the clouds of Spain, and the vapours of the holy league (of Bayonne), began to disperse*, and to threaten her felicity." It was a part of this felicity that many, -perhaps the greater number of English catholics were content occasionally to conform to the rites of the English church, and to partake in the legal form of worship; inasmuch as they deemed it to contain nothing contrary to religion, though it was wanting in many of its important parts. Allen, a catholic clergyman, afterwards conspicuous under the name of cardinal Allen, during his visit to England, where he resided from 1562 to 1565, seems to have lessened the number of the occasional conformists by arguments which are conclusive; as well as by the authority of the most learned of the divines at Trent. His rigour was, however, so unpopular, that he was obliged to quit his native county of Lancaster; and, though he was more successful at Oxford, he soon returned to Flanders.

The first symptoms of a persecuting spirit which began to creep into the legislation of Elizabeth, must have arisen rather from fears excited by the clouds portending storm on the Continent, than from any indiscretion or inflexibility of her own catholic subjects. The English ministers, in 1564, received from their secret agents in Italy information of designs against their sovereign entertained at Rome. § It was a part of this intelligence that a congregation of cardinals, appointed to consider the state of the British islands, had advised Pius IV. to grant the crown of England to any catholic prince who should undertake to reduce that rebellious country to a state of

* i. e. To spread abroad, even while they were thickening and darkening, + Sir R. Naunton, Fragm. Regalia. art. Cecil.

Dod, Church History, ii. 44. Butl. Hist. Mem. i. 166. The first of these respectable works exhibits, on these subjects, two remarkable instances of the power of eager zeal to blind a sagacious and honest writer. Speaking of the supposed versatility of Elizabeth's religion, Mr. Dod says, "The six articles of her faith- the medley liturgy of her brother-all sat easy upon her." Dod, ii. 44. Will the reader believe, that in the year of the law of the six articles, 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14., to which the historian alluded, Elizabeth was in her seventh year? But the liturgy of her brother was substantially the same with her own. "After some months' hesitation," says the same writer," she appeared visibly for the reformation." The reader of the above narrative will perceive, that she never really hesitated for a moment, and that her public avowal of protestantism followed her accession in some days, or, according to the largest calculation, in the space of a month. Strype, Ann. vol. i. part ii. 54-57.

They cannot fail

due obedience towards the holy see. to have much earlier obtained intelligence of a nature that awakened their alarms. The particulars of these accounts, and their coincidence with those secrets of the great continental powers which had transpired since the peace of Câteau-Cambresis, gave considerable probability to the outline of the reports which were made to Cecil by his agents at Venice, and of which, however mixed with mistakes and exaggerations, the substance seems to have been believed by that sagacious minister, and therefore in some measure acted upon by the English government. About the time of these informations, the parliament of 1563 sharpened the severity of the act of uniformity by making the second offence against its provisions capital, if committed by an ecclesiastic of the established church, or by a person who deviated from the authorised rites of the church after admonition, or by such as in words or writing endeavoured to defame* the public worship, or who said or heard private mass.

The oath of supremacy was declared by this statute to import no more than an acknowledgment that "her majesty is, under God, to have the sovereignty and rule over all persons born within her dominions, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, so as that no foreign power shall have or ought to have any superiority over them;" an interpretation conformable to the instructions issued two years before by the ecclesiastical commissioners, who had copied it from the ambiguous and evasive laws of Henry VIII. The oath of supremacy was for the first time imposed on members of the house of commons, as a condition which must be performed before entrance into the house. Peers were exempted from the oath, as persons of whose faith and loyalty the queen was otherwise assured. + One means of hostility against catholics had, indeed, been supplied by a clause in the act of uniformity, which inflicted fine and imprisonment on

"Deprave" is the expression used in the statute. In Minsheu's Dictionary of Nine Languages, one of the senses of that word is " to diffame," which is reduced in the text to modern orthography.

+ 5 Eliz. cap. 1.

those who use any form of prayer but that contained in the liturgy; and increased the penalty, even to imprisonment for life, in case of a repetition of the offence. These statutes were opposed by lord Montague and Mr. Atkinson in their respective houses, on principles of liberty so large as to be of suspicious sincerity from any statesmen in that age, and to seem not becoming in the mouths of those ministers or partisans of queen Mary who now employed them.

