CHAPTER XVI.

THE ANGLICAN SETTLEMENT AND THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION.

WHEN at the beginning of 1560 there was a new Pope, pledged to convoke the Council for a third time and to stem and repel the tide of heresy, the latest disaster that met his eye was no mere relapse of England followed by a lapse of Scotland ; for what was shaping itself in the northern seas already looked ominously like a Protestant Great Britain. Two small Catholic Powers traditionally at war with each other, the one a satellite of the Habsburg luminary, the other a satellite of France, seemed to be fusing themselves in one Power that might be very great: great perhaps for good, but more probably for evil. "Earnest embracing of religion," wrote a Scottish to an English statesman, "will join us straitly together." The religion that William Maitland meant when he sent these words to Sir William Cecil was not the religion of Pius IV and the General Council.

Suddenly all farsighted eyes had turned to a backward country. Eyes at Rome and eyes at Geneva were fixed on Scotland, and, the further they could peer into the future, the more eager must have been their gaze. And still we look intently at that wonderful scene, the Scotland of Mary Stewart and John Knox: not merely because it is such glorious tragedy, but also because it is such modern history. The fate of the Protestant Reformation was being decided, and the creed of unborn millions in undiscovered lands was being determined. This we see-all too plainly perhaps-if we rearl ,the books that year by year men still are writing of Queen Mary and her surroundings. The patient analysis of those love letters in the casket may yet be perturbed by thoughts about religion. Nor is the religious the only interest. A new nation, a British nation, was in the making.

All this deserves, and finds, full treatment at the hands of the historians of Scotland. They will also sufficiently warn us that the events of 1560 leave a great deal unchanged. Faith may be changed; works are much what they were, especially the works of the magnates. The blood-feud is no less a blood-feud because one family calls itself Catholic and another calls itself Protestant. The "band" is no less a "band" because it is styled a "Covenant" and makes free with holy names. A King shall be kidnapped, and a King shall be murdered, as of old:-it is the custom of the country. What is new is that farsighted men all Europe over, not only at London and at Paris, but at Rome and at Geneva, should take interest in these barbarous deeds, this customary turmoil.

Continuity there had been and to spare. In that mournful procession of the five Jameses there is no break (1406-1542). The last of them is engaged in thes old task, and failing as his forbears failed. It is picturesque; sometimes it is heroic; often it is pathetic; but it is never modern. Modern history sees it as a funeral procession burying a dead time, and we are silent while it passes. In a ' few sentences we make our way towards the momentous years.

Scottish monarchy, if monarchy it may be called, was indeed strictly limited; but the limits were set much rather by the power of certain noble families and their numerous retainers than by an assembly of Estates expressing the constant will of an organised community. The prelates, lords, and represented boroughs formed but one Chamber. Attempts to induce the lesser tenants-in-chief to choose representatives who would resemble the English knights of the shire had been abortive, and a bad habit prevailed of delegating the work of a Parliament to a committee known as "the Lords of the Articles." Normally the assembly of Estates was but the registrar of foregone conclusions. In troublous times (and the times were often troublous) the faction that was in power would hold a Parliament, and the other faction would prudently abstain from attendance. When in 1560 an unusually full, free and important Parliament was held for the reformation of religion, an elementary question concerning the right of the minor barons to sit and vote was still debateable, and for many years afterwards those who desire to see the true contribution of Scotland to the history of representative institutions will look, not to the blighted and stunted conclave of the three Estates with its titular Bishops and Abbots commendatory, but to the fresh and vigorous Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

Neither valorous feats of arms which overtaxed a people's strength nor a superabundance of earls and barons should conceal from us the nakedness of the land. It is more than probable that in the middle of the sixteenth century the whole of the Scottish nation, including untamable Highlanders, was not too large to be commodiously housed in the Glasgow of to-day. Life was short, and death was violent. It is true that many hopeful signs of increasing prosperity and enlightenment are visible in the days of James IV (1488-1513).

But the day of revolt was long delayed. What held in check the rebellious and even the Reforming forces, was the best of Scottish traditions, the undying distrust of an England which claimed an overlordship ; and in the days of Henry VIII no wholesomer tradition could there be. His father had schemed for amity by way of matrimonial alliance, and Margaret Tudor had become the wife and mother of Scottish Kings. It was plain that in the age of great monarchies England would be feeble so long as she had a hostile Scotland behind her. But the Tudor would not see that he could not annex Scotland, or that a merely annexed Scotland would still be the old enemy. Just as in the days of the Great Schism England had acknowledged one, and Scotland the other, of the rival Popes, so in the new days of a greater schism James V became the better Catholic because his bullying uncle had broken with Rome. As was natural for a King of Scots, he leant upon the support of the clergy, and thereby he offended his barons. They failed him in his hour of need. After the shameful rout at Solway Moss, he turned his face to the wall and died, a worn-out desperate man at the age of thirty years (December 14, 1542).

