contempts, or misdemeanours done and committed contrary to the
tenor of the said several acts and statutes; and also to inquire of all
heretical opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false
rumours or talk, slanderous words and sayings, etc., contrary to the
aforesaid laws. Power is given to any three commissioners, of whom
one must be a bishop, to punish all persons absent from church,
according to the Act of Uniformity, or to visit and reform heresies and
schisms according to law; to deprive all beneficed persons holding
any doctrine contrary to the thirty-nine articles; to punish incests,
adulteries, and all offences of the kind; to examine all suspected
persons on their oaths, and to punish all who should refuse to appear
or to obey their orders, by spiritual censure or by discretionary fine or
imprisonment; to alter and amend the statutes of colleges, cathedrals,
schools, and other foundations, and to tender the oath of supremacy
according to the act of parliament.[319]
190
Master of such tremendous machinery, the archbishop proceeded to
call into action one of its powers contained for the first time in the
present commission, by tendering what was technically styled the
oath ex officio, to such of the clergy as were surmised to harbour a
spirit of puritanical disaffection. This procedure, which was wholly
founded on the canon law, consisted in a series of interrogations, so
comprehensive as to embrace the whole scope of clerical uniformity,
yet so precise and minute as to leave no room for evasion, to which
the suspected party was bound to answer upon oath.[320] So repugnant was this to the rules of our English law, and to the
principles of natural equity, that no species of ecclesiastical tyranny
seems to have excited so much indignation.
Lord Burleigh averse to severity. —Lord Burleigh, who, though at first
rather friendly to Whitgift, was soon disgusted by his intolerant and
arbitrary behaviour, wrote in strong terms of remonstrance against
these articles of examination, as "so curiously penned, so full of
branches and circumstances, as he thought the inquisitors of Spain
used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their preys."
The primate replied by alleging reasons in behalf of the mode of
examination, but very frivolous, and such as a man determined to
persevere in an unwarrantable course of action may commonly
find.[321] They had little effect on the calm and sagacious mind of the treasurer, who continued to express his dissatisfaction, both
individually and as one of the privy council.[322] But the extensive jurisdiction improvidently granted to the ecclesiastical commissioners,
and which the queen was not at all likely to recall, placed Whitgift
beyond the control of the temporal administration.
The Archbishop, however, did not stand alone in this impracticable
endeavour to overcome the stubborn sectaries by dint of hard usage.
Several other bishops were engaged in the
191
same uncharitable course;[323] but especially Aylmer of London, who has left a worse name in this respect than any prelate of Elizabeth's
reign.[324] The violence of Aylmer's temper was not redeemed by many virtues; it is impossible to exonerate his character from the
imputations of covetousness and of plundering the revenues of his
see; faults very prevalent among the bishops of that period. The privy
council wrote sometimes to expostulate with Aylmer, in a tone which
could hardly have been employed towards a man in his station who
had not forfeited the general esteem. Thus, upon occasion of one
Benison, whom he had imprisoned without cause, we find a letter
signed by Burleigh, Leicester, Walsingham, and even Hatton, besides
several others, urging the bishop to give the man a sum of money,
since he would recover damages at law, which might hurt his
lordship's credit. Aylmer, however, who was of a stout disposition,
especially when his purse was interested, objected strongly to this
suggestion, offering rather to confer on Benison a small living, or to
let him take his action at law. The result does not appear; but
probably the bishop did not yield.[325] He had worse success in an information laid against him for felling his woods, which ended not
only in an injunction, but a sharp reprimand from Cecil in the star-
chamber.[326]
What Lord Burleigh thought of these proceedings may be seen in the
memorial to the queen on matters of religion and state, from which I
have, in the last chapter, made an extract to show the tolerance of his
disposition with respect to catholics. Protesting that he was not in the
least addicted to the preciser sort of preachers, he declares himself
"bold to think that the bishops, in these dangerous times, take a very
ill and unadvised course in driving them from their cures;" first,
because it must discredit the reputation of her majesty's power, when
foreign princes should perceive that even among her protestant
subjects, in whom consisted all her force, strength, and power, there
was so great a heart-burning and division; and secondly, "because,"
he says, "though they were over squeamish and nice in their
192
opinions, and more scrupulous than they need; yet with their careful
catechising and diligent preaching, they bring forth that fruit which
your most excellent majesty is to desire and wish; namely, the
lessening and diminishing the papistical numbers."[327] But this great minister's knowledge of the queen's temper, and excessive anxiety to
retain her favour, made him sometimes fearful to act according to his
own judgment. "It is well known," Lord Bacon says of him, in a
treatise published in 1591, "that as to her majesty, there was never a
counsellor of his lordship's long continuance that was so appliable to
her majesty's princely resolutions, endeavouring always after faithful
propositions and remonstrances, and these in the best words and the
most grateful manner, to rest upon such conclusions as her majesty
in her own wisdom determineth, and them to execute to the best; so
far hath he been from contestation, or drawing her majesty into any of
his own courses."[328] Statesmen who betray this unfortunate infirmity of clinging too fondly to power, become the slaves of the princes they
serve. Burleigh used to complain of the harshness with which the
queen treated him.[329] And though, more lucky than most of his class, he kept the white staff of treasurer down to his death, he was reduced
in his latter years to court a rising favourite more submissively than
became his own dignity.[330] From such a disposition we could not expect any decided resistance to those measures of severity towards
the puritans which fell in so entirely with Elizabeth's temper.
