READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

CHAPTER XVII

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 read 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.

We offer no excuse for having as yet said little of Scotland. Called upon to play for some years a foremost part in the great drama, her entry upon the stage of modern history is late and sudden. In such phrases there must indeed be some untruth, for history is not drama. The annals of Scotland may be so written that the story will be continuous enough. We may see the explosion of 1559 as the effect of causes that had long been at work. We might chronicle the remote beginnings of heresy and the first glimmers of the New Learning. All those signs of the times that we have seen elsewhere in capital letters we might see here in minuscule. Also, it would not escape us that, though in the days of Luther and Calvin resistance to the English and their obstinately impolitic claim of suzerainty still seemed the vital thread of Scottish national existence, inherited enmity was being enfeebled, partly by the multiplying perfidies of venal nobles and the increasing wealth of their paymasters, and partly also by the accumulating proofs that in the new age a Scotland which lived only to help France and hamper England would herself be a poor little Power among the nations: doomed, not only to occasional Floddens and Pinkies, but to continuous misery, anarchy, and obscurity.

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 the 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.

Scotland had been slow to emerge from the Middle Age. A country which of all others demanded strong and steady government had been plagued by a series of infant Kings and contested Regencies. In the sixteenth century its barons still belonged to the twelfth, despite a thin veneer of French manners. Its institutions were rudimentary; its Parliaments were feudal assemblies. Since the close of the War of Independence there had been hardly anything that could properly be called constitutional growth. Sometimes there was a little imitation of England and sometimes a little imitation of France, the King appearing as a more or less radical reformer. But the King died young, leaving an infant son, and his feudatories had no desire for reformation. The 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 organized 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 debatable, 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.

Steady taxation and all that it implies had been out of the question. The Scots were ready to fight for their King, unless they happened to be fighting against him; but they would not provide him with a revenue adequate for the maintenance of public order. He was expected “to live of his own” in medieval fashion, and his own was not enough to raise him high above his barons. Moreover, Douglases and Hamiltons and others, hereditary sheriffs and possessors of “regalities”, were slow to forget that these crowned stewards of Scotland were no better than themselves. What had ‘come with a lass’ might ‘go with a lass’, and was in no wise mysterious. We shall see Queen Mary, widow of a King of France, giving her hand first to a Lennox-Stewart whose mother is a Douglas and then to a Hepburn, while the heir presumptive to the throne is the head of the Hamiltons. We shall see Queen Elizabeth having trouble with northern earls, with Percies and Nevilles, who set up an altar which she had cast down, and belike would have cast down an altar which she had set up; but their power to disturb England was as nothing to the power of disturbing Scotland which was exercised by those near neighbors and like-minded fellows of theirs who joined the bellicose Congregation of Jesus Christ. And even in the briefest sketch we must not omit to notice that, as beyond England lay Scotland, so beyond the historic Scotland lay the unhistoric land of ‘the savages’. The very means that had been taken by Scottish Kings to make Scotsmen of these ‘red-shanks’ and to bring these savages within the pale of history had raised up new feudatories of almost royal rank and of more than baronial turbulence. Thenceforward, the King would have to reckon, not only with an Albany, an Angus, and an Arran, but also with an Argyll and with a Huntly. When we see these things we think of the dark age: of Charles the Simple and Rolf the Pirate.

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 today. 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 those days ended at Flodden. The flowers of the forest were once more mown down. The hand went back upon the dial towards poverty and barbarity. An aptitude for letters we may see. Of a brief springtime of song Scotland may fairly boast, for as yet no icy wind was blowing from Geneva. Universities we may see : more universities indeed than the country could well support. By a memorable, if futile, Act of Parliament James IV attempted to drive the sons of the gentry into the grammar-schools. But an all-pervading lack of wealth and of the habits that make for wealth was an impediment to every good endeavour. The printing press had been in no hurry to reach England (1477); but thirty years more elapsed before it entered Scotland. An aptitude for jurisprudence we might infer from subsequent history ; but it is matter of inference. Of lawyers who were not ecclesiastics, of temporal lawyers comparable to the professionally learned justices and serjeants of England, we can hardly read a word. When at length James V founded the College of Justice (1532), half the seats in it, and indeed one more, were allotted to the clergy, and in later days foreign science was imported from the continental universities to supply the deficiencies of an undeveloped system. Scotland had been no place for lawyers, and the temporal law that might be had there, though it came of an excellent stock, had for the more part been of the bookless kind. And as with jurisprudence, so with statesmanship. The Scottish statesman who was not a Bishop was a man of a new kind when Lethington began his correspondence with Cecil; for, even if we employ a medieval standard, we can hardly attribute statecraft or policy to the Albanys and Anguses and Arrans.

In this poor and sparsely peopled country the Church was wealthy; the clergy were numerous, laic, and lazy. The names of ‘dumb dogs’ and ‘idle bellies’ which the new preachers fixed upon them had not been unearned. Nowhere else was there a seed-plot better prepared for revolutionary ideas of a religious sort. Nowhere else would an intelligible Bible be a newer book, or a sermon kindle stranger fires. Nowhere else would the pious champions of the Catholic faith be compelled to say so much that was evil of those who should have been their pastors. Abuses which had been superficial and sporadic in England were widely spread and deeply rooted in the northern kingdom. In particular, the commendation of ecclesiastical benefices to laymen, to babies, had become a matter of course. The Lord James Stewart, the King’s base-born son, who at the critical moment is Prior of St Andrews and sits in Parliament as a member of the spiritual Estate, is a typical figure. The corslet had ‘clattered’ beneath the Archbishop’s cassock, and when Bishops and Abbots lie among the dead on Flodden field they have done no less but no more than their duty. We say that the Scottish Church was rich, and so it nominally was, for the kirk-lands were broad; but when the Protestant ministers, much to their own disappointment, had to be content with a very small fraction of the old ecclesiastical revenues, they had probably secured a larger share than had for a long time past been devoted to any purpose more spiritual than the sustentation of royal, episcopal, and baronial families. We exclaim against the greedy nobles whose lust for the kirk-lands is one of the operative forces in the history of the Scottish Reformation. They might have said that they were only rearranging on a reasonable and modern basis what had long been for practical purposes the property of their class. Their doings send back our thoughts to far-off Carolingian days, when the ‘benefice’ became the hereditary fief. To the King it was, no doubt, convenient that the power of those nobles who would leave heirs should be balanced by the power of other nobles, called prelates, whose children would not be legitimate. But such a system could not be stable, and might at any time provoke an overwhelming outcry for its destruction, if ever one bold man raised his voice against it. Men who are not themselves very moral can feel genuine indignation when they detect immorality among those who, though no worse than themselves, pretend to superior holiness. Prelates, and even primates of Scotland, who were bastards and the begetters of bastards, were the principal fore-runners and coadjutors of John Knox; and unfortunately they were debarred by professional rules from pleading that they, or the best among them, were in truth the respectable husbands of virtuous wives.

