1594 siastical in Richard Hooker, master of the Temple, who published the first four books of his Ecclesiastical Polity, in 1594; the His Ecclefifth in 1597, and dying in 1600, left behind three more, Polity. which were not published before 1647. Presbyterians had always considered it sufficient to prove that their scheme was conformable to that of the Apostles, as deduced merely from the Scriptures. Their pious reverence for the sacred writings had degenerated into very narrow views upon natural religion and moral law, which they treated as mere chimeras of heathen philosophers. To encounter these adversaries, Hooker inquired into the nature and foundation of law itself, as the rule of operation to all created beings; and having established the fundamental distinction between laws natural and positive, eternal and temporary, immutable and variable, he discriminated by the same criterion the various modes and precepts contained in the Scriptures. This was the object of his first book. The Puritans held that Scripture was the exclusive rule of human actions; and that in religious matters, at least, whatever had not its authority was unlawful. Hooker devoted his second book to refute this principle; and then, in the third, proceeded to attack its application to episcopacy, and the various ceremonies and usages which the Puritans considered as superstitious, or as not having Scriptural authority. He asserted that Scripture gives no certain form of polity as indispensable for a Christian church; that ritual observances are variable according to the discretion of ecclesiastical rulers; and more than this, he contended that episcopacy was an apostolical institution, and always preferable, when circumstances would allow its preservation, to the more democratic model of the Calvinistic congregations. In his eighth book, Hooker presented the principles of civil government which he had laid down in the first, in a more expanded form. The object of it was, to vindicate the Queen's supremacy over the church, and he accomplished it by identifying the church with the commonwealth. The political principles and views of our constitution, which he enlarged upon in this book, are just and liberal; he lays down the axioms of our regal government with a fearlessness which would have startled his superiors, the servile divines and courtiers of the Elizabethan age, had he published the book during his life.* * 51. Spoliation of church property by the courtiers. While the bishops thus inflicted so many severities on the Nonconformists, they had not much cause to exult in their own condition. From the time of Henry VIII., there had existed among the courtiers a perpetual appetite for ecclesiastical possessions. In the first Reformation, under Edward VI., the bishoprics were impoverished; and the Roman Catholic bishops, in Mary's reign, made haste to plunder, from a consciousness that their opportunity would be brief. The recklessness with which they alienated their estates led to the enactment of several statutes in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, disabling ecclesiastical proprietors from granting away their lands except on leases for three lives, or twenty-one years.+ But the church was still rich enough to excite the covetousness of the powerful; and an unfortunate reservation was made in favour of the crown, by which Elizabeth and her courtiers continued to prey upon the church lands. Cecil * Hallam, I., 215-223. + See Blackstone, II., c. 28. CHAP. V. surrounded his mansion at Burleigh with estates once belonging to the see of Peterborough; Hatton built his house in Holborn, on the Bishop of Ely's garden, and, when Cox remonstrated against the spoliation, Elizabeth threatened to "unfrock" him, and after his death she kept his see vacant for eighteen years. In the plunder that went forward the bishops took good care of themselves; charges of simony, corruption, covetousness, and, especially, destruction of their church estates for the benefit of their families, are very common; the council often wrote to them with an asperity which would astonish their successors; and when Elizabeth closed the session of 1584, in which many complaints had been made to her of the bishops, she told them that if they did not amend what was wrong she would depose them.* 52. General considerations upon Elizabeth's treatment of the Puritans. The church of England was not left in a very satisfactory state on Elizabeth's death. After forty years of constant persecution, the number of the non-conforming clergy was greater, their popularity more deeply rooted, and their enmity to the established order more irreconcileable. What would have been the best policy towards them it is now difficult to determine; but it is manifest that bold and sincere men are not put down by force only. In the earlier part of her reign, Elizabeth clung to certain ceremonies, probably from the justice and expediency of winning over the Roman Catholics. These ceremonies, however, were the bones of contention between the church and the Puritans. But the Queen did not extend the same policy to them, not even in the latter part of her reign, when it was no longer necessary to conciliate the Roman Catholics by retaining the ceremonies. Had she acted upon the same principle, and made those concessions which would have satisfied the people; had she reformed the abuses and corruption of the spiritual courts; had she abrogated obnoxious, and, at best, frivolous ceremonies; had she restrained the pluralities; had she not discountenanced the most diligent ministers, and had the bishops shown more temper and disinterestedness in their behaviour, the more reasonable and moderate Puritans, who formed by far the great majority of the nonconformists would, at least, have been contented; and that great dissatisfaction with the established scheme of church government, which its want of resemblance to any other Protestant church government more or less produced, would have been destroyed.† Hallam's Const. Hist., I., 223-226, and Notes. + Ibid, 226-227. 1389 III. ENGLISH RETALIATIONS UPON SPAIN. 