One of the last acts of the dying King had been to make a will regulating the succession. It was doubtless suggested to him by the Duke of Northumberland, but, once adopted, the lad clung to it with Tudor tenacity. It set aside as illegitimate both his sisters. It also set aside the young Queen of Scotland, who, failing Mary and Elizabeth, was the legitimate heir, being the granddaughter of Margaret, the eldest sister of Henry VIII., and selected the Lady Jane Grey, the representative (eldest child of eldest child) of Mary, the younger sister of Henry VIII. Both the King and his Council seem to have thought that the nation would not submit to a Roman Catholic on the throne; and Charles V. appears to have agreed with them. He considered the chances of Mary’s succession small.
The people of England, however, rallied to Mary, as the nearest in blood to their old monarch, who, notwithstanding his autocratic rule, had never lost touch with his people.
The new Queen naturally turned to her cousin Charles V. for guidance. He had upheld her mother’s cause and her own; and in the dark days which were past, his Ambassador Chapuys had been her indefatigable friend.
It was Mary’s consuming desire to bring back the English Church and nation to obedience to Rome—to undo the work of her father, and especially of her brother. The Emperor recommended caution; he advised the Queen to be patient; to watch and accommodate her policy to the manifestations of the feelings of her people; to punish the leaders who had striven to keep her from the throne, but to treat all their followers with clemency. Above all, she was to mark carefully the attitude of her sister Elizabeth, and to reorganise the finances of the country.
Mary had released Gardiner from the Tower, and made him her trusted Minister. His advice in all matters, save that of her marriage, coincided with the Emperor’s. It was thought that small difficulty would be found in restoring the Roman Catholic religion, but that difficulties might arise about the papal supremacy, and especially about the reception of a papal Legate. Much depended on the Pope. If His Holiness did not demand the restoration of the ecclesiastical property alienated during the last two reigns, and now distributed among over forty thousand proprietors, all might go well.
Signs were not wanting, however, that if the people were almost unanimous in accepting Mary as their Queen, they were not united upon religion. When Dr. Gilbert Bourne, preaching at St. Paul’s Cross (Aug. 13th, 1553) praised Bishop Bonner, he was interrupted by shouts; a dagger was thrown at him; he was hustled out of the pulpit, and his life was threatened. The tumult was only appeased when Bradford, a known Protestant, appealed to the crowd. The Lord Mayor of London was authorised to declare to the people that it was not the Queen’s intention to constrain men’s consciences, and that she meant to trust solely to persuasion to bring them to the true faith.
Five days later (August 18th), Mary issued her first Proclamation about Religion, in which she advised her subjects “to live together in quiet sort and Christian charity, leaving those new-found devilish terms of papist or heretic and such like.” She declared that she meant to support that religion which she had always professed; but she promised “that she would not compel any of her subjects thereunto, unto such time as further order, by common assent, may be taken therein”—a somewhat significant threat. The proclamation prohibited unlicensed preaching and printing “any book, matter, ballad, rhyme, interlude, process, or treatise, or to play any interlude, except they have Her Grace’s special licence in writing for the same,” which makes it plain that from the outset Mary did not intend that any Protestant literature should be read by her subjects if she could help it.[496]
Mary was crowned with great ceremony on October 1st, and her first Parliament met four days later (Oct. 5th to Dec. 6th, 1553). It reversed a decision of a former Parliament, and declared that Henry VIII.’s marriage with Catharine of Aragon had been valid, and that Mary was the legitimate heir to the throne; and it wiped out all the religious legislation under Edward VI. The Council had wished the anti-papal laws of Henry VIII. to be rescinded; but Parliament, especially the House of Commons, was not prepared for anything so sweeping. The Church of England was legally restored to what it had been at the death of Henry, and Mary was left in the anomalous position of being the supreme head of the Church in England while she herself devoutly believed in the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The title and the powers it gave were useful to restore by royal proclamation the mediæval ritual and worship, and Mass was reintroduced in this way in December.[497]
Meanwhile the marriage of the Queen was being discussed. Mary herself decided the matter by solemnly promising the Spanish Ambassador (Oct. 19th) that she would wed Philip of Spain; the marriage treaty was signed on January 12th, 1554; the formal betrothal took place in March, and the wedding was celebrated on July 25th.[498] It was very unpopular from the first. The boys of London pelted with snowballs the servants of the Spanish embassy sent to ratify the wedding treaty (Jan. 1st, 1554); the envoys themselves were very coldly received by the populace; and Mary had to issue a proclamation commanding that all courtesy should be used to the Prince of Spain and his train coming to England to marry the Queen.[499]
In September (1553) the pronouncedly Protestant Bishops who had remained in England to face the storm, Cranmer, Ridley, Coverdale, Latimer, were ejected and imprisoned; the Protestant refugees from France and Germany and many of the eminent Protestant leaders had sought safety on the Continent; the deprived Romanist Bishops, Gardiner, Heath, Bonner, Day, had been reinstated; and the venerable Bishop Tunstall, who had acted as Wolsey’s agent at the famous Diet of Worms, had been placed in the See of Durham.
Various risings, one or two of minor importance and a more formidable one under Sir Thomas Wyatt, had been crushed. Lady Jane Grey, Lord Guilford Dudley (February 12th, 1554), Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lord Suffolk, and others were executed. Charles V. strongly recommended the execution of the Princess Elizabeth, but his advice was not followed.
