Volume I Part 15 (1/2)

Parker with the following courtesy: ”_Madam_ (the style of a married lady) I may not call you; _mistress_ (the appellation at that time of an unmarried woman) I am loth to call you; but, however, I thank you for your good cheer.” The lady is styled, in deeds made while her husband was archbishop, _Parker_, alias _Harleston_; which was her maiden name.

And she dying before her husband, her brother is called her heir-at-law, though she left children. But the archbishop procured letters of legitimation, in order to render them capable of inheritance. _Life of Parker_, 511. Others did the same. _Annals_, i. 8. Yet such letters were, I conceive, beyond the queen's power to grant, and could not have obtained any regard in a court of law.

In the diocese of Bangor, it was usual for the clergy, some years after Elizabeth's accession, to pay the bishop for a licence to keep a concubine. Strype's _Parker_, 203.

[277] Burnet, iii. 305.

[278] Jewel's letters to Bullinger, in Burnet, are full of proofs of his dissatisfaction; and those who feel any doubts may easily satisfy themselves from the same collection, and from Strype as to the others.

The current opinion, that these scruples were imbibed during the banishment of our reformers, must be received with great allowance. The dislike to some parts of the Anglican ritual had begun at home; it had broken out at Frankfort; it is displayed in all the early doc.u.ments of Elizabeth's reign by the English divines, far more warmly than by their Swiss correspondents. Grindal, when first named to the see of London, had his scruples about wearing the episcopal habits removed by Peter Martyr. Strype's _Grindal_, 29.

[279] It was proposed on this occasion to abolish all saints' days, to omit the cross in baptism, to leave kneeling at the communion to the ordinary's discretion, to take away organs, and one or two more of the ceremonies then chiefly in dispute. Burnet, iii. 303 and Append. 319; Strype, i. 297, 299. Nowell voted in the minority. It can hardly be going too far to suppose that some of the majority were attached to the old religion.

[280] Jewel, one of these visitors, writes afterwards to Martyr: ”Invenimus ubique animos mult.i.tudinis satis propensos ad religionem; ibi etiam, ubi omnia putabantur fore difficillima.... Si quid erat obstinatae malitiae, id totum erat in presbyteris, illis praesertim, qui aliquando stetissent a nostra sententia.” Burnet, iii. Append. 289. The common people in London and elsewhere, Strype says, took an active part in demolis.h.i.+ng images; the pleasure of destruction, I suppose, mingling with their abhorrence of idolatry. And during the conferences held in Westminster Abbey, Jan. 1559, between the catholic and protestant divines, the populace who had been admitted as spectators, testified such disapprobation of the former, that they made it a pretext for breaking off the argument. There was indeed such a tendency to antic.i.p.ate the government in reformation, as necessitated a proclamation, Dec. 28, 1558, silencing preachers on both sides.

Mr. Butler says, from several circ.u.mstances it is evident that a great majority of the nation then inclined to the Roman catholic religion.

_Mem. of Eng. Catholics_, i. 146. But his proofs of this are extremely weak. The attachment he supposes to have existed in the laity towards their pastors may well be doubted; it could not be founded on the natural grounds of esteem; and if Rishton, the continuator of Sanders de Schismate, whom he quotes, says that one-third of the nation was protestant, we may surely double the calculation of so determined a papist. As to the influence which Mr. B. alleges the court to have employed in elections for Elizabeth's first parliament, the argument would equally prove that the majority was protestant under Mary, since she had recourse to the same means. The whole tenor of historical doc.u.ments in Elizabeth's reign proves that the catholics soon became a minority, and still more among the common people than the gentry. The north of England, where their strength lay, was in every respect the least important part of the kingdom. Even according to Dr. Lingard, who thinks fit to claim half the nation as catholic in the middle of this reign, the number of recusants certified to the council under 23 Eliz.

c. 1, amounted only to fifty thousand; and, if we can trust the authority of other lists, they were much fewer before the accession of James. This writer, I may observe in pa.s.sing, has, through haste and thoughtlessness, misstated a pa.s.sage he cites from Murden's _State Papers_, p. 605, and confounded the persons suspected for religion in the city of London, about the time of the Armada, with the whole number of men fit for arms; thus making the former amount to seventeen thousand and eighty-three.

