part of those foolish priests guiltless of any designs against her or their country." Familiar as the people were with cruelty, and relentless as adverse religionists were to each other, the extent to which the use of the rack was carried, even when the objects were jesuits and popish priests, shocked the natural humanity of the nation. Burleigh was put upon his defence before the public. His vindication mainly consisted in alleging, that Campion was tortured so mildly as to be able soon after to walk and sign his confession. The genius of the reign of Elizabeth, and of the age, is exhibited by a single trait, and a fearful glimpse, in this association of the rack with mildness. Elizabeth, to render her ministers more odious by the contrast of her own clemency, proclaimed that torture should be discontinued; and after the false glory thus gained by her, shut her eyes to the resumed or continued use of the horrid engine with renewed activity by her ministers. To her eternal honour, however, she ordered seventy popish priests, either under sentence of death or awaiting it, to be released from prison, the rack, and the scaffold.‡ Had the catholics frankly acknowledged the validity of Elizabeth's title, she would have been easily reconciled to them. Had they disclaimed the deposing power of the pope, she would have freely tolerated, as she perhaps shared, the tenets of transubstantiation and the invocation of saints, — those bugbears which faction and hypocrisy, bigotry and credulity, have invested with vain terrors and ridiculous importance down to the first quarter of the 19th century. In reference to the puritans, her antipathies were more numerous and her aversion stronger. The blood of sectaries, it has been observed in the preceding pages, was shed; but the victims were eccentric unrecognised fanatics, not members of the great puritan community. The puritans were too highly patronised, powerful, and independent, they had too many favourers in the house * Cam. Ann. + Somers' Tracts, 209. + Cam. Ann. of commons, and even at court, to be proscribed, tortured, and hanged, like the Roman catholics: but she lost no opportunity to search their consciences, restrict their liberty, and cause their deprivation of benefices which they would have gladly and unscrupulously retained under a church which they pronounced unscriptural. Archbishop Grindall died blind, old, and in disgrace with Elizabeth, in 1582, Whether from the want of energy, or a leaning to the puritans, he tolerated prophesyings and preachings in private houses: he allowed an absolute schism in the church.* In a letter to Burleigh, he vehemently repudiates being a favourer of puritans: his toleration therefore may be imputed to imbecility. The queen, to restore unity in the church, appointed as his successor Whitgift, a stern inquisitor, irritated by previous controversy; and placed in his hands a commission, comparable only to that celebrated tribunal which, in England, has been regarded as the most odious in the world. She placed at the disposal of the new archbishop forty-four commissioners, of whom twelve were ecclesiastics, with a jurisdiction over the kingdom, and authority to reform all heresies, schisms, errors, vices, sins, misbehaviours,—in short, all acts and opinions,by fine and imprisonment at their discretion. The ecclesiastical commission had the power of demanding the subscription of the clergy to new articles, and of scrutinising the conscience of a suspected person by ad * Cam. Ann. + Letter from the Bishop of London (Ed. Grindall) to the Lord Treasurer. June 26th, 1574. "My Lord, No man sustaineth more wrongs than I do. I well hoped that no devil had been so impudent to have charged me with so great and manifest an untruth. 'Sed aliquis incarnatus Diabolus, et qui non dormit,' hath wrought me this wrong, Spiritus ille mendax revelabitur suo tempore.' I am too well acquainted with these calumniations, and God will have me still live under the cross. If I should openly preach, write, and publicly proceed against these innovators, disturbers of the state, and notwithstanding privily consent with them, maintain them, and aid them, truly no punishment were too hard for me; for I would think myself unworthy to live in any commonwealth. But being most untruly charged herewithal, while I remain unpurged I remain blotted and defaced; my office is slandered, and the Gospel which I preach 'male audit.'"-Murdin, State Papers, 275. Proceedings so ministering an oath. Proceedings so tyrannical excited general indignation; but Elizabeth and the archbishop did not the less succeed in restoring unity in the church.