Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/335

 everything that Edward VI had originated; his bishops appointed 'quamdiu se bene gesserint,' were dispossessed without a struggle; his laws were repealed, many of them never to be revived; his advisers, where they would not comply, were exiled or burned: but the efforts to reinstate the old system were not successful; the monastic property could not be restored; the ranks of the lower clergy, reduced to a fraction by the abolition of chauntries and private masses, could not be recruited; and all the restored fabric hung on the life of a woman and a few worn-out old men. For the moment the canon lawyers lifted up their heads, and a few civilians took the doctorate of decrees at Oxford and Cambridge; but the complete extinction of reactionary forces, on Mary's death, showed that the Papal system, with all that was dangerous to national life contained in it, was, so far as England was concerned, practically extinct: six years of blood and fire, of tears and prayers, of cruel jealousies and heartbreaking divisions, wrought this; and Elizabeth for some years after her accession had before her a task, not certainly easy, but not encumbered with insuperable difficulties.

The subject which we are treating now contracts its limits; for to attempt anything like circumstantial discussion of the legal history of a period into' which ecclesiastical quarrels so largely enter, would be to lose oneself at once in a wilderness of controversy. I must content myself with a few generalisations and a few significant facts. The Elizabethan settlement in Church and State was a compromise, satisfactory to no party, and very unsatisfactory indeed to the constitutional lawyer or historian; but, possibly, the best arrangement compatible with circumstances. She began her reign, of course, by a reversal of her sister's legislation; but she did not restore the Edwardian system; she did not revive the Act of Henry VIII which had asserted the king's headship of the Church, or the Act of Edward which deprived the bishops of all original jurisdiction: the doctrine of the headship was opposed both by the Puritans and by the Catholic party; the abolition of all the high functions of the episcopate which was aimed at by Edward's advisers was a measure which