There is no middle course, in dealing with religious sectaries,
between the persecution that exterminates, and the toleration that
satisfies. They were wise in their generation, the Loaisas and Valdes
of Spain, who kindled the fires of the inquisition, and quenched the
rising spirit of protestantism in the blood of a Seso and a Cazalla. But
sustained by the favouring voice of his associates, and still more by
that firm persuasion which bigots never know how to appreciate in
their adversaries, a puritan minister set at nought the vexatious and
arrogant tribunal before which he was summoned. Exasperated, not
overawed, the sectaries threw off what little respect they had hitherto
paid to the hierarchy. They had learned, in the earlier controversies of
the reformation, the use, or, more truly, the abuse, of that powerful
lever of human bosoms, the press. He who in Saxony
193
had sounded the first trumpet-peal against the battlements of Rome,
had often turned aside from his graver labours to excite the rude
passions of the populace by low ribaldry and exaggerated invective;
nor had the English reformers ever scrupled to win proselytes by the
same arts. What had been accounted holy zeal in the mitred Bale and
martyred Latimer, might plead some apology from example in the
aggrieved puritan. Pamphlets, chiefly anonymous, were rapidly
circulated throughout the kingdom, inveighing against the prelacy. Of
these libels the most famous went under the name of Martin Mar-
prelate, a vizored knight of those lists, behind whose shield a host of
sturdy puritans were supposed to fight. These were printed at a
movable press, shifted to different parts of the country as the pursuit
grew hot, and contained little serious argument, but the
unwarrantable invectives of angry men, who stuck at no calumny to
blacken their enemies.[331] If these insults upon authority are apt sometimes to shock us even now, when long usage has rendered
such licentiousness of seditious and profligate libellers almost our
daily food, what must they have seemed in the reign of Elizabeth,
when the press had no acknowledged liberty, and while the
accustomed tone in addressing those in power was little better than
servile adulation?
A law had been enacted some years before, levelled at the books
dispersed by the seminary priests, which rendered the publication of
seditious libels against the queen's government a capital felony.[332]
This act, by one of those strained constructions which the judges
were commonly ready to put upon any political crime, was brought to
bear on some of these puritanical writings. The authors of Martin Mar-
prelate could not be traced with certainty; but strong suspicions
having fallen on one Penry, a young Welshman, he was tried some
time after for another pamphlet, containing some sharp reflections on
the queen herself, and received sentence of death, which it was
thought proper to carry into execution.[333] Udal, a puritan minister, fell into the
194
grasp of the same statute for an alleged libel on the bishops, which
had surely a very indirect reference to the queen's administration. His
trial, like most other political trials of the age, disgraces the name of
English justice. It consisted mainly in a pitiful attempt by the court to
entrap him into a confession that the imputed libel was of his writing,
as to which their proof was deficient. Though he avoided this snare,
the jury did not fail to obey the directions they received to convict him.