Patriotism and Catholicism were now all one. Not but that there were Protestants. One George Wishart, who had been in Switzerland and at Cambridge, was preaching the Gospel, and some (but thiJ is no better than a guess) would identify him with a Wishart who was plotting Beton's murder. He had powerful protectors, and among his disciples was a man of middle age, born in 1505, who as yet had done nothing memorable ; he was priest, notary, private tutor ; his name was John Knox. Wishart was arrested, tried and burnt for heresy (March 2,1546). Thereupon a band of assassins burst into the castle of St Andrews and slew Beton (May 29, 1546). The leaders were well bom men, Leslies, Kirkaldys, Melvilles. Their motives were various. Ancient feuds and hopes of English gold were mingled with hatred for a " bloody butcher of the saints of God." They held the castle and the town. The ruffianly and the godly flocked in. There was a strange mixture of debauchery and gospel in the St Andrews of those days. John Knox appeared there and was " called " to preach to the congregation ; reluctantly (so he says) he accepted the call. The Regent had laid siege, but had failed. At length came French ships with requisite artillery. The besieged capitulated (July, 1547) ; they were to be taken to France and there liberated. John Knox was shipped off with the rest, and was kept in the galleys for nineteen months, to meditate on faith that justifies.

In the meantime Calvinism, for it was Calvinism now, was spreading. After the quarrels at Frankfort, Knox had gone back to Geneva and had sat at the master's feet. In 1555 he returned to Scotland, no mere preacher, but an organiser also. He went through the country, and " Churches " of the new order sprang into being where he went. Powerful nobles began to listen, such as Lord Lome, who was soon to be Earl of Argyll, and the Queen's bastard brother, the Lord James Stewart, who was to be Earl of Moray and Regent. And politicians listened also, such as William Maitland, the young laird of Lethington. Knox was summoned before an ecclesiastical Court (May 15,1556); but apparently at the last moment the hearts of the clergy failed them, and the prosecution was abandoned. It was evident that he had powerful supporters, especially the Earl of Glencairn. Moreover the natural leader of the clergy, John Hamilton, the Primate of Scotland, was a bastard brother of Châtel-herault and, as a Hamilton, looked with suspicion on the French policy of Mary of Lorraine, so that the chiefs of Church and State were not united. However, Knox had no mind for martyrdom; and so, after sending to the Regent an admonitory letter, which she cast aside with scornful words, he again departed for Geneva (July, 1556). Then the Bishops summoned him once more ; but only his effigy could be burnt.

A few weeks later Henry Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, was talking with the Duke of Châtelherault. God, said the Englishman, has sent you a true and Christian religion. We are on the point of receiving the same boon. Why should you and we be enemies- we who are hardly out of our servitude to Spain ; you who are being brought into servitude by France? The liberties m Scotland are in jeopardy and the rights of the Hamiltons. Might we not unite in the maintenance of God's Word and national independence ? This is the ideal which springs to light in the last months of 1558 :-deliverance from the toils of foreign potentates ; amity between two sister nations ; union in a pure religion. The Duke himself was a waverer ; his duchy lay in France ; he is the Antoine de Bourbon of Scottish history ; but his son the Earl of Arran had lately installed a Protestant preacher at Châtelherault and was in correspondence with Calvin. Percy reported this interview to an English lady who had once been offered to the Duke as a bride for Arran and had just become Queen Elizabeth.

Mary, Queen of England and Spain, died on the 17th of November, 1558. The young woman at Hatfield, who knew that her sister's days were numbered, had made the great choice. Ever since May it had been clear that she would soon be Queen. The Catholics doubted and feared, but had no other candidate ; King Philip was hopeful. So Elizabeth was prepared. William Cecil was to be her secretary, and England was to be Protestant. Her choice may surprise us. When a few months later she is told by the Bishop of Aquila that she has been imprudent, he seems for once to be telling the truth.

At this moment, however, she put a difference of creed between herself and the Dauphiness. It may be that in any case Henry II of France, who was in want of arguments for the retention of Calais, would have disputed Elizabeth's legitimacy ; it was said that he had been prepared to dispute the legitimacy of her Catholic sister. But had Elizabeth been Catholic, the French and Scottish claim to her throne would have merely been an enemy's insult : an insult to England, a challenge to Spain. As it was, Henry might lay a strong case before the Pope and the Catholic world: Elizabeth was bastard and heretic to boot, and at this moment Paul IV was questioning Ferdinand's election to the Empire because some of his Electors were Lutherans. That heretics are not to rule was no new principle ; the Counts of Toulouse had felt its edge in the old Albigensian days.

