Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/506

492 Returning to England, we find that Elizabeth during this period had been persecuting every form of Christianity which did not agree with her own. There were three parties against whom she felt herself aggrieved, the Puritans, the Papists, and the Anabaptists; and she set to work resolutely to squeeze them into the mould of her orthodoxy or to crush them.



Many of the Puritans who had imbibed the sternest spirit of Geneva had got into the pulpits of the State Church, and refused to wear the robes, to perform the rites, or to preach the exact doctrines as prescribed by law. If they did not accord with that Church, they certainly had no business there, and had no right to complain that Elizabeth turned them out. The time to complain was when she had expelled them and they set up a Church of their own, which she would not allow. Their freedom was their birthright; but the queen would not suffer them to exercise it. She had but one word in her religious vocabulary—conform; and this rigid conformity was carried out ruthlessly by the very ministers and clergy who had so manfully complained of compulsion in the last reign. They purged one diocese after another by expelling Puritan clergy. These acts of arbitrary power were loudly denounced in the House of Commons, where there was a strong Puritan party, and numerous bills were brought in to advance the Reformation. Out of doors, Parker, the old Archbishop of Canterbury, faithfully executed the will of the sovereign; and opinion, suppressed in the Church and in Parliament,