England was still an excommunicated land, and both Queen and King Consort were anxious to receive the papal peace. As soon as he had been informed by Mary of her succession to the throne, the Pope, Julius II., had selected Cardinal Pole to be his Legate to England (early in August 1553). No one could have been more suitable. He was related to the royal house of England, a grandson of the Duke of Clarence, who was the brother of Edward IV. He had so thoroughly disapproved of the anti-papal policy of Henry VIII. that he had been compelled to live in exile. He was a Cardinal, and had almost become Pope. No one could have been more acceptable to Mary. He had protested against her mother’s divorce, and had suffered for it; and he was as anxious as she to see England restored to the papal obedience. But many difficulties had to be cleared away before Pole could land in England as the Pope’s Legate. The English people did not love Legates, and their susceptibilities had to be soothed. If the Pope made the restoration of the Church lands a condition of the restoration of England to the papal obedience, and if Mary insisted on securing that obedience, there would be a rebellion, and she would lose her crown. No one knew all these difficulties better than the Emperor, and he exerted himself to overcome them. The Curia was persuaded that, as it was within the Canon Law to alienate ecclesiastical property for the redemption of prisoners, the Church might give up her claims to the English abbey lands in order to win back the whole kingdom. Pole himself had doubts about this. He believed that he might be allowed to reason with the lay appropriators and persuade them to make restoration, and his enthusiasm on the subject caused many misgivings in the minds of both Charles and Philip. Nor could the Cardinal land in England until his attainder as an English nobleman had been reversed by Parliament. He had been appointed Legate to England once before (February 7th, 1536), in order to compass Henry VIII.’s return to the papal obedience; he had written against the Royal Supremacy. Neither Lords nor Commons were very anxious to receive him.
At last, more than thirteen months after his appointment, the way was open for his coming to England. He landed at Dover (Nov. 20th, 1554), went on to Gravesend, and there found waiting him an Act of Parliament revers ing his attainder. It had been introduced into the Lords, passed in the Upper House in two days, was read three times in the Commons in one day, and received the Royal Assent immediately thereafter (Nov. 27th, 1554). Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham, brought him letters patent, empowering him to exercise his office of Legate in England. He embarked in a royal barge with his silver cross in the prow, sailed up the Thames on a favouring tide, landed at Whitehall, and was welcomed by Mary and Philip. On the following day the two Houses of Parliament were invited to the Palace to meet him, and he explained his commission. The day after, the question was put in both Houses of Parliament whether the nation should return to the papal obedience, and was answered affirmatively. Whereupon Lords and Commons joined in a supplication to the Queen “that they might receive absolution, and be received into the body of the Holy Catholic Church, under the Pope, the Supreme Head thereof.” The Supplication was presented on the 30th, and in its terms the Queen besought the Legate to absolve the realm for its disobedience and schism. Then, while the whole assembly knelt, King and Queen on their knees with the others, the Legate pronounced the absolution, and received the kingdom “again into the unity of our Mother the Holy Church.”
It now remained to Parliament to pass the laws which the change required. In one comprehensive statute all the anti-papal legislation of the reigns of Henry VIII. and of Edward VI. was rescinded, and England was, so far as laws could make it,[500] what it had been in the reign of Henry VII. Two days later (Dec. 2nd, 1554), on the first Sunday in Advent, Philip and Mary, with the Legate, attended divine service in St. Paul’s, and after Mass listened to an eloquent sermon from Bishop Gardiner, in the course of which he publicly abjured the teaching of his book De vera obedientia.[501] Convocation received a special absolution from the Legate. To show how thoroughly England had reconciled itself to Mother Church, Parliament proceeded to revive the old Acts against heresy which had been originally passed for the suppression of Lollardy, among them the notorious De hæretico comburendo, and England had again the privilege of burning Evangelical Christians secured to it by Act of Parliament.[502]
In March 1554 the Queen had issued a series of Injunctions to all Bishops, instructing them on a variety of matters, all tending to bring the Church into the condition in which it had been before the innovations of the late reign. The Bishops were to put into execution all canons and ecclesiastical laws which were not expressly contrary to the statutes of the realm. They were not to inscribe on any of their ecclesiastical documents the phrase regia auctoritate fulcitus; they were to see that no heretic was admitted to any ecclesiastical office; they were to remove all married priests, and to insist that every person vowed to celibacy was to be separated from his wife if he had married; they were to observe all the holy days and ceremonies which were in use in the later days of the reign of King Henry VIII.; all schoolmasters suspected of heresy were to be removed from their office. These Injunctions kept carefully within the lines of the Act which had rescinded the ecclesiastical legislation of the reign of Edward VI.[503] The Bishop of London, Bonner, had previously issued a list of searching questions to be put to the clergy of his diocese, which concerned the laity as well as the clergy, and which went a good deal further. He asked whether there were any married clergymen, or clergymen who had not separated themselves from their wives or concubines? Whether any of the clergy maintained doctrines contrary to the Catholic faith? Whether any of the clergy had been irregularly or schismatically ordained? Whether any of them had said Mass or administered the sacraments in the English language after the Queen’s proclamation? Whether they kept all the holy days and fasting days prescribed by the Church? Whether any of the clergy went about in other than full clerical dress? Whether any persons in the parish spoke in favour of clerical marriage? These and many other minute questions were put, with the evident intention of restoring the mediæval ceremonies and customs in every detail.[504] His clergy assured the Bishop that it was impossible to make all the changes he demanded at once, and Bonner was obliged to give them till the month of November to get their parishes in order. This London visitation evidently provoked a great deal of discontent. In April (1554) “a dead cat was hung on the gallows in the Cheap, habited in garments like those of a priest. It had a shaven crown, and held in its forepaws a round piece of paper to represent a wafer.... A reward of twenty marks was offered for the discovery of the author of the outrage, but it was quite ineffectual.”[505] Other graver incidents showed the smouldering discontent.