Northumberland. Philip's envoy, the Count of Feria, saw incompetence everywhere. The nobles held aloof, while some aged clergymen tried to conduct a war. He hardly dared to think what would happen if a few French ships touched the shore. Since then, there had been some improvement. No invader had landed, and Guise's capture of Thionville had been balanced by Egmont's victory at Gravelines. Shortly before Mary's death negotiations for a peace were begun at Cercamp ; the outline of the scheme was a restoration of conquests. But Calais stopped the way. The French could not surrender that prize, and they were the more constant in their determination because the King of Spain would not much longer be King of England, and an isolated Engl&nd would have no conquest to restore. When Elizabeth became Queen, Calais was not yet lost ; that was the worst of it. Both Kings were weary of the war ; behind both yawned gulfs of debt and heresy. But the ruler of the Netherlands was deeply concerned in the recovery of Calais-perhaps more materially, though less sentimentally, than were the English. Feria has reported the profound remark that when Calais was captured many Englishmen ceased to go to church. A Protestant Elizabeth might have to sign away the last memorial of old glories ; and that would not fill the churches. Philip, it might be plain, would not suffer the French to invade England through Scotland ; but the tie between Spain and an heretical England would be the coolest selfishness, the King's mind would he distracted between his faith and his policy, and if he were compelled to save England from the French, he certainly would not save England for the English.

Within the country the prospect was dubious. The people were discontented : defeat and shame, pestilence and famine had lately been their lot. A new experiment would be welcome ; but it would miserably fail were it not speedily successful. No doubt, the fires in Smithfield had harmed the Catholic cause by confirming the faith and exasperating the passions of the Protestants. No doubt, the Spanish marriage was detested. But we may overestimate the dislike of persecution and the dislike of Spain. No considerable body of Englishmen would deny that obstinate heretics should be burnt. There was no need for Elizabeth to marry Philip or bring Spaniards into the land ; but the Spanish alliance, the old Anglo-Burgundian alliance, was highly valued : it meant safety and trade and occasional victories over the hereditary foe. Moreover, the English Reformers were without a chief; beyond Elizabeth they had no pretender to the throne ; they had no apostle, no prophet ; they were scattered over Europe and had been quarrelling, Knoxians against Coxians, in their foreign abodes. Edward's reign had worn the gloss off the new theology. We may indeed be sure that, had Elizabeth adhered to the old faith, she must have quelled plots and rebellions or herself been quelled. We look at Scotland, France, and the Netherlands, and, it may be, infer that the storm would have overwhelmed her. Perhaps we forget how largely the tempests that we see elsewhere were due to the momentous choice that she made for England. It must probably be allowed that most of the young men of brains and energy who grew to manhood under Mary were lapsing from Catholicism, and that the educated women were falling faster and further. London too, Bonner's London, was Protestant, and London might be worth an abolished Mass. But when, after some years of fortunate and dexterous government, we see how strong is the old creed, how dangerous is Mary Stewart as its champion, we cannot feel sure that Elizabeth chose the path which was, or which seemed to be, the safest.

A story which came from a good quarter bade us see Elizabeth announcing to the Pope her accession to the throne, and not rejecting Catholicism until Paul IV declared that England was a papal fief and she an usurping bastard. Now, Caraffa was capable of any imprudence and just at this moment seemed bent on reviving the claims of medieval Pontiffs, in order that he might drive a long-suffering Emperor into the arms of the Lutherans. But it is certain now that in the matter of courtesy Elizabeth, not Paul, was the offender. She ignored his existence. Edward Carne was living at Rome as Mary's ambassador. He received no letters of credence from the new Queen, and on the 1st of February, 1559, she told him to come home as she had nothing for him to do. Meanwhile the French were thinking to obtain a Bull against her ; they hoped that at all events Paul would not allow her to marry her dead sister's husband. At Christmastide (1558), when she was making a scene in her chapel over the elevation of the Host, the Pope was talking kindly of her to the French ambassador, would not promise to refuse a dispensation, but could not believe that another Englishwoman would want to marry a detestable Spaniard. A little later he knew more about her and detained Carne (a not unwilling prisoner) at Rome (March 27), not because she was base-born, but because she had revolted from the Holy See. He had just taken occasion to declare in a Bull that princes guilty of heresy are deprived of all lawful power by the mere fact of their guilt (February 15). This edict, though it may have been mainly aimed at Ferdinand's three Protestant Electors, was a salutary warning for Elizabeth and Anthony and Maximilian ; but no names were named. Philip had influence enough to balk the French intrigue and protect his sister-in-law from a direct anathema. The Spaniard may in Paul's eyes have been somewhat worse than a heretic ; but the quarrel with the other Habsburg, and then the sudden attack upon his own scandalous nephews, were enough to consume the few remaining days of the fierce old man. He has much to answer for ; but it was no insult from him that made Elizabeth a Protestant.

