Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/368

354 Commons together again, and proceeding with the Bill, no mention was made of the restoration of the Church property, though the queen was anxious to restore all that was in the hands of the Crown; for the Lords, and gentlemen even of the House of Commons, who were in possession of those lands, would have raised a far different opposition to that which was manifested regarding the State religion.



No sooner were these Bills passed than the clergy met in convocation, and passed decrees for the speedy enforcement of all the new regulations. Gardiner had taken care to dismiss all such bishops as he knew would not readily comply. The sentiments expressed in this convocation were those of the most unchecked exultation in the restoration of Popery, even from those who had professed to be zealous Protestants before the accession of Mary, and the adulation of the queen was something almost unparalleled in the king-worship of Courts. The Bishop of London's chaplain, who opened the convocation with a sermon, compared Mary to all the most extraordinary women who ever appeared. She was equal to Miriam, Deborah, Esther, and Judith of the Old Testament, and nearly so to the Virgin Mary. He was now succeeded by Weston the prolocutor, who dwelt, moreover, at great length on the persecution of the Papal prelates and clergy during the last reign, as a hint of what ought now to be the treatment of their enemies. The convocation was not slow to learn. It declared the Book of Common Prayer an abomination, and ordered the immediate suppression of the reformed catechism. It was a curious fact, that amongst the pernicious books which had been used in the reformed worship, was the queen's own translation of the Paraphrases of Erasmus, which, being completed by Udal and Cox, had been ordered to be placed in all the churches along with the Bible as its best exposition. Thus the queen was made to condemn her own literary labour to the flames as heretical.

The persecution of the reformed clergy who had stood firm became vehement. The married clergy were called upon to abandon their wives, and there was a rush of the expelled priests again to fill their pulpits. In the cities