The revival in Parliament of the old anti-heresy laws may be taken as the time clearly foreshadowed in the Queen’s first proclamation on religious affairs when persuasion was to cease and force take its place. The platitudes of many modern historians about Mary’s humane and merciful disposition, about Gardiner’s aversion to shedding blood, about “the good Bishop” Bonner’s benevolent attempt to persuade his victims to recant, may be dismissed from our minds. The fact remains, that the persecutions which began in 1555 were clearly indicated in 1553, and went on with increasing severity until the Queen’s death put an end to them.
The visitations had done their work, and the most eminent of the Reformed bishops and divines had been caught and secured in various prisons. “The Tower, the Fleet, the Marshalsea, the King’s Bench, Newgate, and the two Counters were full of them.”[506] Their treatment differed. “The prisoners in the King’s Bench had tolerably fair usage, and favour sometimes shown them. There was a pleasant garden belonging thereunto, where they had liberty sometimes to walk.” They had also the liberty of meeting for worship, as had the prisoners in the Marshalsea. Their sympathisers who had escaped the search kept them supplied with food, as did the early Christians their suffering brethren in the first centuries. But in some of the other prisons the confessors were not only confined in loathsome cells, but suffered terribly from lack of food. At the end of Strype’s catalogue of the two hundred and eighty-eight persons who were burnt during the reign of Mary, he significantly adds, “besides those that dyed of famyne in sondry prisons.”[507] Some of the imprisoned were able to draw up (May 8th, 1554) and send out for circulation a confession of their faith, meant to show that they were suffering simply for holding and proclaiming what they believed to be scriptural truth. They declared that they believed all the canonical books of Scripture to be God’s very Word, and that it was to be the judge in all controversies of faith; that the Catholic Church was the Church which believed and followed the doctrines taught in Scripture; that they accepted the Apostles’ Creed and the decisions of the first four Œcumenical Councils and of the Council of Toledo, as well as the teachings of Athanasius, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Damasus; that they believed that justification came through the mercy of God, and that it was received by none but by faith only, and that faith was not an opinion, but a persuasion wrought by the Holy Ghost; they declared that the external service of God ought to be according to God’s Word, and conducted in a language which the people could understand; they confessed that God only by Jesus Christ is to be prayed to, and therefore disapproved of the invocation of the saints; they disowned Purgatory and Masses for the dead; they held that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were the Sacraments instituted by Christ, were to be administered according to the institution of Christ, and disallowed the mutilation of the sacrament, the theory of transubstantiation, and the adoration of the bread.[508] This was signed by Ferrar, Hooper, Coverdale (Bishops), by Rogers (the first martyr), by Bradford, Philpot, Crome, Saunders, and others. John Bradford, the single-minded, gentle scholar, was probably the author of the Confession.
Cardinal Pole, in his capacity as papal Legate, issued a commission (Jan. 28th, 1555) to Bishop Gardiner and several others to try the prisoners detained for heresy. Then followed (Feb. 4th, 1555) the burning of John Rogers, to whom Tyndale had entrusted his translation of the Scriptures, and who was the real compiler of the Bible known as Matthews’. The scenes at his execution might have warned the authorities that persecution was not going to be persuasive. Crowds cheered him as he passed to his death, “as if he were going to his wedding,” the French Ambassador reported. His fate excited a strong feeling of sympathy among almost all classes in society, which was ominous. Even Simon Renard, the trusted envoy of Charles V., took the liberty of warning Philip that less extreme measures ought to be used. But the worst of a persecuting policy is that when it has once begun it is almost impossible to give it up without confession of defeat. Bishop Hooper was sent to Gloucester to suffer in his cathedral town, Saunders to Coventry, and Dr. Taylor was burnt on Aldham Common in Suffolk. Several other martyrs suffered the same fate of burning a few days afterwards.
Robert Ferrar, the Reformed Bishop of St. David’s, was sent to Carmarthen to be burnt in the chief town of his diocese (March 30th, 1555). Perhaps it was his death that gave rise to the verses in Welsh, exhorting the men of the Principality to rise in defence of their religion against the English who were bent on its destruction, and calling them to extirpate image worship and the use of the crucifix.[509]
Bishops Ridley and Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer had been kept in confinement at Oxford since April 1554; and they were now to be proceeded against. The two Bishops were brought before the Court acting on a commission from Cardinal Pole, the Legate. They were condemned on Oct. 1st, 1555, and on the 16th they were burnt at Oxford in the present Broad Street before Balliol College. Cranmer witnessed their death from the top of the tower in which he was confined.
In the Archbishop’s case it was deemed necessary, in order to fulfil the requirements of Canon Law, that he should be tried by the Pope himself. He was accordingly informed that his sovereigns had “denounced” him to the Pope, and that His Holiness had commissioned the Cardinal Du Puy, Prefect of the Inquisition, to act on his behalf, and that Du Puy had delegated the duty to James Brooks, who had succeeded Hooper as Bishop of Gloucester, to the Dean of St. Paul’s, and to the Archdeacon of Canterbury. The trial took place in St. Mary’s Church. The accusers, Philip and Mary, were represented by Drs. Martyn and Story. They, in the name of their sovereigns, presented a lengthy indictment, in which the chief charges were adultery, perjury, and heresy. The first meant that although a priest he had been married, and had even married a second time after he had been made an Archbishop; the second, that he had sworn obedience to the Pope and broken his oath; and the third, that he had denied the doctrine of transubstantiation.[510]
Cranmer refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of his judges, but answered the charges brought against him to his accusers because they represented his sovereigns. He denied that the Pope had any ecclesiastical power within England; but submitted to the kingly supremacy. As Brooks had no authority from the Pope to do more than hear the case, no judgment was pronounced; it was only intimated that the proceedings would be reported to Rome. Cranmer was conducted back to his prison. There he addressed first one, then a second letter to the Queen.[511] In dignified and perfectly respectful language he expressed the degradation of the kingdom exhibited in the act of the sovereigns appealing to an “outward judge, or to an authority coming from any person out of this realm” to judge between them and one of their own subjects. Cranmer early in his career had come to the unalterable opinion that the papal supremacy was responsible for the abuses and disorders in the mediæval Church, and that reformation was impossible so long as it was maintained. In common with every thoughtful man of his generation, he repudiated the whole structure of papal claims built up by the Roman Curia during the fifteenth century, and held that it was in every way incompatible with the loyalty which every subject owed to his sovereign and to the laws of his country. He took his stand on this conviction.