Lollardy too there had been, and in some corners of the land it had never been thoroughly extirpated. Also there had been a little burning, but far from enough to accustom the Scots to the sight of a heretic tortured by the flames. Then the German leaven began to work, and from 1528 onwards a few Lutherans were burnt. The protomartyr was Patrick Hamilton, the young and well born Abbot of Ferne. Like many another Scottish youth he had been at the University of Paris. Afterwards he had made a pilgrimage, if not to Wittenberg, at all events to Marburg. It is characteristic of time and place that historians have to consider whether a feud between Douglases and Hamiltons counts for nothing in his martyrdom. “The reek of Patrick Hamilton”, we are told, “infected many; and we can well believe it”. The College of St Leonard was tainted with humanism and new theology. Young men fled from Scotland and made fame elsewhere. Such were Alexander Aless, who as Alesius became the friend of Melanchthon, and John Macalpine, who as Machabaeus professed divinity at Copenhagen. Such also was George Buchanan, the humanist and the Calvinist, the tutor and the calumniator of Queen Mary. And we see the Wedderburns who are teaching Scotsmen to sing ballads of a novel kind, “good and godly ballads”, but such as priests are loth to hear. And we see Sir David Lindsay, the herald, the poet, the King's friend, scourging the lives and sometimes the beliefs of the clergy with verses which rich and poor will know by heart. In short, there was combustible material lying about in large quantities, and sparks were flying.

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).

His wife, Mary of Lorraine, the sister of those Guises who were to be all-powerful in France, had just borne him a daughter : she was the ill-fated Mary Stewart (December 8, 1542). Once more, a baby was to be crowned in Scotland. Next to her in hereditary succession stood a remote cousin, the head of the House of Hamilton, James Earl of Arran, the Châtelherault of after times. But his right depended on the validity of a divorce which some might call in question; and Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, had pretensions. At the head of the Scottish clergy stood the able, though dissolute, Archbishop of St Andrews, Cardinal David Beton. For a moment it seemed as if a Reformed religion, or some northern version of Henricanism, was to have its chance. The nobles chose Arran for Regent; many of them envied the clergy; many were in Henry’s pay. Arran for a while inclined towards England; he kept heretical chaplains; a Parliament, in spite of clerical protest, declared that the Bible might be read in the vulgar tongue. Beton had been imprisoned; a charge of falsifying the late King’s will had been brought against him. Henry’s opportunity had come : the little Queen was to be wedded to Edward Tudor. But Henry was the worst of unionists. He bribed, but he also blustered, and let all men see that Scotland must be his by foul means if not by fair. A treaty was signed (July 1, 1543); but within six months (December 11) it was repudiated by the Scots. Meanwhile the feeble Arran, under pressure of an interdict, had reconciled himself with Beton and had abjured his heresies. The old league with France was re-established. Henry then sent fleet and army. Edinburgh was burnt (May, 1544). The Lowlands were ravaged with pitiless ferocity. The Scottish resistance was feeble. There were many traitors. The powerful Douglases played a double part. Lennox was for the English, and was rewarded with the hand of Henry’s niece, Margaret Douglas. But Scotland could not be annexed, the precious child could not be captured, and Henry could not yet procure the murder of the Cardinal.

Battle of Pinkie. [1543-7

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 this 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 born 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.

Meanwhile Henry of England had died (January 28, 1547); but the Protector Somerset was bent on marrying his boy King to the girl Queen. He had excellent projects in his head. He could speak of a time when England and Scotland would be absorbed and forgotten in Great Britain; but the French also were busy around Mary Stewart. So he led an army northwards, and fought the battle of Pinkie (September 10, 1547). No more decisive defeat could have been inflicted on the Scottish host and the Britannic idea. Other events called Somerset home. The Scots could always be crushed in the field, but Scotland could not be annexed. Then came help from the good friend France, in the shape of French, German, and Italian troops; the English employed Germans and Spaniards. A Parliament decided to accept a French proposal (July, 1548) : the Queen of Scots should marry, not the English King, but young Francis the Dauphin, and meantime should be placed out of harm’s way. She was shipped off at Dumbarton, and landed in Britanny (August 13, 1548) to pass a happy girlhood in a lettered and luxurious Court. The war was prosecuted with a bloodthirst new in the savage annals of the borders; it was a war fought by mercenary Almains. When peace was signed in 1550, England had gained nothing, and upon the surface (though only upon the surface) Scotland was as Catholic as ever it had been, grateful to France, bitterly resentful against heretical England.

