Constitutional History of England, Vol 1 of 3

sh the subordination and dependency of the former; the first abrogating all jurisdiction and legislative power of ecclesiastical rulers, except under the authority of the Crown; and the second pro

nd had to contend with a religious party, quite opposite to the Romish, less dang

nd Calvin were carefully eradicating them as popish idolatry and superstition. Cranmer and Ridley, the founders of the English reformation, justly deeming themselves independent of any foreign master, adopted a middle course between the Lutheran and Calvinistic ritual. The general tendency however of protestants, even in the reign of Edward VI., was towards the simpler forms; whether through the influence of those foreign divines who co-operated in our reformation, or because it was natural in the heat of religious animosity to recede as far as possible, especially in such exterior distinctions, from the opposite denomination. The death of Edward seems to have prevented a further approach to the scheme of Geneva in our ceremonies, and perhaps in our discipline. During the persecution of Mary's reign, the most eminent protestant clergymen took refuge in various cities of Germany and Switzerland. They were received by the Calvinists with

s, and loved also a more splendid worship than had prevailed in her brother's reign; while many of those returned from the continent were intent on copying a still simpler model. She reproved a divine who preached against the real presence, and is even said to have used prayers to the Virgin.[269] But her great struggle with the reformers was about images, and particularly the crucifix, which she retained, with lighted tapers before it, in her chapel; though in the injunctions to the ecclesiastical visitors of 1559, they are directed to have them taken away from churches.[270] This concession she must have made very reluct

the bishops and clergy, though they married by connivance, or rather by an ungracious permission,[275] saw, with very just dissatisfaction, their children treated by the law as the offspring of concubinage.[276] This continued, in legal strictness, till the first year of James, when the statute of Mary was explicitly repealed; though I cannot help suspect

litical revolution.[277] They disliked some other ceremonies for the same reason. These objections were by no means confined, as is perpetually insinuated, to a few discontented persons. Except Archbishop Parker, who had remained in England during the late reign, and Cox, Bishop of Ely, who had taken a strong part at Frankfort against innovation, all the most eminent churchmen, such as Jewel, Grindal, Sandys, Nowell, were in favour of leaving off the surplice and what were called the popish ceremonies.[278] Whether their objections are to be deemed narrow and frivolous or otherwise, it is inconsis

e people.[280] Still the Romish party was extremely numerous; it comprehended the far greater portion of the beneficed clergy, and all those who, having no turn for controversy, clung with pious reverence to the rites and worship of their earliest associations. It might be thought perhaps not very repugnant to wisdom or to charity, that such persons should be won over to the reformed faith by retaining a few indifferent usages, which gratified their eyes, and took off the impression, so unpleasing to simpl

not have been practicable, by receding a little from that uniformity which governors delight to prescribe, to have palliated in a great measure, if not put an end for a time, to the discontent that so soon endangered the new establishment. The frivolous usages, to which so many frivolous objections were raised, such as the tippet and surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in matrimony, the posture of kneeling at the communion, might have been left to private discretion, not possibly without some inconvenience, but with less, as I conceive, than resulted from renderin

d on the unlawfulness of compulsory regulations in the church prescribed by the civil power, than on any special impropriety in the usages themselves. But this principle, which perhaps the scrupulous party did not yet very fully avow, was altogether incompatible with the supremacy vested in the queen, of which fairest flower of her prerogative she was abundantly tenacious. One thing was evident, that the puritan malcontents were growing every day more numerous, more determined, and more likely to win over the generality of those who sincerely favoured the protestant cause. There were but two lines to be taken; either to relax and modify the regulations which gave offence, or to enforce a more punctual observation of them. It seems to me far more probable that the former course would have prevented a great deal of that mischief which the second manifestly aggravated. For in this early stage the advocates of a simpler ritual had by no means assumed the shape of an embodied faction, whom conces

hurch, and Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, men of signal non-conformity, but at the same time of such eminent reputation that, when the law took its course against them, no other offender could hope for indulgence. On refusing to wear the customary habits, Sampson was deprived of his deanery; but the other seems to have been tolerated.[286] This instance of severity, as commonly happens, rather irritated than intimidated the puritan clergy, aware of their numbers, their popularity, and their powerful friends, but above all sustained by their own sincerity and earnestness. Parker had taken his resolution to proceed in the vigorous course he ha