“Ignorance, I know,” he said, “may excuse other men; but he that knoweth how prejudicial and injurious the power and authority which the Pope challengeth everywhere is to the Crown, laws, and customs of this realm, and yet will allow the same, I cannot see in anywise how he can keep his due allegiance, fidelity, and truth to the Crown and slate of this realm.”
In his second letter he struck a bolder note, and declared that the oath which Mary had sworn to maintain the laws, liberties, and customs of the realm was inconsistent with the other oath she had taken to obey the Pope, to defend his person, and to maintain his authority, honour, laws, and privileges. The accusation of perjury did not touch him at all. The sovereigns—Bishop Brooks, appointed to try him—every constituted authority in the realm—when confronted by it, had to choose between the oath of allegiance to country or to Papacy; he had chosen allegiance to his fatherland; others who acted differently betrayed it. That was his position. The words he addressed to Queen Mary—“I fear me that there be contradictions in your oath”—was his justification.
At Rome, Cranmer was found guilty of contumacy, and the command went forth that he was to be deposed, degraded, and punished as a heretic. In the meantime he was burnt in effigy at Rome. When he heard his sentence, he composed an Appeal to a General Council, following, he said, the example of Luther.[512] The degradation was committed to Bonner and Thirlby, and was executed by the former with his usual brutality. This done, he was handed over to the secular authorities for execution. Then began a carefully prepared course of refined mental torture, which resulted in the “Recantations of Thomas Cranmer.”[513] A series of recantations was presented to him, which he was ordered to sign by his sovereign; and, strange as it may seem now, it was the sovereign’s command that made it almost impossible for Cranmer to refuse to sign the papers which, one after another, were given him. He was a man who felt the necessity of an ultimate authority. He had deliberately put aside that of the Pope, and as deliberately placed that of the sovereign in its place; and now the ultimate authority, which his conscience approved, commanded him to sign. The first four were not real recantations; Cranmer could sign them with a good conscience; they consisted of generalities, the effect of which depended on the meaning of the terms used, and everyone knew the meanings which he had attached to the words all throughout his public life. But the fifth and the sixth soiled his conscience and occasioned his remorse. It was not enough for Mary, Pole, and Bonner that they were able to destroy by fire the bodies of English Reformers, they hoped by working partly on the conscience and partly on the weakness of the leader of the English Reformation, to show the worthlessness of the whole movement. In the end, the aged martyr redeemed his momentary weakness by a last act of heroism. He knew that his recantations had been published, and that any further declaration made would probably be suppressed by his unscrupulous antagonists. He resolved by a single action to defeat their calculations and stamp his sincerity on the memories of his countrymen. His dying speech was silenced, as he might well have expected; but he had made up his mind to something which could not be stifled.[514]
“At the moment he was taken to the stake he drew from his bosom the identical paper (the recantation), throwing it, in the presence of the multitude, with his own hands into the flames, asking pardon of God and of the people for having consented to such an act, which he excused by saying that he did it for the public benefit, as, had his life, which he sought to save, been spared him, he might at some time have still been of use to them, praying them all to persist in the doctrines believed by him, and absolutely denying the Sacrament and the supremacy of the Church. And, finally, stretching forth his arm and right hand, he said: ‘This which hath sinned, having signed the writing, must be the first to suffer punishment’; and thus did he place it in the fire and burned it himself.”[515]
If the martyrdoms of Ridley and Latimer lighted the torch, Cranmer’s spread the conflagration which in the end burnt up the Romanist reaction and made England a Protestant nation. The very weakness of the aged Primate became a background to make the clearer his final heroism. The “common man” sympathised with him all the more. He had never been a very strong man in the usual sense of the words. The qualities which go to form the exquisite liturgist demand an amount of religious sensibility and sympathy which seldom belongs to the leader of a minority with the present against it and the future before it. His peculiar kind of courage, which enabled him to face Henry VIII. in his most truculent moods, was liker a woman’s than a man’s, and was especially called forth by sympathy with others in suffering. None of Henry’s Ministers pleaded harder or more persistently for the Princess Mary, the woman who burnt him, than did Cranmer; and he alone of all his fellows dared to beseech the monarch for Cromwell in his fall.[516]
The death of Cranmer was followed by a long succession of martyrdoms. Cardinal Pole became the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in Philip’s absence the principal adviser of the Queen. He did not manage, if he tried, to stop the burnings. Sometimes he rescued prisoners from the vindictive Bonner; at others he seems to have hounded on the persecutors. Mary’s conscience, never satisfied at the confiscation of property, compelled her to restore the lands still in possession of the Crown, and to give up the “first fruits” of English benefices—the only result being to awaken the fears of thousands of proprietors, and set them against the papal claims. She attempted to restore the monastic institutions, with but scanty results; to revive pilgrimages to shrines, which were very forced affairs, and had to be kept alive by fining the parents of children who did not join them. The elevation of Pope Paul IV. (Cardinal Caraffa) to the See of Rome increased her difficulties. The new Pontiff, a Neapolitan, hated her Spanish husband, and personally disliked Cardinal Pole, her chief adviser. Her last years were full of troubles.
