Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/270

 2 5 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 43. Her first and greatest objection was to their marriage. The holy state of matrimony was one which she could not contemplate without bitterness ; and although she could not at the time of her accession prevent the clergy from taking wives, and dared not re-enact the prohibitory laws of her sister, she refused to revive the permissive statutes of Edward. She preferred to leave the arch- bishops and bishops with their children legally illegiti- mate and themselves under the imputation of concubin- age. Nor did time tend to remove her objections. Cecil alone in 1561 prevented her from making an attempt to enforce celibacy. 1 To the Archbishop of Canterbury himself ( she expressed a repentance that he and the other married bishops were in office, wishing it had been otherwise ; ' she thought them worse as they were, ' than in the glorious shame of a counterfeited chastity ; ' ' I was in horror,' the Archbishop wrote after a conversation with her on the subject, ' to hear such words come from her mild nature as she spake concern- ing God's holy ordinance of matrimony/ * Princes hitherto had thought it better to cherish their ecclesias- tical state as conservators of religion ; the English bishops alone were openly brought in hatred, shunned and traduced before the malicious and ignorant people as beasts without knowledge, as men of effrenate intem- 1 ' Her Majesty continues very ill-affected towards the state of ma- trimony in the clergy ; and if I were not therein very stiff, her Majesty would utterly and openly condemn and forbid it.' Cecil to Archbishop Parker, August 12, 1561 : STRYPB'S Life of Parker.,