Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/74

50 which produced dissension and difficulty in the very earliest days of Protestantism.

But beside considerations of this kind, there were marked peculiarities in the origin and progress of the Reformation in England, which were almost certain to produce strong feeling on both sides, and lead to the formation of religious parties and sects within the realm. Henry VIII., as every student of history knows, was not much influenced by love for truth and purity in what he did towards setting England free from papal tyranny and superstition. On the contrary, he had his own ends to serve, and he looked out for that in all the steps which he took. If he did no good to Protestantism, if he were a tyrant, and a beastly tyrant too, he certainly crushed under his heel the insolent pretensions of the pope to rule over and draw revenue from England; and in so far, at least, he was an instrument in God's hand for beginning the good work in England. Edward VI. died young, and unhappily before much could be done for reformation. Mary succeeded him, and very soon gave the English people a bitter draught of that chalice which Rome has always made her victims quaff, when she has had them quite in her power. Elizabeth came to the throne with a large share of her father's imperiousness, and with energy and ability probably unsurpassed by any monarch that has ever, as yet, guided the destinies of England. Fond of show and display in religious things, she determined that the Established Church should have all the advantage and dignity which these could afford. Conscientiously opposed to popery, she yet did not mean to alienate her Roman Catholic subjects, if that were possible, by any undue severity against the religion which they professed; equally indisposed to the bald, stern simplicity of the Puritanical worship, and sagacious enough to see the inevitable tendency of the doctrines which the Puritans set forth and maintained, she held a tight hand, all through her reign, over the heads of those who pleaded further reformation and larger liberty than the Church of England has ever, thus far, been willing to allow. She had no liking for those who opposed her views, and she was not at all disposed to tolerate non-conformity to what seemed to her and her principal advisers, good and proper in Church and State. Such a man as Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, was both able and willing to aid the queen in her efforts to enforce conformity under severe penalties, a course not likely, certainly, to produce harmony and concord and brotherly love among the contending parties.

James I. was bred up in early life in strict Presbyterian views; but when, by that strange turn of affairs which brought the son of the murdered Mary to the throne of her who had so cruelly pursued even to the death the ill-fated Queen of Scots, James was in possession of the crown, he adopted at once the high notions of prerogative which characterized, as well as finally ruined, the Stuart dynasty, and he was disposed to go to any length against dissenters from his wishes and opinions.