HOW THE BISHOPS OBTAINED THEIR OFFICES

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In 1585, when six bishoprics were vacant, a correspondence passed between Lord Burghley and Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, which shows the general character of the men whom Elizabeth selected for ecclesiastical preferment. Says the Lord Treasurer: "There are to be new bishops placed in the six vacant chairs. I wish-but I cannot hope it-that the Church may take that good thereby that it hath need of. Your Grace must pardon me; for I see such worldliness in many that were otherwise affected before they came to cathedral churches, that I fear the places alter the men." To which Whitgift replied: "It is not the chair that maketh the alteration, if any there be, but the unlawful means of coming by it. ... I doubt not but as good men, even at this day, possess some of these chairs as ever did in any age; although I will not justify all, nor yet many of them." Bishops who had bought their seats, as is here plainly intimated, could hardly be expected to refrain from repaying themselves by plundering their sees. Had Elizabeth been actuated by a desire to bring the Established Church into contempt, so that its downfall would be mourned by no one, she certainly could have chosen no better mode of accomplishing her purpose than that of selecting such men to represent its principles.†

tions of the palace at Fulham, etc., he actually proposed to sell his bishopric to Bancroft (Strype's 'Aylmer,' p. 169). The latter, however, waited for his death, and had over £4000 awarded to him; but the crafty old man having laid out his money in land, this sum was never paid."—Hallam, i. 206. At this time land in England could not be taken for debt.

* Strype's" Whitgift," pp. 171, 172. No one who knows anything of Whitgift's character would ever suspect him of libelling the Church. + During the session of Parliament, in 1581, when the nation was

But, after all, the bishops were simply following the lessons taught them by the queen. She was the great despoiler of the Church. All through her reign, we find her not only demanding from the bishops the surrender of portions of the property of their sees for the benefit of some needy favorite-and she thus robbed even the universities themselves *-but she issued numerous commissions, under which keen and unscrupulous adventurers sought out flaws in ecclesiastical titles, recovering the property for the crown and receiving as their compensation a portion of the spoils. Besides this, although the regular revenues of the sees were very small, averaging only about a thousand pounds per annum, they were so diminished by the exactions of the queen and her courtiers, that in many cases the incumbents, without dishonesty, would have found it impossible to live. One illustration of the extent of these exactions will suffice to show their character. In 1583, the Bishop of Winchester, who held one of the richest sees in the kingdom, was complained of for spending so little money as to bring his office into disrepute. In answer to the charge he sent Lord Burghley a statement showing his income and expenditures. His net income was about £2800. Of this he paid to the queen, in first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, and benevolences, about £1900; to Leicester, £100; in annuities granted by his predecessors, "wherein Sir Francis Walsingham's fee is contained," £218; leaving for himself, after paying

alarmed by the Catholic revival which the Jesuits had awakened, one member gave voice to the public opinion in saying: "Were there any honesty in these prelates, in whom honesty should most be found, we should not be in our present trouble."-Froude, xi. 360. *Strype, iii. 54. + Idem, passim.

*

ILLITERACY OF THE CLERGY

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salaries and alms to the poor, just one seventh of the net income. This system was almost as profitable to the queen as the one under which she kept a diocese. vacant for years, receiving all the income.†

But there was something more than corruption in the Church. The mass of the clergy were so illiterate that, even had they been pure of life, they could have done little to elevate the people or win respect for the new establishment. This evil, too, was felt in its full force by the statesmen who tried in vain to influence the queen. They realized the fact that Protestantism

*Strype, iii. Appendix, p. 58.

As

She thus kept the diocese of Ely vacant for eighteen years after the death of Cox. Hall, p. 117. Strype, in this connection, gives a curious letter written to the queen by Sir John Puckering, the Lord Keeper—that is, the acting Chancellor-which shows how bishoprics and their property were disposed of. Sir John desired a lease of some land belonging to the vacant bishopric of Ely, and proposed, about 1595, that the office should be filled in order to carry out his wishes. The lease, he said, would benefit him, without expense to her majesty, since the property did not belong to the crown. to filling the see, although she would thereby lose the income, this would be made up from first-fruits, tenths, and subsidies; which, if an old man were selected for the place, would soon be payable again. In addition, by changing around some of the other old bishops, she could make a profit of several thousand pounds. Strype, iv. 247. Under a statute passed in the first year of her reign, to which reference has been made before (see p. 433), every bishop and every clergyman paid the queen at once, or in two or three annual payments, a sum equal to a year's income on his first appointment to a charge. These payments, called firstfruits, became due again on every change of diocese or parish, and to them was added a tenth of the annual income thereafter. The system had, therefore, a money value to the crown, which was perhaps no small recommendation in the eyes of a frugal monarch like Elizabeth.

must ultimately rest on general intelligence, and that the so-called reformation of the Church would prove an illusive snare, unless the people were taught to understand its meaning. But to do this teachers were needed very different from those who occupied the English pulpits. It was this conviction that led men like Burghley and Bacon, perhaps having little religion themselves, to advocate the cause of the Puritans.

The English Puritans, like their brethren in Holland and Scotland, believed in education, and it is their crowning glory. They might be narrow-minded and intolerant; had they been otherwise, they would have been false to their age and race. But wherever we find them, either in England or America, we find in their possession the school-book and the Bible. They wished, and they finally insisted, that others should believe as they did, for they could not conceive that any other belief was possible. They did not, however, desire a blind acceptance; they demanded a conscientious conviction of the truth, founded on a knowledge of their doctrines. Education, therefore, was their watchword. If you would get rid of the tares and have a crop, you must plough up the ground and sow your seed. The religious crop which the present generation is reaping would surprise these men of three centuries ago; but even the most radical thinker of to-day must give them credit for insisting on the cultivation of the soil.

But it was not the Puritans alone who, in the time of Elizabeth, desired religious instruction for the people. All the churchmen who were earnest in their belief felt the same desire. They argued that the true mode of extirpating popery, then the vital question for the nation, was by showing up its errors. They therefore advocated the general preaching and discussion of the

ELIZABETH OPPOSES RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

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doctrines of the Reformation.* The queen, however, would have no such preaching or discussion. If we can judge from her actions, she wished for no new crop, but desired that the old tares should go to seed. She encouraged the study of the classics, she gave some little countenance to poetry; but of the education of the masses, or of the discussion of religious questions, she entirely disapproved.

Was this sagacity on her part, such as some historians have attributed to her, surpassing that of the ablest statesmen and most earnest churchmen of her times? Was it from any love of the Reformation that she desired to keep the people ignorant of religious truths? It has been said that she did not wish to stir up a religious turmoil, that she feared its effects upon her Catholic subjects, and that she desired to give the people time to forget the old faith and accustom themselves to the new belief. Does this explain her conduct? There might be something in such a theory had she filled the ministry with men of even reputable lives. But nothing is left of it when we recall the character of the clergy during the first half of her reign. Bakers, butchers, cooks, and stablemen, wholly illiterate, drunken and licentious,† seem hardly fitting instruments for advancing such a broad-minded religious policy. In fact, they alienated the few earnest old Catholics, instead of reconciling them to the new establishment.

One thing is very clear. Elizabeth understood full well the effects of educating a people in the doctrines of the Reformation. In 1578, Philip of Spain offered to his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands the full restoration of their civil rights provided they would return to

* Hallam, i. 200.

+ Idem, i. 203. Nathan Drake, p. 44.