January, came through Feria the expected offer of Philip's hand. Elizabeth seemed to hesitate, had doubts about the Pope's dispensing power and so forth ; but in the end said that she did not mean to marry, and added that she was a heretic. Philip, it seems, was relieved by the refusal ; he had laboriously explained to his ambassador that his proposal was a sacrifice laid upon the altar of the Catholic faith. He had hopes, which were encouraged in England, that one of his Austrian cousins, Ferdinand or Charles, would succeed where he had failed, secure England for orthodoxy, and protect the Netherlands from the ill example that an heretical England would set.

Meanwhile the great Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis was in the making. Elizabeth tried to retain Philip's self-interested support ; and she retained it. Without substantial aid from England, he would not fight for Calais ; she would have to sign it away ; but so earnest had he been in this matter that the French covenanted to restore the treasured town after eight years and further to pay half-a-million of crowns by way of penalty in case they broke their promise. No one supposed that they would keep it ; still they had consented to make the retention of Calais a just cause for war, and Elizabeth could plausibly say that some remnants of honour had been saved. But the clouds collected once more. New differences broke out among the negotiators, who had half a world to regulate, and, before the intricate settlement could be completed, a marriage had been arranged between Philip and one of Henry's daughters. Elizabeth of France, not Elizabeth of England, was to be the bride. The conjunction was ominous for heretics.

Elizabeth should make her experiment. A few creations and restorations of peerages strengthened the Protestant element among the lords. The Earl of Bedford and Lord Clinton appeared as proxies for many absent peers, and, of all the lords, Bedford (Francis Russell) was the most decisively committed to radical reform. The Howards were for the Queen, their cousin ; the young Duke of Norfolk, England's one duke, was at this time ardently Protestant, and in the next year was shocked at the sight of undestroyed altars.

Money was cheerfully voted. The Queen was asked to choose a husband, and professed her wish to die a maid. She may have meant what she said, but assuredly did not mean that it should béa believed. A prudently phrased statute announced that she was " lawfully descended and come of the blood royal " ; another declared her capable of inheriting from her divorced and attainted mother ; the painful past was veiled in general words. There was little difficulty about a resumption of those tenths and first-fruits which Mary had abandoned. Round the question of ecclesiastical supremacy the battle raged, and it raged for two months and more (February 9 to April 29). Seemingly the Queen's ministers carried through the Lower House a bill which went the full Henrican length in its Caesaro-papalism and its severity. Upon pain of a traitor's death, everyone was to swear that Elizabeth was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. In the Upper House, to which the bill came on the 27th of February, the Bishops had to oppose a measure which would leave the lives of all open Romanists at the mercy of the government. Few though they were, the dozen prelates could still do much in a House where there were rarely more than thirty temporal lords, and probably Cecil had asked for more than he wanted. On the 18th of March the project had taken a far milder form ; forfeiture of office and benefice was to be the punishment of those who would not swear. Against this more lenient measure only two temporal lords protested ; but a Catholic says that other " good Christians " were feigning to be ill. The bill went back to the Commons ; then back with amendments to the Lords, who read it thrice on the 22nd. Easter fell on the 26th, and it had been hoped that by that time Parliament would have finished its work. Very little had been done ; doctrine and worship had hardly been touched. Apparently an attempt to change the services of the Church had been made, had met with resistance, and had been abandoned.

Augustan; for they feared, and not without cause, that it was Helvetian. A certain " black rubric " which had never formed part of the statutory book fell away ; it would have offended Lutherans ; we have reason to believe that it had been inserted in order to meet the scruples of John Knox. Of what was done in the matter of ornaments by the statute, by the rubrics of the Book and by "injunctions" that the Queen promptly issued, it would be impossible to speak fairly without a lengthy quotation of documents, the import of which became in the nineteenth century a theme of prolonged and inconclusive disputation. It must here suffice that there are few signs of any of the clergymen who accepted the Prayer Book either having worn or having desired to wear in the ordinary churches-there was at times a little more splendour in cathedrals-any ecclesiastical robe except the surplice. But, to return to Elizabeth's Parliament, we have it on fairly good authority that nine temporal lords, including the Treasurer (the Marquis of Winchester), and nine prelates (two Bishops were in gaol) voted against the bill, and that it was only carried by three votes. Unfortunately at an exciting moment there is a gap, perhaps a significant gap, in the official record, and we cease to know what lords were present in the house. But about thirty temporal peers had lately been in attendance, and so we may infer that some of them were inclined neither to alter the religion of England nor yet to oppose the Queen. On the 5th of May, the Bishops were fighting in vain for the renovated monasteries. On the 8th, Parliament was dissolved.