During the struggle Mary of Lorraine had borne herself bravely; she appeared as the guiding spirit of a national resistance. She or her advising kinsfolk were soon to make, though in less brutal sort, the mistake that Henry VIII had made, and this time it was to be irretrievable. During a visit to France (September, 1550-October, 1551) she schemed with her brothers and the French King. She was to take Arran’s place as Regent; he had been compensated with the duchy (no empty title) of Châtelherault, and his eldest son (who now becomes the Arran of our story) was to command the French King’s Scots guard. The arrangement was not perfected until 1554, for “the second person in the kingdom” was loth to relax his hold on a land of which he might soon be King; but the French influence was strong, and he yielded. Mary of Lorraine was no bad ruler for Scotland; but still the Scots could not help seeing that she was ruling in the interest of a foreign Power. Moreover, there had been a change in the religious environment: Mary Tudor had become Queen of England (July 6, 1558). John Knox, who after his sojourn in the French galleys had been one of King Edward’s select preachers and had narrowly escaped the bishopric of Rochester, was fleeing to Geneva; and thence he went to Frankfort, there to quarrel with his fellow exile Dr Cox over the Book of Common Prayer. In Scotland Catholicism had been closely allied with patriotism; but when England became Catholic, Protestant preachers found refuge in Scotland. The King of France was cherishing the intrigues of English heretics against the Spanish Queen; Mary of Lorraine was no fanatic, and her policy was incompatible with stern repression. She was trying to make Scotland more securely French; the task was delicate; and she needed the support of nobles who had little love for the clergy. A few high offices were given to Frenchmen; a few French soldiers were kept in the fortresses; they were few, but enough to scatter whole hosts of undrilled Scots. An attempt to impose a tax for the support of troops was resisted, and the barons showed a strange reluctance to fight the English. At length the time came for the Queen’s marriage (April 24, 1558). The Scottish statesmen had laboriously drawn a treaty which should guard the independence of their realm and the rights of the House of Hamilton. This was signed; but a few days earlier Mary Stewart had set her hand to other documents which purported to convey Scotland for good and all to the King of France. We may find excuses for the girl; but, if treason can be committed by a sovereign, she was a traitor. She had treated Scotland as a chattel. The act was secret; but the Scots guessed much and were uneasy.

John Knox and the Congregation. [1555-8

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 organizer 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 Lorne, 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 Châtelherault 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.

The preaching went on. In the last days of 1557 the first Covenant was signed. “The Congregation of Jesus Christ”, of which Argyll, Glencairn, and other great men were members, stood out in undisguised hostility to that “congregation of Satan” which styled itself the Catholic Church. They demanded that King Edward’s Prayer Book (which was good enough for them if not for their absent inspirer) should be read in all the churches. The Regent was perplexed; the French marriage had not yet been secured; but she did not prevent the prelates from burning one Walter Milne, who was over eighty years of age (April, 1558). He was the last of the Protestant martyrs; they had not been numerous, even when judged by the modest English standard; fanaticism was not among the many faults of the Scottish prelates; but for this reason his cruel death made the deeper mark. On St Giles' day (September 1) in 1558 that Saint's statue was being carried through the town of Edinburgh, of which he was the patron. Under the eyes of the Regent the priests were rabbled and the idol was smashed in pieces. It was plain that the next year would be stormy; and at this crisis the face of England was once more changed.

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 in 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.

Had there been no religious dissension, her title to the throne would hardly have been contested among Englishmen. To say nothing of her father’s will, she had an unrepealed statute in her favor. Divines and lawyers might indeed have found it difficult to maintain her legitimate birth. Parliament had lately declared that her father was lawfully married to Catharine of Aragon, and with this good Catholics would agree. But there was another scandal, of which good Protestants might take account. Elizabeth’s godfather, the Henrican Archbishop and Protestant martyr, had adjudged that Henry was never married to Anne Boleyn. His reasons died with him; but something bad, something nameless, might be guessed. It is sometimes said that Elizabeth's birth condemned her to be Protestant or bastard. But it would be truer to say that, had she cared much about legitimacy, she would have made her peace with Rome. Hints came to her thence, that the plenitude of power can set these little matters straight for the benefit of well-disposed princes; and in papal eyes Cranmer’s sentence would have been a prejudice in her favor. But pure legitimism, the legitimism of the divine entail, was yet in its infancy, and neither Protestant nor Catholic was bound to deny that a statute of the realm may set a bastard on the throne of William the Conqueror. For the people at large it would be enough that the Lady Elizabeth was the only living descendant of old King Henry, and that beyond her lay civil war. The thin stream of Tudor blood was running dry. Henry’s will (but its validity might be questioned) had postponed the issue of his elder to that of his younger sister : in other words, the House of Scotland to the House of Suffolk. Mary Stewart was born in Scotland; she could not have inherited an acre of English land, and it was highly doubtful whether English law would give the crown to an alien who was the child of two aliens. Neither her grandmother’s second marriage, namely that with Archibald Douglas (whence sprang Lady Lennox and her son Lord Darnley), nor the marriage of Mary Tudor with Charles Brandon (whence sprang Greys and Stanleys) was beyond reproach; few marriages were beyond reproach in those days of loose morals and conniving law. John Knox at Geneva had, to Calvin’s regret, just blown a first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, and unfortunately, though the tone was new, the tune was not. The Scottish gospeller could only repeat the biblical and other arguments that had been used a century ago by that Lancastrian sage, Chief Justice Fortescue. No woman had sat upon the English throne, save Mary, and she (it might be said) was a statutory Queen. Many people thought that next in right to Elizabeth stood Henry Hastings, who was no Tudor but a Yorkist; and already in 1565 Philip of Spain was thinking of his own descent from Edward III. Thus Elizabeth’s statutory title stood between England and wars of the roses which would also be wars of religion.

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.

1558] Elizabeth and foreign Powers.

After the fall of Calais in January (1558) England was panic-stricken. The French were coming; the Scots were coming; Danes and Hanseats were coming. German troops were being hastily hired to protect 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 England 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.

