman

and that war with the Empire might ruin the valuable trade with

Flanders, the "government," as would now be said, that is, the king,

received hearty support by the majority of members. The only possible

explanation for this, apart from the king's acknowledged skill as a

parliamentary leader, is the strength of the anti-clerical feeling.

The rebellion of the laity against the clergy, and of the patriots

against the Italian yoke, needed but the example of Germany to burst

all the dykes and barriers of medieval custom. The significance of the

revolution was that it was a forcible reform of the church by the

state. The wish of the people was to end ecclesiastical abuses without

much regard to doctrine; the wish of the king was to make himself {289}

"emperor and pope" in his own dominions. While Henry studied Wyclif's

program, and the people read the English Testament, the lessons they

derived from these sources were at first moral and political, not

doctrinal or philosophic.

[Sidenote: Submission of the clergy, December 1530]

The first step in the reduction of the church was taken when the

attorney-general filed in the court of King's Bench an information

against the whole body of the clergy for violating the statutes of

Provisors and Praemunire by having recognized Wolsey's legatine

authority. Of course there was no justice in this; the king himself

had recognized Wolsey's authority and anyone who had denied it would

have been punished. But the suit was sufficient to accomplish the

government's purposes, which were, first to wring money from the clergy

and then to force them to declare the king "sole protector and supreme

head of the church and clergy of England." Reluctantly the Convocation

of Canterbury accepted this demand in the form that the king was,

"their singular protector, only and supreme lord and, as far as the law

of Christ allows, even Supreme Head." Henry further proposed that the

oaths of the clergy to the pope be abolished and himself made supreme

legislator. [Sidenote: May 15, 1532] Convocation accepted this demand

also in a document known as "the submission of the clergy."

If such was the action of the spiritual estate, it was natural that the

temporal peers and the Commons in parliament should go much further.

[Sidenote: 1532] A petition of the Commons, really emanating from the

government and probably from Thomas Cromwell, complained bitterly of

the tyranny of the ordinaries in ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of

excessive fees and vexations and frivolous charges of heresy made

against unlearned laymen. [Sidenote: May 1532] Abuses of like nature

were dealt with in statutes limiting the fees exacted by priests and

regulating {290} pluralities and non-residence. Annates were abolished

with the proviso that the king might negotiate with the pope,--the

intention of the government being thus to bring pressure to bear on the

curia. No wonder the clergy were thoroughly frightened. Bishop

Fisher, their bravest champion, protested in the House of Lords: "For

God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Boheme was, and when the

church fell down, there fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with the

Commons is nothing but 'Down with the church,' and all this meseemeth

is for lack of faith only."

[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn]

It had taken Henry several years to prepare the way for his chief

object, the divorce. His hand was at last forced by the knowledge that

Anne was pregnant; he married her on January 25, 1533, without waiting

for final sentence of annulment of marriage with Catharine. In so

doing he might seem, at first glance, to have followed the advice so

freely tendered him to discharge his conscience by committing bigamy;

but doubtless he regarded his first marriage as illegal all the time

and merely waited for the opportunity to get a court that would so

pronounce it. The vacancy of the archbishopric of Canterbury enabled

him to appoint to it Thomas Cranmer, [Sidenote: Cranmer] the obsequious

divine who had first suggested his present plan. Cranmer was a

Lutheran, so far committed to the new faith that he had married; he was

intelligent, learned, a wonderful master of language, and capable at

last of dying for his belief. But that he showed himself pliable to

his master's wishes beyond all bounds of decency is a fact made all the

more glaring by the firm and honorable conduct of More and Fisher. His

worst act was possibly on the occasion of his nomination to the

province of Canterbury; wishing to be confirmed by the pope he

concealed his real views and took an oath of obedience to the Holy See,

having previously signed {291} a protest that he considered the oath a

mere form and not a reality.

The first use he made of his position was to pronounce sentence that

Henry and Catharine had never been legally married, though at the same

time asserting that this did not affect the legitimacy of Mary because

her parents had believed themselves married. Immediately afterwards it

was declared that Anne was a lawful wife, and she was crowned queen,

[Sidenote: 1533] amid the smothered execrations of the populace, on

June 1. On September 7, the Princess Elizabeth was born. Catharine's

cause was taken up at Rome; Clement's brief forbidding the king to

remarry was followed by final sentence in Catharine's favor. Her last

years were rendered miserable by humiliation and acts of petty spite.

When she died her late husband, with characteristic indecency,

[Sidenote: January 1536] celebrated the joyous event by giving a ball

at which he and Anne appeared dressed in yellow.

[Sidenote: March 1534]

The feeling of the people showed itself in this case finer and more

chivalrous than that prevalent at court. The treatment of Catharine

was so unpopular that Chapuis wrote that the king was much hated by his

subjects. [Sidenote: January, 1536] Resolved to make an example of

the murmurers, the government selected Elizabeth Barton, the "Holy Maid

of Kent." After her hysterical visions and a lucky prophecy had won

her an audience, she fell under the influence of monks and prophesied

that the king would not survive his marriage with Anne one month, and

proclaimed that he was no longer king in the eyes of God. [Sidenote:

April 1, 1534] She and her accomplices were arrested, attainted

without trial, and executed. She may pass as an English Catholic

martyr.

[Sidenote: Act in Restraint of Appeals, February 1533]

Continuing its course of making the king absolute master the Parliament

passed an Act in Restraint of Appeals, the first constitutional break

with Rome. {292} The theory of the government was set forth in the

preamble:

Whereas by divers sundry old authentic histories and

chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed, that

this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been

accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and

king . . . unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts

and degrees of people, divided in terms, and by names of

spirituality and temporally, be bounden and ought to

bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience. . . .

therefore all jurisdiction of foreign powers was denied.

[Sidenote: January 15, 1534]

When, after a recess, Parliament met again there were forty vacancies

to be filled in the Lower House, and this time care was taken that the

new members should be well affected. Scarcely a third of the spiritual

lords assembled, though whether their absence was commanded, or their

presence not required, by the king, is uncertain. As, in earlier

Parliaments, the spiritual peers had outnumbered the temporal, this was

a matter of importance. Another sign of the secularization of the

government was the change in the character of the chancellors. Wolsey

was the last great ecclesiastical minister of the reign; More and

Cromwell who followed him were laymen.

The severance with Rome was now completed by three laws. In the first

place the definite abolition of the annates meant that henceforth the

election of archbishops and bishops must be under licence by the king

and that they must swear allegiance to him before consecration. A

second act forbade the payment of Peter's pence and all other fees to

Rome, and vested in the Archbishop of Canterbury the right to grant

licences previously granted by the pope. A third act, for the

subjection of the clergy, put convocation under the royal power and

forbade all privileges inconsistent with this. The new pope, Paul III,

struck back, though {293} with hesitation, excommunicating the king,

[Sidenote: 1535-8] declaring all his children by Anne Boleyn

illegitimate, and absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance.

[Sidenote: 1534]

Two acts entrenched the king in his despotic pretensions. The Act of

Succession, [Sidenote: Act of Succession] notable as the first

assertion by crown and Parliament of the right to legislate in this

constitutional matter, vested the inheritance of the crown in the issue

of Henry and Anne, and made it high treason to question the marriage.

The Act of Supremacy [Sidenote: Act of Supremacy] declared that the

king's majesty "justly and rightfully is and ought to be supreme head

of the church of England," pointedly omitting the qualification

insisted on by Convocation,--"as far as the law of Christ allows."

Exactly how far this supremacy went was at first puzzling. That it

extended not only to the governance of the temporalities of the church,

but to issuing injunctions on spiritual matters and defining articles

of belief was soon made apparent; on the other hand the monarch never

claimed in person the power to celebrate mass.

That the abrogation of the papal authority was accepted so easily is

proof of the extent to which the national feeling of the English church

had already gone. An oath to recognize the supremacy of the king was

tendered to both convocations, to the universities, to the clergy and

to prominent laymen, and was with few exceptions readily taken.

Doubtless many swallowed the oath from mere cowardice; others took it

with mental reservations; and yet that the majority complied shows that

the substitution of a royal for a papal despotism was acceptable to the

conscience of the country at large. Many believed that they were not

departing from the Catholic faith; but that others welcomed the act as

a step towards the Reformation cannot be doubted. How strong was the

hold of Luther on the country will presently be shown, but here {294}

only one instance of the exuberance of the will for a purely national

religion need be quoted. "God hath showed himself the God of England,

or rather an English God," wrote Hugh Latimer, [Sidenote: 1537] a

leading Lutheran; not only the church but the Deity had become insular!

[Sidenote: Fisher]

But there were a few, and among them the greatest, who refused to

become accomplices in the break with Roman Christendom. John Fisher,

Bishop of Rochester, a friend of Erasmus and a man of admirable

steadfastness, had long been horrified by the tyranny of Henry. He had

stoutly upheld the rightfulness of Catharine's marriage, and now ho

refused to see in the monarch the fit ruler of the church. So strongly

did he feel on these subjects that he invited Charles to invade England

and depose the king. This was treason, though probably the government

that sent him to the tower was ignorant of the act. When Paul III

rewarded Fisher by creating him a cardinal [Sidenote: May 20, 1535]

Henry furiously declared he would send his head to Rome to get the hat.

[Sidenote: June 22] The old man of seventy-six was accordingly

beheaded.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas More executed, July 6]

This execution was followed by that of Sir Thomas More, the greatest

ornament of his country. As More has been remembered almost entirely

by his noble _Utopia_ and his noble death, it is hard to estimate his

character soberly. That his genius was polished to the highest

perfection, that in a hard age he had an altogether lovely sympathy

with the poor, and in a servile age the courage of his convictions,

would seem enough to excuse any faults. But a deep vein of fanaticism

ran through his whole nature and tinctured all his acts, political,

ecclesiastical, and private. Not only was his language violent in the

extreme, but his acts were equally merciless when his passions were

aroused. Appointed chancellor after the fall of Wolsey, he did not

scruple to hit the man who was down, describing {295} him, in a

scathing speech in Parliament, as the scabby wether separated by the

careful shepherd from the sound sheep. In his hatred of the new

opinions he not only sent men to death and torture for holding them,

but reviled them while doing it. "Heretics as they be," he wrote, "the

clergy doth denounce them. And as they be well worthy, the temporality

doth burn them. And after the fire of Smithfield, hell doth receive

them, where the wretches burn for ever."

As chancellor he saw with growing disapproval the course of the tyrant.

He opposed the marriage with Anne Boleyn. The day after the submission

of the clergy he resigned the great seal. He could not long avoid

further offence to his master, and his refusal to take the oath of

supremacy was the crime for which he was condemned. His behaviour

during his last days and on the scaffold was perfect. He spent his

time in severe self-discipline; he uttered eloquent words of

forgiveness of his enemies, messages of love to the daughter whom he

tenderly loved, and brave jests.

