Volume Iv Part 5 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Her religious policy.]

It was with the religious difficulty that Elizabeth was called first to deal; and the way in which she dealt with it showed at once the peculiar bent of her mind. The young Queen was not without a sense of religion; at moments of peril or deliverance throughout her reign her acknowledgements of a divine protection took a strange depth and earnestness. But she was almost wholly dest.i.tute of spiritual emotion, or of any consciousness of the vast questions with which theology strove to deal. While the world around her was being swayed more and more by theological beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was absolutely untouched by them. She was a child of the Italian Renascence rather than of the New Learning of Colet or Erasmus, and her att.i.tude towards the enthusiasm of her time was that of Lorenzo de' Medici towards Savonarola. Her mind was untroubled by the spiritual problems which were vexing the minds around her; to Elizabeth indeed they were not only unintelligible, they were a little ridiculous. She had been brought up under Henry amidst the ritual of the older Church; under Edward she had submitted to the English Prayer-Book, and drunk in much of the Protestant theology; under Mary she was ready after a slight resistance to conform again to the ma.s.s. Her temper remained unchanged through the whole course of her reign. She showed the same intellectual contempt for the superst.i.tion of the Romanist as for the bigotry of the Protestant.

While she ordered Catholic images to be flung into the fire, she quizzed the Puritans as ”brethren in Christ.” But she had no sort of religious aversion from either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled at the Catholic n.o.bles whom she admitted to the presence. The Catholics grumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom she called to her council-board. To Elizabeth on the other hand the arrangement was the most natural thing in the world. She looked at theological differences in a purely political light. She agreed with Henry the Fourth that a kingdom was well worth a ma.s.s. It seemed an obvious thing to her to hold out hopes of conversion as a means of deceiving Philip, or to gain a point in negotiation by restoring the crucifix to her chapel. The first interest in her own mind was the interest of public order, and she never could understand how it could fail to be the first in every one's mind.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's toleration.]

One memorable change marked the n.o.bler side of the policy she brought with her to the throne. Elizabeth's accession was at once followed by a close of the religious persecution. Whatever might be the changes that awaited the country, conformity was no longer to be enforced by the penalty of death. At a moment when Philip was presiding at _autos-de-fe_ and Henry of France plotting a ma.s.sacre of his Huguenot subjects, such a resolve was a gain for humanity as well as a step towards religious toleration. And from this resolve Elizabeth never wavered. Through all her long reign, save a few Anabaptists whom the whole nation loathed as blasphemers of G.o.d and dreaded as enemies of social order, no heretic was ”sent to the fire.” It was a far greater gain for humanity when the Queen declared her will to meddle in no way with the consciences of her subjects. She would hear of no inquisition into a man's private thoughts on religious matters or into his personal religion. Cecil could boldly a.s.sert in her name at a later time the right of every Englishman to perfect liberty of religious opinion. Such a liberty of opinion by no means implied liberty of public wors.h.i.+p. On the incompatibility of freedom of wors.h.i.+p with public order Catholic and Protestant were as yet at one. The most advanced reformers did not dream of contending for a right to stand apart from the national religion. What they sought was to make the national religion their own. The tendency of the reformation had been to press for the religious as well as the political unity of every state. Even Calvin looked forward to the winning of the nations to a purer faith without a suspicion that the religious movement which he headed would end in establis.h.i.+ng the right even of the children of ”antichrist” to wors.h.i.+p as they would in a Protestant commonwealth. If the Protestant lords in Scotland had been driven to a.s.sert a right of nonconformity, if the Huguenots of France were following their example, it was with no thought of a.s.serting the right of every man to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as he would. From the claim of such a right Knox or Coligni would have shrunk with even greater horror than Elizabeth. What they aimed at was simply the establishment of a truce till by force or persuasion they could win the realms that tolerated them for their own. In this matter therefore Elizabeth was at one with every statesman of her day. While granting freedom of conscience to her subjects, she was resolute to exact an outward conformity to the established religion.

[Sidenote: Religion unchanged.]

