for sick women. Before many years had passed comfortable bedding had been introduced. Pewter platters and tin spoons replaced wooden ones. Along with these improvements was noticed a universal chase after wealth, and farmers complained that landlords not only exacted higher rents, but themselves engaged in the sale of the produce of their lands.

12. Growing Strength of the House of Commons.-This increase of general prosperity could not but strengthen the House of Commons. It was mainly composed of country gentlemen, and it had been the policy of the Tudors to rely upon that class as a counterpoise to the old nobility. Many of the country gentlemen were employed as Justices of the Peace, and Elizabeth had gladly increased their powers. When, therefore, they came to fulfil their duties as members of Parliament, they were not mere talkers unac quainted with business, but practical men, who had been used to deal with their own local affairs before being called on to discuss the affairs of the country. Various causes made their opinions more important as the reign went on. In the first place, the national uprising against Spain drew with it a rapid increase of Protestantism in the younger generation, and, for this reason, the House of Commons, which, at the beginning of the reign, represented only a Protestant minority in the nation itself (see p. 428), at the end of the reign represented a Protestant majority, and gained strength in consequence. In the second place, Puritanism tended to develope independence of character, whilst the queen was not only unable to overawe the Puritan members of the House, but, unlike her father, had no means of keeping the more worldly-minded in submission by the distribution of abbey lands.

13. Archbishop Whitgift and the Court of High Commission. 1583. The Jesuit attack in 1580 and 1581 strengthened the queen's resolution to put an end to the divisions which weakened the English Church, as she was still afraid lest Puritanism, if unchecked, might give offence to her more moderately-minded subjects and drive them into the arms of the Papacy. In 1583, on Grindal's death, she appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury Whitgift, who had taken a leading part in opposing Cartwright (see p. 446). Whitgift held that as questions about vestments and ceremonies were unimportant, the queen's pleasure in such matters ought to be the rule of the Church. He was, however, a strict disciplinarian, and he was as anxious as the queen to force into conformity those clergy who broke the unity of the Church for the sake of what he regarded as mere crotchets of their own, especially

as some of them were violent assailants of the established order. In virtue of a clause in the Act of Supremacy the queen erected a Court of High Commission. Though many laymen were members of the new Court, they seldom attended its sittings, and it was therefore practically managed by bishops and ecclesiastical lawyers. Its business was to enforce conformity on the clergy, and under Whitgift it acted most energetically, driving from their livings and committing to prison clergymen who refused to conform.

14. The House of Commons and Puritanism. 1584-The severity of the High Commission roused some of the Puritan clergy to attempt-in private meetings-to bring into existence something of the system of Presbyterianism, but the attempt was soon abandoned. Few amongst the Protestant laity had any liking for Presbyterianism, which they regarded as oppressive and intolerant. and it had no deep roots even amongst the Puritan clergy. If many members of the House of Commons were attracted to Puritanism, as opposed to Presbyterianism, it was partly because at the time of a national struggle against Rome, they preferred those amongst the clergy whose views were most antagonistic to those of Rome; but still more because they admired the Puritans as defenders of morality. Not only were the Church courts oppressive and meddlesome, but plain men were disgusted at a system in which ignorant and lazy ministers who conformed to the Prayer Book were left untouched, whilst able and energetic preachers who refused to adopt its ceremonies were silenced.

15. The Separatists.-The desire for a higher standard of morality, which made so many support the Puritan demand for a further reformation of the Church, drove others to denounce the Church as apostate. Robert Browne, a clergyman, was the first to declare in favour of a system which was neither Episcopal nor Presbyterian. He held it to be the duty of all true Christians to separate themselves from the Church, and to form congregations apart, to which only those whose religion and morality were beyond question should be admitted. These separatists, as they called themselves, were known as Brownists in common speech. Unfortunately their zeal made them uncharitably contemptuous of those who were less zealous than themselves, and it was from amongst them that there came forth-Leginning in 1588-a series of virulent and libellous attacks on the bishops, known as the Marprelate Tracts, printed anonymously at a secret press. Browne and his followers advocated complete religious liberty-denying the right of the State to interfere with the conscience. The doctrine