[Sidenote: Anabaptist martyrs, 1536]

But while More's passion was one that any man might envy, his courage

was shared by humbler martyrs. In the same year in which he was

beheaded thirteen Dutch Anabaptists were burnt, as he would have

approved, by the English government. Mute, inglorious Christs, they

were led like sheep to the slaughter and as lambs dumb before their

shearers. They had no eloquence, no high position, to make their words

ring from side to side of Europe and echo down the centuries; but their

meek endurance should not go unremembered.

To take More's place as chief minister Henry appointed the most

obsequious tool he could find, Thomas Cromwell. [Sidenote: Thomas

Cromwell, 1485?-1540] To good purpose this man had studied

Machiavelli's _Prince_ as a practical manual of tyranny. His most

important service to the crown was the {296} next step in the reduction

of the medieval church, the dissolution of the monasteries. [Sidenote:

Dissolution of the monasteries] Like other acts tending towards the

Reformation this was, on the whole, popular, and had been rehearsed on

a small scale on several previous occasions in English history. The

pope and the king of France taught Edward II to dissolve the

preceptories, to the number of twenty-three, belonging to the Templars;

in 1410 the Commons petitioned for the confiscation of all church

property; in 1414 the alien priories in England fell under the

animadversion of the government; their property was handed over to the

crown and they escaped only by the payment of heavy fines, by

incorporation into English orders, and by partial confiscation of their

land. The idea prevailed that mortmain had failed of its object and

that therefore the church might rightfully be relieved of her

ill-gotten gains. These were grossly exaggerated, a pamphleteer

believing that the wealth of the church amounted to half the property

of the realm. In reality the total revenue of the spirituality

amounted to only L320,000; that of the monasteries to only L140,000.

There had been few endowments in the fifteenth century; only eight new

ones, in fact, in the whole period 1399-1509. Colleges, schools, and

hospitals now attracted the money that had previously gone to the monks.

Moreover, the monastic life had fallen on evil days. The abbeys no

longer were centers of learning and of the manufacture of books. The

functions of hospitality and of charity that they still exercised were

not sufficient to redeem them in the eyes of the people for the "gross,

carnal, and vicious living" with which they were commonly and quite

rightly charged. Visitations undertaken not by hostile governments but

by bishops in the fifteenth century prove that much immorality obtained

within the cloister walls. By 1528 {297} they had become so

intolerable that a popular pamphleteer, Simon Fish, in his

_Supplication of Beggars_, proposed that the mendicant friars be

entirely suppressed.

[Sidenote: January 21, 1535]

A commission was now issued to Thomas Cromwell, empowering him to hold

a general visitation of all churches, monasteries, and collegiate

bodies. The evidence gathered of the shocking disorders obtaining in

the cloisters of both sexes is on the whole credible and well

substantiated. Nevertheless these disorders furnished rather the

pretext than the real reason for the dissolutions that followed.

Cromwell boasted that he would make his king the richest in

Christendom, and this was the shortest and most popular way to do it.

[Sidenote: 1536]

Accordingly an act was passed for the dissolution of all small

religious houses with an income of less than L200 a year. The rights

of the founders were safe-guarded, and pensions guaranteed to those

inmates who did not find shelter in one of the larger establishments.

By this act 376 houses were dissolved with an aggregate revenue of

L32,000, not counting plate and jewels confiscated. Two thousand monks

or nuns were affected in addition to about eight thousand retainers or

servants. The immediate effect was a large amount of misery, but the

result in the long run was good. Perhaps the principal political

importance of this and the subsequent spoliations of the church was to

make the Reformation profitable and therefore popular with an

enterprising class. For the lion's share of the prey did not go to the

lion, but to the jackals. From the king's favorites to whom he threw

the spoils was founded a new aristocracy, a class with a strong vested

interest in opposing the restoration of the papal church. To the

Protestant citizens of London was now added a Protestant landed gentry.

{298} [Sidenote: Union with Wales, 1536]

Before the "Reformation Parliament" had ceased to exist, one more act

of great importance was passed. Wales was a wild country, imperfectly

governed by irregular means. By the first Act of Union in British

history, Wales was now incorporated with England and the anomalies, or

distinctions, in its legal and administrative system, wiped out. By

severe measures, in the course of which 5000 men were sent to the

gallows, the western mountaineers were reduced to order during the

years 1534-40; and in 1543 their union with England was completed. The

measure was statesmanlike and successful; it was undoubtedly aided by

the loyalty of the Welsh to their own Tudor dynasty.

[Sidenote: April 14, 1536]

When Parliament dissolved after having accomplished, during its seven

years, the greatest permanent revolution in the history of England, it

had snapped the bands with Rome and determined articles of religious

belief; it had given the king more power in the church than the pope

ever had, and had exalted his prerogative in the state to a pitch never

reached before or afterwards; it had dissolved the smaller monasteries,

abridged the liberties of the subject, settled the succession to the

throne, created new treasons and heresies; it had handled grave social

problems, like enclosures and mendicancy; and had united Wales to

England.

[Sidenote: Execution of Anne Boleyn]

And now the woman for whose sake, one is tempted to say, the king had

done it all--though of course his share in the revolution does not

represent the real forces that accomplished it--the woman he had won

with "such a world of charge and hell of pain," was to be cast into the

outer darkness of the most hideous tragedy in history. Anne Boleyn was

not a good woman. And yet, when she was accused of adultery [Sidenote:

May 19, 1536] with four men and of incest with her own brother, {299}

though she was tried by a large panel of peers, condemned, and

beheaded, it is impossible to be sure of her guilt.

[Sidenote: Jane Seymour]

On the day following Anne's execution or, as some say, on May 30, Henry

married his third wife, Jane Seymour. On October 12, 1537, she bore

him a son, Edward. Forced by her husband to take part in the

christening, an exhausting ceremony too much for her strength, she

sickened and died soon afterwards.

[Sidenote: Lutheran tracts]

In the meantime the Lutheran movement was growing apace in England. In

the last two decades of Henry's reign seven of Luther's tracts and some

of his hymns were translated into English. Five of the tracts proved

popular enough to be reprinted. One of them was _The Liberty of a

Christian Man_, turned into English by John Tewkesbury whom, having

died for his faith, More called "a stinking martyr." The hymns and

some of the other tracts were Englished by Miles Coverdale. In

addition to this there was translated an account of Luther's death in

1546, the Augsburg Confession and four treatises of Melanchthon, and

one each of Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Bullinger,--this last reprinted.

Of course these versions are not a full measure of Lutheran influence,

but a mere barometer. The party now numbered powerful preachers like

Latimer and Ridley; Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury and

Thomas Cromwell, since May, 1534, the king's principal secretary. The

adherence of the last named to the Reforming party is perhaps the most

significant sign of the times. As his only object was to be on the

winning side, and as he had not a bit of real religious interest, it

makes it all the more impressive that, believing the cat was about to

jump in the direction of Lutheranism, he should have tried to put

himself in the line of its trajectory {300} by doing all he could to

foster the Reformers at home and the Protestant alliance abroad.

[Sidenote: Coverdale, 1488?-1569]

One of the decisive factors in the Reformation again proved to be the

English Bible, completed, after the end of Tyndale's labors by a man of

less scholarship but equally happy mastery of language, Miles

Coverdale. Of little original genius, he spent his life largely in the

labor of translating tracts and treatises by the German Reformers into

his native tongue. [Sidenote: The English Bible, 1535] His first

great work was the completion of the English Bible which was published

by Christopher Froschauer of Zurich in 1535, the title-page stating

that it had been translated "out of Douche and Latyn"--the "Douche"

being, of course, Luther's German version. For the New Testament and

for the Old Testament as far as the end of Chronicles, Tyndale's

version was used; the rest was by Coverdale. The work was dedicated to

the king, and, as Cromwell had already been considering the

advisability of authorizing the English Bible, this was not an

unwelcome thing. But as the government was as yet unprepared to

recognize work avowedly based on German Protestant versions, [Sidenote:

1537] they resorted to the device of re-issuing the Bible with the name

of Thomas Matthew as translator, though in fact it consisted entirely

of the work of Tyndale and Coverdale. [Sidenote: 1538-9] A light

revision of this work was re-issued as the Great Bible, [Sidenote:

October 11, 1538] and Injunctions were issued by Cromwell ordering a

Bible of the largest size to be set up in every church, and the people

to be encouraged to read it. They were also to be taught the Lord's

prayer and creed in English, spiritual sermons were to be preached, and

superstitions, such as going on pilgrimages, burning candles to saints,

and kissing and licking relics, were to be discouraged.

At the same time Cromwell diligently sought a _rapprochement_ with the

German Protestants. The idea {301} was an obvious one that, having won

the enmity of Charles, England should support his dangerous intestine

enemies, the Schmalkaldic princes. In that day of theological politics

it was natural to try to find cement for the alliance in a common

confession. Embassy after embassy made pilgrimages to Wittenberg,

where the envoys had long discussions with the Reformers [Sidenote:

January, 1536] both about the divorce and about matters of faith. They

took back with them to England, together with a personal letter from

Luther to Cromwell, [Sidenote: April] a second opinion unfavorable to

the divorce and a confession drawn up in Seventeen Articles. In this,

though in the main it was, as it was called, "a repetition and exegesis

of the Augsburg Confession," considerable concessions were made to the

wishes of the English. Melanchthon was the draughtsman and Luther the

originator of the articles.

This symbol now became the basis of the first definition of faith drawn

up by the government. Some such statement was urgently needed, for,

amid the bewildering acts of the Reformation Parliament, the people

hardly knew what the king expected them to believe. The king therefore

presented to Convocation a Book of Articles of Faith and Ceremonies,

[Sidenote: July 11 The Book of Articles] commonly called the Ten

Articles, drafted by Fox on the basis of the memorandum he had received

at Wittenberg, in close substantial and frequently in verbal agreement

with it. By this confession the Bible, the three creeds, and the acts

of the first four councils were designated as authoritative; the three

Lutheran sacraments of baptism, penance, and the altar were retained;

justification by faith and good works jointly was proclaimed; the use

of images was allowed and purgatory disallowed; the real presence in

the sacrament was strongly affirmed. The significance of the articles,

however, is not so much their Lutheran provenance, as in their

promulgation {302} by the crown. It was the last step in the

enslavement of religion. "This king," as Luther remarked, "wants to be

God. He founds articles of faith, which even the pope never did."

[Sidenote: The Pilgrimage of Grace]

It only remained to see what the people would say to the new order.