eserting their vocation on that account. Several of the most respectable opponents of the ceremonies were equally adverse to any open schism.[289] But the animosities springing from heated zeal, and the smart of what seemed oppression, would not suffer the English puritans generally to acquiesce in such temperate counsels. They began to form separate conventicles in London, not ostentatiously indeed, but of course without the possibility of eluding notice. It was doubtless worthy of much consideration, whether an established church-government could wink at the systematic disregard of its discipline by those who were subject to its jurisdiction and partook of its revenues. And yet there were many important considerations derived from the posture of religion and of the state, which might induce cool-headed men to doubt the expediency of too much straightening the reins. But there are few, I trust, who can h

y their virtues and services of more indulgent treatment.[292] Cecil himself, though on intimate terms with the archbishop, and concurring generally in his measures, was not far removed from the latter way of thinking, if his natural caution and extreme dread at this juncture of losing the queen's favour had permitted him more unequivocally to express it. Those whose judgment did not incline them towards the puritan notions, respected the scruples of men in whom the reformed religion could so implicitly confide. They had regard also to the condition of the church. The far greater part of its benefices were supplied by conformists of very doubtful sincerity, who would resume their mass-books with more alacrity than they had cast them aside.[293] Such a deficiency of protestant clergy had been experienced at the queen's accession, that for several years it was a common practice to appoint laymen, usually mechanics, to read the service in vacan

of the prelates. The ostensible founder of this new school (though probably its tenets were by no means new to many of the sect) was Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret's professor of divinity at Cambridge. He began about 1570 to inculcate the unlawfulness of any form of church-government, except what the apostles had instituted, namely, the presbyterian. A deserved reputation for virtue, learning, and acuteness, an ardent zeal, an inflexible self-confidence, a vigorous, rude, and arrogant style, marked him as the formidable leader of a religious faction.[298] In 1572 he published his celebrated Admonition to the Parliament, calling on that a

of this prerogative were hitherto chiefly those who looked to Rome for another head of their church. The disciples of Cartwright now learned to claim an ecclesiastical independence, as unconstrained as the Romish priesthood in the darkest ages had usurped. "No civil magistrate in councils or assemblies for church matters," he says in his Admonition, "can either be chief moderator, over-ruler, judge, or determiner; nor has he such authority as that, without his consent, it should not be lawful for ecclesiastical persons to make any church orders or ceremonies. Church matters ought ordinarily to be handled by church officers. The principal direction of them is by God's ordinance committed to the ministers of the church and to the ecclesiastical governors. As these meddle not with the making civil laws, so the civil magistrate ought not to ordain ceremonies, or determine controversies in the church, as long as they do not intrench upon his

perfectly distinguishable from those of the Roman see, to perceive the same pretensions urged, and the same ambition and arrogance at work, which had imposed a yoke on the necks of their fathers. With whatever plausibility it might be maintained that a connection with temporal magistrates could only corrupt the purity and shackle the liberties of a Christian church, this argument was not for them to urge, who called on those magistrates to do the church's bidding, to enforce its decrees, to punish its refractory members; and while they disdained to accept the prince's co-operation as their ally, claimed his service as their minister. The protestant dissenters since the revolution, who have almost unanimousl

hat a spirit not less mischievous in the present hierarchy, under the mask of the queen's authority, was actually manifesting itself in deeds of oppression. The upper ranks among the laity, setting aside courtiers, and such as took little interest in the dispute, were chiefly divided between those attached to the ancient church and those who wished for further alterations in the new. I conceive the church of England party, that is, the party adverse to any species of ecclesiastical change, to have been the least numerous of the three during this reign; still excepting, as I ha

rchbishop. And, after the Council of Trent had effected such considerable reforms in the catholic discipline, it seemed a sort of reproach to the protestant church of England, that she retained all the dispensations, the exemptions, the pluralities, which had been deemed the peculiar corruptions of the worst times of popery.[305] In the reign of Edward VI., as I have already mentioned, the canon law being naturally obnoxious from its origin and character, a commission was appointed to draw up a code of ecclesiastical laws. This was accordingly compiled, but never obtained the sanction of parliament; and though some attempts were made, and especially in the Commons at this very time, to bring it again before the legislature, our ecclesiastical tribunals have been always compelled to borrow a great part of their prin