Mary died in 1558 (Nov. 17th). “The unhappiest of queens, and wives, and women,” she had been born amidst the rejoicings of a nation, her mother a princess of the haughtiest house in Europe. In her girlhood she had been the bride-elect of the Emperor—a lovely, winning young creature, all men say. In her seventeenth year, at the age when girls are most sensitive, the crushing stroke which blasted her whole life fell upon her. Her father, the Parliament, and the Church of her country called her illegitimate; and thus branded, she was sent into solitude to brood over her disgrace. When almost all England hailed her Queen in her thirty-seventh year, she was already an old woman, with sallow face, harsh voice, her dark bright eyes alone telling how beautiful she had once been. But the nation seemed to love her who had been so long yearning for affection; she married the man of her choice; and she felt herself the instrument selected by Heaven to restore an excommunicated nation to the peace of God. Her husband, whom she idolised, tired of living with her after a few years. The child she passionately longed for and pathetically believed to be coming never came.[517] The Church and the Pope she had sacrificed so much for, disregarded her entreaties, and seemed careless of her troubles. The people who had welcomed her, and whom she really loved, called her “Bloody” Mary,—a name which was, after all, so well deserved that it will always remain. Each disappointment she took as a warning from Heaven that atonement had not yet been paid for England’s crimes, and the fires of persecution were kept burning to appease the God of sixteenth century Romanism.
Mary Tudor’s health had long been frail, and when it was known for certain that she would leave no direct heir (i.e. from about June 1558), the people of England were silently coming to the conclusion that Elizabeth must be Queen, or civil war would result. It seemed also to be assumed that she would be a Protestant, and that her chief adviser would be William Cecil, who had been trained in statecraft as secretary to England’s greatest statesman, the Lord Protector Somerset. So it fell out.
Many things contributed to create such expectations. The young intellectual life of England was slowly becoming Protestant. Both the Spanish ambassadors noticed this with alarm, and reported it to their master.[519] This was especially the case among the young ladies of the upper classes, who were becoming students learned in Latin, Greek, and Italian, and at the same time devout Protestants, with a distinct leaning to what afterwards became Puritanism. Elizabeth herself, at her most impressionable age had been the pupil of Bishop Hooper, who was accustomed to praise her intelligence. “In religious matters she has been saturated ever since she was born in a bitter hatred to our faith,” said the Bishop of Aquila.[520] The common people had been showing their hatred of Romanism, and “images and religious persons were treated disrespectfully.” It was observed that Elizabeth “was very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do,” and that “her attitude was much more gracious to the common people than to others.”[521] The burnings of the Protestant martyrs, and especially the execution of Cranmer, had stirred the indignation of the populace of London and the south counties against Romanism, and the feelings were spreading throughout the country. All classes of the people hated the entire subjugation of English interests to those of Spain during the late reign, just as the people of Scotland at the same time were growing weary of French domination under Mary of Lorraine, and Elizabeth shared the feeling of her people.[522]
Yet there was so much in the political condition of the times to make both Elizabeth and Cecil pause before committing themselves to the Reformation, that it is necessary to believe that religious conviction had a great influence in determining their action. England was not the powerful nation in 1558-60 which it became after twenty years under the rule of the great Queen. The agrarian troubles which had disturbed the three reigns of Henry VIII., Edward, and Mary had not died out. The coinage was still as debased as it had been in the closing years of Henry VIII. Trade was stagnant, and the country was suffering from a two years’ visitation of the plague. The war with France, into which England had been dragged by Spain, had not merely drained the country of men and money, but was bringing nothing save loss of territory and damage to prestige. Nor was there much to be hoped from foreign aid. The Romanist reaction was in full swing throughout Europe, and the fortunes of the continental Protestants were at their lowest ebb. It was part of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (April 1559) that France and Spain should unite to crush the Protestantism of the whole of Europe, and the secret treaty between Philip II. and Catherine de’ Medici in 1565[523] showed that such a design was thought possible of accomplishment during the earlier years of Elizabeth. It was never wholly abandoned until the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Cecil’s maxim, that the Reformation could not be crushed until England had been conquered, had for its corollary that the conquest of England must be the prime object of the Romanist sovereigns who were bent on bringing Europe back to the obedience of Rome. The determination to take the Protestant side added to the insecurity of Elizabeth’s position in the earlier years of her reign. She was, in the opinion of the Pope and probably of all the European Powers, Romanist and Protestant, illegitimate; and heresy combined with bastardy was a terrible weapon in the hands of Henry II. of France, who meant to support the claims of his daughter-in-law, the young Queen of Scots,—undoubtedly the lawful heir in the eyes of all who believed that Henry VIII. had been lawfully married to Catharine of Aragon. The Spanish Ambassador, Count de Feria, tried to frighten Elizabeth by reminding her how, in consequence of a papal excommunication, Navarre had been seized by the King of Spain.[524] His statement to his master, that at her accession two-thirds of the English people were Romanists,[525] may be questioned (he made many miscalculations), but it is certain that England was anything but a united Protestant nation. Still, who knew what trouble Philip might have in the Netherlands, and the Lords of the Congregation might be encouraged enough to check French designs on England through Scotland.[526] At the worst, Philip of Spain would not like to see England wholly in the grip of France. The Queen and Cecil made up their minds to take the risk, and England was to be Protestant and defy the Pope, from “whom nothing was to be feared but evil will, cursing, and practising.”
