Volume I Part 16 (1/2)

[308] Several ministers were deprived, in 1572, for refusing to subscribe the articles. Strype, ii. 186. Unless these were papists, which indeed is possible, their objection must have been to the articles touching discipline; for the puritans liked the rest very well.

[309] Neal, 187; Strype's _Parker_, 325. Parker wrote to Lord Burleigh (June 1573), exciting the council to proceed against some of those men who had been called before the star-chamber. ”He knew them,” he said, ”to be cowards”--a very great mistake--”and if they of the privy council gave over, they would hinder her majesty's government more than they were aware, and much abate the estimation of their own authorities,”

etc. _Id._ p. 421; Cartwright's _Admonition_ was now prohibited to be sold. _Ibid._

[310] Neal, 210.

[311] Strype's _Annals_, i. 433.

[312] Strype's _Annals_, ii. 219, 232; _Life of Parker_, 461.

[313] Strype's _Life of Grindal_, 219, 230, 272. The archbishop's letter to the queen, declaring his unwillingness to obey her requisition, is in a far bolder strain than the prelates were wont to use in this reign, and perhaps contributed to the severity she showed towards him. Grindal was a very honest, conscientious man, but too little of a courtier or statesman for the place he filled. He was on the point of resigning the archbishopric when he died; there had at one time been some thoughts of depriving him.

[314] Strype's _Whitgift_, 27 _et alibi_. He did not disdain to reflect on Cartwright for his poverty, the consequence of a scrupulous adherence to his principles. But the controversial writers of every side in the sixteenth century display a want of decency and humanity which even our anonymous libellers have hardly matched. Whitgift was not of much learning, if it be true, as the editors of the _Biographia Britannica_ intimate, that he had no acquaintance with the Greek language. This must seem strange to those who have an exaggerated notion of the scholars.h.i.+p of that age.

[315] Strype's _Whitgift_, 115.

[316] Neal, 266; Birch's _Memoirs of Elizabeth_, vol. i. p. 42, 47, etc.

[317] According to a paper in the appendix to Strype's _Life of Whitgift_, p. 60, the number of conformable ministers in eleven dioceses, not including those of London and Norwich, the strongholds of puritanism, was 786, that of non-compliers 49. But Neal says that 233 ministers were suspended in only six counties, 64 of whom in Norfolk, 60 in Suffolk, 38 in Ess.e.x. P. 268. The puritans formed so much the more learned and diligent part of the clergy, that a great scarcity of preachers was experienced throughout this reign, in consequence of silencing so many of the former. Thus in Cornwall, about the year 1578, out of 140 clergymen, not one was capable of preaching. Neal, p. 245.

And, in general, the number of those who could not preach, but only read the service, was to the others nearly as four to one; the preachers being a majority only in London. _Id_. p. 320.

This may be deemed by some an instance of Neal's prejudice. But that historian is not so ill-informed as they suppose; and the fact is highly probable. Let it be remembered that there existed few books of divinity in English; that all books were, comparatively to the value of money, far dearer than at present; that the majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate, and many of them addicted to drunkenness and low vices; above all, that they had no means of supplying their deficiences by preaching the discourses of others; and we shall see little cause for doubting Neal's statement, though founded on a puritan doc.u.ment.

[318] _Life of Whitgift_, 137 _et alibi pluries_; _Annals_, iii. 183.

[319] Neal, 274; Strype's _Annals_, iii. 180.

The germ of the high commission court seems to have been a commission granted by Mary (Feb. 1557) to certain bishops and others to inquire after all heresies, punish persons misbehaving at church, and such as refused to come thither, either by means of presentments by witness, or any other politic way they could devise; with full power to proceed as their discretions and consciences should direct them; and to use all such means as they could invent, for the searching of the premises, to call witnesses, and force them to make oath of such things as might discover what they sought after. Burnet, ii. 347. But the primary model was the inquisition itself.

It was questioned whether the power of deprivation for not reading the common prayer, granted to the high commissioners, were legal; the Act of Uniformity having annexed a much smaller penalty. But it was held by the judges in the case of Cawdrey (5 c.o.ke Reports), that the act did not take away the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and supremacy which had ever appertained to the crown, and by virtue of which it might erect courts with as full spiritual jurisdiction as the archbishops and bishops exercised.

[320] Strype's _Whitgift_, 135; and Appendix, 49.

[321] _Id._ 157, 160.

[322] _Id._ 163, 166 _et alibi_; Birch's _Memoirs_, i. 62. There was said to be a scheme on foot, about 1590, to make all persons in office subscribe a declaration that episcopacy was lawful by the word of G.o.d, which Burleigh prevented.

[323] Neal, 325, 385.

[324] _Id._ 290; Strype's _Life of Aylmer_, p. 59, etc. His biographer is here, as in all his writings, too partial to condemn, but too honest to conceal.

[325] Neal, 294.

[326] Strype's _Aylmer_, 71. When he grew old, and reflected that a large sum of money would be due from his family, for dilapidations of the palace at Fulham, etc., he literally proposed to sell his bishopric to Bancroft. _Id._ 169. The other, however, waited for his death, and had above 4000 awarded to him; but the crafty old man having laid out his money in land, this sum was never paid. Bancroft tried to get an act of parliament in order to render the real estate liable, but without success. P. 194.

[327] _Somers' Tracts_, i. 166.

[328] Bacon's Works, i. 532.

[329] Birch's _Memoirs_, ii. 146,

[330] _Id. ibid._ Burleigh does not s.h.i.+ne much in these memoirs; but most of the letters they contain are from the two Bacons, then engaged in the Ess.e.x faction, though nephews of the treasurer.