CHAPTER V. REFORMATION BY ELIZABETH. Elizabeth's accession Alteration of religion-Act of Uniformity Deprived clergymen - New bishops - Divines who refuse bishoprics-Articles of religion— Rites and ceremonies Puritans object to them. ELIZABETH was twenty-five years of age at the death of her sister queen Mary. She had complied with the popish ceremonies in the late reign: but being known to favour the protestant doctrines in which she had been educated, though her life was spared, she was committed to the custody of Sir Thomas Pope at Hatfield. There she found much relief in her literary studies, having been directed in the reading of the principal Latin and Greek classics by the famous Roger Ascham, who declared that she was at the head of the lettered ladies of England, excelling even Lady Jane Grey, and Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, called by Erasmus " The Ornament of England." : Elizabeth inherited much of the high spirit of her father Henry but it had partially been subdued by persecution and confinement. Though the pope had pronounced her illegitimate, and Mary queen of Scots laid claim to the throne of England, the bloody tyranny of the late reign had so terrified the nation at popery, that Elizabeth ascended the throne without opposition. On receiving at Hatfield the information of having been proclaimed queen, Elizabeth fell on her knees, exclaiming, "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." She immediately appointed Sir William Cecil to be secretary of state, an office which he had held under Edward, a man of great talents and a zealous protestant. "Within a few days of her arrival in London, Cecil laid before her his plan for a religious revolution, which was to take from her enemies the power and influence of the establishment, and arm her friends with these formidable weapons *;" and he advised an ecclesiastical commission to carry forward his plan. Oglethorpe, bishop of Carlisle, officiating in the royal * Mackintosh's History of England, vol. iii, p. 4. chapel on Christmas day, was desired to omit the elevation of the host in the mass; which he conscientiously refusing, the queen with her ladies withdrew, to mark her displeasure. On the 28th of December the commission issued a proclamation, allowing the Epistles and Gospels and Decalogue, together with the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Litany, to be read in English; and such measures being taken, the queen assuming power to regulate religion, and these things favouring the restoration of the reformed doctrines, all the Catholic prelates, except Oglethorpe, refused to assist at the coronation of Elizabeth, Jan. 14, 1559. Parliament met Jan. 25, when Cox, one of the protestant exiles, having returned, preached; and Sir Nicholas Bacon, a favourer of the reformation, now raised to the office of lord keeper of the great seal, opened the business, declaring, that one object of their being called together was "to inake laws for the uniting of the people of the realm in one uniform order of religion." The acts by which "the ecclesiastical revolution was accomplished" occupied the whole session until May. They first revived all the statutes of Henry VIII, against foreign jurisdiction. "All spiritual jurisdiction was by the same act expressly annexed to the crown, and the sovereign was empowered to exercise it by commissioners appointed under the great seal*." The ancient statutes against Lollardy were repealed, and the ecclesiastical commissioners were forbidden to declare any matter to be heresy, but such as had been decided to be so, either by the Scripture, or by any of the first four general councils. The next act, for re-establishing the Common Prayer Book of Edward VI, entitled "An Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer," met with some resistance, but it passed the House of Commons in three days, April 20, and the House of Lords on the 28th, against the opposition of nine prelates and nine temporal peers. Uniformity in Common Prayer having been thus determined by act of parliament, measures were taken to enforce its observance. Only two important alterations were * Ibid. p. 9. made in the liturgy of King Edward, and those were intended to conciliate the papists: the first consisted in the omission of a prayer in the litany, to be delivered from "the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities:" the second, instead of the simple language of the Zuinglian reformers, who maintained that the Lord's supper was only a remembrance of the death of Christ, substituted words favouring the Lutheran notion of consubstantiation, and which might be used even by Catholics. At the delivery of the bread, King Edward's book directed the priest to say, "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” Elizabeth's book says, "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul." Elizabeth scrupled about the abolition of the honours shown to the statues and pictures of saints, and kept a crucifix in her own chapel: she also entertained strong prejudices against the marriage of the clergy, some of whom on that account endured her frowns. This form of Protestantism was publicly restored by the use of the new liturgy at Midsummer 1559, and with that the administration of the oath of supremacy. Fifteen bishops refused