Paul IV., it was said, was prepared to receive the news of Elizabeth’s succession favourably, perhaps under conditions to guarantee her legitimacy; but partly to his astonishment, and certainly to his wrath, he was not even officially informed of her accession, and the young Queen’s ambassador at Rome was told that she had no need for him there.
The changes at home, however, were made with all due caution. In Elizabeth’s first proclamation an “et cetera” veiled any claim to be the Head of the Church,[527] and her earliest meddling with ecclesiastical matters was to forbid all contentious preaching.[528] The statutory religion (Romanist) was to be maintained for the meantime. No official proclamation was made foreshadowing coming changes.
Elizabeth, however, did not need to depend on proclamations to indicate to her people the path she meant to tread. She graciously accepted the Bible presented to her on her entry into London, clasped it to her bosom, and pressed it to her lips. Her hand ostentatiously shrank from the kiss of Bonner the persecutor. The great lawyer, Goderick, pointed out ways in which Protestant feeling might find vent in a legal manner:
“In the meantime Her Majesty and all her subjects may by licence of law use the English Litany and suffrages used in King Henry’s time, and besides Her Majesty in her closet may use the Mass without lifting up the Host according to the ancient canons, and may also have at every Mass some communicants with the ministers to be used in both kinds.”[529]
The advice was acted upon, improved upon. “The affairs of religion continue as usual,” says the Venetian agent (Dec. 17th, 1558), “but I hear that at Court when the Queen is present a priest officiates, who says certain prayers with the Litanies in English, after the fashion of King Edward.”[530] She went to Mass, but asked the Bishop officiating not to elevate the Host for adoration; and when he refused to comply, she and her ladies swept out of church immediately after the Gospel was read.[531] Parliament was opened in the usual manner with the performance of Mass, but the Queen did not appear until it was over; and then her procession was preceded by a choir which sang hymns in English. When the Abbot of Westminster met her in ecclesiastical procession with the usual candles sputtering in the hands of his clergy, the Queen shouted, “Away with these torches, we have light enough.”[532]
She was crowned on January 15th, 1559; but whether with all the customary ceremonies, it is impossible to say; it is most likely that she did not communicate.[533] The Bishops swore fealty in the usual way, but were chary of taking any official part in the coronation of one so plainly a heretic. Later in the day, Dr. Cox, who had been King Edward’s tutor, and was one of the returned refugees, preached before the Queen. As early as Dec. 14th (1558) the Spanish Ambassador could report that the Queen “is every day standing up against religion (Romanism) more openly,” and that “all the heretics who had escaped are beginning to flock back again from Germany.”[534]
When Convocation met it became manifest that the clergy would not help the Government in the proposed changes. They declared in favour of transubstantiation and of the sacrifice of the Mass, and against the royal supremacy. The Reformation, it was seen, must be carried through by the civil power exclusively; and it was somewhat difficult to forecast what Parliament would consent to do.
What was actually done is still matter of debate, but it seems probable that the Government presented at least three Bills. The first was withdrawn; the second was wrecked by the Queen withholding her Royal Assent; the third resulted in the Act of Supremacy and in the Act of Uniformity. It is most likely that the first and second Bills, which did not become law, included in one proposed Act of legislation the proposals of the Government about the Queen’s Supremacy and about Uniformity of Public Worship.[535] The first was introduced into the House of Commons on Feb. 9th (1559), was discussed there Feb. 13th to 16th, and then withdrawn. A “new” Bill “for the supremacy annexed to the Crown” was introduced in the Commons on Feb. 21st, passed the third reading on the 25th, and was sent to the Lords on the 27th.[536]
The majority in the House of Commons was Protestant;[537] but the Marian Bishops had great influence in the House of Lords, and it was there that the Government proposals met with strong opposition. Dr. Jewel describes the situation in a letter to Peter Martyr (March 20th):
“The bishops are a great hindrance to us; for being, as you know, among the nobility and leading men in the Upper House, and having none there on our side to expose their artifices and confute their falsehoods, they reign as sole monarchs in the midst of ignorant and weak men, and easily overreach our little party, either by their numbers or their reputation for learning. The Queen, meanwhile, though she openly favours our cause, yet is wonderfully afraid of allowing any innovations.”[538]
The Bill (Bill No. 2—the “new” Bill), which had passed the Commons on the 25th, was read for the first time in the Lords on the 28th, passed the second reading on March 13th, and was referred to a Committee consisting of the Duke of Norfolk, the Bishops of Exeter and Carlisle, and Lords Winchester, Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Rutland, Sussex, Pembroke, Montagu, Clinton, Morley, Rich, Willoughby, and North. They evidently made such alterations on the Bill as to make that part of it at least which enforced a radical change in public worship useless for the purpose of the Government. The clearest account of what the Lords did is contained in a letter of a person who signs himself “Il Schifanoya,” which is preserved in the State Archives in Mantua.[539] He says:
“Parliament, which ought to have ended last Saturday, was prolonged till next Wednesday in Passion Week, and according to report they will return a week after Easter (March 26, 1559); which report I believe, because of the three principal articles the first alone passed, viz. to give the supremacy of the Anglican Church to the Queen ... notwithstanding the opposition of the bishops, and of the chief lords and barons of this kingdom; but the Earls of Arundel and Derby, who are very good Christians, absented themselves from indisposition, feigned, as some think, to avoid consulting about such ruin of this realm.
