Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/361

Rh REIGN OF ELIZABETH.] ENGLAND 341 Tie was therefore obliged to be, not a return to the system of rayer- her father, but a return, with some modifications, to the k system of her brother. The second service-book of his reign was taken as the standard; but some changes were made, the first of several successive changes, all of which have been in the direction of a return to the first book. It was Elisabeth s policy to make her new system as little offensive as might be to those who still preferred the old state of things. She refused the title of Head of the Church which was offered to her by parliament, and which had been borne by Henry, by Edward, and by Mary up to the reconciliation with Koine. She caused some passages in the prayer-book, which were specially offensive to the papal party, to be left out. The forty-two articles of Edward were not enforced in the earlier years of her reign, and when they were enforced, they were cut down to thirty-nine. One favourite doctrine of the Reformers, the lawfulness of marriage in the clergy, Elizabeth could never be brought to sanction by any legal enactment. The practice was simply winked at during the whole of her reign, and was nut legalized till the reign of her successor. On the other hand, the anti-papal legislation of Henry was restored in its substance; but the refusal of the oaths, which under Henry had carried with it the pains of treason, in Elizabeth s first legislation carried with it only loss of office. But we are met at the very beginning with the fact that the changes under Elizabeth, less violent in every way than the changes of Henry and Edward, met with a much more pposi- decided opposition from the bishops than the changes of Edward and Henry had met with. Prelates who had gone all shops l ell ot us with Henry, who had gone a considerable way with Edward, refused the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth. One only of the existing bishops conformed, Kitchen of Llandaff, who had kept his see through all changes. The reason doubtless was that the rest had seen the hopeless ness of the middle system, that they had chosen their side with the papacy, and that they could not either in con science or in decency change again. The mass of the clergy conformed ; so did the great body of the laity, including some of the lords who had voted in parliament against all Elizabeth s changes. In the early years of Elizabeth, though there were two discontented parties in opposite directions, and though some still practised the old rites in secret, there was no open separation either way Elizabeth always professed that she did not force the con science of any one, but that the English service was established by law, and that the law must be obeyed. And there doubtless were still many who were ready to conform without approving, just as they were ready to obey the law on any other subject, even though they might wish the law to be altered. It has even been said that, when Pope Pius IV. made overtures to the queen, he offered to admit the use of the English service-book on condition of his supremacy being acknowledged. 1 Such a compromise would have put the English Church in the same position as the bodies known in the East as United Greeks and United Armenians, who admit the papal authority, but keep their own national usages. But the pontiffs before and after Pius, Paul IV. and Pius V., dealt with Elizabeth in another fashion. In their eyes, and in the eyes of all the extreme supporters of papal claims, she was not only schismatic and heretic, but an usurper of the English crown. On this last point much of the history of this reign turns, both domestic and foreign. According to English 1 The evidence on which this statement is made will be found at length in Hook s Lives of the Archbishops, viii. 321. It is certainly not such evidence as would be needed to assert the fact with any positiveness ; but the tale is not very unlikely in 1560, though it would be quite out of place ill 1570. The deliberate invention of the story, unless perhaps at a much later time, would really be more unlikely thau the story itself. law, nothing could be better than Elizabeth s parliamentary The suc- title, a title quite independent of the canonical legitimacy cess. io &quot; ; of her birth. But, according to the papal theory, she was illegitimate, and, according to the hereditary theory, her i, et j, illegitimacy excluded her from the crown. On this show- Mary, ing, the lawful queen was Mary of Scotland, who, at the beginning of Elizabeth s reign, was the wife of the dauphin, soon afterwards Francis II. , king of France. Francis and Mary took the titles of king and queen of England and Ireland ; and Mary, whether at the court of France, on the throne of Scotland, or in her prison in England, was the centre of all the hopes and all the conspiracies of the Roman party. This is not the place to go through her story, closely connected as it is throughout with English history. As regards the succession, it is clear that, by the will of Henry VIII., the claim of the house of Suffolk was Claims undoubted. But it was a kind of claim which needed a of tlie claimant of position and ability, like Richard of York in J! 01 i s ^, r i i. -. rn/ i &amp;lt; o a- n, i Suffolk. former times, to assert it. I he house of bunolk, on the other hand, was under a cloud, through a series of low or doubtful marriages. Their claim therefore passed out of notice. The queen obstinately refused to name any successor, or to allow any successor to be named; and all claims might be looked on as set aside by an act which made it treasonable to maintain any one to be the lawful successor except the queen s own issue. In this state of things, men s minds naturally turned to the Scottish line, which had at least hereditary descent in its favour. After the death of Mary the religious objection no longer applied, and James, her Protestant son, succeeded on Elizabeth s Accession death, without the slightest opposition from any party. of Jaraes The house of Stewart however came in without any shadow ail ( j C of parliamentary title, and directly in the teeth of the par liamentary title of the house of Suffolk, if the will of Henry VIII. is to be looked on as valid and unrepealed. The quiet of the first eleven years of Elizabeth s reign was broken in 1569 by a rising in the North in favour of Rising the old religion. This was not a mere popular movement, in the like the western and eastern revolts of Edward s reign. North - Its leaders were the greatest nobles of northern England, the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. It was, in short, the Pilgrimage of Grace over again. The insur rection was put down with a good deal of bloodshed, but not till mass had been again sung in Durham abbey. In the next year, 1570, the bull of excommunication and deposition pronounced by Pius V. changed all Elizabeth s relations at home and abroad. From this time the English The Roman Catholics, from a party dissatisfied with change, RomaD become a distinct and a persecuted religious body. In the a, p V next year the Puritan movement for further change in the tanssepa- church took a more definite shape in the motions of Strick- rate, land in the House of Commons. About the same time the first separate Puritan congregations began to be formed. From this time the queen and her ecclesiastical system had to struggle with enemies on both sides, and to deal out persecution in different measures against both. A terrible engine for this purpose was the special creation of the reign of Elizabeth, the Court of High Commission. The queen, as The High Supreme Governor of the Church, appointed commissioners, Commis- clerical and lay, to exercise the somewhat undefined powers S1&amp;lt; of her office. Alongside of the Star-Chamber a kindred power arose, to bring men s souls and bodies into sub mission. And meanwhile a few men who ventured on specially daring speculations, and whose tenets were con demned alike by Roman, Anglican, and Puritan orthodoxy, Persecu- were still sent to the flames. The Roman martyrs were tioni many; but in their case religious and political disputes were hopelessly mixed up. Conspirators against the queen s life or crown could not be allowed to escape on any pretence of religious duty. On the other hand, acts of simple religious