Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/461

 The Wars of Religion 339 574. Elizabeth establishes the Church of England. Upon the death of Queen Mary (551), in 1558, the English government became once more Protestant. Queen Elizabeth had a new revised edition issued of the Book of Common Prayer which had been prepared in the time of her half brother, Edward VI. This con- tained the services which the government ordered to be performed in all the churches of England. All her subjects were required to accept the queen's views and to go to church, and ministers were to use no other than the official prayer book. Elizabeth did not adopt the Presbyterian system advocated by Calvin but retained many features of the Catholic Church, including the bishops and archbishops. So the Anglican Church, as it was called, followed a middle path halfway between the Lutherans and Calvinists on the one hand and the Catholics on the other. Elizabeth's first Parliament gave the sovereign the powers of supreme head of the Church of England, although the title, which her father, Henry VIII, had assumed, was not revived. The Church of England still exists in much the same form in which it was established in the first years of Elizabeth's reign, and the prayer book is still used, although Englishmen are no longer required to attend church and may hold any religious views they please without being interfered with by the government. 575. Presbyterian Church established in Scotland. Conditions in Scotland caused much trouble for Elizabeth. There, shortly after her accession, the ancient Catholic Church was abolished, for the nobles were anxious to get the lands of the bishops into their own hands and enjoy the revenue from them. John Knox, a veritable second Calvin in his stern energy, secured the intro- duction of the Presbyterian form of faith and church government which still prevails in Scotland. 576. Mary Stuart, the Scotch Queen, the Hope of the Catho- lics. In 1561 the Scotch queen, Mary Stuart, whose French hus- band, Francis II, had just died, landed at Leith. She was but nineteen years old, of great beauty and charm, and, by reason of her Catholic faith and French training, almost a foreigner to her subjects. Her grandmother was a sister of Henry VIII, and