the oath; being all the prelates then living, except Kitchen of Landaff, who is regarded as a mere time-server. Burnet states, that the visitors of the high commission having made their report to the queen, “it was found, that out of nine thousand four hundred beneficed men in England, there were no more than fourteen bishops, six abbots, twelve deans, fifteen heads of colleges, fifty prebendaries, and eighty rectors of parishes, that had left their benefices on account of religion. So compliant were the papists generally: and indeed the bishops after this time had the same apprehension of the danger into which religion was brought by the jugglings of the greatest part of the clergy, who retained their affection for the old superstition, that those in King Edward's time had *" Some make the whole number of the priesthood that thus refused to take the oath of supremacy one hundred and fifty, * History of the Reformation, vol. iii, p. 510. and others two hundred ond twenty-nine in England and Wales. Great moderation, however, characterized the conduct of the court towards the deprived bishops; for though they were at first put in prison, they were all soon released except Bonner, White, and Watson. Tonstal bishop of Durham, and Thirlby of Ely, were allowed to live in the palace at Lambeth, and the queen frequently visited Heath, late archbishop of York, at his house in Surrey *." Difficulties arose in filling the vacant episcopal seats. Cecil and Bacon, occupying chief offices in the government of Elizabeth, after waiting about twelve months to see if any of the old bishops would conform, nominated Doctor Parker archbishop of Canterbury, and laboured to satisfy him about a valid consecration. Sir James Mackintosh remarks, "The church of England then adopted, and has not yet renounced, the inconsistent and absurd opinion, that the church of Rome, though idolatrous, is the only channel through which all lawful power of ordaining priests, of consecrating bishops, or validly performing any religious rite, flowed from Christ, through a succession of prelates, down to the latest age of the world. The ministers, therefore, first endeavoured to obtain the concurrence of the Catholic bishops in the consecration; which those prelates, who must have considered such an act as a profanation, conscientiously refused. They were at length obliged to issue a new commission for consecrating Parker, directed to Kitchen of Landaff, to Ball an Irish bishop, to Scory, and Coverdale, deprived in the reign of Mary, and to two suffragans. Whoever considers it important at present to examine this list, will perceive the perplexities in which the English church was involved by a zeal to preserve unbroken the chain of episcopal succession. On account of this frivolous advantage, that church was led to prefer the common enemy of all reformation to those protestant communions which had boldly snapped that brittle chain: a striking example of the evil that sometimes arises from the inconsistent respect paid by reformers to ancient establishments t." * Ibid. p. 505. + History of England, vol. iii, p. 16, 17. without any Parker was consecrated in a plain manner, ceremonies except imposition of hands and prayer, December the 17th, 1559, and on the 21st the primate consecrated four bishops, Grindal, Cox, Sandys, and Merrick; and in January four others, Bullingham, Jewel, Young, and Davis. Several of the most eminent of the returned exiles, who were offered bishoprics, refused on account of the habits and ceremonies, among whom were Miles Coverdale, Bernard Gilpin, John Knox, Sampson, Whitehead, and others; and those who did accept those honours, did it with hopes of obtaining an amendment in the constitution of the church. In the course of the next year bishops were consecrated for all the sees, some of whom had been exiles for religion in the days of Mary, and they stood pledged to promote the Reformation by the rule of the Scriptures, and in a spirit of mutual charity. "Thus," says Burnet, were the sees filled, the worship reformed, and the queen's injunctions sent over England. Three things yet remained to be done. The first was to set out the doctrine of the church, as it had been done in King Edward's time. The second was to translate the Bible, and publish it with short notes. And the third was, to regulate the ecclesiastical courts. The bishops therefore set about these. And for the first, though they could not, by public authority, set out the articles of the church until they met in convocation, yet they soon after proposed them. And for the present, they agreed on a short profession of their doc trine, which all incumbents were obliged to read and publish to their people *." The Bible was divided into many parts, and given to the most learned divines, by whom it was com pleted, and printed in the year 1561 +. "As for the canons and rules of church government, they were not so soon prepared. These came out, some in the year 1571, and more in the year 1597, and a far larger collection of them in the first year of King James's reign.” "Thus," Burnet adds, "did Queen Elizabeth again recover the reformation of religion: and it might have been expected, that, under such moderate and wise councils, things would * History of the Reformation, vol. iii, p. 515, 516. + Ibid. p. 518. |