But men watched curiously to see what religion the Queen would establish. Even before her accession the keen eye of the Spanish amba.s.sador had noted her ”great admiration for the king her father's mode of carrying on matters,” as a matter of ill omen for the interests of Catholicism. He had marked that the ladies about her and the counsellors on whom she seemed about to rely were, like Cecil, ”held to be heretics.” ”I fear much,” he wrote, ”that in religion she will not go right.” As keen an instinct warned the Protestants that the tide had turned. The cessation of the burnings, and the release of all persons imprisoned for religion, seemed to receive their interpretation when Elizabeth on her entry into London kissed an English Bible which the citizens presented to her and promised ”diligently to read therein.” The exiles at Stra.s.sburg or Geneva flocked home with wild dreams of a religious revolution and of vengeance upon their foes. But hopes and fears alike met a startling check. For months there was little change in either government or religion. If Elizabeth introduced Cecil and his kinsman, Sir Nicholas Bacon, to her council-board, she retained as yet most of her sister's advisers. The Ma.s.s went on as before, and the Queen was regular in her attendance at it. As soon as the revival of Protestantism showed itself in controversial sermons and insults to the priesthood it was bridled by a proclamation which forbade unlicensed preaching and enforced silence on the religious controversy. Elizabeth showed indeed a distaste for the elevation of the Host, and allowed the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments to be used in English. But months pa.s.sed after her accession before she would go further than this.

A royal proclamation which ordered the existing form of wors.h.i.+p to be observed ”till consultation might be had in Parliament by the Queen and the Three Estates” startled the prelates; and only one bishop could be found to a.s.sist at the coronation of Elizabeth. But no change was made in the ceremonies of the coronation; the Queen took the customary oath to observe the liberties of the Church, and conformed to the Catholic ritual. There was little in fact to excite any reasonable alarm among the adherents of the older faith, or any reasonable hope among the adherents of the new. ”I will do,” the Queen said, ”as my father did.”

Instead of the reforms of Edward and the Protectorate, the Protestants saw themselves thrown back on the reforms of Henry the Eighth. Even Henry's system indeed seemed too extreme for Elizabeth. Her father had at any rate broken boldly from the Papacy. But the first work of the Queen was to open negotiations for her recognition with the Papal Court.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and Philip.]

What shaped Elizabeth's course in fact was hard necessity. She found herself at war with France and Scotland, and her throne threatened by the claim of the girl who linked the two countries, the claim of Mary Stuart, at once Queen of Scotland and wife of the Dauphin Francis. On Elizabeth's accession Mary and Francis a.s.sumed by the French king's order the arms and style of English sovereigns: and if war continued it was clear that their pretensions would be backed by Henry's forces as well as by the efforts of the Scots. Against such a danger Philip of Spain was Elizabeth's only ally. Philip's policy was at this time a purely conservative one. The vast schemes of ambition which had so often knit both Pope and Protestants, Germany and France, against his father were set aside by the young king. His position indeed was very different from that of Charles the Fifth. He was not Emperor. He had little weight in Germany. Even in Italy his influence was less than his father's. He had lost with Mary's death the crown of England. His most valuable possessions outside Spain, the provinces of the Netherlands, were disaffected to a foreign rule. All the king therefore aimed at was to keep his own. But the Netherlands were hard to keep: and with France mistress of England as of Scotland, and so mistress of the Channel, to keep them would be impossible. Sheer necessity forbade Philip to suffer the union of the three crowns of the west on the head of a French king; and the French marriage of Mary Stuart pledged him to oppose her pretensions and support Elizabeth's throne. For a moment he even dreamed of meeting the union of France with Scotland by that union of England with Spain which had been seen under Mary. He offered Elizabeth his hand. The match was a more natural one than Philip's union with her sister, for the young king's age was not far from her own. The offer however was courteously put aside, for Elizabeth had no purpose of lending England to the ambition of Spain, nor was it possible for her to repeat her sister's unpopular experiment. But Philip remained firm in his support of her throne. He secured for her the allegiance of the Catholics within her realm, who looked to him as their friend while they distrusted France as an ally of heretics. His envoys supported her cause in the negotiations at Cateau-Cambresis; he suffered her to borrow money and provide herself with arms in his provinces of the Netherlands. At such a crisis Elizabeth could not afford to alienate Philip by changes which would roughly dispel his hopes of retaining her within the bounds of Catholicism.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Papacy.]

