Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/251

ELI queen, nor the party adhering to them, placed any confidence in the compliance thus extorted. Had the question concerning the life of Elizabeth been simply a domestic question, she would probably have ceased to be a ground of apprehension to the party in ascendancy. But happily there was a phase of international policy with which her fate had become associated. "The English Romanists wished she were away. But this grated on the ears of Philip, Queen Mary's husband, and the Spaniards, who were more favourable to the Lady Elizabeth, not so much from pitying the condition of the afflicted maiden princess, as from regarding their own interest; for they foresaw that if once the Lady Elizabeth were made away, the kingdom of England, Ireland, and Scotland, might, by Mary Queen of Scots, next heir to the crown of England, and already espoused to the dauphin of France, be united to the French sceptre, than which nothing could be more dreadful to the Spanish grandeur, then in continual wars with the French." All other expedients failing, an attempt was made to send the obnoxious princess into exile by marrying her to the duke of Savoy. But this Elizabeth resisted strongly, though Mary never forgave her for so doing. The fall of Calais, and the conduct of her husband, contributed to shorten the reign of Mary Tudor. On her decease in 1558 Elizabeth became her successor.

Elizabeth was nearly twenty-five years of age on coming to the throne. Not the least valuable part of her education had consisted in the adversities through which she had passed. Her first council consisted of twenty-one members—fourteen of whom were Romanists, who had been in office under the late queen; the other seven were protestants who had no place in the former government. Of this latter number was William Cecil, the future Lord Burghley, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Lord Bacon. Of the ministers of Elizabeth generally. Bishop Aylmer says—"She picked out such counsellors to serve her, as were neither of common wit nor common experience; of whom some by travel in strange countries, some by learning, some by practice and like authority in other rulers' days, some by affliction either one way or other, for their gifts and graces which they had received at God's hand—were men meet to be called to such rooms." As Elizabeth was determined to restore the reformed religion, it became her to mould her council as soon as possible according to this conception. One feature in Elizabeth's policy in this respect is observable—her ministers were not ecclesiastics. Her trusted men were all laymen. In English history everything in the civil, as well as in the ecclesiastical administration, had long been in the hands of the great churchmen. The lord-chancellor especially had always been a man of that order. The first attempt to innovate on this usage was made by the national party, as opposed to the priest party in the time of Edward III., when the leaders of the movement were John Wycliffe and John of Gaunt. But the reaction of the government in favour of the church on the accession of Henry IV. impeded that course of events. The ministers of Henry VII. were chiefly ecclesiastics—men eminently conservative, and without one really English idea in their heads, either as to the authority of parliaments or the liberty of the subject. The cabinet of Henry VIII. on the fall of Wolsey consisted, with but one exception, of laymen. In that fact there was a sign of the times. Sir Thomas More was the first lay chancellor. Elizabeth was to carry out the better part of her father's policy with better temper, with greater thoroughness, greater wisdom, and greater success. Her Cecils, Bacons, and Walsinghams were not men indifferent to religion, but grave men, prepared, in common with their mistress, to restrict the action of the ministers of religion to its proper sphere.

But the contemplated measures of the queen, so full of change, were adopted with reservation and caution. Philip lost no time in seeking the hand of Elizabeth, in the hope of perpetuating the existing friendly relations between England and Spain, and of still using this country against France. Elizabeth entertained this proposal long enough to ascertain the feelings of her subjects in relation to it, and to mature her own plans.

The new queen had to remember that she was not at peace with France, and that in carrying out her policy, the probable effect would be a loud explosion of the thunder of the Vatican, hostility on the part of Spain, the Netherlands, and Scotland, and a large amount of disaffection among her own subjects, both in England and Ireland. For the reform of religion necessarily involved, according to the custom of the times, the introduction of new tests, and the displacement of a large number of persons from important civil and ecclesiastical offices. All such persons were to be watched as parties disposed to encourage disturbance.

But the die was cast. The liturgy, as revised under Edward VI., was revised anew by a committee of prelates and eminent laymen. The Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Litany, and the Epistles and Gospels, were to be read in the mother tongue. Other matters were to remain as they had been until parliament should assemble, when the affairs of the English church for the future should be duly considered and determined. In the meanwhile, there was to be no preaching on controversial subjects, and the queen continued to conform to the ritual of the Romish church, in many things which the more advanced protestants had learnt to denounce as superstitious. The lord-keeper. Sir Nicholas Bacon, in his address to the first parliament under Elizabeth, indicated very clearly the course which the queen was desirous of taking, and from which, in fact, she was not to be moved. "She earnestly requires you," said the speaker, "to spare no pains for establishing that which, after your utmost inquiry, shall be judged most serviceable; that in managing this debate, no considerations of power, interest, or pleasure, or contest for victory, may prevail amongst you. To this purpose her majesty expects that you will decline squabbling, heat of disputation, and scholastic inquiry; that no party language, no terms of reproach, no provoking distinctions, be kept up in the kingdom; that the names of heretic, schismatic, papist, and such like, be laid aside and forgotten; that, on the one hand, there must be a guard against unlawful worship and superstition; and, on the other, things must not be left under such a loose regulation as to occasion indifferency in religion, a contempt of holy things."

The effect of pursuing the middle course thus marked out was, that the Church of England was established on a basis which, while it insured to her the bulk and strength of the nation, left her exposed to a formidable antagonism on her right and left; on the one hand from a diminishing body of Romanists, who were slow to believe that the day of their power in England had passed for ever; and, on the other hand, from an ever-increasing body of advanced protestants, who, from their insisting on a more thorough purification of the church from the ideas and customs which had grown up with the papacy, were to become known under the name of puritans. The ecclesiastical history of England under Elizabeth consists in the history of the struggle between these three parties. The queen at the head of the Anglicans held the balance between them. She required all ecclesiastical persons, all judges, magistrates, mayors, and public officers, to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and all persons whatsoever to be so far conformists, as to attend their parish church on the Lord's day. She at the same time prohibited the slightest innovation, under any plea of greater light or liberty, upon the scheme of doctrine, discipline, and worship which had been set forth by authority. There was to be no divided allegiance in the case of papist or puritan. The plea from her sovereignty to the sovereignty supposed to belong to the pope, and from her judgments to the right supposed to belong to private judgment, were alike repudiated. Even on religious questions, the authority of the state was ultimate; and, if not infallible, it ought to have been so from the position assigned to it.

It was of great importance to the future power of Elizabeth, that the first ten or eleven years of her reign were years of comparative tranquillity. Heavy as were the clouds which seemed to hang on all parts of the horizon at her accession, they rolled away without a storm. Since the origin of the rupture between Henry VIII. and the papal see, such had been the confusions of opinion and the conflicts of parties, that the block, the gallows, and the stake had been in frightful requisition, and the darkness in this respect had become the blackness of darkness under Mary When the crown passed to Elizabeth, men began to breathe again. The sun seemed to shine once more. The people became growingly attached to the sway of their maiden queen, whose influence they felt to be upon the whole so benignant. England, in this interval, became settled and strong, and capable of taking the place which Providence had assigned to her as the head of the great protestant interest.

On the continent, the great division which was ultimately to take place between Romanists and protestants was in process. The protestantism of Geneva made a much greater progress in France than the character of the people, or the nature of the