Mr. Butler has taken up so paradoxical a notion on this subject, that he literally maintains the catholics to have been at least one half of the people at the epoch of the gunpowder plot. Vol. i. p. 295. We should be glad to know at what time he supposes the grand apostasy to have been consummated. Cardinal Bentivoglio gives a very different account; reckoning the real catholics, such as did not make profession of heresy, at only a thirtieth part of the whole; though he supposes that four-fifths might become such, from secret inclination or general indifference, if it were once established. _Opere di Bentivoglio_, p.

83, edit. Paris, 1645. But I presume neither Mr. Butler nor Dr. Lingard would own these _adiaphorists_.

The latter writer, on the other hand, reckons the Hugonots of France, soon after 1560, at only one-hundredth part of the nation, quoting for this Castelnau, a useful memoir writer, but no authority on a matter of calculation. The stern spirit of Coligni, _atrox animus Catonis_, rising above all misfortune, and unconquerable, except by the darkest treachery, is sufficiently admirable without reducing his party to so miserable a fraction. The Calvinists at this time are reckoned by some at one-fourth, but more frequently at one-tenth, of the French nation.

Even in the beginning of the next century, when proscription and ma.s.sacre, lukewarmness and self-interest, had thinned their ranks, they are estimated by Bentivoglio (_ubi supra_) at one-fifteenth.

[281] Strype's _Parker_, 152, 153; Collier, 508. In the Lansdowne Collection, vol. viii. 47, is a letter from Parker, Apr. 1565, complaining of Turner, dean of Wells, for having made a man do penance for adultery in a square cap.

[282] Strype's _Parker_, 157, 173.

[283] This apprehension of Elizabeth's taking a disgust to protestantism is intimated in a letter of Bishop c.o.x. Strype's _Parker_, 229.

[284] Parker sometimes declares himself willing to see some indulgence as to the habits and other matters; but, the queen's commands being peremptory, he had thought it his duty to obey them, though forewarning her that the puritan ministers would not give way (225, 227). This, however, is not consistent with other pa.s.sages, where he appears to importune the queen to proceed. Her wavering conduct, partly owing to caprice, partly to insincerity, was naturally vexatious to a man of his firm and ardent temper. Possibly he might dissemble a little in writing to Cecil, who was against driving the puritans to extremities. But, on the review of his whole behaviour, he must be reckoned, and always has been reckoned, the most severe disciplinarian of Elizabeth's first hierarchy; though more violent men came afterwards.

[285] Strype's _Annals_, 416; _Parker_, 159. Some years after, these advertis.e.m.e.nts obtained the queen's sanction, and got the name of Articles and Ordinances. _Id._ 160.

[286] Strype's _Annals_, 416, 430; _Life of Parker_, 184. Sampson had refused a bishopric on account of these ceremonies. Burnet, iii. 292.

[287] _Life of Parker_, 214. Strype says (p. 223) that the suspended ministers preached again after a little time by connivance.

[288] Jewel is said to have become strict in enforcing the use of the surplice. _Annals_, 421.

[289] Strype's _Annals_, i. 423, ii. 316; _Life of Parker_, 243, 348; Burnet, iii. 310, 325, 337. Bishops Grindal and Horn wrote to Zurich, saying plainly, it was not their fault that the habits were not laid aside, with the cross in baptism, the use of organs, baptism by women, etc. P. 314. This last usage was much inveighed against by the Calvinists, because it involved a theological tenet differing from their own, as to the necessity of baptism. In Strype's _Annals_, 501, we have the form of an oath taken by all mid-wives, to exercise their calling without sorcery or superst.i.tion, and to baptize with the proper words.

It was abolished by James I.

Beza was more dissatisfied than the Helvetic divines with the state of the English church (_Annals_, i. 452; Collier, 503); but dissuaded the puritans from separation, and advised them rather to comply with the ceremonies. _Id._ 511.

[290] Strype's _Life of Parker_, 242; _Life of Grindal_, 114.

[291] Burnet, iii. 316; Strype's _Parker_, 155 _et alibi_.

[292] _Id._ 226. The church had but two or three friends, Strype says, in the council about 1572, of whom Cecil was the chief. _Id._ 388.

[293] Burnet says, on the authority of the visitors' reports, that out of 9400 beneficed clergymen, not more than about 200 refused to conform.