Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/322

308 there was a powerful party still, alike amongst the peers and the prelates and the people, who were strongly attached to the old religion. The Princess Mary was a resolute Papist, and she was the heir-apparent to the throne. Her religion, derived from her mother, and her Spanish blood and predilections, had been deeply ingrained into her nature by the ill-usage of her mother, and the rude attempts to compel her to abandon her first faith. Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, Gardiner of Winchester, Bonner of London, and several of the other prelates were stanch supporters of the Roman Church. The people, as had already been seen in the Pilgrimage of Faith, remained in vast masses rooted in attachment to their old rites, usages, and authorities. It required, therefore, not only resolution, but caution mixed with it, to introduce the new plans.

To prepare the way for these changes, a great step was already taken in the removal of Wriothesley from the council, and Tunstall was next ordered to his own diocese, on plea of business there which demanded his immediate attention. Cranmer then, in order to remind the bishops that the retention of their sees might depend on their acquiescence in the proposed alterations, asserted that his authority as primate expired with the king who had conferred it; and he therefore petitioned to be continued in it, and accepted a new commission to execute the functions of an archbishop till it should please the sovereign to revoke it. This was literally laying episcopacy at the foot of the throne; not admitting simply that such offices were derivable from it, but terminated at its pleasure. The example set by the primate became, as it were, a law to the whole episcopal bench.

The next movement was to adopt the late king's plan of a visitation of dioceses. For this purpose, the kingdom was divided into six circuits, to each of which was appointed a certain number of visitors, partly laymen partly clergymen, who, the moment they arrived in a diocese, became the only ecclesiastical authority there. They were empowered to call before them the bishop, the clergy, and five, six, or eight of the principal inhabitants of each parish, and put into their hands a body of Royal injunctions, seven-and-thirty in number. These injunctions regarded religious doctrines and practice, and the visitors required an answer upon oath to every question which they chose to put concerning them. The injunctions were similar to those which had been framed and used by Cromwell, but the present practice of joining the laity with the clergy was an innovation of a more sweeping character.

The visitors also carried with them and introduced into every parish a book of homilies, which every clergyman was required to read in his church on Sundays and holidays, and also to provide for himself, and each parish for the congregation, a copy of the paraphrase of Erasmus on the New Testament. This was an immense change in the public worship of the nation, and that it might be effectually obeyed, no person was allowed to preach, not even the bishop of the diocese, who had not a licence from the metropolitan. To prevent any lack of preaching, through the refusal of any of the clergy to obey the injunctions, the most popular preachers of the reformed faith were sent down into the country, and these gradually superseded those who refused to comply with the new ordinances. Coverdale was so delighted with these regulations, that he declared the young king to be "the high and chief admiral of the great navy of the Lord of Hosts; principal captain and governor of us all under him; the most noble ruler of his ships, even our most comfortable Noah, whom the eternal God hath chosen to be the bringer of us unto rest and quietness."

The visitors set out to their respective districts about the same time that the Protector departed for his campaign in Scotland, and he had the satisfaction, on his return, to find that they had completed their work with great success. One of the injunctions was that all objects of idolatry should be removed out of all the walls and windows of the churches; and under this particular order there was as much mischief done to art as there was good to religion; and Bishop Burnet tells us that "those who expounded the secret providences of God with an eye to their own opinions, took great notice of this, that on the same day in which the visitors removed and destroyed most of the images in London, their armies were so successful in Scotland in Pinkie Field."

Of all the prelates who resisted the new injunctions, none were so prominent as Bonner and Gardiner. Bonner made at first a great show of opposition, then attempted to escape by saying that he would obey the injunctions as far as they were not contrary to the law of God and the ordinances of the Church, and finally acquiesced in them, at least outwardly. Gardiner took a more honest and honourable stand, and had he been as willing to concede liberty of conscience to others as he was to claim it for himself, would have proved himself a more genuine Christian than he appeared in the next reign. Gardiner, who had both great ability and learning, did not wait for the arrival of the visitors in his diocese of Winchester to ascertain the nature of the injunctions and the paraphrase. He procured copies of them, and then wrote to the Protector and the Primate, warning them of the danger, and, as he conceived, sin of forcing these on the public. He contended that the two books contradicted each other, and to the Protector he said that the king was too young to understand those matters, and Somerset himself too much occupied to examine them properly; that it was imprudent to unsettle the general mind with the theological crotchets of Cranmer, and that, as they were in direct violation of Acts of Parliament, any clergyman who taught from the homilies and paraphrase, would incur the penalties attached to the statute of the Six Articles; that the Royal covenant did not shield Wolsey from the penalty of a premunire, nor could it hereafter defend the present clergy from the reactions of the law.

"It is a dangerous thing," he said, "to use too much freedom in researches of this kind. If you cut the old canal, the water is apt to run farther than you have a mind to." And as regarded himself, he added, with a dignity worthy of respect, "My sole concern is to manage the third and last act of my life with decency, and to make a handsome exit off the stage. Provided this point is secured, I am not solicitous about the rest. I am already by nature condemned to death. No man can give me a pardon from this sentence; nor so much as procure me a reprieve. To speak my mind, and to act as my conscience dictates, are two branches of liberty which I can never part with. Sincerity in speech and