Within a few months after the dissolution of the Reformation Parliament

and the publication of the Ten Articles, the people in the north spread

upon the page of history an extremely emphatic protest. For this is

really what the Pilgrimage of Grace was--not a rebellion against king,

property, or any established institution, but a great demonstration

against the policy for which Cromwell became the scapegoat. In those

days of slow communication opinions travelled on the beaten roads of

commerce. As late as Mary's reign there is proof that Protestantism

was confined to the south, east, and midlands,--roughly speaking to a

circle with London as its center and a radius of one hundred miles. In

these earlier years, Protestant opinion was probably even more

confined; London was both royalist and anti-Roman Catholic; the ports

on the south-eastern coast, including Calais, at that time an English

station in France, and the university towns had strong Lutheran and

still stronger anti-clerical parties.

But in the wilds of the north and west it was different. There, hardly

any bourgeois class of traders existed to adopt "the religion of

merchants" as Protestantism has been called. Perhaps more important

was the mere slowness of the diffusion of ideas. The good old ways

were good enough for men who never knew anything else. The people were

discontented with the high taxes, and the nobles, who in the north

retained feudal affections if not feudal power, were outraged by the

ascendency in the royal councils of low-born upstarts. Moreover, it

seems that the clergy {303} were stronger in the north even before the

inroads of the new doctrines. In the suppression of the lesser

monasteries Yorkshire, the largest county in England, had lost the most

foundations, 53 in all, and Lincolnshire the next most, 37. Irritation

at the suppression itself was greatly increased among the clergy by the

insolence and thoroughness of the visitation, in which not only

monasteries but parish priests had been examined. In resisting the

king in the name of the church the priests had before them the example

of the most popular English saint, Thomas Becket. They were the real

fomenters of the demonstration, and the gentlemen, not the people, its

leaders.

Rioting began in Lincolnshire on October 1, 1536, and before the end of

the month 40,000 men had joined the movement. A petition to the king

was drawn up demanding that the church holidays be kept as before, that

the church be relieved of the payment of first-fruits and tithes, that

the suppressed houses be restored except those which the king "kept for

his pleasure only," that taxes be reduced and some unpopular officials

banished.

Henry thundered an answer in his most high and mighty style: "How

presumptuous then are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that one

of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of least

experience to find fault with your prince in the electing of his

councillors and prelates!" He at once dispatched an army with orders

"to invade their countries, to burn, spoil and destroy their goods,

wives and children." [Sidenote: March 1537] Repression of the rising

in Lincolnshire was followed by the execution of forty-six leaders.

But the movement had promptly spread to Yorkshire, where men gathered

as for a peaceable demonstration, [Sidenote: October 1536] and swore

not to enter "this pilgrimage of grace for the commonwealth, save only

for the {304} maintenance of God's faith and church militant,

preservation of the king's person, and purifying the nobility of all

villein's blood and evil counsellors, to the restitution of Christ's

church and the suppression of heretics' opinions." In Yorkshire it was

feared that the money extorted from the abbeys was going to London; and

that the new treason's acts would operate harshly. Cumberland and

Westmoreland soon joined the rising, their special grievance being the

economic one of the rise of rents, or rather of the heavy fines exacted

by landlords on the renewal of leases. An army of 35,000 was raised by

the insurgents but their leader, Robert Aske, did not wish to fight,

though he was opposed by only 8,000 royal troops. He preferred a

parley and demanded, in addition to a free pardon, the acceptance of

the northern demands, the summons of a free Parliament, the restoration

of the papal supremacy as touching the cure of souls, and the

suppression of the books of Tyndale, Huss, Luther, and Melanchthon.

The king invited Aske to a personal interview, and promised to accede

to the demand for a Parliament if the petitioners would disperse. An

act of violence on a part of a few of the northerners was held to

absolve the government, and Henry, having gathered his forces,

demanded, and secured, a "dreadful execution" of vengeance.

Though the Pilgrimage of Grace had some effect in warning Henry not to

dabble in foreign heresies, the policy he had most at heart, that of

making himself absolute in state and church, went on apace. The

culmination of the growth of the royal power is commonly seen in the

Statute of Proclamations [Sidenote: Statute of Proclamations, 1539]

apparently giving the king's proclamations the same validity as law

save when they touched the lives, liberty, or property of subjects or

were repugnant to existing statutes. Probably, however, the intent of

Parliament was not {305} to confer new powers on the crown but to

regulate the enforcement of already existing prerogatives. As a matter

of fact no proclamations were issued during the last years of Henry's

reign that might not have been issued before.

But the reform of the church by the government, in morals and usages,

not in doctrine, proceeded unchecked. The larger monasteries had been

falling into the king's hands by voluntary surrender ever since 1536; a

new visitation and a new Act for the dissolution [Sidenote: 1539] of

the greater monasteries completed the process.

[Sidenote: War on relics]

An iconoclastic war was now begun not, as in other countries, by the

mob, but by the government. Relics like the Blood of Hailes were

destroyed, and the Rood of Boxley, a crucifix mechanically contrived so

that the priests made it nod and smile or shake its head and frown

according to the liberality of its worshipper, was taken down and the

mechanism exposed in various places. At Walsingham in Norfolk was a

nodding image of the Virgin, a bottle of her milk, still liquid, and a

knuckle of St. Peter. The shrine, ranking though it did with Loretto

and Compostella in popular veneration, was now destroyed. With much

zest the government next attacked the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at

Canterbury, thus revenging the humiliation of another Henry at the

hands of the church. The martyr was now declared to be a rebel who had

fled from the realm.

[Sidenote: 1536]

The definition of doctrine, coupled with negotiations with the

Schmalkaldic princes, continued briskly. The project for an alliance

came to nothing, for John Frederic of Saxony wrote that God would not

allow them to have communication with Henry. Two embassies to England

engaged in assiduous, but fruitless, theological discussion. Henry

himself, with the aid of Cuthbert Tunstall, drew up a long statement

"against {306} the opinions of the Germans on the sacrament in both

kinds, private masses, and sacerdotal marriage." The reactionary

tendency of the English is seen in the _Institution of the Christian

Man_, [Sidenote: Definitions of Faith] published with royal authority,

and still more in the Act of the Six Articles. [Sidenote: 1537] In

the former the four sacraments previously discarded are again "found."

[Sidenote: 1539] In the latter, transubstantiation is affirmed, the

doctrine of communion in both kinds branded as heresy, the marriage of

priests declared void, vows of chastity are made perpetually binding,

private masses and auricular confessions are sanctioned. Denial of

transubstantiation was made punishable by the stake and forfeiture of

goods; those who spoke against the other articles were declared guilty

of felony on the second offence. This act, officially entitled "for

abolishing diversity in opinions" was really the first act of

uniformity. It was carried by the influence of the king and the laity

against the parties represented by Cromwell and Cranmer. It ended the

plans for a Schmalkaldic alliance. [Sidenote: July 10, 1539] Luther

thanked God that they were rid of that blasphemer who had tried to

enter their league but failed.

By a desperate gamble Cromwell now tried to save what was left of his

pro-German policy. Duke William of Cleves-Jülich-Berg had adopted an

Erasmian compromise between Lutheranism and Romanism, in some respects

resembling the course pursued by Henry. In this direction Cromwell

accordingly next turned and induced his master to contract a marriage

with Anne, [Sidenote: January 6, 1540] the duke's sister. As Henry had

offered to the European audience three tragedies in his three former

marriages, he now, in true Greek style, presented in his fourth a farce

or "satyric drama." The monarch did not like his new wife in the

least, and found means of ridding himself of her more speedily than was

usual even with him. Having shared her bed for six months {307} he

divorced her on the ground that the marriage had not been consummated.

[Sidenote: July 28, 1540] The ex-queen continued to live as "the

king's good sister" with a pension and establishment of her own, but

Cromwell vicariously expiated her failure to please. He was attainted,

without trial, for treason, and speedily executed.

[Sidenote: Bluebeard's wives]

On the same day Henry married Catharine Howard, a beautiful girl

selected by the Catholics to play the same part for them that Anne

Boleyn had played for the Lutherans, and who did so more exactly than

her backers intended. Like her predecessor she was beheaded for

adultery on February 13, 1542. On July 12, 1543, Bluebeard concluded

his matrimonial adventures by taking Catharine Parr, a lady who, like

Sieyès after the Terror, must have congratulated herself on her rare

ability in surviving.

[Sidenote: Catholic reaction]

As a Catholic reaction marked the last eight years of Henry's reign, it

may perhaps be well to say a few words about the state of opinion in

England at that time. The belief that the whole people took their

religion with sheepish meekness from their king is too simple and too

dishonorable to the national character to be believed. That they

_appeared_ to do this is really a proof that parties were nearly

divided. Just as in modern times great issues are often decided in

general elections by narrow majorities, so in the sixteenth century

public opinion veered now this way, now that, in part guided by the

government, in part affecting it even when the channels by which it did

so are not obvious. We must not imagine that the people took no

interest in the course of affairs. On the contrary the burning issues

of the day were discussed in public house and marketplace with the same

vivacity with which politics are now debated in the New England country

store. "The Word of God was disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in

every alehouse and {308} tavern," says a contemporary state paper. In

private, graver men argued with the high spirit reflected in More's

dialogues.

Four parties may be plainly discerned. First and most numerous were

the strict Anglicans, orthodox and royalist, comprising the greater

part of the crown-loving, priest-hating and yet, in intellectual

matters, conservative common people. Secondly, there were the pope's

followers, still strong in numbers especially among the clergy and in

the north. Their leaders were among the most high-minded of the

nation, but were also the first to be smitten by the king's wrath

which, as his satellites were always repeating in Latin proverb, meant

death. Such men were More and Fisher and the London Carthusians

executed in 1535 for refusing the oath of supremacy. Third, there were

the Lutherans, an active and intelligent minority of city merchants and

artisans, led by men of conspicuous talents and generally of high

character, like Coverdale, Kidley, and Latimer. With these leaders

were a few opportunists like Cranmer and a few Machiavellians like

Cromwell. Lastly there was a very small contingent of extremists,

Zwinglians and Anabaptists, all classed together as blasphemers and as

social agitators. Their chief notes were the variety of their opinions

and the unanimity of their persecution by all other parties. Some of

them were men of intelligible social and religious tenets; others

furnished the "lunatic fringe" of the reform movement. The

proclamation banishing them from England [Sidenote: 1538] on pain of

death merely continued the previous practice of the government.

The fall of the Cromwell ministry, if it may be so termed by modern

analogy, was followed by a government in which Henry acted as his own

prime minister. {309} He had made good his boast that if his shirt

knew his counsel he would strip it off.[1] Two of his great ministers

he had cast down for being too Catholic, one for being too Protestant.

Having procured laws enabling him to burn Romanists as traitors and

Lutherans as heretics, he established a régime of pure Anglicanism, the

only genuine Anglican Catholicism, however much it may have been

imitated in after centuries, that ever existed.

