Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 15

Parker with the following courtesy: "_Madam_ (the style of a married lady) I may not call you; _mistress_ (the appellation at that time of an unmarried woman) I am loth to call you; but, however, I thank you for your good cheer." The lady is styled, in deeds made while her husband was archbishop, _Parker_, alias _Harleston_; which was her maiden name.

And she dying before her husband, her brother is called her heir-at-law, though she left children. But the archbishop procured letters of legitimation, in order to render them capable of inheritance. _Life of Parker_, 511. Others did the same. _Annals_, i. 8. Yet such letters were, I conceive, beyond the queen's power to grant, and could not have obtained any regard in a court of law.

In the diocese of Bangor, it was usual for the clergy, some years after Elizabeth's accession, to pay the bishop for a licence to keep a concubine. Strype's _Parker_, 203.

[277] Burnet, iii. 305.

[278] Jewel's letters to Bullinger, in Burnet, are full of proofs of his dissatisfaction; and those who feel any doubts may easily satisfy themselves from the same collection, and from Strype as to the others.

The current opinion, that these scruples were imbibed during the banishment of our reformers, must be received with great allowance. The dislike to some parts of the Anglican ritual had begun at home; it had broken out at Frankfort; it is displayed in all the early doc.u.ments of Elizabeth's reign by the English divines, far more warmly than by their Swiss correspondents. Grindal, when first named to the see of London, had his scruples about wearing the episcopal habits removed by Peter Martyr. Strype's _Grindal_, 29.

[279] It was proposed on this occasion to abolish all saints' days, to omit the cross in baptism, to leave kneeling at the communion to the ordinary's discretion, to take away organs, and one or two more of the ceremonies then chiefly in dispute. Burnet, iii. 303 and Append. 319; Strype, i. 297, 299. Nowell voted in the minority. It can hardly be going too far to suppose that some of the majority were attached to the old religion.

[280] Jewel, one of these visitors, writes afterwards to Martyr: "Invenimus ubique animos mult.i.tudinis satis propensos ad religionem; ibi etiam, ubi omnia putabantur fore difficillima.... Si quid erat obstinatae malitiae, id totum erat in presbyteris, illis praesertim, qui aliquando stetissent a nostra sententia." Burnet, iii. Append. 289. The common people in London and elsewhere, Strype says, took an active part in demolis.h.i.+ng images; the pleasure of destruction, I suppose, mingling with their abhorrence of idolatry. And during the conferences held in Westminster Abbey, Jan. 1559, between the catholic and protestant divines, the populace who had been admitted as spectators, testified such disapprobation of the former, that they made it a pretext for breaking off the argument. There was indeed such a tendency to antic.i.p.ate the government in reformation, as necessitated a proclamation, Dec. 28, 1558, silencing preachers on both sides.

Mr. Butler says, from several circ.u.mstances it is evident that a great majority of the nation then inclined to the Roman catholic religion.

_Mem. of Eng. Catholics_, i. 146. But his proofs of this are extremely weak. The attachment he supposes to have existed in the laity towards their pastors may well be doubted; it could not be founded on the natural grounds of esteem; and if Rishton, the continuator of Sanders de Schismate, whom he quotes, says that one-third of the nation was protestant, we may surely double the calculation of so determined a papist. As to the influence which Mr. B. alleges the court to have employed in elections for Elizabeth's first parliament, the argument would equally prove that the majority was protestant under Mary, since she had recourse to the same means. The whole tenor of historical doc.u.ments in Elizabeth's reign proves that the catholics soon became a minority, and still more among the common people than the gentry. The north of England, where their strength lay, was in every respect the least important part of the kingdom. Even according to Dr. Lingard, who thinks fit to claim half the nation as catholic in the middle of this reign, the number of recusants certified to the council under 23 Eliz.

c. 1, amounted only to fifty thousand; and, if we can trust the authority of other lists, they were much fewer before the accession of James. This writer, I may observe in pa.s.sing, has, through haste and thoughtlessness, misstated a pa.s.sage he cites from Murden's _State Papers_, p. 605, and confounded the persons suspected for religion in the city of London, about the time of the Armada, with the whole number of men fit for arms; thus making the former amount to seventeen thousand and eighty-three.