riest or minister shall subscribe to all the articles of religion which only concern the confession of the true christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments, comprised in a book entitled Articles whereupon it was agreed, etc. That the word only was inserted for the sake of excluding the articles which established church authority and the actual discipline, is evident from a remarkable conversation which Mr. Wentworth, the most distinguished asserter of civil liberty in this reign, relates himself in a subsequent session (that of 1575), to have held on the subject with Archbishop Parker. "I was," he says, "among others, the last parliament sent for unto the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the articles of religion that then passed this house. He asked us, 'Why we did put out of the book the articles for the homilies, consecration of bishops, and such like?' 'Surely, sir,' said I, 'because we were so occupied in other matters that we had no time to examine them how the

harass the puritan ministers, suppressing their books, silencing them in churches, prosecuting them in private meetings.[309] Sandys and Grindal, the moderate reformers of our spiritual aristocracy, not only withdrew their countenance from a party who aimed at improvement by subversion, but fell, according to the unhappy temper of their age, into courses of undue severity. Not merely the preachers, to whom, as regular ministers, the rules of canonical obedience might apply, but plain citizens, for listenin

ir prudence and magnanimity to have gone as sheep to the slaughter, and risked the destruction of protestantism under a second Mary, if the intrigues of ambitious men, the pusillanimity of the multitude, and the specious pretext of hereditary right, should favour her claims on a demise of the Crown. They would have failed perhaps in attempting to resist them; but upon resistance I make no question that they had resolved. In so awful a crisis, to what could they better look than to the stern, intrepid, uncompromising spirit of puritanism; congenial to that of the Scottish reformers, by whose aid the lords of the congregation had overthrown the ancient religion in despite of the regent Mary of Guise? Of conforming churchmen, in general, they might well be doubtful, after the oscillations of the three preceding reigns; but every abhorrer of ceremonies, every rejecter

ople. The lurking priests had great advantages from the attractive nature of their faith, and some, no doubt, from its persecution. A middle system, like the Anglican, though it was more likely to produce exterior conformity, and for that reason was, I think, judiciously introduced at the outset, did not afford such a security against relapse, nor draw over the heart so thoroughly, as one which admitted of no compromise. Thus the sign of the cross in baptism, one of the principal topics of objection, may well seem in itself a very innocent and decorous ceremony. But if the perpetual use of that sign is one of the most striking superstitions in the church of Rome, it might be urged in behalf of the puritans, that the people were less likely to treat it with contempt, when they saw i

people, very little acquainted as yet with their religion, and supply in some degree the deficiencies of learning among the pastors themselves. These deficiencies were indeed glaring; and it is not unlikely that the prophecyings might have had a salutary effect, if it had been possible to exclude the prevailing spirit of the age. It must however be evident to any one who had experience of mankind, that the precise clergy, armed not only with popular topics, but with an intrinsic superiority of learning and ability to support them, would wield these assemblies at their pleasure, whatever might be the regulations devised for their control. The queen entirely disliked them, and directed Parker to put them down. He wrote ac

rather than obey her commands on this subject. He conceived that, by establishing strict rules with respect to the direction of those assemblies, the abuses which had already appeared of disorderly debate, and attacks on the discipline of the church, might be got rid of without entirely abolishing the exercise. The queen would hear of no middle course, and insisted both that the prophecyings should be discontinued, and that fewer licences for preaching should be granted. For no parish priest could without a licen

rigour he had determined to adopt, by promulgating articles for the observance of discipline. One of these prohibited all preaching, reading, or catechising in private houses, whereto any not of the same family should resort, "seeing the same was never permitted as lawful under any christian magistrate." But that which excited the loudest complaints was the subscription to three points, the queen's supremacy, the lawfulness of the common prayer and ordination service, and the truth of the whole thirty-nine articles, exacted from every minister of the church.[315] These indeed were so far from novelties, that it might seem rather supererogatory to demand them (if in fact the law required subscription to all the articles); yet it is highly probable that many had hitherto eluded the legal subscriptions, and that others had conceived their scruples after having conformed to the prescribed order. The archbishop's peremptory requisition passed, perha