[Sidenote: Anti-protestant measures]

Measures were at once taken towards suppressing the Protestants and

their Bible. One of the first martyrs was Robert Barnes, a personal

friend of Luther. Much stir was created by the burning, some years

later, of a gentlewoman named Anne Askewe and of three men, at

Smithfield. The revulsion naturally caused by this cruelty prepared

the people for the Protestant rule of Edward. The Bible was also

attacked. The translation of 1539 was examined by Convocation in 1540

and criticized for not agreeing more closely with the Latin. In 1543

all marginal notes were obliterated and the lower classes forbidden to

read the Bible at all.

Henry's reign ended as it began with war on France and Scotland, but

with little success. The government was put to dire straits to raise

money. A forced loan of 10 per cent. on property was exacted in 1542

and repudiated by law the next year. An income tax rising from four

pence to two shillings in the pound on goods and from eight pence to

three shillings on revenue from land, was imposed. Crown lands were

sold or mortgaged. The last and most disastrous expedient was the

debasement of the coinage, the old equivalent of the modern issue of

irredeemable paper. As a consequence of this prices rose enormously.

[1] The metaphor came from Erasmus, _De lingua_, 1525, _Opera_, iv,

682, where the words are attributed to Caecilius Metellus.

{310}

SECTION 2. THE REFORMATION UNDER EDWARD VI. 1547-1553

[Sidenote: Accession of Edward VI, January 28, 1547]

The real test of the popularity of Henry's double revolution,

constitutional and religious, came when England was no longer guided by

his strong personality, but was ruled by a child and governed by a weak

and shifting regency. It is significant that, whereas the prerogative

of the crown was considerably relaxed, though substantially handed on

to Edward's stronger successors, the Reformation proceeded at

accelerated pace.

[Sidenote: Somerset Regent]

Henry himself, not so much to insure further change as to safeguard

that already made, appointed Reformers as his son's tutors and made the

majority of the Council of Regency Protestant. The young king's

maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was chosen by the

council as Protector and created Duke of Somerset. [Sidenote: 1547]

Mildness was the characteristic of his rule. He ignored Henry's

treason and heresy acts even before they had been repealed.

[Sidenote: Repeal of treason and heresy laws]

The first general election was held with little government

interference. Parliament may be assumed to have expressed the will of

the nation when it repealed Henry's treason and heresy laws, the

ancient act _De Haeretico comburendo_, the Act of the Six Articles, and

the Statute of Proclamations.

To ascertain exactly what, at a given time, is the "public opinion" of

a political group, is one of the most difficult tasks of the

historian.[1] Even nowadays it is certain that the will of the

majority is frequently not reflected either in the acts of the

legislature or in the newspaper press. It cannot even be said that the

wishes of the majority are always public opinion. In expressing the

voice of the people there is generally some section more vocal, more

powerful on account {311} of wealth or intelligence, and more deeply in

earnest than any other; and this minority, though sometimes a

relatively small one, imposes its will in the name of the people and

identifies its voice with the voice of God.

[Sidenote: Protestant public opinion]

Therefore, when we read the testimony of contemporaries that the

majority of England was still Catholic by the middle of the sixteenth

century, a further analysis of popular opinion must be made to account

for the apparently spontaneous rush of the Reformation. Some of these

estimates are doubtless exaggerations, as that of Paget who wrote in

1549 that eleven Englishmen out of twelve were Catholics. But

conceding, as we must, that a considerable majority was still

anti-Protestant, it must be remembered that this majority included most

of the indifferent and listless and almost all those who held their

opinions for no better reason than they had inherited them and refused

the trouble of thinking about them. Nearly the solid north and west,

the country districts and the unrepresented and mute proletariat of the

cities, counted as Catholic but hardly counted for anything else. The

commercial class of the towns and the intellectual class, which, though

relatively small, then as now made public opinion as measured by all

ordinary tests, was predominantly and enthusiastically Protestant.

If we analyse the expressed wishes of England, we shall find a mixture

of real religious faith and of worldly, and sometimes discreditable,

motives. A new party always numbers among its constituency not only

those who love its principles but those who hate its opponents. With

the Protestants were a host of allies varying from those who detested

Rome to those who repudiated all religion. Moreover every successful

party has a number of hangers-on for the sake of political spoils, and

some who follow its fortunes {312} with no purpose save to fish in

troubled waters.

But whatever their constituency or relative numbers, the Protestants

now carried all before them. In the free religious debate that

followed the death of Henry, the press teemed with satires and

pamphlets, mostly Protestant. From foreign parts flocked allies, while

the native stock of literary ammunition was reinforced by German and

Swiss books. In the reign of Edward there were three new translations

of Luther's books, five of Melanchthon's, two of Zwingli's, two of

Oecolampadius's, three of Bullinger's and four of Calvin's. Many

English religious leaders were in correspondence with Bullinger, many

with Calvin, and some with Melanchthon. Among the prominent European

Protestants called to England during this reign were Bucer and Fagius

of Germany, Peter Martyr and Bernardino Ochino of Italy, and the Pole

John Laski.

The purification of the churches began promptly. [Sidenote: 1547]

Images, roods and stained glass windows were destroyed, while the

buildings were whitewashed on the inside, properly to express the

austerity of the new cult. Evidence shows that these acts,

countenanced by the government, were popular in the towns but not in

the country districts.

[Sidenote: Book of Common Prayer, 1549]

Next came the preparation of an English liturgy. The first Book of

Common Prayer was the work of Cranmer. Many things in it, including

some of the most beautiful portions, were translations from the Roman

Breviary; but the high and solemn music of its language must be

credited to the genius of its translator. Just as the English Bible

popularized the Reformation, so the English Prayer Book strengthened

and broadened the hold of the Anglican church. Doctrinally, it was a

compromise between Romanism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. Its use was

enforced by the Act of Uniformity, [Sidenote: 1549] {313} the first and

mildest of the statutes that bore that name. Though it might be

celebrated in Greek, Latin or Hebrew as well as in English, priests

using any other service were punished with loss of benefices and

imprisonment.

At this time there must have been an unrecorded struggle in the Council

of Regency between the two religious parties, followed by the victory

of the innovators. [Sidenote: End of 1549] The pace of the

Reformation was at once increased; between 1550 and 1553 England gave

up most of what was left of distinctively medieval Catholicism. For

one thing, the marriage of priests was now legalized. [Sidenote:

Accelerated Reformation] That public opinion was hardly prepared for

this as yet is shown by the act itself in which celibacy of the clergy

is declared to be the better condition, and marriage only allowed to

prevent vice. The people still regarded priests' wives much as

concubines and the government spoke of clergymen as "sotted with their

wives and children." There is one other bit of evidence, of a most

singular character, showing that this and subsequent Acts of Uniformity

were not thoroughly enforced. The test of orthodoxy came to be taking

the communion occasionally according to the Anglican rite. This was at

first expected of everyone and then demanded by law; but the law was

evaded by permitting a conscientious objector to hire a substitute to

take communion for him.

In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised in a Protestant sense. Bucer had

something to do with this revision, and so did John Knox. Little was

now left of the mass, nothing of private confession or anointing the

sick. Further steps were the reform of the Canon Law and the

publication of the Forty-two Articles of Religion. These were drawn up

by Cranmer on the basis of thirteen articles agreed upon by a

conference of three English Bishops, four English doctors, and two

German missionaries, Boyneburg and Myconius, in {314} May, 1538.

Cranmer hoped to make his statement irenic; and in fact it contained

some Roman and Calvinistic elements, but in the main it was Lutheran.

Justification by faith was asserted; only two sacraments were retained.

Transubstantiation was denounced as repugnant to Scripture and private

masses as "dangerous impostures." The real presence was maintained in

a Lutheran sense: the bread was said to be the Body of Christ, and the

wine the Blood of Christ, but only after a heavenly and spiritual

manner. It was said that by Christ's ordinance the sacrament is not

reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

A reform of the clergy was also undertaken, and was much needed. In

1551 Bishop Hooper found in his diocese of 311 clergymen, 171 could not

repeat the Ten Commandments, ten could not say the Lord's Prayer in

English, seven could not tell who was its author, and sixty-two were

absentees, chiefly because of pluralities.

The notable characteristic of the Edwardian Reformation was its

mildness. There were no Catholic martyrs. It is true that heretics

coming under the category of blasphemers or deniers of Christianity

could still be put to death by common law, and two men were actually

executed for speculations about the divinity of Christ, but such cases

were wholly exceptional.

[Sidenote: Social disorders]

The social disorders of the time, coming to a head, seemed to threaten

England with a rising of the lower classes similar to the Peasants' War

of 1525 in Germany. The events in England prove that, however much

these ebullitions might be stimulated by the atmosphere of the

religious change, they wore not the direct result of the new gospel.

In the west of England and in Oxfordshire the lower classes rebelled

{315} under the leadership of Catholic priests; in the east the rising,

known as Kett's rebellion, took on an Anabaptist character. The real

causes of discontent were the same in both cases. The growing wealth

of the commercial classes had widened the gap between rich and poor.

The inclosures continued to be a grievance, by the ejection of small

tenants and the appropriation of common lands. But by far the greatest

cause of hardship to the poor was the debasement of the coinage.

Wheat, barley, oats and cattle rose in price to two or three times

their previous cost, while wages, kept down by law, rose only 11 per

cent. No wonder that the condition of the laborer had become

impossible.

The demands of the eastern rising, centering at Norwich, bordered on

communism. The first was for the enfranchisement of all bondsmen for

the reason that Christ had made all men free. Inclosures of commons

and private property in game and fish were denounced and further

agrarian demands were voiced. The rebels committed no murder and

little sacrilege, but vented their passions by slaughtering vast

numbers of sheep. All the peasant risings were suppressed by the

government, and the economic forces continued to operate against the

wasteful agricultural system of the time and in favor of wool-growing

and manufacture.

[Sidenote: Execution of Somerset, January 22, 1552]

After five years under Protector Somerset there was a change of

government signalized, as usual under Henry VIII, by the execution of

the resigning minister. Somerset suffered from the unpopularity of the

new religious policy in some quarters and from that following the

peasants' rebellion in others. As usual, the government was blamed for

the economic evils of the time and for once, in having debased the

coinage, justly. Moreover the Protector had been {316} involved by

scheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, for

this least bloody of all English ministers in that century, had

executed his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious man

rightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.

Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the class of mere

adventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and the

worst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only be

deposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiated

himself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council.

Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name of

royalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At his

command Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote:

Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis of

Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, again

using the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.

The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward lived

and was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visibly

declining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alter

the succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick had

been a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's will

appointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1)

Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who had

married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there had

been born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married Henry

Grey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriage

were three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, was

picked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to

{317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was now

appealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter the

succession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but his

lukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant Lady

Jane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession to

the crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting to

do this.

[1] See A. L. Lowell: _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, 1914.