* The commons offered a gentle suggestion of their disapproval. Elizabeth rebuked them in a tone of spiritual supremacy not exceeded by the pope. She said, that by censuring the church they slandered her whom God had appointed supreme ruler over it; that nothing was exempt from abuse; that the prelates must be vigilant in correcting and preventing abuse and error, or she would deprive them of their office; that she was deeply read in religious science, for which she had more leisure than most other persons; that she would not tolerate the licentiousness and presumption with which many people, she perceived, canvassed scripture, and started innovations; that she was resolved to guide her people by God's rule in the mean between Romish corruptions and sectarian licentiousness; that the papists were enemies of her person, but the sectaries were hostile to all kingly government; and, under colour of preaching the word of God, presumed to exercise their private judgments, and to censure the acts of the prince.t The only legal ground for this monstrous tribunal, in a country pretending to law or liberty, was a clause in the act of supremacy of the first year of Elizabeth. If such power were conferred by it, the sovereign was absolute; if it was not conferred, Elizabeth set herself above the laws. Sir Edward Coke pronounces the commission against law ‡, and says, that, from a secret distrust or consciousness of its illegality, it was not enrolled in chancery as other commissions, to prevent its validity from being questioned. This appears to be the reason of a stunted lawyer who identified substance with formality. The commissioners were exercising their jurisdiction by fines and imprisonments, ransacking the houses of the people by their pursuivants, and their + L'Ewes, Journ. * Camd. Ann. Fourth Inst. consciences by administering oaths. This, assuredly, was a more likely mode of challenging the question of its legality, than the recording of it on the chancery roll. At a subsequent period, indeed, when Elizabeth re-issued a similar commission, a man slew a pursuivant who with a warrant from the commissioners entered and searched his house, and the man was discharged from the bar by the judges of assize, on the ground that the warrant was illegal.* as But whilst the queen was thus strenuous in asserting her supremacy without bounds, the puritans became more jealous of the right of private judgment and extemporaneous prayer,-the commons of the exercise of their privileges. An attempt was made at the close of 1584, in the house of commons, by doctor Turner, a puritan, to introduce a book of common prayer, drawn up by the ministers of that sect, and containing a summary of their discipline. The book would appear to bind to a specific form of prayer, but there was a rule in the rubrick allowing the minister, at his discretion, to use the form set down, or pray 66 God should move him." It was rejected; but the puritans succeeded in wringing from archbishop Whitgift, chiefly through the power of Leicester, a conference at Lambeth, to argue the question between them and the church. Sparke and Travers were deputed to vindicate the tenets of the puritans, and more particularly their objections to the book of common prayer. They made five objections: to the reading of the apocryphal writings; to the manner of baptism; to private communion; to the apparel; and to the allowing of an inefficient ministry, non-residence, and pluralities. The assessors of the privy council were Leicester, Grey, and Walsingham. The two champions of puritanism maintained a four hours' disputation: in the opinion of Leicester they had the advantage§; according to the ecclesiastical historians of the adverse Fourth Inst. 42 Eliz. Neal, Hist. Pur. vol. i. p. 289. Coll. Ec. Hist. Carte, Gen. Hist. book xix. party they were confuted and convinced*; in point of fact, they continued non-conformists to their death.† The probability is, that the conference ended leaving the convictions of both parties as it found them, or rooted more firmly. Private meditation may enlighten, -in a public dispute the object is not truth but victory. The house of commons at the same time vindicated the privileges of its members against subpœnas from the courts of chancery and star-chamber. If its independence and practical operation were borne down by the despotic temper of Elizabeth, the energy of her character and the skill with which she obtained popularity, by flattering the religious and other prejudices of the common people, still its vitality was from time to time asserted and preserved. The penal laws against Roman catholics were at the same time so sharpened and multiplied by fresh enactments, and by the employment of spies and informers, those worst instruments used by the emperors in the worst days of Rome, as to render it impossible for catholics to live under them in safety. False denunciations and forged letters subjected the most conspicuous to examinations before the privy council, deprivation of rights, or committal to the Tower. The desperate plots of foreign emissaries and religious fanatics against the life of Elizabeth would palliate, if not excuse, the severity of her laws against Roman catholics, if her own intolerance had not so great a share in provoking and producing them. These successive conspiracies are so linked with the captivity and execution of Mary queen of Scots, that both should be passed conjointly in review. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, whilst it produced no interruption of political amity and diplomatic politeness between Elizabeth and Charles IX., and but a brief suspension of the negotiation of marriage between her and the duke of Alençon, sealed the doom of Mary |