Mr. Butler has taken up so paradoxical a notion on this subject, that he literally maintains the catholics to have been at least one half of the people at the epoch of the gunpowder plot. Vol. i. p. 295. We should be glad to know at what time he supposes the grand apostasy to have been consummated. Cardinal Bentivoglio gives a very different account; reckoning the real catholics, such as did not make profession of heresy, at only a thirtieth part of the whole; though he supposes that four-fifths might become such, from secret inclination or general indifference, if it were once established. _Opere di Bentivoglio_, p.

83, edit. Paris, 1645. But I presume neither Mr. Butler nor Dr. Lingard would own these _adiaphorists_.

The latter writer, on the other hand, reckons the Hugonots of France, soon after 1560, at only one-hundredth part of the nation, quoting for this Castelnau, a useful memoir writer, but no authority on a matter of calculation. The stern spirit of Coligni, _atrox animus Catonis_, rising above all misfortune, and unconquerable, except by the darkest treachery, is sufficiently admirable without reducing his party to so miserable a fraction. The Calvinists at this time are reckoned by some at one-fourth, but more frequently at one-tenth, of the French nation.

Even in the beginning of the next century, when proscription and ma.s.sacre, lukewarmness and self-interest, had thinned their ranks, they are estimated by Bentivoglio (_ubi supra_) at one-fifteenth.

[281] Strype's _Parker_, 152, 153; Collier, 508. In the Lansdowne Collection, vol. viii. 47, is a letter from Parker, Apr. 1565, complaining of Turner, dean of Wells, for having made a man do penance for adultery in a square cap.

[282] Strype's _Parker_, 157, 173.

[283] This apprehension of Elizabeth's taking a disgust to protestantism is intimated in a letter of Bishop c.o.x. Strype's _Parker_, 229.

[284] Parker sometimes declares himself willing to see some indulgence as to the habits and other matters; but, the queen's commands being peremptory, he had thought it his duty to obey them, though forewarning her that the puritan ministers would not give way (225, 227). This, however, is not consistent with other pa.s.sages, where he appears to importune the queen to proceed. Her wavering conduct, partly owing to caprice, partly to insincerity, was naturally vexatious to a man of his firm and ardent temper. Possibly he might dissemble a little in writing to Cecil, who was against driving the puritans to extremities. But, on the review of his whole behaviour, he must be reckoned, and always has been reckoned, the most severe disciplinarian of Elizabeth's first hierarchy; though more violent men came afterwards.

[285] Strype's _Annals_, 416; _Parker_, 159. Some years after, these advertis.e.m.e.nts obtained the queen's sanction, and got the name of Articles and Ordinances. _Id._ 160.

[286] Strype's _Annals_, 416, 430; _Life of Parker_, 184. Sampson had refused a bishopric on account of these ceremonies. Burnet, iii. 292.

[287] _Life of Parker_, 214. Strype says (p. 223) that the suspended ministers preached again after a little time by connivance.

[288] Jewel is said to have become strict in enforcing the use of the surplice. _Annals_, 421.

[289] Strype's _Annals_, i. 423, ii. 316; _Life of Parker_, 243, 348; Burnet, iii. 310, 325, 337. Bishops Grindal and Horn wrote to Zurich, saying plainly, it was not their fault that the habits were not laid aside, with the cross in baptism, the use of organs, baptism by women, etc. P. 314. This last usage was much inveighed against by the Calvinists, because it involved a theological tenet differing from their own, as to the necessity of baptism. In Strype's _Annals_, 501, we have the form of an oath taken by all mid-wives, to exercise their calling without sorcery or superst.i.tion, and to baptize with the proper words.

It was abolished by James I.