SECTION 3. THE CATHOLIC REACTION UNDER MARY. 1553-58

[Sidenote: Proclamation of Queen Jane, July 10, 1553]

When Edward died on July 6, 1553, Northumberland had taken such

precautions as he could to ensure the success of his project. He had

gathered his own men at London and tried to secure help from France,

whose king would have been only too glad to involve England in civil

war. The death of the king was concealed for four days while

preparations were being made, and then Queen Jane was proclaimed.

Mary's challenge arrived the next day and she (Mary) at once began

raising an army. Had her person been secured the plot might have

succeeded, but she avoided the set snares. Charles V wished to support

her for religious reasons, but feared to excite patriotic feeling by

dispatching an army and therefore confined his intervention to

diplomatic representations to Northumberland.

[Sidenote: Accession of Mary]

There was no doubt as to the choice of the people. Even the strongest

Protestants hated civil turmoil more than they did Catholicism, and the

people as a whole felt instinctively that if the crown was put up as a

prize for unscrupulous politicians there would be no end of strife.

All therefore flocked to Mary, and almost without a struggle she

overcame the conspirators and entered her capital amid great rejoicing.

Northumberland, after a despicable and fruitless recantation, was

executed and so were his son and his son's wife, Queen Jane. Sympathy

was felt for her on {318} account of her youth, beauty and remarkable

talents, but none for her backers.

The relief with which the settlement was regarded gave the new queen at

least the good will of the nation to start with. This she gradually

lost. Just as Elizabeth instinctively did the popular thing, so Mary

seemed almost by fatality to choose the worst course possible. Her

foreign policy, in the first place, was both un-English and

unsuccessful. [Sidenote: Marriage of Mary and Philip, July 25, 1554]

Almost at once Charles V proposed his son Philip as Mary's husband,

and, after about a year of negotiation, the marriage took place. The

tremendous unpopularity of this step was due not so much to hostility

to Spain, though Spain was beginning to be regarded as the national foe

rather than France, but to the fear of a foreign domination. England

had never before been ruled by a queen, if we except the disastrous

reign of Mathilda, and it was natural to suppose that Mary's husband

should have the prerogative as well as the title of king. In vain

Philip tried to disabuse the English of the idea that he was asserting

any independent claims; in some way the people felt that they were

being annexed to Spain, and they hated it.

The religious aim of the marriage, to aid in the restoration of

Catholicism, was also disliked. Cardinal Pole frankly avowed this

purpose, declaring that

as Christ, being heir of the world, was sent down by his

Father from the royal throne, to be at once Spouse and

Son of the Virgin Mary and to be made the Comforter

and Saviour of mankind; so, in like manner, the greatest

of all princes upon earth, the heir of his father's

kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms that

he, too, might come hither into this land of trouble, to be

the spouse and son of this virgin Mary . . . to aid in the

reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.

For Mary herself the marriage was most unhappy. {319} She was a bride

of thirty-eight, already worn and aged by grief and care; her

bridegroom was only twenty-seven. She adored him, but he almost

loathed her and made her miserable by neglect and unfaithfulness. Her

passionate hopes for a child led her to believe and announce that she

was to have one, and her disappointment was correspondingly bitter.

So unpopular was the marriage coupled with the queen's religious

policy, that it led to a rebellion under Sir Thomas Wyatt. Though

suppressed, it was a dangerous symptom, especially as Mary failed to

profit by the warning. Her attempts to implicate her sister Elizabeth

in the charge of treason failed.

Had Mary's foreign policy only been strong it might have conciliated

the patriotic pride of the ever present jingo. But under her

leadership England seemed to decline almost to its nadir. The command

of the sea was lost and, as a consequence of this and of the military

genius of the Duke of Guise, Calais, held for over two centuries, was

conquered by the French. [Sidenote: 1558] With the subsequent loss of

Guines the last English outpost on the continent was reft from her.

[Sidenote: Religious policy]

Notwithstanding Mary's saying that "Calais" would be found in her heart

when she died, by far her deepest interest was the restoration of

Catholicism. To assist her in this task she had Cardinal Reginald

Pole, in whose veins flowed the royal blood of England and whom the

pope appointed as legate to the kingdom. Though Mary's own impulse was

to act strongly, she sensibly adopted the emperor's advice to go slowly

and, as far as possible, in legal forms. Within a month of her

succession she issued a proclamation stating her intention to remain

Catholic and her hope that her subjects would embrace the same

religion, but at the same time disclaiming the intention of forcing

them and forbidding strife and the use of {320} "those new-found

devilish terms of papist or heretic or such like."

Elections to the first Parliament were free; it passed two noteworthy

Acts of Repeal, [Sidenote: Repeal of Reforming acts] the first

restoring the _status quo_ at the death of Henry VIII, the second

restoring the _status quo_ of 1529 on the eve of the Reformation

Parliament. This second act abolished eighteen statutes of Henry VIII

and one of Edward VI, but it refused to restore the church lands. The

fate of the confiscated ecclesiastical property was one of the greatest

obstacles, if not the greatest, in the path of reconciliation with

Rome. The pope at first insisted upon it, and Pole was deeply grieved

at being obliged to absolve sinners who kept the fruits of their sins.

But the English, as the Spanish ambassador Renard wrote, "would rather

get themselves massacred than let go" the abbey lands. The very

Statute of Repeal, therefore, that in other respects met Mary's

demands, carefully guarded the titles to the secularized lands, making

all suits relating to them triable only in crown courts.

The second point on which Parliament, truly representing a large

section of public opinion, was obstinate, was in the refusal to

recognize the papal supremacy. The people as a whole cared not what

dogma they were supposed to believe, but they for the most part

cordially hated the pope. They therefore agreed to pass the acts of

repeal only on condition that nothing was said about the royal

supremacy. To Mary's insistence they returned a blank refusal to act

and she was compelled to wait "while Parliament debated articles that

might well puzzle a general council," as a contemporary wrote.

Lords and Commons were quite willing to pass acts to strengthen the

crown and then to leave the responsibility {321} for further action to

it. Thus the divorce of Henry and Catharine of Aragon was repealed and

the Revival of treason laws were revived. [Sidenote: Revival of

treason laws] Going even beyond the limit of Henry VIII it was made

treason to "pray or desire" that God would shorten the queen's days.

Worse than that, Parliament revived the heresy laws. It is a strange

comment on the nature of legislatures that they have so often, as in

this case, protected property better than life, and made money more

sacred than conscience. However, it was not Parliament but the

executive that carried out to its full extent the policy of persecution

and religious reaction.

The country soon showed its opposition. A temporary disarray that

might have been mistaken for disintegration had been produced in the

Protestant ranks by the recantation of Northumberland. The restoration

of the mass was accomplished in orderly manner in most places. The

English formulas had been patient of a Catholic interpretation, and

doubtless many persons regarded the change from one liturgy to the

other as a matter of slight importance. Moreover the majority made a

principle of conformity to the government, believing that an act of the

law relieved the conscience of the individual of responsibility. But

even so, there was a large minority of recusants. Of 8800 beneficed

clergy in England, 2000 were ejected for refusal to comply. A very

large number fled to the Continent, forming colonies at

Frankfort-on-the-Main and at Geneva and scattering in other places.

The opinion of the imperial ambassador Renard that English Protestants

depended entirely on support from abroad was tolerably true for this

reign, for their books continued to be printed abroad, and a few

further translations from foreign reformers were made. It is

noteworthy that these mostly treat of the {322} question, then so much

in debate, whether Protestants might innocently attend the mass.

Other expressions of the temper of the people were the riots in London.

On the last day of the first Parliament a dog with a tonsured crown, a

rope around its neck and a writing signifying that priests and bishops

should be hung, was thrown through a window into the queen's presence

chamber. At another time a cat was found tonsured, surpliced, and with

a wafer in its mouth in derision of the mass. The perpetrators of

these outrages could not be found.

[Sidenote: Passive resistance]

A sterner, though passive, resistance to the government was gloriously

evinced when stake and rack began to do their work. Mary was totally

unprepared for the strength of Protestant feeling in the country. She

hoped a few executions would strike terror into the hearts of all and

render further persecution unnecessary. But from the execution of the

first martyr, John Rogers, it was plain that the people sympathized

with the victims rather than feared their fate. Not content with

warring on the living, Mary even broke the sleep of the dead.[1] The

bodies of Bucer and Fagius were dug up and burned. The body of Peter

Martyr's wife was also exhumed, though, as no evidence of heresy could

be procured, it was thrown on a dunghill to rot.

[Sidenote: Martyrs, October 16, 1555]

The most famous victims were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. The first

two were burnt alive together, Latimer at the stake comforting his

friend by assuring him, "This day we shall light such a candle, by

God's grace, in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." A

special procedure was reserved for Cranmer, as primate. Every effort

was made to get him to recant. He at first signed four submissions

recognizing the {323} power of the pope as and if restored by

Parliament. He then signed two real recantations, and finally drew up

a seventh document, repudiating his recantations, re-affirming his

faith in the Protestant doctrine of the sacraments and denouncing the

pope. By holding his right hand in the fire, when he was burned at the

stake, he testified his bitter repentance for its act in signing the

recantations. [Sidenote: March 21, 1556]

The total number of martyrs in Mary's reign fell very little, if at

all, short of 300. The lists of them are precise and circumstantial.

The geographical distribution is interesting, furnishing, as it does,

the only statistical information available in the sixteenth century for

the spread of Protestantism. It graphically illustrates the fact, so

often noticed before, that the strongholds of the new opinions were the

commercial towns of the south and east. If a straight line be drawn

from the Wash to Portsmouth, passing about twenty miles west of London,

it will roughly divide the Protestant from the Catholic portions of

England. Out of 290 martyrdoms known, 247 took place east of this

line, that is, in the city of London and the counties of Essex,

Hertford, Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge. Thirteen are

recorded in the south center, at Winchester and Salisbury, eleven at

the western ports of the Severn, Bristol and Gloucester. There were

three in Wales, all on the coast at St. David's; one in the

south-western peninsula at Exeter, a few in the midlands, and not one

north of Lincolnshire and Cheshire.

When it is said that the English changed their religion easily, this

record of heroic opposition must be remembered to the contrary. Mary's

reign became more and more hateful to her people until at last it is

possible that only the prospect of its speedy termination prevented a

rebellion. The popular epithet of {324} "bloody" rightly distinguishes

her place in the estimate of history. It is true that her persecution

sinks into insignificance compared with the holocausts of victims to

the inquisition in the Netherlands. But the English people naturally

judged by their own history, and in all of that such a reign of terror

was unexampled. The note of Mary's reign is sterility and its

achievement was to create, in reaction to the policy then pursued, a

ferocious and indelible hatred of Rome.

[1] The canon law forbade the burial of heretics in consecrated ground,

but it is said that Charles V refused to dig up Luther's body when he

took Wittenberg.