Nor is there any sign that Elizabeth had resolved on a defiance of the Papacy. She was firm indeed to a.s.sert her father's claim of supremacy over the clergy and her own t.i.tle to the throne. But the difficulties in the way of an accommodation on these points were such as could be settled by negotiation; and, acting on Cecil's counsel, Elizabeth announced her accession to the Pope. The announcement showed her purpose of making no violent break in the relations of England with the Papal See. But between Elizabeth and the Papacy lay the fatal question of the Divorce. To acknowledge the young Queen was not only to own her mother's marriage, but to cancel the solemn judgement of the Holy See in Catharine's favour and its solemn a.s.sertion of her own b.a.s.t.a.r.dy. The temper of Paul the Fourth took fire at the news. He reproached Elizabeth with her presumption in ascending the throne, recalled the Papal judgement which p.r.o.nounced her illegitimate, and summoned her to submit her claims to his tribunal. Much of this indignation was no doubt merely diplomatic. If the Pope listened to the claims of Mary Stuart, which were urged on him by the French Court, it was probably only with the purpose of using them to bring pressure to bear on Elizabeth and on the stubborn country which still refused to restore its lands to the Church and to make the complete submission which Paul demanded. But Cecil and the Queen knew that, even had they been willing to pay such a price for the crown, it was beyond their power to bring England to pay it. The form too in which Paul had couched his answer admitted of no compromise.

The summons to submit the Queen's claim of succession to the judgement of Rome produced its old effect. Elizabeth was driven, as Henry had been driven, to a.s.sert the right of the nation to decide on questions which affected its very life. A Parliament which met in January, 1559, acknowledged the legitimacy of Elizabeth and her t.i.tle to the crown.

[Sidenote: The Supremacy re-established.]

Such an acknowledgement in the teeth of the Papal repudiation of Anne Boleyn's marriage carried with it a repudiation of the supremacy of the Papacy. It was in vain that the clergy in convocation unanimously adopted five articles which affirmed their faith in transubstantiation, their acceptance of the supreme authority of the Popes as ”Christ's vicars and supreme rulers of the Church,” and their resolve ”that the authority in all matters of faith and discipline belongs and ought to belong only to the pastors of the Church, and not to laymen.” It was in vain that the bishops unanimously opposed the Bill for restoring the royal supremacy when it was brought before the Lords. The ”ancient jurisdiction of the Crown over the Estate ecclesiastical and spiritual”

was restored; the Acts which under Mary re-established the independent jurisdiction and legislation of the Church were repealed; and the clergy were called on to swear to the supremacy of the Crown and to abjure all foreign authority and jurisdiction. Further Elizabeth had no personal wish to go. A third of the Council and at least two-thirds of the people were as opposed to any radical changes in religion as the Queen. Among the gentry the older and wealthier were on the conservative side, and only the younger and meaner on the other. In the Parliament itself Sir Thomas White protested that ”it was unjust that a religion begun in such a miraculous way and established by such grave men should be abolished by a set of beardless boys.” Yet even this ”beardless” Parliament had shown a strong conservatism. The Bill which re-established the royal supremacy met with violent opposition in the Commons, and only pa.s.sed through Cecil's adroit manoeuvring.

[Sidenote: Prayer-Book restored.]

But the steps which Elizabeth had taken made it necessary to go further.

If the Protestants were the less numerous, they were the abler and the more vigorous party, and the break with Rome threw Elizabeth, whether she would or no, on their support. It was a support that could only be bought by theological concessions, and above all by the surrender of the Ma.s.s; for to every Protestant the Ma.s.s was identified with the fires of Smithfield, while the Prayer-Book which it had displaced was hallowed by the memories of the Martyrs. The pressure of the reforming party indeed would have been fruitless had the Queen still been hampered by danger from France. Fortunately for their cause the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis at this juncture freed Elizabeth's hands. By this treaty, which was practically concluded in March 1559, Calais was left in French holding on the illusory pledge of its restoration to England eight years later; but peace was secured and the danger of a war of succession, in which Mary Stuart would be backed by the arms of France, for a while averted.

Secure from without, Elizabeth could venture to buy the support of the Protestants within her realm by the restoration of the English Prayer-Book. Such a measure was far indeed from being meant as an open break with Catholicism. The use of the vulgar tongue in public wors.h.i.+p was still popular with a large part of the Catholic world; and the Queen did her best by the alterations she made in Edward's Prayer-Book to strip it of its more Protestant tone. To the bulk of the people the book must have seemed merely a rendering of the old service in their own tongue. As the English Catholics afterwards represented at Rome when excusing their own use of it, the Prayer-Book ”contained neither impiety nor false doctrine; its prayers were those of the Catholic Church, altered only so far as to omit the merits and intercession of the saints.” On such a concession as this the Queen felt it safe to venture in spite of the stubborn opposition of the spiritual estate. She ordered a disputation to be held in Westminster Abbey before the Houses on the question, and when the disputation ended in the refusal of the bishops to proceed, an Act of Uniformity, which was pa.s.sed in spite of their strenuous opposition, restored at the close of April the last Prayer-Book of Edward, and enforced its use on the clergy on pain of deprivation.