The requisite laws had been made, but whether they would take effect was very uncertain. The new oath was not tendered to the judges; and some of them were decided Romanists. Nor was the validity of the statutes unquestioned, for it was by no means so plain as it now is that an Act against which the spiritual Lords have voted in a body may still be an Act of the three Estates. Gradually in the summer and autumn the Bishops were called upon to swear ; they refused and were deprived. It is not certain that the one weak brother, Kitchin of Llandaff, actually swore the oath, though he promised to exact it from others. Futile hopes seem to have been entertained that Tunstall and Heath would at least take part in the consecration of their Protestant successors. Such successors were nominated by the Queen ; but to make Bishops of them was not easy. Apparently a government bill dealing with this matter had come to naught. Probably the Queen's advisers had intended to abolish the canonical election ; they procured its abolition in Ireland on the ground that it was inconsistent with the Royal Supremacy ; but for some cause or another the English Parliament had restored that grotesque Henrican device, the compulsory election of a royal nominee. By a personal interview Elizabeth secured the conversion of the dean of the two metropolitan churches, that pliant old diplomat Nicholas Wotton. When sees and benefices were rapidly falling vacant, his adhesion was of great importance if all was to be done in an orderly way.

Norfolk was to be raised and placed on the border. Large supplies of arms had been imported from the dominions of the Catholic King. Bargains for professed soldiers were struck with German princes William Winter, Master of the Ordnance, was to take fourteen ships to the Forth. He might " as of his own hand " pick a quarrel with the French ; but there was to be no avowed war (December 16). On the morrow Dr Parker was consecrated. He had been properly shocked by Knox's doings. " God keep us from such visitation as Knox hath attempted in Scotland : the people to be orderers of things ! " (November 6). If in that autumn the people of Scotland had not ordered things in a summary way, Dr Parker's tenure of the archiepiscopate might have been precarious. A few days later and there was once more a Pope (December 25) : this time a sane Pope, Pius IV, who would have to deplore the loss, not only of England, but of Scotland also. God of His mercy, said Lethington, had removed that difference of religion.

Be all this as it may, the tumult of Amboise fell pat into Cecil's scheme, and on the 29th of March Lord Grey crossed the border with English troops. The Scottish affair then takes this shape:-A small but disciplined force of Frenchmen in the fortified town of Leith ; the Regent in Edinburgh Castle, which is held by the neutral Erskine; English ships in the Forth; an English and Scottish army before Leith; very few Scots openly siding with the Queen-mother ; the French seeking to gain time. We hasten to the end. An assault failed, but hunger was doing its work. The Regent died on the llth of June ; even stern Protestants have a good word for the gallant woman. Cecil went into Scotland to negotiate with French plenipotentiaries. He wrung from them the Treaty of Edinburgh, which was signed on the 6th of July. The French troops were to quit Scotland. The French King and Queen were never thereafter to use the arms and style of England. Compensation for the insult to her title was to be awarded to Elizabeth by arbitrators or the King of Spain. A pact concluded between Francis and Mary on the one hand and their Scottish subjects on the other was to be observed. That pact itself was humiliating. There was to be pardon for the insurgents ; there were to be but six score French soldiers in the land ; a Scottish Council was to be appointed :-in a word, Scotland was to be for the Scots. But the lowest point was touched when the observance of this pact between sovereign and rebels was made a term in the treaty between England and France. Cecil and famine were inexorable. We had to sign, said the French commissioners, or four thousand brave men would have perished before our eyes and Scotland would have been utterly lost.