“The Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Viscount Montague and Lord Hastings did not fail in their duty, like true soldiers of Christ, to resist the Commons, whom they compelled to modify a book passed by the Commons forbidding the Mass to be said or the Communion to be administered (ne se communicassero) except at the table in the manner of Edward VI.; nor were the Divine offices to be performed in church; priests likewise being allowed to marry, and the Christian religion and the Sacraments being absolutely abolished; adding thereto many extraordinary penalties against delinquents. By a majority of votes they have decided that the aforesaid things shall be expunged from the book, and that the Masses, Sacraments, and the rest of the Divine offices shall be performed as hitherto.... The members of the Lower House, seeing that the Lords passed this article of the Queen’s supremacy of the Church, but not as the Commons drew it up,—the Lords cancelling the aforesaid clauses and modifying some others,—grew angry, and would consent to nothing, but are in very great controversy.”[540]
The Lords, induced by the Marian Bishops, had wrecked the Government’s plan for an alteration of religion.
The Queen then intervened. She refused her assent to the Bill, on the dexterous pretext that she had doubts about the title which it proposed to confer upon her—Supreme Head of the Church.[541] She knew that Romanists and Calvinists both disliked it, and she adroitly managed to make both parties think that she had yielded to the arguments which each had brought forward. The Spanish Ambassador took all the credit to himself; and Sandys was convinced that Elizabeth had been persuaded by Mr. Lever, who “had put a scruple into the Queen’s head that she would not take the title of Supreme Head.”[542]
The refusal of Royal Assent enabled the Government to start afresh. They no longer attempted to put everything in one Bill. A new Act of Supremacy,[543] in which the Queen was declared to be “the only supreme governor of this realm ... as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal,” was introduced into the Commons on April 10th, and was read for a third time on the 13th. Brought into the Lords on April 14th, it was read for a second time on the 17th, and finally passed on April 29th. If the obnoxious title was omitted, all the drastic powers claimed by Henry VIII. were given to Elizabeth. The Elizabethan Act revived no less than nine of the Acts of Henry VIII.,[544] and among them the statute concerning doctors of civil law,[545] which contained these sentences: “Most royal majesty is and hath always been, by the Word of God, Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, and hath full power and authority to correct, punish, and repress all manner of heresies ... and to exercise all other manner of jurisdiction commonly called ecclesiastical jurisdiction”; and his majesty is “the only and undoubted Supreme Head of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, to whom by Holy Scripture all authority and power is wholly given to hear and determine all manner of causes ecclesiastical.” Thus the very title Supreme Head of the Church of England was revived and bestowed on Elizabeth by this Parliament of 1559. It may even be said that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction bestowed upon Elizabeth was more extensive than that given to her father, for schisms were added to the list of matters subject to the Queen’s correction, and she was empowered to delegate her authority to commissioners—a provision which enabled her to exercise her supreme governorship in a way to be felt in every corner of the land.[546] This Act of Supremacy revived an Act of King Edward VI., enjoining that the communion should be given in both “kinds,” and declared that the revived Act should take effect from the last day of Parliament.[547] It contained an interesting proviso that nothing should be judged to be heresy which was not condemned by canonical Scripture, or by the first four General Councils “or any of them.”[548]
The same Parliament, after briefer debate (April 18th to 28th), passed an Act of Uniformity which took an interesting form.[549] The Act began by declaring that at the death of King Edward VI. there “remained one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies in the Church of England, which was set forth in one Book, entitled The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England.” This Book had been authorised by Act of Parliament held in the fifth and sixth years of King Edward VI., and this Act had been repealed by an Act of Parliament in the first year of the reign of Queen Mary “to the great decay of the due honour of God, and discomfort of the professors of the truth of Christ’s religion.” This Act of Queen Mary was solemnly repealed, and the Act of King Edward VI., with some trifling alterations, was restored. In consequence, “all and singular ministers in any cathedral or parish church” were ordered “to say and use the Matins, Evensong, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and administration of each of the sacraments, and all their common and open prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said Book, so authorised by Parliament in the said fifth and sixth years of the reign of King Edward VI., with one alteration or addition of certain lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year, and the form of the Litany altered and corrected, and two sentences only added in the delivery of the sacrament to the communicants, and none other or otherwise.” This meant that while there might be the fullest freedom of thought in the country and a good deal of liberty of expression, there was to be no freedom of public worship. All Englishmen, of whatever creed, were to be compelled by law to join in one common public worship according to the ritual prescribed. The Act of Parliament which compelled them to this had no specific Book of Common Prayer annexed to it and incorporated in it. It simply replaced on the Statute Book the Act of King Edward VI., and with it the Second Prayer-Book of King Edward, which with its rubrics had been “annexed and joined” to that Act[550]—certain specified alterations in the Book being notified in the Elizabethan Act.