SECTION 4. THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT. 1558-88.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth, 1558-1603]

However numerous and thorny were the problems pressed for solution into

the hands of the maiden of twenty-five now called upon to rule England,

the greatest of all questions, that of religion, almost settled itself.

It is extremely hard to divest ourselves of the wisdom that comes after

the event and to put ourselves in the position of the men of that time

and estimate fairly the apparent feasibility of various alternatives.

But it is hard to believe that the considerations that seem so

overwhelming to us should not have forced themselves upon the attention

of the more thoughtful men of that generation.

In the first place, while the daughter of Anne Boleyn was predestined

by heredity and breeding to oppose Rome, yet she was brought up in the

Anglican Catholicism of Henry VIII. At the age of eleven she had

translated Margaret of Navarre's _Mirror of the Sinful Soul_, a work

expressing the spirit of devotion joined with liberalism in creed and

outward conformity in cult. The rapid vicissitudes of faith in England

taught her tolerance, and her own acute intellect and practical sense

inclined her to indifference. She did not scruple to give all parties,

Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist, the impression, when it suited her,

that she was almost in agreement with each of them. The accusation

{325} that she was "an atheist and a maintainer of atheism" [Sidenote:

1601] meant no more than that her interests were secular. She once

said that she would rather hear a thousand masses than be guilty of the

millions of crimes perpetrated by some of those who had suppressed the

mass. She liked candles, crucifixes and ritual just as she

inordinately loved personal display. And politically she learned very

early to fear the republicanism of Knox.

[Sidenote: Most of people Catholic]

The conservatism of Elizabeth's policy was determined also by the

consideration that, though the more intelligent and progressive classes

were Protestant, the mass of the people still clung to the Roman faith,

and, if they had no other power, had at least the _vis inertiae_.

Accurate figures cannot be obtained, but a number of indications are

significant. In 1559 Convocation asserted the adherence of the clergy

to the ancient faith. Maurice Clenoch estimated in 1561 that the

majority of the people would welcome foreign intervention in favor of

Mary Stuart and the old faith. Nicholas Sanders, a contemporary

Catholic apologist, said that the common people of that period were

divided into three classes: husbandmen, shepherds and mechanics. The

first two classes he considered entirely Catholic; the third class, he

said, were not tainted with schism as a whole, but only in some parts,

those, namely of sedentary occupation such as weavers, cobblers and

some lazy "aulici," _i.e._ servants and humble retainers of the great.

The remote parts of the kingdom, he added, were least tainted with

heresy and, as the towns were few and small, he estimated that less

than one per cent. of the population was Protestant. Though these

figures are a tremendous exaggeration of the proportion of Catholics,

some support may be found for them in the information sent to the Curia

in 1567 that 32 English nobles were Catholic, 20 {326} well affected to

the Catholics and 15 Protestants. Only slightly different is the

report sent in 1571 that at that time 33 English peers were Catholic,

15 doubtful and 16 heretical. As a matter of fact, in religious

questions we find that the House of Lords would have been Catholic but

for the bishops, a solid phalanx of government nominees.

[Sidenote: But most powerful class Protestants]

But if the masses were Catholic, the strategically situated classes

were Reformed. The first House of Commons of Elizabeth proved by its

acts to be strongly Protestant. The assumption generally made that it

was packed by the government has been recently exploded. Careful

testing shows that there was hardly any government interference. Of

the 390 members, 168 had sat in earlier Parliaments of Mary, and that

was just the normal proportion of old members. It must be remembered

that the parliamentary franchise approached the democratic only in the

towns, the strongholds of Protestantism, and that in the small boroughs

and in some of the counties the election was determined by just that

middle class most progressive and at this time most Protestant.

Another test of the temper of the country is the number of clergy

refusing the oath of supremacy. Out of a total number of about nine

thousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, and

most of these were Mary's appointees.

The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of the

time. The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by the

Parker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts,

hymns and letters of this period. During the first thirty years of

Elizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther's

works, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations from

Melanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin.

{327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, the

English Reformation at this time resumed the national character

temporarily lost during Mary's reign. John Jewel's _Apologia Ecclesiae

Anglicanae_ [Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the first

methodical statement of the position of the church of England against

the church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy."

Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the rising

young men, were Protestants. The English sea-captains, wolves of the

sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the

sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the

cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord

Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale,

still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the

interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the

time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to Lutheran

Germany as "a place where Christ's doctrine, the fear of God,

punishment of sin, and discipline of honesty were held in special

regard." Edmund Spenser's great allegory, as well as some of his minor

poems, were largely inspired by Anglican and Calvinistic purposes.

[Sidenote: Conversion of the masses]

It was during Elizabeth's reign that the Roman Catholics lost the

majority they claimed in 1558 and became the tiny minority they have

ever since remained. The time and to some extent the process through

which this came to pass can be traced with fair accuracy. In 1563 the

policy of the government, till then wavering, became more decided,

indicating that the current had begun to set in favor of Protestantism.

The failure of the Northern rising and of the papal bull in 1569-70,

indicated the weakness of the ancient faith. In 1572 a careful

estimate of the {328} religious state of England was made by a

contemporary, [Sidenote: Carleton's estimate] who thought that of the

three classes into which he divided the population, papist, Protestant

and atheist (by which he probably meant, indifferent) the first was

smaller than either of the other two. Ten years later (1580-85) the

Jesuit mission in England claimed 120,000 converts. But in reality

these adherents were not new converts, but the remnant of Romanism

remaining faithful. If we assume, as a distinguished historian has

done, that this number included nearly all the obstinately devoted, as

the population of England and Wales was then about 4,000,000, the

proportion of Catholics was only about 3 per cent. of the total, at

which percentage it remained constant during the next century. But

there were probably a considerable number of timid Roman Catholics not

daring to make themselves known to the Jesuit mission. But even

allowing liberally for these, it is safe to say that by 1585 the

members of that church had sunk to a very small minority.

Those who see in the conversion of the English people the result merely

of government pressure must explain two inconvenient facts. The first

is that the Puritans, who were more strongly persecuted than the

papists, waxed mightily notwithstanding. The second is that, during

the period when the conversion of the masses took place, there were no

martyrdoms and there was little persecution. The change was, in fact,

but the inevitable completion and consequence of the conversion of the

leaders of the people earlier. With the masses, doubtless, the full

contrast between the old and the new faiths was not realized.

Attending the same churches if not the same church, using a liturgy

which some hoped would obtain papal sanction, and ignorant of the

changes made in translation from the Latin ritual, the uneducated did

not trouble themselves {329} about abstruse questions of dogma or even

about more obvious matters such as the supremacy of the pope and the

marriage of the clergy. Moreover, there were strong positive forces

attracting them to the Anglican communion. They soon learned to love

the English prayer-book, and the Bible became so necessary that the

Catholics were obliged to produce a version of their own. English

insularity and patriotism drew them powerfully to the bosom of their

own peculiar communion.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's policy]

Though we can now see that the forces drawing England to the

Reformation were decisive, the policy of Elizabeth was at first

cautious. The old services went on until Parliament had spoken. As

with Henry VIII, so with this daughter of his, scrupulous legality of

form marked the most revolutionary acts. Elizabeth had been proclaimed

"Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith &c," this

"&c" being chosen to stand in place of the old title "Supreme Head of

the Church," thus dodging the question of its assumption or omission.

Parliament, however, very soon passed supremacy and uniformity acts to

supply the needed sanction. The former repealed Philip and Mary's

Heresy Act and Repealing Statute, revived ten acts of Henry VIII and

one of Edward VI, but confirmed the repeal of six acts of Henry VIII.

Next, Parliament proceeded to seize the episcopal lands. Its spirit

was just as secular as that of Henry's Parliaments, only there was less

ecclesiastical property left to grab.

The Book of Common Prayer was revised by introducing into the recension

of 1552 a few passages from the first edition of 1549, previously

rejected as too Catholic. Three of the Forty-two Articles of Religion

of Edward were dropped, [Sidenote: The Thirty-nine Articles 1563] thus

making the Thirty-nine Articles that have ever since been the

authoritative {330} statement of Anglican doctrine. Thus it is true to

some extent that the Elizabethan settlement was a compromise. It took

special heed of various parties, and tried to avoid offence to

Lutherans, Zwinglians, and even to Roman Catholics. But far more than

a compromise, it was a case of special development. As it is usually

compared with the English Dissenting sects, the church of England is

often said to be the most conservative of the reformed bodies. It is

often said that it is Protestant in doctrine and Catholic in ritual and

hierarchy. But compared with the Lutheran church it is found to be if

anything further from Rome. In fact the Anglicans of the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries abhorred the Lutherans as "semi-papists."

[Sidenote: The Church of England]

And yet the Anglican church was like the Lutheran not only in its

conservatism as compared with Calvinism, but in its political aspects.

Both became the strong allies of the throne; both had not only a

markedly national but a markedly governmental quality. Just as the

Reformation succeeded in England by becoming national in opposition to

Spain, and remaining national in opposition to French culture, so the

Anglican church naturally became a perfect expression of the English

character. Moderate, decorous, detesting extremes of speculation and

enthusiasm, she cares less for logic than for practical convenience.

Closely interwoven with the religious settlement were the questions of

the heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy.

Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the people

and a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir was

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry

VIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race and

wholly by her first marriage to Francis II, she would have been most

{331} distasteful to the ruling party in England. Elizabeth was

therefore desired and finally urged by Parliament to marry. Her

refusal to do this has been attributed to some hidden cause, as her

love for Leicester or the knowledge that she was incapable of bearing a

child. But though neither of these hypotheses can be disproved,

neither is necessary to account for her policy. It is true that it

would have strengthened her position to have had a child to succeed

her; but it would have weakened her personal sway to have had a

husband. She wanted to rule as well as to reign. Her many suitors

were encouraged just sufficiently to flatter her vanity and to attain

her diplomatic ends. First, her brother-in-law Philip sought her hand,

and was promptly rejected as a Spanish Catholic. Then, there was

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, apparently her favorite in spite of

his worthless character, but his rank was not high enough. Then, there

were princes of Sweden and Denmark, an Archduke of Austria and two sons

of Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began when

Elizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote:

1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides.

Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make her

flirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twice

she forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwards

consented to hear the petition, she was careful not to call another

Parliament for five years.

[Sidenote: Financial measures]

Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largely

owing to the debasement of the currency royal expenditure had risen

from L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in the

last year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way,

and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By the

wise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543,

the hardest problems were solved.