Beza was more dissatisfied than the Helvetic divines with the state of the English church (_Annals_, i. 452; Collier, 503); but dissuaded the puritans from separation, and advised them rather to comply with the ceremonies. _Id._ 511.

[290] Strype's _Life of Parker_, 242; _Life of Grindal_, 114.

[291] Burnet, iii. 316; Strype's _Parker_, 155 _et alibi_.

[292] _Id._ 226. The church had but two or three friends, Strype says, in the council about 1572, of whom Cecil was the chief. _Id._ 388.

[293] Burnet says, on the authority of the visitors' reports, that out of 9400 beneficed clergymen, not more than about 200 refused to conform.

This caused for some years just apprehensions of the danger into which religion was brought by their retaining their affections to the old superst.i.tion; "so that," he proceeds, "if Queen Elizabeth had not lived so long as she did, till all that generation was dead, and a new set of men better educated and principled were grown up and put in their rooms; and if a prince of another religion had succeeded before that time, they had probably turned about again to the old superst.i.tion as nimbly as they had done before in Queen Mary's days." Vol. ii. p. 401. It would be easy to multiply testimonies out of Strype, to the papist inclinations of a great part of the clergy in the first part of this reign. They are said to have been sunk in superst.i.tion and looseness of living.

_Annals_, i. 166.

[294] Strype's _Annals_, 138, 177; Collier, 436, 465. This seems to show that more churches were empty by the desertion of popish inc.u.mbents than the foregoing note would lead us to suppose. I believe that many went off to foreign parts from time to time, who had complied in 1559; and others were put out of their livings. The Roman catholic writers make out a longer list than Burnet's calculation allows.

It appears from an account sent in to the privy council by Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, in 1562, that in his diocese more than one-third of the benefices were vacant. _Annals_, i. 323. But in Ely, out of 152 cures only 52 were served in 1560. _L. of Parker_, 72.

[295] Parker wrote in 1561 to the bishops of his province, enjoining them to send him certificates of the names and qualities of all their clergy; one column, in the form of certificate, was for learning: "And this," Strype says, "was commonly set down; Latine aliqua verba intelligit, Latine utcunque intelligit; Latine pauca intelligit," etc.

Sometimes, however, we find doctus. _L. of Parker_, 95. But if the clergy could not read the language in which their very prayers were composed, what other learning or knowledge could they have? Certainly none; and even those who had gone far enough to study the school logic and divinity, do not deserve a much higher place than the wholly uninstructed. The Greek tongue was never _generally_ taught in the universities or public schools till the Reformation, and perhaps not so soon.

Since this note was written, a letter of Gibson has been published in Pepys's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 154, mentioning a catalogue he had found of the clergy in the archdeaconry of Middles.e.x, A.D. 1563, with their qualifications annexed. Three only are described as docti Latine et Graece; twelve are called docti simply; nine, Latine docti; thirty-one, Latine mediocriter intelligentes; forty-two, Latine perperam, utcunque aliquid, pauca verba, etc., intelligentes; seventeen are non docti or indocti. If this was the case in London, what can we think of more remote parts?

[296] In the struggle made for popery at the queen's accession, the lower house of convocation sent up to the bishops five articles of faith, all strongly catholic. These had previously been transmitted to the two universities, and returned with the hands of the greater part of the doctors to the first four. The fifth they scrupled, as trenching too much on the queen's temporal power. Burnet, ii. 388, iii. 269.

Strype says, the universities were so addicted to popery that for some years few educated in them were ordained. _Life of Grindal_, p. 50. And Wood's _Antiquities of the University of Oxford_ contain many proofs of its attachment to the old religion. In Exeter College, as late as 1578, there were not above four protestants out of eighty, "all the rest secret or open Roman affectionaries." These chiefly came from the west, "where popery greatly prevailed, and the gentry were bred up in that religion." Strype's _Annals_, ii. 539. But afterwards, Wood complains, "through the influence of Humphrey and Reynolds (the latter of whom became divinity lecturer on Secretary Walsingham's foundation in 1586), the disposition of the times, and the long continuance of the Earl of Leicester, the princ.i.p.al patron of the puritanical faction, in the place of Chancellor of Oxford, the face of the university was so much altered that there was little to be seen in it of the church of England, according to the principles and positions upon which it was first reformed." _Hist. of Oxford_, vol. ii. p. 228. Previously, however, to this change towards puritanism, the university had not been Anglican, but popish; which Wood liked much better than the first, and nearly as well as the second.

