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 regulating and rigorously enforcing discipline throughout the church's bounds. Puritan doctrine was not uncongenial to him, but with puritan practice wherever it conflicted with the Book of Common Prayer or the Act of Uniformity he resolved to have no truce. To Roman catholicism he was directly opposed in regard to both its doctrine and practice, but, like all the statesmen of the day, he regarded Roman catholicism in England chiefly as a political danger, and while supporting with enthusiasm penal legislation of an extreme kind against catholics, he was content to let others initiate schemes for repressing the exercise of the papist religion. The stifling of puritanism, especially in the ranks of the clergy, he regarded as his peculiar function. He not merely devised the practical measures for the purpose, but refused to allow the queen's ministers to modify them, and closed his ears to arguments, however influential the quarter whence they came, in favour of laxity in the administration of a coercive policy.

His first step was to draw up in 1583 a series of stringent articles which, among other things, prohibited all preaching, reading, or catechising in private houses, and forbade any one to execute ecclesiastical functions unless he first subscribed to the royal supremacy, pledged himself to abide in all things by the Book of Common Prayer, and accepted the Thirty-nine Articles. The articles received the queen's sanction, and were put into force during Whitgift's first visitation. All clergymen who hesitated to assent to them were suspended from their duties. On the anniversary of the queen's accession (17 Nov. 1583) the archbishop preached at St. Paul's Cross, and took for his text (1 Cor. vi. 10) ‘Railers shall not inherit the kingdom of God’ (the sermon was published in 1589). At the same time he successfully recommended that the high commission court should be granted greatly augmented powers. By his advice the crown delegated to the court, which was thenceforth to consist of forty-four commissioners, (twelve of them to be bishops), all its powers in the way of discovering and punishing heretics and schismatics. In 1584 Whitgift drew up a list of twenty-four articles, or interrogatories, which were to be administered by the amended court of high commission to any of the clergy whom the court, of its own initiative, thought good to question. The new procedure obliged a suspected minister to answer upon oath (called the oath ex officio) whether he was in the habit of breaking the law, and thus he was forced to become evidence against himself. Burghley doubted the wisdom of such courses, which he explained to Whitgift ‘too much savoured of the Romish inquisition, and [were] rather a device to seek for offenders than to reform any.’ Whitgift replied at length that the procedure was well known to many courts of the realm, but promised not to apply it except when private remonstrances had failed. The clergy and many influential sympathisers protested against Whitgift's procedure with no greater effect. Such ministers of Kent as were suspended from the execution of their ministry addressed a strong remonstrance to the privy council. The ministers of Suffolk followed the example of their Kentish colleagues. Leicester and other members of the council urged the archbishop to show greater moderation. Whitgift peremptorily refused. He asserted that the puritan ministers were very few in number. He knew only ten nonconformist clergy of any account in his own diocese of Kent, where sixty ministers enthusiastically supported his policy at all points. The House of Commons joined in the attack on the ex-officio oath and the new articles of subscription that Whitgift imposed on the clergy, but Whitgift retorted that the complaints came from lawyers whose learning was too limited to warrant any attention being paid to it. He declined to be moved from any of his positions, and in order to crush adverse criticism he caused to be passed in the high commission court on 23 Jan. 1586 an extraordinarily rigorous decree—known as the Star-chamber decree—which seemed to render public criticism impossible. No manuscript was to be set up in type until it had been perused and licensed by the archbishop or the bishop of London. The press of any printer who disobeyed the ordinance was to be at once destroyed; he was prohibited from following his trade thenceforth, and was to suffer six months' imprisonment (, Transcript of Stationers' Company, ii. 810). Elizabeth's faith in the archbishop was confirmed by his rigorous action. He was admitted a member of the privy council on 2 Feb. 1585–6, and regularly attended its meetings thenceforth. The absence of Leicester in the Low Countries during 1586, and his death in 1588, deprived the puritans of a powerful advocate, and the archbishop of a powerful critic. The patriotic fervour excited by the Spanish armada also strengthened Whitgift's hands, and officers of state grew less inclined to question the wisdom of his policy. In 1587, on the death of Sir Thomas Bromley, he was offered the post of lord chancel-