[Sidenote: Pius the Fourth.]

At Rome the news of these changes stirred a fiercer wrath in Paul the Fourth, and his threats of excommunication were only held in check by the protests of Philip. The policy of the Spanish king still bound him to Elizabeth's cause, for the claims of Mary Stuart had been reserved in the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis and the refusal of France to abandon them held Spain to its alliance with the Queen. Vexed as he was at the news of the Acts which re-established the supremacy, Philip ordered his amba.s.sador to a.s.sure Elizabeth he was as sure a friend as ever, and to soothe the resentment of the English Catholics if it threatened to break out into revolt. He showed the same temper in his protest against action at Rome. Paul had however resolved to carry out his threats when his death and the interregnum which followed gave Elizabeth a fresh respite.

His successor, Pius the Fourth, was of milder temper and leaned rather to a policy of conciliation. Decisive indeed as the Queen's action may seem in modern eyes, it was far from being held as decisive at the time.

The Act of Supremacy might be regarded as having been forced upon Elizabeth by Paul's repudiation of her t.i.tle to the crown. The alterations which were made by the Queen's authority in the Prayer-Book showed a wish to conciliate those who clung to the older faith. It was clear that Elizabeth had no mind merely to restore the system of the Protectorate. She set up again the royal supremacy, but she dropped the words ”Head of the Church” from the royal t.i.tle. The forty-two Articles of Protestant doctrine which Cranmer had drawn up were left in abeyance.

If the Queen had had her will, she would have retained the celibacy of the clergy and restored the use of crucifixes in the churches.

[Sidenote: The Clergy and the oath.]

The caution and hesitation with which she enforced on the clergy the oath required by the Act of Supremacy showed Elizabeth's wish to avoid the opening of a religious strife. The higher dignitaries indeed were unsparingly dealt with. The bishops, who with a single exception refused to take the oath, were imprisoned and deprived. The same measure was dealt out to most of the archdeacons and deans. But with the ma.s.s of the parish priests a very different course was taken. The Commissioners appointed in May 1559 were found to be too zealous in October, and several of the clerical members were replaced by cooler laymen. The great bulk of the clergy seem neither to have refused nor to have consented to the oath, but to have left the Commissioners' summons unheeded and to have stayed quietly at home. Of the nine thousand four hundred beneficed clergy only a tenth presented themselves before the Commissioners. Of those who attended and refused the oath a hundred and eighty-nine were deprived, but many of the most prominent went unharmed.

At Winchester, though the dean and canons of the cathedral, the warden and fellows of the college, and the master of St. Cross, refused the oath, only four of these appear in the list of deprivations. Even the few who suffered proved too many for the purpose of the Queen. In the more remote parts of the kingdom the proceedings of the visitors threatened to wake the religious strife which she was endeavouring to lull to sleep. On the northern border, where the great n.o.bles, Lord Dacres and the Earls of c.u.mberland and Westmoreland, were zealous Catholics, and refused to let the bishop ”meddle with them,” the clergy held stubbornly aloof. At Durham a parson was able to protest without danger that the Pope alone had power in spiritual matters. In Hereford the town turned out to receive in triumph a party of priests from the west who had refused the oath. The University of Oxford took refuge in sullen opposition. In spite of pressure from the Protestant prelates, who occupied the sees vacated by the deprived bishops, Elizabeth was firm in her policy of patience, and in December she ordered the Commissioners in both provinces to suspend their proceedings.

[Sidenote: The Religious Chaos.]

In part indeed of her effort she was foiled by the bitterness of the reformers. The London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Her attempt to retain the crucifix, or to enforce the celibacy of the priesthood, fell dead before the opposition of the Protestant clergy.

But to the ma.s.s of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth seems to have been fairly acceptable. They saw but little change. Their old vicar or rector in almost every case remained in his parsonage and ministered in his church. The new Prayer-Book was for the most part an English rendering of the old service. Even the more zealous adherents of Catholicism held as yet that in complying with the order for attendance at public wors.h.i.+p ”there could be nothing positively unlawful.” Where party feeling ran high indeed the matter was sometimes settled by a compromise. A priest would celebrate ma.s.s at his parsonage for the more rigid Catholics, and administer the new communion in church to the more rigid Protestants. Sometimes both parties knelt together at the same altar-rails, the one to receive hosts consecrated by the priest at home after the old usage, the other wafers consecrated in church after the new. In many parishes of the north no change of service was made at all.