True that for Protestant eyes there was light on the horizon. Anyone could see that there would be religious troubles in France and Scotland. Geneva was active, and Rome seemed to be doting. That summer the psalms had gone up loudly from the Pré-aux-Clercs, and a Châtillon had been arrested. That autumn St Giles of Edinburgh had lain prostrate in the mud. Expectant heirs and royal cadets, Bourbons and Hamiltons, were wavering; Maximilian was listening to an enlightened pastor; France, Scotland, the Empire, might someday fall to evangelical lords. Good news came from Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary; it was even rumored that the Pope would at last succeed in shaking Philip’s faith. Still, the black fact of the moment was that Philip and Henry were making peace in order that they might crush their respective heretics. And England’s military weakness was patent to all. Her soldiers and captains were disgracefully old-fashioned, and what gunpowder she had was imported from the Netherlands. “To make a lewd comparison”, said an Englishman, “England is as a bone thrown between two dogs”. Was this bone to display an irritating activity of its own, merely because the two dogs seemed for the moment to be equal and opposite? To more than one mind came the same thought : “They will make a Piedmont of England”

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.

Of her own opinions she told strange tales. Puzzled by her shifty discourse, a Spanish envoy once suggested atheism. When a legal settlement had been made, it was her pleasure, and perhaps her duty, to explain that her religion was that of all sensible people. The difference between the various versions of Christianity “n’estait que bagatelle”. So she agreed with the Pope, except about some details; she cherished the Augsburg confession, or something very like it; she was at one, or nearly at one, with the Huguenots. She may have promised her sister (but this is not proved) to make no change in religion; at any rate she had gone to mass without much ado. Nevertheless it is not unlikely that at the critical time her conduct was swayed rather by her religious beliefs or disbeliefs than by any close calculation of loss and gain. She had not her father’s taste for theology; she was neither prig like her brother nor zealot like her sister; but she had been taught from the first to condemn the Pope, and during Edward’s reign she had been highly educated in the newest doctrines. John Hooper, the father of the Puritans, had admired her displays of argumentative divinity. More than one Catholic who spoke with her in later days was struck by her ignorance of Catholic verity. The Bishop of Aquila traced her phrases to “the heretic Italian friars”. He seems to have been thinking of Vermigli and Ochino, and there may have been some little truth in his guess. Once she said that she liked Italian ways and manners better than any other, and sometimes seemed to herself half Italian. Her eyes filled with tears over Peter Martyr’s congratulations. She had talked predestination with Fra Bernardino and had translated one of his sermons; the Puritans were persuaded that if she would listen to no one else, she would listen to him. All this might have meant little; but then she had suffered in the good cause. She had been bullied into going to mass; she had been imprisoned; she had nearly been excluded from the throne; some ardent Catholics had sought her life; and her suspected heresies had been at least a part of her offending. It would have been base to disappoint all those who had prayed for her and plotted for her, and pleasant it was when from many lands came letters which hailed her as the miraculously preserved champion of the truth. She had a text ready for the bearer of the good news: “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes”.

One point was clear. The Henrican Anglo-Catholicism was dead and buried. It died with Henry and was interred by Stephen Gardiner. In distant days its spirit might arise from the tomb; but not yet. The Count of Feria and Bishop Tunstall were at needless pains to explain to the young Queen that she was favoring “Lutherans and Zwinglians”, whom her father would have burnt. But in 1558 nothing was to be gained by mere schism. Her fellow sovereigns, more especially her brother-in-law, could have taught her that a prince might enjoy all the advantages of spotless orthodoxy and yet keep the Pope at arm’s length. Many Englishmen hated popery; but by this time the core of the popery that they hated was no longer the Papacy, but the idolatrous Mass. The choice lay between Catholicism with its Pope and the creed for which Cranmer and Ridley died. It could scarcely be hoped that the Bishops would yield an inch. Very shame, if no worthier motive, would keep them true to the newly restored supremacy of Rome. Happily for Elizabeth, they were few and feeble. Reginald Pole had hardly outlived Mary, and for one reason or another had made no haste in filling vacant sees; Feria thought that the “accursed Cardinal” had French designs. And death had been and still was busy. Only sixteen instead of twenty-six Bishops were entitled to attend the critical Parliament, and only eleven with the Abbot of Westminster were present. Their constancy in the day of trial makes them respectable; but not one of them was a leader of men. The ablest of them had been Henry's ministers and therefore could be taunted as renegades.

Elizabeth and Paul IV

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.

No time was lost. Mary’s death (November 17, 1558) dissolved a Parliament. Heath, Archbishop of York and Chancellor of the realm, dismissed it, and with loyal words proclaimed the new Queen. Within three weeks (December 5) writs went out for a new Parliament. Elizabeth was going to exact conformity to a statutory religion. For the moment the statutory religion was the Roman Catholic, and she would have taken a false step if in the name of some higher law she had annulled or ignored the Marian statutes. At once she forbade innovations and thus disappointed the French who hoped for a turbulent revolution. A new and happy et caetera was introduced into the royal style and seemed to hint, without naming, a Headship of the Church. Every change pointed one way. Some of the old Councillors were retained, but the new Councillors were Protestants. William Cecil, then aged thirty-eight, had been Somerset’s and was to be Elizabeth’s secretary. Like her he had gone to mass, but no Catholic doubted that he was a sad heretic. The Great Seal, resigned by Heath, was given to Nicholas Bacon. He and Cecil had married sisters who were godly ladies of the new sort. The imprisoned heretics were bailed, and the refugees flocked back from Frankfort, Zurich and Geneva. Hardly was Mary dead, before one Bishop was arrested for an inopportune sermon (November 27). Another preached at her funeral (December 13) and praised her for rejecting that title which Elizabeth had not yet assumed; he too was put under restraint. Mary’s chief mourner was not her sister, but, appropriately enough, the Lady Lennox who was to have supplanted Elizabeth. No Bishop preached the funeral sermon for Charles V, and what good could be said of that Catholic Caesar was said by the Protestant Dr Bill (December 24). The new Queen was artist to the finger-tips. The English Bible was rapturously kissed; the Tower could not be re-entered without uplifted eyes and thankful words; her hand (it was a pretty hand) shrank, so folk said, from Bonner's lips. Christmas-day was chosen for a more decisive scene. The Bishop who was to say mass in her presence was told not to elevate the Host. He would not obey; so after the Gospel out went Elizabeth; she could no longer witness that idolatry. Three weeks later (January 15) she was crowned while Calvin was dedicating to her his comments on Isaiah. What happened at the coronation is obscure: The Bishops, it seems, swore fealty in the accustomed manner; the Epistle and Gospel were read in English; it is said that the celebrant was one of the Queen’s chaplains and that he did not elevate the Host; it is said that she did not communicate; she was anointed by the Bishop of Carlisle, whose rank would not have entitled him to this office, had not others refused it. At length the day came for a Parliament (January 25). A mass was said at Westminster early in the morning. At a later hour the Queen approached the Abbey with her choir singing in English. The last of the Abbots came to meet her with monks and candles. “Away with those torches” she exclaimed: “we can see well enough!”. And then Edward’s tutor, Dr Cox, late of Frankfort, preached; and he preached, it is said, for an hour and a half, the peers all standing.