A letter from the University of Oxford to Elizabeth on her accession (Hearne's edition of Roper's _Life of More_, p. 173) shows the accommodating character of these academies. They extol Mary as an excellent queen, but are consoled by the thought of her excellent successor. One sentence is curious: "c.u.m _patri_, _fratri_, _sorori_, nihil fuerit republica carius, _religione optatius_, vera gloria dulcius; c.u.m in hac familia hae laudes floruerint, vehementer confidimus, etc., quae ejusdem stirpis sis, easdem cupidissime prosecuturam." It was a singular strain of complaisance to praise Henry's, Edward's, and Mary's religious sentiments in the same breath; but the queen might at least learn this from it, that whether she fixed on one of their creeds, or devised a new one for herself, she was sure of the acquiescence of this ancient and learned body. A preceding letter to Cardinal Pole, in which the times of Henry and Edward are treated more cavalierly, seems by the style, which is very elegant, to have been the production of the same pen.

[297] The fellows and scholars of St. John's College, to the number of three hundred, threw off their hoods and surplices, in 1565, without any opposition from the master, till Cecil, as chancellor of the university, took up the matter, and insisted on their conformity to the established regulations. This gave much dissatisfaction to the university; not only the more intemperate party, but many heads of colleges and grave men, among whom we are rather surprised to find the name of Whitgift, interceding with their chancellor for some mitigation as to these unpalatable observances. Strype's _Annals_, i. 441; _Life of Parker_, 194. Cambridge had, however, her catholics, as Oxford had her puritans, of whom Dr. Caius, founder of the college that bears his name, was among the most remarkable. _Id._ 200. The Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, Leicester and Cecil, kept a very strict hand over them, especially the latter, who seems to have acted as paramount visitor over every college, making them reverse any act which he disapproved. Strype, _pa.s.sim_.

[298] Strype's _Annals_, i. 583; _Life of Parker_, 312, 347; _Life of Whitgift_, 27.

[299] Cartwright's _Admonition_, quoted in Neal's _Hist. of Puritans_, i. 88.

[300] Madox's _Vindication of Church of England against Neal_, p. 122.

This writer quotes several very extravagant pa.s.sages from Cartwright, which go to prove irresistibly that he would have made no compromise short of the overthrow of the established church. P. 111, etc. "As to you, dear brethren," is said in a puritan tract of 1570, "whom G.o.d hath called into the brunt of the battle, the Lord keep you constant, that ye yield neither to toleration, neither to any other subtle persuasions of dispensations and licences, which were to fortify their Romish practices; but, as you fight the Lord's fight, be valiant." Madox, p.

287.

[301] These principles had already been broached by those who called Calvin master; he had himself become a sort of prophet-king at Geneva.

And Collier quotes pa.s.sages from Knox's _Second Blast_, inconsistent with any government, except one slavishly subservient to the church. P.

444. The nonjuring historian holds out the hand of fellows.h.i.+p to the puritans he abhors, when they preach up ecclesiastical independence.

Collier liked the royal supremacy as little as Cartwright; and in giving an account of Bancroft's attack on the nonconformists for denying it, enters upon a long discussion in favour of an absolute emanc.i.p.ation from the control of laymen. P. 610. He does not even approve the determination of the judges in Cawdrey's case (5 c.o.ke's Reports), though against the nonconformists, as proceeding on a wrong principle of setting up the state above the church. P. 634.