So far from being concerned in Martin's writings, Udal professed his
disapprobation of them and his ignorance of the author. This
sentence appeared too iniquitous to be executed even in the eyes of
Whitgift, who interceded for his life; but he died of the effects of
confinement.[334]
Attempt to set up a Presbyterian system. —If the libellous pen of
Martin Mar-prelate was a thorn to the rulers of the church, they had
still more cause to take alarm at an overt measure of revolution which
the discontented party began to effect about the year 1590. They set
up, by common agreement, their own platform of government by
synods and classes; the former being a sort of general assemblies,
the latter held in particular shires or dioceses, agreeably to the
presbyterian model established in Scotland. In these meetings
debates were had, and determinations usually made, sufficiently
unfavourable to the established
195
system. The ministers composing them subscribed to the puritan
book of discipline. These associations had been formed in several
counties, but chiefly in those of Northampton and Warwick, under the
direction of Cartwright, the legislator of their republic, who possessed,
by the Earl of Leicester's patronage, the mastership of a hospital in
the latter town.[335] It would be unjust to censure the archbishop for interfering to protect the discipline of his church against these
innovators, had but the means adopted for that purpose been more
consonant to equity. Cartwright with several of his sect were
summoned before the ecclesiastical commission; where refusing to
inculpate themselves by taking the oath ex officio, they were
committed to the Fleet. This punishment not satisfying the rigid
churchmen, and the authority of the ecclesiastical commission being
incompetent to inflict any heavier judgment, it was thought fit the next
year to remove the proceedings into the court of star-chamber. The
judges, on being consulted, gave it as their opinion, that since far less
crimes had been punished by condemnation to the galleys or
perpetual banishment, the latter would be fittest for their offence. But
several of the council had more tender regards to sincere, though
intractable, men; and in the end they were admitted to bail upon a
promise to be quiet, after answering some interrogatories respecting
the queen's supremacy and other points, with civility and an evident
wish to avoid offence.[336] It may be observed that Cartwright explicitly declared his disapprobation of the libels under the name of Martin
Mar-prelate.[337] Every political party, however honourable may be its objects and character, is liable to be disgraced by the association of
such unscrupulous zealots. But, though it is an uncandid sophism to
charge the leaders with the excesses they profess to disapprove in
their followers, it must be confessed that few chiefs of faction have
had the virtue to condemn with sufficient energy the
misrepresentations which are intended for their benefit.
It was imputed to the puritan faction with more or less of truth, that,
not content with the subversion of episcopacy and of the whole
ecclesiastical polity established in the kingdom, they maintained
principles that would essentially affect its civil institutions. Their denial
indeed of the queen's supremacy, carried to such lengths as I have
shown above, might justly be considered as a derogation of her
temporal sovereignty. Many
196
of them asserted the obligation of the judicial law of Moses, at least in
criminal cases; and deduced from this the duty of putting idolaters
(that is, papists), adulterers, witches and demoniacs, sabbath-
breakers, and several other classes of offenders, to death.[338] They claimed to their ecclesiastical assemblies the right of determining "all
matters wherein breach of charity may be, and all matters of doctrine
and manners, so far as appertaineth to conscience." They took away
the temporal right of patronage to churches, leaving the choice of
ministers to general suffrage.[339] There are even passages in Cartwright's Admonition, which intimate that the commonwealth ought
to be fashioned after the model of the church.[340] But these it would not be candid to press against the more explicit declarations of all the
puritans in favour of a limited monarchy, though they grounded its
legitimacy on the republican principles of popular consent.[341] And with respect to the former opinions, they appear to have been by no
means common to the whole puritan body; some of the deprived and
imprisoned ministers even acknowledging the queen's supremacy in
as full a manner as the law conferred it on her, and as she professed
to claim it.[342]
The pretensions advanced by the school of Cartwright did
197
not seem the less dangerous to those who cast their eyes upon what
was passing in Scotland, where they received a practical illustration.
In that kingdom, a form of polity very nearly conforming to the
puritanical platform had become established at the reformation of
1560; except that the office of bishop or superintendent still
continued, but with no paramount, far less arbitrary dominion, and
subject even to the provincial synod, much more to the general
assembly of the Scottish church. Even this very limited episcopacy
was abolished in 1592. The presbyterian clergy, individually and
collectively, displayed the intrepid, haughty, and untractable spirit of
the English puritans. Though Elizabeth had from policy abetted the
Scottish clergy in their attacks upon the civil administration, this
connection itself had probably given her such an insight into their
temper as well as their influence, that she must have shuddered at
the thought of seeing a republican assembly substituted for those
faithful satraps, her bishops, so ready to do her bidding, and so
patient under the hard usage she sometimes bestowed on them.
