Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/485

A.D. 1571.] and Mary's commissioners had insisted that the word lawful should be used before "issue," to which Elizabeth's commissioners had strenuously objected, and only at last conceded that it should stand "any issue by any lawful husband," which seemed to imply that, if she had living issue by Leicester, she would then marry him. What still more confirmed the public in this belief was that Leicester himself, in writing to Walsingham, mentioned the queen being in indifferent health, having had several fainting fits, having been "troubled with a spice or show of the mother," which had, however, turned out to be not so.

A second bill was passed this session enacting that any one was guilty of high treason who not merely obtained any bull from, or entered any suit in, the Court of Rome, but who was merely absolved by the Pope, or by means of any Papal instrument; and that all persons should suffer the pains of premunire who received any Agnus Dei, cross, bead, picture, which had been blessed by the Pope, or any one deriving authority from him; and their aiders and abettors the same. All persons whatsoever, of a certain age, were bound to attend the Protestant worship, and receive the sacrament as by law established; and all such as had fled abroad in order to escape this most despotic state of things, were ordered to return within six months and submit themselves under penalty of suffering the forfeiture of all property or rents from laud. Spite of the fanatic zeal of the Commons, however, the compulsory enforcement of the sacrament on the Papists was given up as at once impracticable and dangerous. The rest of these intolerable measures were passed.

But if Parliament was disposed to annihilate all religious freedom in one direction, they were as prompt to extend it in another—that is, towards themselves. A great party had sprung up in the House of Commons and the nation, already known by the name of Puritans, and destined to become far more known hereafter.

This sect of severe religionists Elizabeth had done all in her power to force upon Scotland; but she was by no means desirous of having them herself in England. As Knox in Scotland, so the leaders of the Puritans in England, who had been driven out during the persecutions in Mary's reign, had many of them visited Geneva, and imbibed the hard and persecuting spirit of Calvin. Though they were ready to fight for their own liberties, they were not a whit more inclined to allow any religious freedom to others. Whether in the Commonwealth of England, when in power, or in the new regions of America, we shall find them displaying, with all their virtues, this intolerant spirit. Elizabeth and the Puritans were wide as the poles asunder in their ideas of a reformed religion, though they were of precisely the same spirit in maintaining those ideas. They were determined as much as possible to have their own way. The Puritans were for the utmost simplicity in the externals of religion. They thought the Reformation had stopped half way. They would have no images, no crucifix. The ring in marriage, the observance of times and seasons, of festivals, chanting of psalms, church music, and robes and surplices for the clergy, they declared were the masks and livery of the beast.

On the other hand, Elizabeth had never gone far out of the regions of Popery. Like her father, she rather resisted the Papal power than the Papal spirit. Her cardinal religious tenet was that Elizabeth must do as she pleased in ecclesiastical as in temporal matters. She had always kept the great silver crucifix in her chapel, though she had in 1559 issued an order for the removal of all crucifixes from everybody else's churches and chapels. She kept candles burning before her crucifix to the end of her life, and was fond of all sorts of gorgeous robes and ceremonies—so that no one would readily perceive the difference betwixt her Protestantism and Popery, except that she had not absolutely the celebration of mass. In her hatred of the marriage of the clergy she was a thorough Papist, and never would repeal the statute of her sister Mary for the maintenance of clerical celibacy.

Though the clergy submitted to be brow-beaten and insulted concerning their marriages, their wives regarded as more concubines, and their children actually bastardised, the Puritans showed no such moderation. They spoke out with their usual boldness, and denounced the celibacy of the clergy as a rag of the woman of Babylon. An ill feeling grew quickly betwixt Elizabeth and them: each of them were intolerant, but Elizabeth had the power, and exercised it, with the certain result on such a people of provoking a daring and unsparing retaliation. They attacked with right good will her favourite doctrine of the royal supremacy, declared that the Church was in its nature independent of the State, and that the simple Presbyterian form of Church government was the true one, and not the episcopal, with its proud bishops and dignitaries, in all their semi-Popish gear. Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, preached vehemently against the anti-Christian institution of bishops, whom he characterised as merely the tools of the State, and against all the Papistical rites and ceremonies of the Church as maintained by Elizabeth. And, in these crusades against the Anglican Church, undaunted reformers found much secret support from the ministers of Elizabeth themselves, at the very time they seemed to be conforming most obediently to her model. Bacon, Walsingham, Sadler, Knollys, the Earls of Bedford, Warwick, and Huntingdon, were all forerunners, in secret, of the Puritans. Leicester especially patronised and made use of them. He was particularly fond of Cartwright, who shouted from his pulpit, in the loudest tones, that "princes ought to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns, before the Church; yea, as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church." These ministers found it very convenient, when they could not themselves persuade the queen to moderation, to rouse the Puritans, who made a popular commotion, and rendered it necessary to draw in. Leicester had no more efficient means of thwarting any scheme of foreign marriage for the queen than by rousing the Dissenters against such Popish schemes.

The House of Commons was almost wholly leavened with the Puritans, and this Session they brought in no less than seven bills to carry forward their ideas of the thorough reformation of the Church. These projected reforms were so many attacks on the favourite rites, tenets, and ecclesiastical pomps of Elizabeth, and she was thrown into a passion of amazement by their audacity. William Strickland, an old sea-captain, was the introducer of these bills. Though they were strongly supported by the House, Elizabeth, in her rage, sent a message commanding Strickland to cease to meddle with matters which concerned her