[Sidenote: Underhand war]

Towards France and Spain Elizabeth's policy was one well described by

herself as "underhand war." English volunteers, with government

connivance, but nominally on their own responsibility, fought in the

ranks of Huguenots and Netherlanders. Torrents of money poured from

English churches to support their fellow-Protestants in France and

Holland. English sailors seized Spanish galleons; if successful the

queen secretly shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might be

hanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now,

was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very idea

of neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying to

harm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan England

the anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possible

this buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizes

themselves been enough to attract the adventurous. Doubtless far more

energy went into privateering than into legitimate commerce.

Peace was officially made with France, recognizing the surrender of

Calais at first for a limited period of years. Though peace was still

nominally kept with Spain for a long time, the shift of policy from one

of hostility to France to one of enmity to Spain was soon manifest. As

long, however, as the government relied chiefly on the commercial

interests of the capital and other large towns, and as long as Spain

controlled the Netherlands, open war was nearly impossible, for it

would have been extremely unpopular with the merchants of both London

and the Low Countries. In times of crisis, however, [Sidenote: 1569]

an embargo was laid on all trade with Philip's dominions.

Elizabeth's position was made extremely delicate by {333} the fact that

the heiress to her throne was the Scotch Queen Mary Stuart, who, since

1568, had been a refugee in England and had been kept in a sort of

honorable captivity. On account of her religion she became the center

of the hopes and of the actual machinations of all English malcontents.

In these plots she participated as far as she dared.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Powers]

Elizabeth's crown would have been jeoparded had the Catholic powers, or

any one of them, acted promptly. That they did not do so is proof,

partly of their mutual jealousies, party of the excellence of Cecil's

statesmanship. Convinced though he was that civil peace could only be

secured by religious unity, for five years he played a hesitating game

in order to hold off the Catholics until his power should be strong

enough to crush them. By a system of espionage, by permitting only

nobles and sailors to leave the kingdom without special licence, by

welcoming Dutch Protestant refugees, he clandestinely fostered the

strength of his party. His scheme was so far successful that the pope

hesitated more than eleven years before issuing the bull of

deprivation. For this Elizabeth had also to thank the Catholic

Hapsburgs; in the first place Philip who then hoped to marry her, and

in the second place the Emperor Ferdinand who said that if Elizabeth

were excommunicated the German Catholics would suffer for it and that

there were many German Protestant princes who deserved the ban as much

as she did.

Matters were clarified by the calling of the Council of Trent. Asked

to send an embassy to this council Elizabeth refused for three reasons:

(1) because she had not been consulted about calling the council; (2)

because she did not consider it free, pious and Christian; (3) because

the pope sought to stir up sedition in her realms. The council replied

to this snub by excommunicating her, but it is a significant sign of

the {334} times that neither they nor the pope as yet dared to use

spiritual weapons to depose her, as the pope endeavored to do a few

years later.

[Sidenote: Anti-Catholic laws]

Whether as a reply to this measure or not, Parliament passed more

stringent laws against Catholics. Cecil's policy, inherited from

Thomas Cromwell, to centralize and unify the state, met with threefold

opposition; first from the papists who disliked nationalizing the

church, second from the holders of medieval franchises who objected to

their absorption in a centripetal system, and third from the old nobles

who resented their replacement in the royal council by upstarts. All

these forces produced a serious crisis in the years 1569-70. The

north, as the stronghold of both feudalism and Catholicism, led the

reaction. The Duke of Norfolk, England's premier peer, plotted with

the northern earls to advance Mary's cause, and thought of marrying her

himself. Pope Pius V warmly praised their scheme which culminated in a

rebellion. [Sidenote: Rebellion, 1561] The nobles and commons alike

were filled with the spirit of crusaders, bearing banners with the

cross and the five wounds of Christ. At the same time they voiced the

grievance of the old-fashioned farmer against the new-fangled merchant.

Their banners inscribed "God speed the plough" bear witness to the

agrarian element common to so many revolts. Their demands were the

restoration of Catholicism, intervention in Scotland to put Mary back

on her throne, and her recognition as heiress of England, and the

expulsion of foreign refugees. Had they been able to secure Mary's

person or had the Scotch joined them, it is probable that they would

have seceded from the south of England.

But the new Pilgrimage of Grace was destined to no more success than

the old one. Moray, Regent of Scotland, forcibly prevented assistance

going to the {335} rebels from North Britain. Elizabeth prepared an

overwhelming army, but it was not needed. The rebels, seeing the

hopelessness of their cause, dispersed and were pursued by an exemplary

punishment, no less than eight hundred being executed. Three years

later Norfolk trod the traitor's path to the scaffold. His death

sealed the ruin of the old nobility whose privileges were incompatible

with the new régime. In the same year a parliamentary agitation in

favor of the execution of Mary witnessed how dead were medieval titles

to respect.

[Sidenote: Papal Bull, February 25, 1570]

Too late to have much effect, Pius V issued the bull _Regnans in

excelsis_, declaring that whereas the Roman pontiff has power over all

nations and kingdoms to destroy and ruin or to plant and build up, and

whereas Elizabeth, the slave of vice, has usurped the place of supreme

head of the church, has sent her realm to perdition and has celebrated

the impious mysteries of Calvin, therefore she is cut off from the body

of Christ and deprived of her pretended right to rule England, while

all her subjects are absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The bull

also reasserted Elizabeth's illegitimacy, and echoed the complaint of

the northern earls that she had expelled the old nobility from her

council. The promulgation of the bull, without the requisite warning

and allowance of a year for repentance, was contrary to the canon law.

The fulmination was sent to Alva to the Netherlands and a devotee was

found to carry it to England. Forthwith Elizabeth issued a masterly

proclamation vouchsafing that,

her majesty would have all her loving subjects to

understand that, as long as they shall openly continue in

the observation of her laws, and shall not wilfully and

manifestly break them by open actions, her majesty's means

is not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or

{336}

examination of their consciences in causes of religion, but

to accept and entreat them as her good and obedient subjects.

But to obviate the contamination of her people by political views

expressed in the bull, [Sidenote: Anti-papal laws] and to guard against

the danger of a further rising in the interests of Mary Stuart, the

Parliament of 1571 passed several necessary laws. One of these forbade

bringing the bull into England; another made it treasonable to declare

that Elizabeth was not or ought not to be queen or that she was a

heretic, usurper or schismatic.

The first seventeen years of Elizabeth's reign had been blessedly free

from persecution. The increasing strain between England and the papacy

was marked by a number of executions of Romanists. A recent Catholic

estimate is that the total number of this faith who suffered under

Elizabeth was 189, of whom 128 were priests, 58 laymen and three women;

and to this should be added 32 Franciscans who died in prison of

starvation. The contrast of 221 victims in Elizabeth's forty-five

years as against 290 in Mary's five years, is less important than the

different purpose of the government. Under Mary the executions were

for heresy; under Elizabeth chiefly for treason. It is true that the

whole age acted upon Sir Philip Sidney's maxim that it was the highest

wisdom of statesmanship never to separate religion from politics.

Church and state were practically one and the same body, and opinions

repugnant to established religion naturally resulted in acts inimical

to the civil order. But the broad distinction is plain. Cecil put men

to death not because he detested their dogma but because he feared

their politics.

Nothing proves more clearly the purposes of the English government than

its long duel with the Jesuit mission. [Sidenote: Jesuit mission] It

is unfair to say that the primary purpose {337} of the Curia was to get

all the privileges of loyalty for English Catholics while secretly

inciting them to rise and murder their sovereign. But the very fact

that the Jesuits were instructed not to meddle in politics and yet were

unable to keep clear of the law, proves how inextricably politics and

religion were intertwined. Immediately drawing the suspicion of

Burghley, they were put to the "bloody question" and illegally

tortured, even while the government felt called upon to explain that

they were not forced to the rack to answer "any question of their

supposed conscience" but only as to their political opinions. But one

of these opinions was whether the pope had the right to depose the

queen.

[Sidenote: Character of Jesuits]

The history of these years is one more example of how much more

accursed it is to persecute than to be persecuted. The Jesuits sent to

England were men of the noblest character, daring and enduring all with

fortitude, showing charity and loving-kindness even to their enemies.

But the character of their enemies correspondingly deteriorated. That

sense of fair play that is the finest English quality disappeared under

the stress of fanaticism. Not only Jesuits, but Catholic women and

children were attacked; one boy of thirteen was racked and executed as

a traitor. The persecution by public opinion supplied what the

activity of the government overlooked. In fact it was the government

that was the moderating factor. The act passed in 1585 banishing the

Jesuits was intended to obviate sterner measures. In dealing with the

mass of the population Burghley made persecution pay its way by

resorting to fines as the principal punishment. During the last twenty

years of the reign no less than L6,000 per annum was thus collected.

The helpless rage of the popes against "the Jezebel of the north" waxed

until one of them, Gregory XIII, {338} sanctioned an attempt at her

assassination. [Sidenote: Conspiracies] In 1580 there appeared at the

court of Madrid one Humphrey Ely, later a secular priest. He informed

the papal nunciature that some English nobles, mentioned by name, had

determined to murder Elizabeth but wished the pope's own assurance

that, in case they lost their lives in the attempt, they should not

have fallen into sin by the deed. After giving his own opinion that

the bull of Pius V gave all men the right to take arms against the

queen in any fashion, the nuncio wrote to Rome. From the papal

secretary, speaking in the pope's name, he received the following reply:

As that guilty woman of England rules two so noble

realms of Christendom, is the cause of so much harm to

the Catholic faith, and is guilty of the loss of so many

million souls, there is no doubt that any one who puts

her out of the world with the proper intention of serving

God thereby, not only commits no sin but even wins

merit, especially seeing that the sentence of the late

Pius V is standing against her. If, therefore, these

English nobles have really decided to do so fair a work,

your honor may assure them that they commit no sin.

Also we may trust in God that they will escape all danger.

As to your own irregularity [caused to the nuncio as a

priest by conspiracy to murder] the pope sends you his

holy blessing.[1]

A conspiracy equally unsuccessful but more famous, because discovered

at the time, was that of Anthony Babington. Burghley's excellent

secret service apprised the government not only of the principals but

also of aid and support given to them by Philip II and Mary Queen of

Scots. Parliament petitioned for the execution of Mary. Though there

was no doubt of her guilt, Elizabeth hesitated to give the dangerous

example of sending a crowned head to the block. {339} With habitual

indirection she did her best to get Mary's jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to

put her to death without a warrant. Failing in this, she finally

signed the warrant, [Sidenote: Mary beheaded, February 8, 1587] but

when her council acted upon it in secret haste lest she should change

her mind, she flew into a rage and, to prove her innocence, heavily

fined and imprisoned one of the privy council whom she selected as

scapegoat.