The history of the Elizabethan Prayer-Book is confessedly obscure. If an important paper called the Device,[551] probably drafted by Cecil, embodied the intentions of the Government, their procedure may be guessed with some probability. It enumerates carefully, after the manner of the great Elizabethan statesman, the dangers involved in any “alteration of religion,” and shows how they can be met or averted. France and Scotland can be treated diplomatically. Rome may be left unheeded—it is far away, and its opposition will not go beyond “evil will and cursing.” The important dangers were at home. They would come from two sides—from the Romanists backed by most of the higher clergy; and from the advanced Reformers, who would scoff at the alteration which is alone possible in the condition of the kingdom, and would call it a “cloaked papistry and a mingle-mangle.” Yet both may be overcome by judicious firmness. The Romanists may be coerced by penal laws. The danger from the advanced Reformers may be got over by a carefully drafted Prayer-Book, made as far as possible to their liking, and enforced by such penalties as would minimise all objections. There is great hope that such penalties would “touch but few.” “And better it were that they did suffer than Her Highness or Commonwealth should shake or be in danger.” The Device suggested that a small committee of seven divines—all of them well-known Reformers, and most of them refugees—should prepare a Book “which, being approved by Her Majesty,” might be laid before Parliament. It was evidently believed that the preparation of the Book would take some time, for suggestion is made that food, drink, wood, and coals should be provided for their sustenance and comfort. There is no direct evidence to show that the suggested committee met or was even appointed; but evidence has been brought forward to show that most of the theologians named were in London, and were in a position to meet together and consult during the period when such a Book would naturally be prepared.[552] The whole matter is shrouded in mystery, and secrecy was probably necessary in the circumstances. No one knew exactly what was to take place; but some change was universally expected. “There is a general expectation that all rites and ceremonies will shortly be reformed,” said Richard Hilles, writing to Bullinger in the end of February (1559), “by our faithful citizens and other godly men in the afore-mentioned Parliament, either after the pattern which was lately in use in the time of King Edward the Sixth, or which is set forth by the Protestant Princes of Germany in the afore-mentioned Confession of Augsburg.”[553]
The authorities kept their own counsel, and nothing definite was known to outsiders. A Book was presented to the Commons—The Book of Common Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments—on Feb. 16th, at the time when the first draft of the Supremacy Bill was being discussed.[554] It must have been withdrawn along with that Bill. The second attempt at a Supremacy Act was probably accompanied with a Prayer-Book annexed to the Bill; and this Prayer-Book was vehemently opposed in the Lords, who struck out all the clauses relating to it.[555] What this Book of Common Prayer was, cannot be exactly known. Many competent liturgist scholars are inclined to believe that it was something more drastic than the Edwardine Prayer-Book of 1552, and that it was proposed to enforce it by penalties more drastic than those enacted by the Act of Uniformity which finally passed. They find the characteristic features of the Book in the well-known letter of Guest (Geste) to Cecil.[556] Such suggestions are mere conjectures. The Book may have been the Edwardine Prayer-Book of 1552.
The Government had made slow progress with their proposed “alteration of religion,” and the Protestant party were chafing at the delay. Easter was approaching, and its nearness made them more impatient. Canon law required everyone to communicate on Easter Day, which in 1559 fell on the 26th of March, and by a long established custom the laity of England had gone to the Lord’s Table on that one day of the year. Men were asking whether it was possible that a whole year was to elapse before they could partake of the communion in a Protestant fashion. The House of Commons was full of this Protestant sentiment. The reactionary proceedings in the House of Lords urged them to some protest.[557] A Bill was introduced into the Lower House declaring that “no person shall be punished for now using the religion used in King Edward’s last year.” It was read twice and engrossed in one day (March 15th), and was read a third time and passed on March 18th.[558] It does not appear to have been before the Lords; but it was acted on in a curious way. A proclamation, dated March 22nd, declares that the Queen, “with the assent of Lords and Commons,” in the “present last session,” has revived the Act of King Edward VI. touching the reception of the Communion in both “kinds,” and explains that the Act cannot be ready for Easter. It proceeds: “And because the time of Easter is so at hand, and that great numbers, not only of the noblemen and gentry, but also of the common people of this realm, be certainly persuaded in conscience in such sort as they cannot be induced in any wise to communicate or receive the said holy Sacrament but under both kinds, according to the first institution, and to the common use both of the Apostles and of the Primitive Church ... it is thought necessary to Her Majesty, by the advice of sundry of her nobility and commons lately assembled in Parliament,” to declare that the statute of Edward is in force, and all and sundry are commanded to observe the provisions of the statute.[559] What is more, the Queen acted upon her proclamation. The well-informed “Schifanoya,” writing on March 28th, says that the Government “during this interval” (i.e. between March 22nd and March 28th) had ordered and printed a proclamation for every one to take the communion in both “kinds” (sub utraque specie). He goes on to say that on Easter Day “Her Majesty appeared in chapel, where Mass was sung in English, according to the use of her brother, King Edward, and the communion received in both ‘kinds,’ kneeling.” The chaplain wore nothing “but the mere surplice” (la semplice cotta).[560] The news went the round of Europe. Elizabeth had at last declared herself unmistakably on the Protestant side.
Easter had come and gone, and the religious question had not received final settlement. The authorities felt that something must be done to counteract the speeches of the Romanist partisans in the Lords.[561] So, while Parliament was sitting, a conference was arranged between Roman Catholic and Protestant divines. It seems to have been welcomed by both parties. Count Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, declared that he had something to do with it. He was anxious that the disputation should be in Latin, that the arguments should be reduced to writing, and that each disputant should sign his paper. He was overruled so far as the language was concerned. The authorities meant that the laity should hear and understand. The three questions debated were:—Whether a “particular Church can change rites and ceremonies; Whether the services of public worship must be conducted in Latin; Whether the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice.” The conference was held at Westminster on March 31st, in presence of the Privy Council, the Lords and Commons, and the “multitude.” Great expectations were cherished by both parties in anticipation, and when the Romanist divines withdrew on points of procedure, their cause suffered in the popular estimation. Two of the Bishops were sent to the Tower “for open contempt and contumacy”; and others seem to have been threatened.[562]
Parliament reassembled after the Easter recess and passed the Act of Supremacy in its third form, and the Act of Uniformity, which re-enacted, as has been said, the revised Prayer-Book—that is, the Second Book of King Edward VI. with the distinctly specified alterations. The most important of these changes were the two sentences added to the words to be used by the officiating minister when giving the communion. The clauses had been in the First Prayer-Book of Edward VI.
While in the Second Prayer-Book of King Edward the officiating minister was commanded to say while giving the Bread:
“Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving,”
and while giving the Cup, to say:
“Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee, and be thankful;”
the words were altered in the Elizabethan book to:
“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving;”
“The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.”