House of Commons averse to episcopal authority. —These prelates
did not however obtain so much support from the House of Commons
as from their sovereign. In that assembly a determined band of
puritans frequently carried the victory against the courtiers. Every
session exhibited proofs of their dissatisfaction with the state of the
church. The Crown's influence would have been too weak without
stretches of its prerogative. The Commons in 1575 received a
message forbidding them to meddle with religious concerns. For five
years afterwards the queen did not convoke parliament, of which her
dislike to their puritanical temper might in all probability be the chief
reason. But, when they met again in 1580, the same topic of
ecclesiastical grievances, which had by no means abated during the
interval, was revived. The Commons appointed a committee, formed
only of the principal officers of the Crown who sat in the house, to
confer with some of the bishops, according to the irregular and
imperfect course of parliamentary proceedings in that age, "touching
the griefs of this house for some things very requisite to be reformed
in the church, as the great number of unlearned and unable ministers,
the great abuse of excommunications for every matter of small
moment, the commutation of penances, and the great multitude of
dispensations and pluralities, and other things very hurtful to the
church."[343]
198
The committee reported that they found some of the bishops desirous
of a remedy for the abuses they confessed, and of joining in a petition
for that purpose to her majesty; which had accordingly been done,
and a gracious answer, promising all convenient reformation, by
laying the blame of remissness upon some prelates, had been
received. This the house took with great thankfulness. It was exactly
the course which pleased Elizabeth, who had no regard for her
bishops, and a real anxiety that her ecclesiastical as well as temporal
government should be well administered, provided her subjects would
intrust the sole care of it to herself, or limit their interference to
modest petitioning.
A new parliament having been assembled, soon after Whitgift on his
elevation to the primacy had begun to enforce an universal
conformity, the lower house drew up a petition in sixteen articles, to
which they requested the Lords' concurrence, complaining of the oath
ex officio, the subscription to the three new articles, the abuses of
excommunication, licences for non-residence, and other
ecclesiastical grievances. The Lords replied coolly, that they
conceived many of those articles, which the Commons had proposed,
to be unnecessary, and that others of them were already provided for;
and that the uniformity of the common prayer, the use of which the
Commons had requested to leave in certain respects to the minister's
discretion, had been established by parliament. The two archbishops,
Whitgift and Sandys, made a more particular answer to each article of
the petition, in the name of their brethren.[344] But, in order to show some willingness towards reformation, they proposed themselves in
convocation a few regulations for redress of abuses, none of which,
however, on this occasion, though they received the royal assent,
were submitted to the legislature;[345] the queen in fact maintaining an insuperable jealousy of all intermeddling on the part of parliament
with her exclusive supremacy over the church. Excluded by
Elizabeth's jealousy from entertaining these religious innovations,
which would probably have met no unfavourable reception from a
free parliament, the Commons vented their ill-will towards the
dominant hierarchy in complaints of ecclesiastical grievances, and
measures to redress them; as to which, even with the low notions of
parliamentary right prevailing at court, it was impossible to deny their
competence. Several bills were introduced this session of 1584-5
199
into the lower house, which, though they had little chance of receiving
the queen's assent, manifest the sense of that assembly, and in all
likelihood of their constituents. One of these imported that bishops
should be sworn in one of the courts of justice to do nothing in their
office contrary to the common law. Another went to restrain
pluralities, as to which the prelates would very reluctantly admit of
any limitation.[346] A bill of the same nature passed the Commons in 1589, though not without some opposition. The clergy took so great
alarm at this measure, that the convocation addressed the queen in
vehement language against it; and the archbishop throwing all the
weight of his advice and authority into the same scale, the bill expired
in the upper house.[347] A similar proposition in the session of 1601
seems to have miscarried in the Commons.[348] In the next chapter will be found other instances of the Commons' reforming temper in
ecclesiastical concerns, and the queen's determined assertion of her
supremacy.
The oath ex officio, binding the taker to answer all questions that
should be put to him, inasmuch as it contravened the generous
maxim of English law that no one is obliged to criminate himself,
provoked very just animadversion. Morice, attorney of the court of
wards, not only attacked its legality with arguments of no slight force,
but introduced a bill to take it away. This was on the whole well
received by the house; and Sir Francis Knollys, the stanch enemy of