[Sidenote: War with Spain]

The war with Spain is sometimes regarded as the inevitable consequence

of the religious opposition of the chief Catholic and the chief

Protestant power. But probably the war would never have gone beyond

the stage of privateering and plots to assassinate in which it remained

inchoate for so long, had it not been for the Netherlands. The

corner-stone of English policy has been to keep friendly, or weak, the

power controlling the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. The war of

liberation in the Netherlands had a twofold effect; in the first place

it damaged England's best customer, and secondly, Spanish

"frightfulness" shocked the English conscience. For a long time the

policy of the queen herself was as cynically selfish as it could

possibly be. She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva,

but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince of

Orange, now betraying his cause in a way that may have been sport to

her but was death to the men she played with. Her aim, as far as she

had a consistent one, was to allow Spain and the Netherlands to exhaust

each other.

Not only far nobler but, as it proved in the end, far wiser, was the

action of the Puritan party that poured money and recruits into the

cause of their oppressed fellow-Calvinists. But an equally great

service to them, or at any rate a greater amount of damage to Spain,

was done by the hardy buccaneers, Hawkins and Drake, who preyed upon

the Spanish treasure {340} galleons and pillaged the Spanish

settlements in the New World. These men and their fellows not only cut

the sinews of Spain's power but likewise built the fleet.

[Sidenote: England's sea power]

The eventual naval victory of England was preceded by a long course of

successful diplomacy. As the aggressor England forced the haughtiest

power in Europe to endure a protracted series of outrages. Not only

were rebels supported, not only were Spanish fleets taken forcibly into

English harbors and there stripped of moneys belonging to their

government, but refugees were protected and Spanish citizens put to

death by the English queen. Philip and Alva could not effectively

resent and hardly dared to protest against the treatment, because they

felt themselves powerless. As so often, the island kingdom was

protected by the ocean and by the proved superiority of her seamen.

After a score of petty fights all the way from the Bay of Biscay to the

Pacific Ocean, Spanish sailors had no desire for a trial of strength in

force.

But in every respect save in sea power Spain felt herself immeasurably

superior to her foe. Her wealth, her dominions, recently augmented by

the annexation of Portugal, were enormous; her army had been tried in a

hundred battles. England's force was doubtless underestimated. An

Italian expert stated that an army of 10,000 to 12,000 foot and 2,000

horse would be sufficient to conquer her. Even to the last it was

thought that an invader would be welcomed by a large part of the

population, for English refugees never wearied of picturing the hatred

of the people for their queen.

But the decision was long postponed for two reasons. First, Spain was

fully employed in subduing the Netherlands. Secondly, the Catholic

powers hoped for the accession of Mary. But after the assassination of

Orange in 1584, and after the execution of the Queen {341} of Scots,

these reasons for delay no longer existed. Drake carried the naval war

[Sidenote: 1585] to the coasts of Spain and to her colonies. The

consequent bankruptcy of the Bank of Seville and the wounded national

pride brought home to Spaniards the humiliation of their position. All

that Philip could do was to pray for help and to forbid the importation

of English wares. [Sidenote: April 1587] In reply Drake fell upon the

harbor of Cadiz and destroyed twenty-four or more warships and vast

military stores.

So at last the decision was taken to crush the one power that seemed to

maintain the Reformation, to uphold the Huguenots and the Dutch

patriots and to harry with impunity the champions of Catholicism. Pope

Sixtus V, not wishing to hazard anything, promised a subsidy of

1,000,000 crowns of gold, the first half payable on the landing of the

Spanish army, the second half two months later. Save this, Philip had

no promise of help from any Catholic power.

The huge scale of his preparations was only equaled by their vast lack

of intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of ship

adopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy but

totally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 ships

carried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small,

intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against the

ships themselves. The necessary geographical information for the

invasion of Britain in the year 1588 was procured from Caesar's _De

Bello Gallico_. The admiral in chief, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had

never even commanded a ship before and most of the high officers were

equally innocent of professional knowledge, for sailors were despised

as inferior to soldiers. Three-fourths of the crews were soldiers, all

but useless in naval warfare of the new type. Blind zeal did little to

supply the lack {342} of foresight, though Philip spent hours on his

knees before the host in intercession for the success of his venture.

The very names of the ships, though quite in accordance with Spanish

practice, seem symbolic of the holy character of the crusade: _Santa

Maria de Gracia, Neustra Señora del Rosario, San Juan Baptista, La

Concepcion_.

On the English side there was also plenty of fanatical fury, but it was

accompanied by practical sense. The grandfathers of Cromwell's

Ironsides had already learned, if they had not yet formulated, the

maxim, "Fear God and keep your powder dry." Some of the ships in the

English navy had religious names, but many were called by more secular

appellations: _The Bull, The Tiger, The Dreadnought, The Revenge_. To

meet the foe a very formidable and self-confident force of about

forty-five ships of the best sort had gathered from the well-tried

ranks of the buccaneers. It is true that patronage did some damage to

the English service, but it was little compared to that of Spain. Lord

Howard of Effingham was made admiral on account of his title, but the

vice-admiral was Sir Francis Drake, to whom the chief credit of the

action must fall.

[Sidenote: July, 1588]

The battle in the Channel was fought for nine days. There was no

general strategy or tactics; the English simply sought to isolate and

sink a ship wherever they could. Their heavier cannon were used

against the enemy, and fire-ships were sent among his vessels. When

six Spanish ships had foundered in the Channel, the fleet turned

northward to the coasts of Holland. During their flight an uncertain

number were destroyed by the English, and a few more fell a prey to the

Sea Beggars of Holland. The rest, much battered, turned north to sail

around Scotland. In the storms nineteen ships were wrecked on the

coasts of Scotland and Ireland; of thirty-five ships the Spaniards

themselves {343} could give no account. For two months Philip was in

suspense as to the fate of his great Armada, of which at last only a

riddled and battered remnant returned to home harbors.

The importance of the victory over the Armada, like that of most

dramatic events, has been overestimated. To contemporaries, at least

to the victors and their friends it appeared as the direct judgment of

God: "Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt." The gorgeous rhetoric of Ranke

and Froude has painted it as one of the turning points in world

history. But in reality it rather marked than made an epoch. Had

Philip's ships won, it is still inconceivable that he could have

imposed his dominion on England any more than he could on the

Netherlands. England was ripening and Spain was rotting for half a

century before the collision made this fact plain to all. The Armada

did not end the war nor did it give the death blow to Spanish power,

much less to Catholicism. On the Continent of Europe things went on

almost unchanged.

But in England the effect was considerable. The victory stimulated

national pride; it strengthened the Protestants, and the left wing of

that party. Though the Catholics had shown themselves loyal during the

crisis they were subjected, immediately thereafter, to the severest

persecution they had yet felt. This was due partly to nervous

excitement of the whole population, partly to the advance towards power

of the Puritans, always the war party.

[Sidenote: Puritans]

Even in the first years of the great queen there had been a number of

Calvinists who looked askance at the Anglican settlement as too much of

a compromise with Catholicism and Lutheranism. The Thirty-nine

Articles passed Convocation by a single vote [Sidenote: 1563] as

against a more Calvinistic confession. Low-churchmen (as they would

now be called) attacked the "Aaronic" {344} vestments of the Anglican

priests, and prelacy was detested as but one degree removed from papacy.

The Puritans were not dissenters but were a party in the Anglican

communion thoroughly believing in a national church, but wishing to

make the breach with Rome as wide as possible. They found fault with

all that had been retained in the Prayer Book for which there was no

direct warrant in Scripture, and many of them began to use, in secret

conventicles, the Genevan instead of the English liturgy. Their

leader, Thomas Cartwright, [Sidenote: Cartwright, 1535-1603] a

professor of divinity at Cambridge until deprived of his chair by the

government, had brought back from the Netherlands ideals of a

presbyterian form of ecclesiastical polity. In his view many "Popish

Abuses" remained in the church of England, among them the keeping of

saints' days, kneeling at communion, "the childish and superstitious

toys" connected with the baptismal service, the words then used in the

marriage service by the man, "with my body I thee worship" by which the

husband "made an idol of his wife," the use of such titles as

archbishop, arch-deacon, lord bishop.

It was because of their excessively scrupulous conscience in these

matters, that the name "Puritan" was given to the Calvinist by his

enemy, at first a mocking designation analogous to "Catharus" in the

Middle Ages. But the tide set strongly in the Puritan direction. Time

and again the Commons tried to initiate legislation to relieve the

consciences of the stricter party, but their efforts were blocked by

the crown. From this time forth the church of England made an alliance

with the throne that has never been broken. As Jewel had been

compelled, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, [Sidenote: 1562] to

defend the Anglican church against Rome, so Richard Hooker, in his

famous {345} _Ecclesiastical Polity_ [Sidenote: 1594] was now forced to

defend it from the extreme Protestants. In the very year in which this

finely tempered work was written, a Jesuit reported that the Puritans

were the strongest body in the kingdom and particularly that they had

the most officers and soldiers on their side. The coming Commonwealth

was already casting its shadow on the age of Shakespeare.

As a moral and religious influence Puritanism was of the utmost

importance in moulding the English--and American--character and it was,

take it all in all, a noble thing. If it has been justly blamed for a

certain narrowness in its hostility, or indifference, to art and

refinement, it more than compensated for this by the moral earnestness

that it impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible into

English life and literature, to impress each man with the idea of

living for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state to

ethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically,

it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense of

personal worth that made democracy possible and necessary.

[Sidenote: Browne, 1550?-1633?]

To the left of the Puritans were the Independents or Brownists as they

were called from their leader Robert Browne, the advocate of

_Reformation without Tarrying for Any_. He had been a refugee in the

Netherlands, where he may have come under Anabaptist influence. His

disciples differed from the followers of Cartwright in separating

themselves from the state church, in which they found many "filthy

traditions and inventions of men." Beginning to organize hi separate

congregations about 1567, they were said by Sir Walter Raleigh to have

as many as 20,000 adherents in 1593. Though heartily disliked by

re-actionaries and by the _beati possidentes_ in both church {346} and

state, they were, nevertheless, the party of the future.

[1] A. O. Meyer: _England und die katholische Kirche unter Elizabeth_,

p. 231.

SECTION 5. IRELAND

If the union of England and Wales has been a marriage--after a

courtship of the primitive type; if the union with Scotland has been a

successful partnership--following a long period of cut-throat

competition; the position of Ireland has been that of a captive and a

slave. To her unwilling mind the English domination has always been a

foreign one, and this fact makes more difference with her than whether

her master has been cruel, as formerly, or kind, as of late.

[Sidenote: English rule]

The saddest period in all Erin's sad life was that of the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, when to the old antagonism of race was added a

new hatred of creed and a new commercial competition. The policy of

Henry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of God and obedience

of Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that God might "call them

to the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to assist the

Almighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. The

government of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime some

considerations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded the

Irish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, as

savages to be killed and driven off to make room for a higher

civilization. Had England been able to apply the method of

extermination she would doubtless have done so and there would then be

no Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "to

enterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all the

Irishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge and great

difficulty."