All this had been done, not only without Spanish help, but (so a patriot might say) in defiance of Spain. To discover Philip's intentions had been difficult, and in truth he had been of two minds. Elizabeth was setting the worst of examples. Say what she would, she was encouraging a Protestant revolt against a Catholic King. She was doing this in sight, and with the hardly concealed applause, of the Netherlander« ; a friar who dared to preach against her at Antwerp went in fear of his life ; whole families of Flemings were already taking refuge in England. Philip's new French wife was coming home to him ; his mother-in-law, Catharine de' Medici, implored him to stop Elizabeth from " playing the fool." He had in some kind made himself responsible for the religious affairs of England, by assuring the Pope that au would yet be well. But the intense dread of France, the outcome of long wars, could not be eradicated, and was reasonable enough. He dared not let the French subdue Scotland and threaten England on both sides. Moreover he was for the moment miserably poor; Margaret of Parma, his Regent in the Netherlands, had hardly a crown for current expenses, and the Estates would grant nothing. So in public he scolded and lectured Elizabeth, while in private he hinted that what she was doing should be done quickly. The French, too, though they asked his aid, hardly wished him to fulfil his promise of sending troops to Scotland. Then his navy was defeated by the opportune Turk (May 11) ; and the Spaniards suspected that the French, if guiltless of, were not displeased at the disaster.

An excuse had been given to the French for a refusal to ratify the treaty with England. That treaty confirmed a convention which the Scots were already breaking. Another part of the great project was not to be fulfilled. Elizabeth was not going to marry Arran, though the Estates of Scotland begged this of her and set an united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland before her eyes. Perhaps it was well that Arran was crazy ; otherwise there might have been a premature enterprise. A King of Scots who was husband of the English Queen would have been hateful in England ; Scotland was not prepared for English methods of government ; and Elizabeth had troubles enough to face without barbaric blood feuds and a Book of Discipline. She had gained a great advantage. Sudden as had been the conversion of Scotland, it was permanent. Beneath all that was fortuitous and all that was despicable, there was a moral revolt. " It is almost miraculous," wrote Randolph in the June of 1560, " to see how the word of God takes place in Scotland. They are better willing to receive discipline than in any country I ever was in. Upon Sunday before noon and after there were at the sermons that confessed their offences and repented their lives before the congregation. Cecil and Dr Wotton were present... .They think to see next Sunday Lady Stonehouse, by whom the Archbishop of St Andrews has had, without shame, five or six children, openly repent herself." Elizabeth, the deliverer of Scotland, had built an external buttress for her English Church. If now and then Knox " gave her cross and candles a wipe," he none the less prayed for her and everlasting friendship. They did not love each other; but she had saved his Scottish Reformation, and he had saved her Anglican Settlement.

Scotland for a deliverer ; the alien's right to inherit was very dubious ; they looked rather to young Darnley, who was born in England and by English law was an Englishman and the son of an English mother. So the Elizabethan religion had a fair chance of striking root before the General Council could do its work.

The Queen, it is true, was tormenting her faithful subjects by playing fast and loose with all her many wooers, and by disallowing all talk of what would happen at her death. It was a policy that few women could have maintained, but was sagacious and successful. It made men pray that her days might be long ; for, when compared with her sister's, they were good days, and when they were over there would be civil war. We hear the preacher :-" How was this our realm then pestered with strangers, strange gods, strange languages, strange religion, strange coin ! And now how peaceably rid of them all ! " So there was no difficulty about a supply of money, and another turn might be given to the screw of conformity. Some new classes of persons, members of the House of Commons, lawyers, schoolmasters, were to take the oath of Supremacy ; a first refusal was to bring imprisonment and forfeiture, a second death. The temporal lords procured their own exemption on the ground that the Queen was " otherwise sufficiently assured " of their loyalty. That might be so, but she was also sufficiently assured of a majority in the Upper House, for there sat in it four-and-twenty spiritual Lords of her own nomination.

Rightly or wrongly, but very naturally, there was one man especially odious to the Protestants. When the statute of 1563 was passed, it was said among the Catholics that Bonner would soon be done to death, and the oath that he had already refused was tendered to him a second time by Home the occupant of the see of Winchester. The tender was only valid if Home was "Bishop of the diocese." Bonner, who, it is said, had the aid of Plowden, the most famous pleader of the time, threatened to raise the fundamental question whether Home and his fellows were lawful Bishops. He was prepared to dispute the validity of the statutes of 1559 : to dispute the validity of the quasi-papal power of " supplying defects " which the Queen had assumed : to attack the very heart of the new order of things. Elizabeth, however, was not to be hurried into violence. The proceedings against him were stayed ; her Bishops were compelled to petition the Parliament of 1566 for a declaration that they were lawful Bishops ; their prayer was not granted except with the proviso that none of their past acts touching life and property were to be thereby validated ; and eleven out of some thirty-five temporal Lords were for leaving Dr Parker and his suffragans in their uncomfortably dubious position. Elizabeth allowed Lords and Commons to discuss and confirm her letters patent ; she was allowing all to see that no Catholic who refrained from plots need fear anything worse than twelve-penny fines; but she had not yet been excommunicated and deposed.