The negotiations between Spain, England and France had been brought to a pause by Mary’s death, but were to be resumed after a brief interval, during which Elizabeth was to make up her mind. Some outwardly amicable letters passed between her and Henry II. She tried to play the part of the pure-bred Englishwoman, who should not suffer for the sins of the Spanish Mary. But the French were not to be coaxed out of Calais, and she knew that they were seeking a papal Bull against her. It became plain that she must not detach herself from Spain and that, even with Philip’s help, Calais could only be obtained after another war, for which England was shamefully unready. Then, in the middle of 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-Cambrésis 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 honor 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.

From the first days of February to the first days of April the negotiations had been pending. Meanwhile in England little had been accomplished. It had become plain that the clergy in possession (but there was another and expectant clergy out of possession) would not yield. The Convocation of Canterbury met when Parliament met, and the Lower House declared for transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the Roman supremacy; also it idly protested that laymen were not to meddle with faith, worship, or discipline (February 17, 1559). The Bishops were staunch; the English Church by its constitutional organs refused to reform itself; the Reformation would be an unprecedented state-stroke. Probably the assembled Commons were willing to strike. The influence of the Crown had been used on the Protestant side; but Cecil had hardly gathered the reins in his hand and the government’s control over the electoral machinery must have been unusually weak. Our statistics are imperfect, but the number of knights and burgesses who, having served in 1558, were again returned in 1559 was not abnormally small, and with the House of 1558 Mary had been well content. Also we may see at Westminster not a few men who soon afterwards are “hinderers of true religion” or at best only “faint professors”; but probably the nation at large was riot unwilling that 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.

1559] The Act of Supremacy.

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 be 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 Caesaropapism 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.

Elizabeth was in advance of the law and beckoned the nation forward. During that Lent the Court sermon had been the only sermon, the preacher Scory or Sandys, Grindal or Cox. A papist’s excited fancy saw a congregation of five thousand and heard extravagant blasphemy. On Easter day the Queen received the Communion in both kinds; the news ran over Europe; Antoine de Bourbon on the same day had done the like at Pau; Mary of Lorraine had marked that festival for the return of all Scots to the Catholic worship. The colloquy of Westminster follows. There was to be a trial by battle in the Abbey between chosen champions of the two faiths. Its outcome might make us suspect that a trap was laid by the Protestants. But it is by no means certain that the challenge came from their side, and the Spanish ambassador took some credit for arranging the combat. The colloquy of Westminster stands midway between that of Worms (1557) and that of Poissy (1561). The Catholics were wont to get the better in these feats of arms, because, so soon as Christ’s presence in the Eucharist was mentioned, the Protestants fell a-fighting among themselves. Apparently on this occasion the rules of the debate were settled by Heath and Bacon. The Great Seal had passed from an amiable to an abler keeper. The men of the Old Learning were to defend the use of Latin in the services of the Church, to deny that a “particular Church” can change rites and ceremonies and to maintain the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass. Their first two theses would bring them into conflict with national feeling; and at the third point they would be exposed to the united force of Lutherans and Helvetians, for the sacrifice, and not the presence, was to be debated. It was a less advantage for the Reformers that their adversaries were to speak first, for there was to be no extemporary argument but only a reading of written dissertations. In the choir of the abbey, before Council, Lords, Commons and multitude, the combatants took their places on Friday, the 31st of March. At once the Catholics began to except against the rules that they were required to observe. Dr Cole, however, maintained their first proposition and Dr Horne read the Protestant essay. The Reformers were well content with that day’s work and the applause that followed. On Monday the second question was to be handled. Of what happened we have no impartial account; we do not know what had passed between Heath and Bacon, or whether the Catholic doctors were taken by surprise. Howbeit, they chose the worst course; they wrangled about procedure and refused to continue the debate. Apparently they were out of heart and leaderless. Two of the Bishops were forthwith imprisoned by the Council for intemperate words, and thus the Catholic party in the House of Lords was seriously weakened at a critical moment. Moreover, the inference that men do not break off a debate with preliminary objections when they are confident of success in the main issue, though it is not always just, is always natural.

The next day Parliament resumed its work. Meanwhile, Elizabeth had at length decided that she would not assume the Henrican title, though assuredly she had meant that it should be, as it had been, offered to her. Women should keep silence in the churches; so there was difficulty about a “dumb head”. She had managed to get a little credit from Philip’s envoy and a little from zealous Calvinists by saying that she would not be Head of the Church, and she could then tell appropriate persons that she scorned a style which the Pope had polluted. So Cecil had to go to the Commons and explain that there must be a new bill and new oath. He met with some opposition, for there were who held that the Queen was Supreme Head iure divino. Ultimately a phrase was fashioned which declared that she was the only Supreme Governor of the realm as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as in temporal, and that no foreign prince or prelate had any ecclesiastical or spiritual authority within her dominions. However, among other statutes of Henry VIII, one was revived which proclaims that the King is Head of the Church, and that by the word of God all ecclesiastical jurisdiction flows from him. Catholics suspected that Elizabeth’s husband would be head of the Church, if not head of his wife, and saw the old title concealed behind the new et caetera. Protestant lawyers said that she could take the title whenever she pleased. Sensible men saw that, having the substance, she could afford to waive the irritating name. On the 14th of April the bill was before the Lords. There were renewed debates and more changes; and the famous Act of Supremacy was not finally secured until the 29th.