[302] The school of Cartwright were as little disposed as the episcopalians to see the laity fatten on church property. Bancroft, in his famous sermon preached at Paul's Cross in 1588 (p. 24), divides the puritans into the clergy factious, and the lay factious. The former, he says, contend and lay it down in their supplication to parliament in 1585, that things once dedicated to a sacred use ought so to remain for ever, and not to be converted to any private use. The lay, on the contrary, think it enough for the clergy to fare as the apostles did.

Cartwright did not spare those who longed to pull down bishoprics for the sake of plundering them, and charged those who held impropriations with sin. Bancroft takes delight in quoting his bitter phrases from the ecclesiastical discipline.

[303] The old friends and protectors of our reformers at Zurich, Bullinger and Gualter, however they had favoured the principles of the first nonconformists, write in strong disapprobation of the innovators of 1574. Strype's _Annals_, ii. 316. And Fox, the martyrologist, a refuser to conform, speaks, in a remarkable letter quoted by Fuller in his _Church History_, p. 107, of factiosa illa Puritanorum capita, saying that he is totus ab iis alienus, and unwilling perbacchari in episcopos. The same is true of Bernard Gilpin, who disliked some of the ceremonies, and had subscribed the articles with a reservation, "so far as agreeable to the word of G.o.d;" but was wholly opposed to the new reform of church discipline. _Carleton's Life of Gilpin_, and Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical Biography_, vol. iv. Neal has not reported the matter faithfully.

[304] "The puritan," says Persons the jesuit, in 1594, "is more generally favoured throughout the realm with all those which are not of the Roman religion than is the protestant, upon a certain general persuasion, that his profession is the more perfect, especially in great towns, where preachers have made more impression in the artificers and burghers than in the country people. And among the protestants themselves, all those that were less interested in ecclesiastical livings, or other preferments depending of the state, are more affected commonly to the puritans, or easily are to be induced to pa.s.s that way for the same reason." Doleman's _Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England_, p. 242. And again: "The puritan party at home, in England, is thought to be most rigorous of any other, that is to say, most ardent, quick, bold, resolute, and to have a great part of the best captains and soldiers on their side, which is a point of no small moment."--P. 244. I do not quote these pa.s.sages out of trust in Father Persons, but because they coincide with much besides that has occurred to me in reading, and especially with the parliamentary proceedings of this reign. The following observation will confirm what may startle some readers; that the puritans, or at least those who rather favoured them, had a majority among the protestant gentry in the queen's days. It is agreed on all hands, and is quite manifest, that they predominated in the House of Commons. But that house was composed, as it has ever been, of the princ.i.p.al landed proprietors, and as much represented the general wish of the community when it demanded a further reform in religious matters, as on any other subject. One would imagine, by the manner in which some express themselves, that the discontented were a small faction, who by some unaccountable means, in despite of the government and the nation, formed a majority of all parliaments under Elizabeth and her two successors.

[305] Burnet, iii. 335. Pluralities are still the great abuse of the church of England; and the rules on this head are so complicated and unreasonable that scarce any one can remember them. It would be difficult to prove that, with a view to the interests of religion among the people, or of the clergy themselves, taken as a body, any pluralities of benefices with cure of souls ought to remain, except of small contiguous parishes. But with a view to the interests of some hundred well connected ecclesiastics, the difficulty is none at all.

[306] D'Ewes, p. 156; _Parliament. Hist._ i. 733, etc.

[307] D'Ewes, p. 239; _Parl. Hist._ 790; Strype's _Life of Parker_, 394.

In a debate between Cardinal Carvajal and Rockisane, the famous Calixtin archbishop of Prague, at the council of Basle, the former said he would reduce the whole argument to two syllables; Crede. The latter replied he would do the same, and confine himself to two others; Proba. Lenfant makes a very just observation on this: "Si la gravite de l'histoire le permettoit, on diroit avec le comique: C'est tout comme ici. Il y a long tems que le premier de ces mots est le langage de ce qu'on appelle _l'Eglise_, et que le second est le langage de ce qu'on appelle _l'heresie_." _Concile de Basle_, p. 193.