Simultaneously with the Parliament a Convocation of the province of Canterbury was held (January 12, 1563), and its acts may be said to complete the great outlines of the Anglican settlement. A delicate task lay before the theologians : no other than that of producing a confession of faith. Happily in this case also a restoration was possible. In the last months of Edward's reign a set of forty-two Articles had been published ; in the main they were the work of Cranmer. In 1563 Parker laid a revised version of them before the assembled clergy, and, when a few more changes had been made, they took durable shape and received the royal assent. A little more alteration at a later day made them the famous "Thirty-nine Articles." To all seeming the leaders of English theological thought were remarkably unanimous.

But while there was an agreeable harmony in dogma and little controversy over polity, the quarrel about ceremonies had begun. In the Convocation of 1563, resolutions, which would have left the posture of the communicants to the discretion of the Bishops and would have abolished the observance of Saints' days, the sign of the cross in baptism and the use of organs, were rejected in the Lower House by the smallest of majorities. It was notorious that some of the Bishops favoured only the simplest rites ; five deans and a dozen archdeacons petitioned against the modest surplice. But for its Supreme Governor, the English Church would in all likelihood have carried its own purgation far beyond the degree that had been fixed by the secular legislature. To the Queen, however, it was of the first importance that there should be no more changes before the face of the Tridentine enemy, and also that her occasional professions of Augustan principles should have some visible support. The Bishops, though at first with some reluctance, decided to enforce the existing law; and in course of time conservative sentiment began to collect around the rubrics of the Prayer Book. However, there were some men who were not to be pacified. The " Vestiarian controversy" broke out. Those who strove for a worship purified from all taint of popery (and who therefore were known as "Puritans'") "scrupled" the cap and gown that were to be worn by the clergy in daily life, and "scrupled1' the surplice that was to be worn in church. Already in 1565 resistance and punishment had begun. At Oxford the Dean of Christ Church was deprived, and young gentlemen at Cambridge discarded the rags of the Roman Antichrist.

In the next year the London clergy were recalcitrant. The Spanish ambassador improved the occasion. In reply, Elizabeth told him that the disobedient ministers were " not natives of the country, but Scotsmen, whom she had ordered to be punished." Literal truth she was not telling, and yet there was truth of a sort in her words. From this time onwards, the historian of the English Church must be often thinking of Scotland, and the historian of the Scottish Church must keep England ever in view. Two kingdoms are drifting together, first towards a " personal " and then towards a " real " Union ; but two Churches are drifting apart into dissension and antagonism. The attractions and repulsions that are involved in this process fill a large page in the annals of Britain ; they have become plain to all in the age of the Bishops' Wars and the Westminster Assembly ; but they are visible much earlier. The attempt to Scoticise the English Church, which failed in 1660, and the attempt to Anglicise the Scottish Church, which failed in 1688, each of these had its century.

Elizabeth's resistance to the Puritan demands was politic. The more Protestant a man was, the more secure would be his loyalty if Rome were aggressive. It was for her to appeal to the " neutral in religion " and those " faint professors " of whom her Bishops saw too many. It is not perhaps very likely that surplices and square caps won to her side many of those who cared much for the old creed. Not the simplest and most ignorant papist, says Whitgift to the Puritans, could mistake the Communion for the Mass: the Mass has been banished from England as from Scotland : we are full as well Reformed as are the Scots. But Elizabeth feared frequent changes, was glad to appear as a merely moderate Reformer, and meant to keep the clergy well in hand. Moreover, in Catholic circles her cross and candles produced a good impression. When she reproved Dean Nowell for inveighing against such things, this was soon known to Cardinal Borromeo, and he was not despondent (April 21, 1565). Even her dislike for a married clergy, which seems to have been the outcome of an indiscriminating misogyny, was favourably noticed. It encouraged the hope that she might repent, and for some time Rome was unwilling to quench this plausibly smoking flax. But her part was difficult. The Puritans could complain that they were worse treated than Spanish, French and Dutch refugees, whose presence in England she liberally encouraged. Casio-doro de Reyna, Nicolas des Gallars, and Utenhove, though the Bishop of London was their legal " superintendent," were allowed a liberty that was denied to Humphry and Sampson; there was one welcome for Mrs Matthew Parker and another for Madame la Cardinale.