1559] The Act of Uniformity.

In the last days of an unusually long session a bill for the Uniformity of Religion went rapidly through both Houses (April 18-28). The services prescribed in a certain Book of Common Prayer, and none other, were to be lawful. The embryonic history of this measure is obscure. An informal committee of Protestant divines seems to have been appointed by the Queen to prepare a book. It has been thought that as the basis of their labors they took the Second Book of Edward VI, but desired a further simplification of ceremonies. On the other hand, there are some signs that Cecil and the Queen thought that the Second Book, which had hardly been introduced before it was abrogated, had already gone far enough or too far in the abolition of accustomed rites. All this, however, is very uncertain. Our guess may be that, when men were weary of the prolonged debate over the Supremacy and its continuance was becoming a national danger (for violent speeches had been made), the Queen’s advisers took the short course of proposing the Book of 1552 with very few changes. At such a moment relief might be found in what could be called a mere act of restoration, and the Edwardian Book, however unfamiliar, was already ennobled by the blood of martyrs. There are signs of haste, or of divided counsels, for the new Book when it came from the press differed in some little, but not trivial, matters from that which Parliament had expressly sanctioned. The changes sanctioned by Parliament were few. An offensive phrase about the Bishop of Rome’s “detestable enormities” was expunged, apparently by the House of Lords. An addition from older sources was made to the words that accompany the delivery of bread and wine to the communicant, whereby a charge of the purest Zwinglianism might be obviated. At the moment it was of importance to Elizabeth that she should assure the German Princes that her religion was 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 splendor 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.

At a moment of strain and peril a wonderfully durable settlement had been made. There is cause for thinking that the Queen’s advisers had been compelled to abandon considerable parts of a lengthy programme; but the great lines had been drawn and were permanent. For this reason they can hardly be described in words that are both just and few; but perhaps we may make a summary of those points which were the most important to the men of 1559. A radical change in doctrine, worship and discipline has been made by Queen and Parliament against the will of prelates and ecclesiastical Councils. The legislative power of the Convocations is once more subjected to royal control. The derivation of episcopal from royal jurisdiction has been once more asserted in the words of Henry VIII. Appeal from the Courts of the Church lies to royal delegates who may be laymen. What might fairly be called a plenitude of ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the corrective sort can be, and at once is, committed to delegates who constitute what is soon known as the Court of High Commission and strongly resembles the consistory of a German Prince. Obstinate heresy is still a capital crime; but practically the Bishops have little power of forcing heretics to stand a trial, and, unless Parliament and Convocation otherwise ordain, only the wilder sectaries will be in danger of burning. There is no “liberty of cult”. The Prayer Book prescribes the only lawful form of common worship. The clergyman who adopts any other, even in a private chapel, commits a crime; so does he who procures this aberration from conformity. Everyone must go to church on Sunday and bide prayer and preaching or forfeit twelve pence to the use of the poor. Much also can be done to ensure conformity by excommunication which has imprisonment behind it. The papal authority is abolished. Clergy and office-holders can be required to swear that it is naught; if they refuse the oath, they lose office and benefice. If anyone advisedly maintains that authority, he forfeits his goods; on a third conviction he is a traitor. The service book is not such as will satisfy all ardent Reformers; but their foreign fathers in the faith think it not intolerable, and the glad news goes out that the Mass is abolished. The word “Protestant”, which is rapidly spreading from Germany, comes as a welcome name. In the view of an officially inspired apologist of the Elizabethan settlement, those who are not Papists are Protestants.

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.

But given the election, there must still be confirmation and consecration; statute required it. The cooperation of four “Bishops” would be necessary if Matthew Parker was to sit where Reginald Pole had sat. Four men in episcopal Orders might be found : for instance, William Barlow, of whose Protestant religion there could be no doubt, since Albert of Prussia had lately attested it; but these men would not be in possession of English sees. Moreover, it seems to have been doubted whether the Edwardian Ordinal had been revived as part of the Edwardian Prayer Book. Cecil was puzzled, but equal to the occasion. In a document redolent of the papal chancery Elizabeth “supplied” all “defects”, and at length on the 17th of December, in the chapel at Lambeth. Parker was consecrated with Edwardian rites by Barlow, Scory, Coverdale and Hodgkin. The story of a simpler ceremony at the Nag’s Head tavern was not concocted until long afterwards; it should have for pendants a Protestant fable which told of a dramatic scene between Elizabeth and the Catholic prelates, and an Anglican fable which strove to suggest that the Prayer Book was sanctioned by a synod of Bishops and clergy. A large number of deans and canons followed the example set by the Bishops. Of their inferiors hardly more than two hundred, so it seems, were deprived for refusing the oath. The royal commissioners treated the hesitating priests with patient forbearance; and the meaning of the oath was minimized by an ably worded Proclamation. We may conjecture that many of those who swore expected another turn of the always turning wheel. However, Elizabeth succeeded in finding creditable occupants for the vacant dignities; of Parker and some of his suffragans more than this might be said. The new service was introduced without exciting disturbances; the altars and roods were pulled down, tables were purchased, and a coat of whitewash veiled the pictured saints from view. Among the laity there was much despondent indifference. Within a dozen years there had been four great changes in worship, and no good had come of it all. For some time afterwards there are many country gentlemen whom the Bishops describe as “indifferent in religion”. Would the Queen’s Church secure them and their children? That question could not be answered by one who looked only at England. From the first, Elizabeth and Cecil, who were entering into their long partnership, had looked abroad.

The Scottish rebellion.