A circular letter of the primate, written by the queen's command, and to which Cecil added a paragraph of earnest exhortation to mildness, tempered and almost suspended the harshest part of these bad laws. He takes it for granted that nothing but the wilfulness of "some of that sort" could "compel a bishop to tender the oath to them, and enjoins him in that extreme case not to offer the oath a second time without consulting the archbishop himself; a direction not so consonant to first principles as the professions of the opponents of the law, but, on account of its very limitations, a much more conclusive proof of the sincerity of the writer.

During the period now under consideration, no other change in the laws occurred. There can be no doubt that the administration of Bacon and Cecil far surpassed in approaches towards toleration all contemporary governments. Their prudence and temper probably led them often to connive at a degree of religious liberty, from which as a general principle they would themselves have recoiled. Some stains of their age may, however, be traced in the policy of these excellent ministers. 1568, a notable mark of the queen's displeasure was fixed on the ancient religion, by the exclusion of catholics from court. Shortly after they were excluded from the bar by an order in council, which directed the Denchers or governors of the inns of court, the places of

* 1 Eliz. cap. 2

In

+ Robert Atkinson, burgess for Appleby, styled by Strype a student of law in the Inner Temple; perhaps a barrister. Browne Willis, iii. 76. Strype's Parker, i. 533.

legal education, to enforce the oath of supremacy upon all candidates for the bar or the bench.* Sir Edward Waldegrave, a catholic gentleman who held high office under Mary, was, with his lady, committed to the Tower for hearing mass; a committal which, under the largest construction of the act of uniformity, was of doubtful legality.+ Some other unnamed persons were committed at the same time with Waldegrave, and probably for the same offence. We find a complaint from Grindal and another bishop to the privy council, breathing no humane spirit against the contumacy of lady Carew's servants, who refused to make oath to answer interrogatories where they apprehended that the answers might criminate themselves. Where such facts are still ex

tant and accessible, it is certain that the madness of fanaticism, and the officious servility of petty tyrants in many cases unknown to us, must have employed bad laws for objects beyond their detestable purpose. Yet some

monument must have remained of a persecution, if it had extended to capital punishment, or had comprehended very numerous victims. It was not till 1568 that the extensive and open prevalence of the catholic worship in Lancashire began to awaken the alarms of the court. A commission was granted to the bishop of Chester to examine and reform the state of his diocese.§ Information was given of extensive confederacies, of secret meetings, of absolution from the oaths of allegiance, and of unlawful oaths of obedience to the pope, which seemed so much to portend commotion, if not rebellion, that they deterred the bishop from visiting the most disaffected parts of his diocese, where his presence was most necessary. The catholics, however, escaped the consequences of these imprudences without any more harsh conditions than an acknowledgment of their offences against the

Strype's Grindal, 203.

† April 22. 1561. Strype, Ann. i. 400. Oxford edition, 1824. (old edition, 267.). They must have been committed as accessories to the offence against the act of uniformity, which their chaplain had committed by using the

mass.

‡ September 15. 1562. Haynes, 395.

§ Strype, Ann. vol. i. part 2. p. 253.

Il Id. 260.

act of uniformity, and a solemn promise to obey the laws; which, though they were infringements of the rights of conscience, will presently appear to be palliated, or, according to the standard of that age, justified, by the events which followed in the north of England.

It

The protestants who fled to England before the destroying sword of the duke of Alva, and from the religious wars of France, had so much increased, that it was thought prudent to ascertain their numbers, at least in the capital, where the enumeration was more easy, and considered to be more necessary. The whole number of aliens in the city of London and the adjoining parishes was found to be nearly 5000; of whom about 4000 inhabited the city of London, and little more than 1000 dwelt in the suburban districts. Of the number in the city 1200 were new-comers. In the city, 3400 were French or Dutch; which last term comprehended Germans and Flemings. In the suburbs almost the whole of the foreigners were of these classes.* is not improbable that the body of aliens was not less than a twentieth part of the dwellers in the capital at that period. A very large portion of them appear, from the countries of which they were natives, and from the circumstances of the Continent at the time of their arrival, to have been refugees for religion, who spread alarm and horror by the narratives of their sufferings. Among them lurked many individuals who had been carried along by the flood of speculation which the reformation excited, into opinions which, though false, and indeed monstrous, were yet so alluring to the inexperienced philanthropist, as well as to the ravenous plunderer, that they might become dangerous to the order and safety of human society. A smaller number, either inflamed by fanaticism or stimulated by rapacity, had perpetrated atrocities which rendered them objects of suspicion to every watchful government. The name of anabaptist was applied by undistinguishing enemies to persons of both these classes; though the majority of those who Grindal's Return, 1567. Haynes, 445.