Britain. In what is popularly called Presbyterianism there are various elements. One is the existence of certain presbyters or elders, who are not pastors or ministers of the Word, but who take a larger or smaller part in the government of the Church. This element may properly be called Calvinian, though the idea of some such eldership had occurred to other Reformers. Speculations touching the earliest history of the Christian Church were combined with a desire to interest the laity in a rigorous ecclesiastical discipline. But Calvin worked with the materials that were ready to his hand and was far too wary to raise polity to the rank of dogma. The Genevan Church was essentially civic or municipal ; its Consistory is very much like a committee of a town council. This could not be the model for a Church of France or of Scotland, which would contain many particular congregations or churches. Granted that these particular Churches will be governed by elders, very little has yet been decided : we may have the loosest federation of autonomous units, or the strictest subordination of the parts to some assembly which is or represents the whole. Slowly and empirically, the problem was solved with somewhat different results in France, Scotland, and the Low Countries. As we have said, the month which saw Knox land in Scotland saw a French Church taking shape in a national Synod that was being secretly held at Paris. Already Frenchmen are setting an example for constituent assemblies and written constitutions. Knox, who had been edifying the Church of Dieppe-that Dieppe which was soon to pass into Elizabeth's hands-stood in the full current of the French movement ; but, like his teacher, he had no iron system to impose. Each particular congregation would have elders besides a pastor ; there would be some general assembly of the whole Church ; but Knox was not an ecclesiastical jurist. The First Book of Discipline (1560) decides wonderfully little ; even the structure of the General Assembly is nebulous ; and, as a matter of fact, all righteous noblemen seem to be welcome therein. It gradually gives itself a constitution, and, while a similar process is at work in France, other jurisdictional and governmental organs are developed, until kirk-session, presbytery, synod and assembly form a concentric system of Courts and councils of which Rome herself might be proud. But much of this belongs to a later time ; in Scotland it is not Knoxian but Melvillian.

The enthusiasm and antagonism were awakened by a different cry: it was not a call for presbyters, but a call for " parity," for an equality among all the ministers of God's Word, and consequently for an abolition of all " prelacy." As a battle cry this is hardly Calvinian ; nor is it Knoxian ; it is first audible at Cambridge. The premisses, it is true, lay ready to the hand of anyone who chose to combine them. The major was that Protestant principle which refers us to the primitive Church. The minor was a proposition familiar to the Middle Age :-originally there was no difference between the presbyter and the episcopus. Every student of the Canon Law knew the doctrine that the prelacy of Bishops is founded, not on divine command, but on a " custom of the Church." When the Puritan said that the episcopal jurisdiction was of popish origin, he agreed with Laynez and the Pope ; at least, as had been amply shown at Trent, the divine right of Bishops was a matter over which Catholic doctors could quarrel bitterly. But the great Reformers had been chary of their words about ecclesiastical polity ; there were many possibilities to be considered, and the decision would rest with Princes or civic Councils. The defenders of Anglican episcopacy occasionally told the Puritan that he was not a good Calvinist, and even Beza could hardly be brought by British pressure to a sufficiently dogmatic denunciation of prelacy. As to Knox, it is clear that, though he thought the English dioceses too large, he had no radical objection to such prelacy as existed in England. Moreover, the Church that he organised in Scotland was prelatic, and there is but little proof that he regarded its prelatic constitution as a concession to merely temporary needs. The word " bishop " was avoided (in Scotland there still were lawful Bishops of another creed); but over the "dioceses" stand "superintendents" (the title comes from Germany), who, though strictly accountable to the general assembly, are distinctly the rulers of the diocesan clergy. Between superintendent and minister there is no " parity " ; the one may command, the other must obey. The theory that valid orders can be conferred by none but a Bishop, Knox would, no doubt, have denied ; but some at all events of the contemporary English Bishops would have joined him in the denial.

Puritan woes and did not like surplices ; he knew and much disliked the "semi-popery" of Lutheran Germany; but in his eyes the Church of England was no half-way house. As to Elizabeth, he saw her as no luke-warm friend of true religion, but as a virgin-queen beloved of God, whose wisdom and clemency, whose felicity and dexterity were a marvel and a model for all Christian Princes (March 12, 1572).

The felicity and dexterity are not to be denied. The Elizabethan religion which satisfied Bullinger was satisfying many other people also ; for (to say nothing of intrinsic merits or defects) it appeared as part and parcel of a general amelioration. It was allied with honest money, cheap and capable government, national independence, and a reviving national pride. The long Terror was overpast, at least for a while; the flow of noble blood was stayed ; the axe rusted at the Tower. The long Elizabethan peace was beginning (1563), while France was ravaged by civil war, and while more than half the Scots looked to the English Queen as the defender of their faith. One Spaniard complains that these heretics have not their due share of troubles (November, 1562) ; another, that they are waxing fat upon the spoil of the Indies (August, 1565). The England into which Francis Bacon was born in 1561 and William Shakespeare in 1564 was already unlike the England that was ruled by the Queen of Spain.