The month of May, 1559, which saw the ratification of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, is a grand month in the annals of the heresy which was to be destroyed. A hideous act of faith at Valladolid may show us that Catholicism is safe in Spain; but the English Parliament ends its work, a French Reformed Church shapes itself in the synod of Paris, and Scotland bursts into flame. In 1558 we saw it glowing. Mary of Guise was temporizing; she had not yet obtained the crown matrimonial for the Dauphin. In the winter Parliament she had her way; the crown was to be (but never was) carried to her son-in-law. His father had just ceased his intrigues with English Protestants, and was making peace in order that he might be busy among the Protestants of France. The Regent of Scotland was given to understand that the time for tolerance was past. In March, 1559, the Scottish prelates followed the example of their English brethren and uttered their Non possumus. They proposed to remedy many an indefensible abuse, but to new beliefs there could be no concession. The Queen-mother fixed Easter day for the return of all men to the Catholic worship. The order was disregarded. On the 10th of May the more notorious of the preachers were to answer at Stirling for their misdeeds. They collected at Perth, with Protestant lords around them. At this moment Elizabeth’s best friend sprang into the arena. John Knox had been fuming at Dieppe. Elizabeth, enraged at his ill-timed “blast”, denied him a safe conduct. François Morel, too, the French Reformer, implored Calvin to keep this fire-brand out of England lest all should be spoilt. But if Knox chose to revisit his native land that was no affair of Elizabeth’s, and he was predestinated to win for Calvinism the most durable of its triumphs. He landed in Scotland on the 2nd of May and was at Perth by the 11th. Then there was a sermon; a stone was thrown; an image was broken, and the churches of St Johnston were wrecked. Before the end of the month there were two armed hosts in the field. There were more sermons, and where Knox preached the idols fell and monks and nuns were turned adrift. There were futile negotiations and disregarded truces. At the head of the belligerent Congregation rode Glencairn, Argyll, and Lord James. Châtelherault was still with the Regent; and she had a small force of disciplined Frenchmen. At the end of July a temporary truce was made at Leith. The Congregation could bring a numerous host (of the medieval sort) into the field, but could not keep it there. However, as the power of the French soldiers was displayed, the revolutionary movement became more and more national. The strife, if it was between Catholic and Calvinist, was also a strife for the delivery of Scotland from a foreign army. None the less there was a revolt. Thenceforth, Calvinism often appears as a rebellious religion. This, however, is its first appearance in that character. Calvin had long been a power in the world of Reformed theology, and his death (1564) was not far distant; but in 1559 the Count of Feria was at pains to tell King Philip that “this Calvin is a Frenchman and a great heretic” (March 19). Knox, when he preached “the rascal multitude” into iconoclastic fury was setting an example to Gueux and Huguenots.

What would Elizabeth think of it? Throughout the winter and spring Englishmen and Scots, who had been dragged into war by their foreign masters, had been meeting on the border and talking first of armistice and then of peace. Already in January Maitland of Lethington had a strong desire to speak with Sir William Cecil and since then had been twice in London. He was the Regent’s Secretary, conforming in religion as Cecil had conformed; but it is likely that the core of such creed as he had was unionism. The news that came from Scotland in May can hardly have surprised the English Secretary. “Some great consequences must needs follow” : this was his quiet comment (May 26). Diplomatic relations with France had just been resumed. Nicholas Throckmorton, one of those able men who begin to collect around Elizabeth, had gone to reside there as her ambassador, had gone to “practise” there and exacerbate the “garboils” there. One of the first bits of news that he sends home is that Arran has been summoned to Court from Poitou, where he has been Calvinising, has disobeyed the summons and cannot be found (May 30). The Guises connect Arran’s disappearance with Throckmorton’s advent; and who shall say that they are wrong? In June Cecil heard from the border that the Scottish lords were devising how this young man could be brought home and married “you know where”. “You have a Queen”, said a Scot to Throckmorton, “and we our Prince the Earl of Arran, marriable both, and the chief upholders of God's religion”. Arran might soon be King of Scotland. The Dauphiness, who at the French Court was being called Queen of England, did not look as if she were long for this world : Throckmorton noted her swoons. Arran had escaped to Geneva. Early in July Elizabeth was busy, and so was Calvin, over the transmission of this invaluable youth to the quarter where he could best serve God and the English Queen. Petitions for aid had come from Scotland. Cecil foresaw what would happen : the Protestants were to be helped “first with promises, next with money, and last with arms” (July 8). But to go beyond the first stage was hazardous. The late King of England was only a few miles off with his fleet and veteran troops; he was being married by proxy to a French Princess; he had thoughts of enticing Catharine Grey out of England, in order that he might have another candidate for the throne, if it were necessary to depose the disobedient Elizabeth. And could Elizabeth openly support these rebels? In the answer to that question lay the rare importance of Arran. The Scottish uproar must become a constitutional movement directed by a prince of the blood royal against a French attempt to deprive a nation of its independence. Cecil explained to Calvin that if true religion is to be supported it must first convert great noblemen (June 22).

Then the danger from France seemed to increase. There was a mischance at a tournament and Henry II was dead (July 10). The next news was that “the House of Guise ruleth” (July 13). In truth, this was good news. Elizabeth’s adversary was no longer an united France. The Lorrainers were not France; their enemies told them that they were not French. But the Duke and Cardinal were ruling France; they came to power as the uncles of the young King’s wife, and soon there might be a boy born who would be Valois-Tudor-Stewart-Guise. A Guise was ruling Scotland also, and the rebellion against her was hanging fire. So early in August Cecil’s second stage was reached, and Ralph Sadler was carrying three thousand pounds to the border. He knew his Scotland; Henry VIII had sent him there on a fool’s errand; there would be better management this time. In the same month Philip turned his back on the Netherlands, never to see them more. Thenceforth, he would be the secluded King of a distant country. Also, Paul IV died, and for four months the Roman Church had no supreme governor. The Supreme Governor of the English Church could breathe more freely. She kept her St Bartholomew (August 24). There was burning in Bartlemy Fair, burning in Smithfield - but only of wooden roods and Maries and Johns and such-like popish gear. “It is done of purpose to confirm the Scottish revolt” : such was a guess made at Brussels (September 2); and it may have been right, for there was little of the natural iconoclast in Elizabeth. A few days later (August 29) Arran was safely and secretly in her presence, and thence was smuggled into Scotland, Probably she took his measure; he was not quite sane, but would be useful. Soon afterwards Philip’s ambassador knew that she was fomenting tumults in Scotland through “a heretic preacher called Knox”. That was unkindly said, but not substantially untrue. Early in October “the Congregation” began once more to take an armed shape. Châtelherault, that unstable “second person”, had been brought over by his impetuous son. The French troops in Scotland had been reinforced; the struggle was between Scot and Frenchman. So, to the horror of Bishops-elect (whose consecration had not yet been managed), the table in Elizabeth's chapel began to look like an altar with cross and candles. “She will not favor the Scots in their religion”, said Gilles de Noailles the French ambassador. “She is afraid”, said the Cardinal of Lorraine. “She is going to marry the Archduke Charles who is coming here in disguise”, said many people. Surely she wished that just those comments should be made; and so Dr Cox, by this time elect of Ely, had to stomach cross and candles as best he might.