66 53. The Journey of Portugal." We will now turn from these religious contests, which so strongly display the intolerant spirit of the age, to the foreign wars and domestic intrigues which occupied the attention of the government for the rest of the reign. As soon as the rejoicings upon the defeat of the Armada were subsided, Elizabeth levied a forced loan to replenish her exchequer; and when parliament and convocation assembled (March 8th, 1589), liberal supplies were granted. But the Commons requested that the war might now be carried into Philip's dominions; Elizabeth replied that she was too poor. An association was, therefore, formed under her sanction, headed by Drake and Sir John Norris, grandson of that Norris who was unjustly executed with Anne Boleyn. Under their auspices, an armament of nearly 200 sail, carrying 21,000 men, was collected in Plymouth harbour. One great object of the expedition, which was called at the time "The journey of Portugal," was to wrest the crown of that country from Philip, and place it on the head of Don Antonio, an illegitimate nephew of Henry, King of Portugal, one of the pretenders to the crown. But Drake was not the man to be shackled by any definite instructions; and choosing rather to do as much mischief as he could to Spain, and obtain prizes, he attacked Corunna, burnt part of the town, and captured several merchantmen and men-of-war. At the same time, Sir John Norris landed, and defeated a body of Spaniards who had intrenched themselves in the neighbourhood. At this stage of the proceedings, Essex, now the Queen's favourite, joined the expedition, having secretly escaped from the court for that purpose. The troops proceeded to Peniche; and, while the fleet sailed up the Tagus, Essex and Norris marched through Torres Vedras to Lisbon, everywhere proclaiming Don Antonio. But no one rose in favour of that pretender; the army had no artillery, and was short of ammunition; famine and sickness raged in the ranks, and, on the 27th of May, the expedition sailed from Cascaes and returned to England, with less than half the number of men it had started with.* The great result of the expedition was to confirm the English in that opinion of their superiority to the Spaniards, whether at sea or in the field, which they had now begun to entertain; and the spirit of adventure became more general. 54. Essex and his rivals in the court. Robert Devereux, Earl Southey's Lives, III., 204-221, Life of CHAP. V. of Essex, was brought up by Burleigh, and had been introduced to the court through the marriage of his mother with the Earl of Leicester. He served in Holland, under his father-in-law, and greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Zutphen (1586), where Sir Philip Sidney received his mortal wound. His youth, address, and spirit soon captivated Elizabeth, who made him master of the horse, knight of the garter, and captain-general of the cavalry, in 1587, before he was twenty years of age. He was of a noble and high-minded spirit, ill fitted for so servile and dissembling a court as that of Elizabeth's,* and it was his thirst for military renown and romantic adventure, which induced him to join the expedition to Portugal, contrary to the Queen's commands. The Queen soon forgave him this fault, as well as that of his marrying, without her consent, the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, Walsingham's daughter. After his return to court, he found himself opposed by two rivals for the royal favour, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Charles Blount. The former of these, Raleigh. one of Devonshire's worthies, had distinguished himself in the wars in France and the Netherlands, where his natural aptitude for political and military science had received the best nurture, under such leaders as Coligny and the Prince of Orange. But he was soon drawn from these wars by a pursuit which had captivated his imagination from an early age-the prosecution of discovery in the New World. After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony in North America, he entered the Queen's army in Ireland (1589), and served with good esteem for personal courage and professional skill, until the suppression of the rebellion in that country. He owed his introduction to court, and the personal favour of Elizabeth, as is traditionally reported, to a fortunate and well-improved incident, which is too familiar to be repeated here; but his name and talents were already known, as he was almost immediately afterwards employed in certain matters of diplomacy. Sir Charles Blount was the second son of Lord Mountjoy, and a student in the Inner Temple. The Sir Charles Queen having presented him with a chess queen of gold Blount. at a tilting match, the jealous Essex insulted him, and the two fought a duel, which gratified the Queen's vanity, and led to their becoming sincere friends afterwards. The earl, however, remained secure in the Queen's good graces, though he was constantly thwarted by the jealousy of Lord Burleigh, who, in 1590, on the death of Walsingham,† became chief secretary, with Essex's duel with *Hallam's Const. Hist., I., 167. ↑ Sir Francis Walsingham, perhaps the most penetrating statesman of his time, was 1589-90 his son Robert as his assistant. This was in opposition to Essex, who had petitioned the Queen to place the unfortunate Davison in the vacant office; but though he could readily obtain favours for himself, he was generally unsuccessful when he applied for his friends. 55. The Wars of the League. Elizabeth again aids the Huguenots. When Henry of Navarre succeeded to the throne of France, he found it necessary to make large concessions to those Catholic nobility, who had hitherto adhered to the royal cause in opposition to the League; and he engaged not to suffer the public exercise of any other than the Catholic worship, except in the towns where the Huguenot worship was already allowed; not to give offices in cities and corporations to any but the Roman Catholics; to maintain the rights and privileges of all his subjects; to punish the late King's murderers; and to permit the Catholic lords to explain their conduct to the Pope. These engagements so incensed the Huguenots, who had hitherto supported Henry, that they threatened to leave him to the fury of his enemies, and nine regiments refused to fight under his colours. Thus weakened by desertion, he was forced to raise the siege of Paris, and retire into Normandy. The Duke of Mayenne pursued him; but he intrenched himself at Arques, near Dieppe; and when the enemy attacked him (September 21st, 1589), he Arques. repulsed them, although their number was four times greater than his own. In this crisis he applied to Elizabeth, who immediately aided him with £20,000, and 4,000 troops, under Lord Willoughby. This timely assistance enabled him to resume the offensive. By a forced march he retraced his steps, surprised the suburbs of Paris, returned by Tours into Normandy, and reduced Falaise, Honfleur, and several other towns of importance. During this campaign the English supported by their bravery the honour of their country, and they suffered severely in several actions. The next campaign was signalised by the celebrated battle Battle of of Ivry (March 14th, 1590), in which Henry defeated the Ivry. Duke of Mayenne; all the towns around Paris immediately fell into his power; the capital was blockaded, and for four months endured such extremities of famine, that more than 13,000 persons Battle of born at Chislehurst, in Kent, and began public life as one of Cecil's continental agents, residing as ambassador in France during the civil wars in that kingdom. In 1573 he became one of the principal secretaries of state, and a privy councillor, in which capacity his life has been sufficiently described in the text. At first he favoured the Puritans. He was an ardent promoter of trade and navigation, as well as of learning, and he founded the Library of King's College, Cambridge. He had only one daughter, of whom some account has been given above. His character has been well summed up by Miss Aikin, Memoirs, IL, 264-65, |