The host of the Congregation arrived at Edinburgh; a manifesto declared that the Regent was deposed (October 21). She and the French were fortifying Leith; the castle was held by the neutral Lord Erskine. But once more the extemporized army began to melt away. Treasure sent by Elizabeth was captured by a border ruffian, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who was to play a part in coming tragedies. The insurgents fled from Edinburgh (November 6). In negotiation with Cecil, Knox was showing the worldly wisdom that underlay his Hebraic frenzies; he knew the weak side of his fellow-countrymen; without more aid from England, the movement would fail. Knox, however, was not presentable at Court; Lethington was. The Regent’s Secretary had left her and had carried to the opposite camp the statecraft that it sorely needed. He saw a bright prospect for his native land and took the road to London. Cecil’s third stage was at hand. There were long debates in the English Council; there were “Philipians” in it, and all that passed there was soon known at the French embassy. The Queen was irresolute; even Bacon was for delay; but, though some French ships had been wrecked, others were ready, and the danger to Scotland, and through Scotland to England, was very grave. At length Cecil and Lethington won their cause. An army under the Duke of 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.

Treaty of Berwick. [1559-60

Once more the waves were kind to Elizabeth. They repulsed the Marquis of Elbeuf (René of Lorraine), and suffered Winter to pass. All the news that came from France was good. It told of unwillingness that national treasure should be spent in the cause of the Guises, of a dearth of recruits for Scotland, of heretics burnt and heretics rescued, of factions in religion fomented by the great. Something was very wrong in France, for envoys came thence with soft words. “Strike now”, was Throckmorton’s counsel; “they only seek to gain time”. So a pact was signed at Berwick (February 27,1560) between Norfolk and the Scottish lords who acted on behalf of “the second person of the realm of Scotland”. Elizabeth took Scotland, its liberties, its nobility, its expectant heir under her protection, and the French were to be expelled. On second thoughts nothing was published about “the profession of Christ’s true religion”. Every French envoy spoke softer than the last. Mary Stewart had assumed the arms of England because she was proud of being Elizabeth’s cousin. The title of Queen of England was taken to annoy, not Elizabeth, but Mary Tudor. All this meant the Tumult of Amboise (March 14-20). Behind that strange essay in rebellion, behind la Renaudie, men have seen Condé, and behind Condé two dim figures, Jean Calvin and the English Queen. Calvin’s acquittal seems deserved. The profession of Christ’s true religion was not to be advanced by so ill laid a plot. But a very ill laid plot might cripple France at this critical moment, and, before we absolve Elizabeth, we wish to know why a certain Tremaine was sent to Britanny, where the plotters were gathering, and whether Chantonnay, Granvelle’s brother, was right in saying that la Renaudie had been at the English Court. Certain it is that Throckmorton had intrigued with Anthony of Navarre, with the Vidame of Chartres, with every enemy of the Guises; he was an apt pupil in the school that Renard and Noailles had founded in England. A little later (May 23) messages from Condé to the Queen were going round by Strasbourg; and in June Tremaine brought from France a scheme which would put Breton or Norman towns into English hands : a scheme from which Cecil as yet recoiled as from “a bottomless pit”.

1660] The siege of Leith and Treaty of Edinburgh.

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 11th 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.

And so the French troops were deported from Scotland and the English army came home from a splendid exploit. The military display, it is true, had not been creditable; there had been disunion, if no worse, among the captains; there had been peculation, desertion, sheer cowardice. All the martial glory goes to the brave besieged. But for the first time an English army marched out of Scotland leaving gratitude behind. Perhaps the truest victory that England had won was won over herself. Not a word had been publicly said of that old suzerainty; no spoil had been taken, not a town detained. Knox included in his liturgy a prayer that there might nevermore be war between Scotland and England, and that prayer has been fulfilled. There have been wars between British factions, but never another truly national war between the two nations. Elizabeth in her first two years had done what none of her ancestors could do, for by the occasion of her religion she had obtained the amity of Scotland, and thus had God blemished the fame of the great men of the world through the doings of a weak woman: such was the judgment of a daughter of France and a mother in the Protestant Israel, of Renée, the venerable Duchess of Ferrara. Another observer, Hubert Languet, said that the English were so proud of the conversion of Scotland that they were recovering their old insolence and would be the very people to defy the imminent Council at Trent. The tone of Catholic correspondence changes : the Elizabeth who was merely rushing to her ruin, will now set all Europe alight in her downward course. That young woman’s conduct, when we now examine it, will not seem heroic. As was often to happen in coming years, she had been pursuing two policies at once, and she was ready to fall back upon an Austrian marriage if the Scottish revolt miscarried. But this was not what men saw at the time. What was seen was that she and Cecil had played and won a masterly game; and Englishmen must have felt that the change of religion coincided with a transfer of power from incapable to capable hands.

Elizabeth, Philip II and Pius IV. [1560