ers, twelve of whom were bishops, many more privy-counsellors, and the rest either clergymen or civilians. This commission, after reciting the acts of supremacy, uniformity, and two others, directs them to inquire from time to time, as well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, as by witnesses and all other means they can devise, of all offences, contempts, or misdemeanours done and committed contrary to the tenor of the said several acts and statutes; and also to inquire of all heretical opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false rumours or talk, slanderous words and sayings, etc., contrary to the aforesaid laws. Power is given to any three commiss

harbour a spirit of puritanical disaffection. This procedure, which was wholly founded on the canon law, consisted in a series of interrogations, so comprehensive as to embrace the whole scope of clerical uniformity, yet so precise and minute as to leave no ro

s of Spain used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their preys." The primate replied by alleging reasons in behalf of the mode of examination, but very frivolous, and such as a man determined to persevere in an unwarrantable course of action may commonly find.[321] They had little effect on the calm and sagacious mi

his see; faults very prevalent among the bishops of that period. The privy council wrote sometimes to expostulate with Aylmer, in a tone which could hardly have been employed towards a man in his station who had not forfeited the general esteem. Thus, upon occasion of one Benison, whom he had imprisoned without cause, we find a letter signed by Burleigh, Leicester, Walsingham, and even Hatton, besides several others, urging the bishop to give the man a sum of money, since he would recover damages at law

sh and nice in their opinions, and more scrupulous than they need; yet with their careful catechising and diligent preaching, they bring forth that fruit which your most excellent majesty is to desire and wish; namely, the lessening and diminishing the papistical numbers."[327] But this great minister's knowledge of the queen's temper, and excessive anxiety to retain her favour, made him sometimes fearful to act according to his own judgment. "It is well known," Lord Bacon says of him, in a treatise published in 1591, "that as to her majesty, there was never a counsellor of his lordship's long continuance that was so appliable to her majesty's princely resolutions, endeavouring always after faithful propositions and remonstrances, and these in the best words and the most grateful manner,

ier controversies of the reformation, the use, or, more truly, the abuse, of that powerful lever of human bosoms, the press. He who in Saxony had sounded the first trumpet-peal against the battlements of Rome, had often turned aside from his graver labours to excite the rude passions of the populace by low ribaldry and exaggerated invective; nor had the English reformers ever scrupled to win proselytes by the same arts. What had been accounted holy zeal in the mitred Bale and martyred Latimer, might plead some apology from example in the aggrieved puritan. Pamphlets, chiefly anonymous, were rapidly circulated throughout the kingdom, inveighing against the prelacy. Of these libels the most famous went under the name of Martin Mar

man, he was tried some time after for another pamphlet, containing some sharp reflections on the queen herself, and received sentence of death, which it was thought proper to carry into execution.[333] Udal, a puritan minister, fell into the grasp of the same statute for an alleged libel on the bishops, which had surely a very indirect reference to the queen's administration. His trial, like most other political trials of the age, disgraces the name of English justice. It consisted mainly in a pitiful attempt

the Earl of Leicester's patronage, the mastership of a hospital in the latter town.[335] It would be unjust to censure the archbishop for interfering to protect the discipline of his church against these innovators, had but the means adopted for that purpose been more consonant to equity. Cartwright with several of his sect were summoned before the ecclesiastical commission; where refusing to inculpate themselves by taking the oath ex officio, they were committed to the Fleet. This punishment not satisfying the rigid churchmen, and the authority of the ecclesiastical commission being incompetent to inflict any heavier judgment, it was thought fit the next year to remove the proceedings into the court of star-chamber. The judges, on being consulted, gave it as their opinion, that since far less crimes had been punished by condemnation to the galleys or perpetual banishment, the latter would

utting idolaters (that is, papists), adulterers, witches and demoniacs, sabbath-breakers, and several other classes of offenders, to death.[338] They claimed to their ecclesiastical assemblies the right of determining "all matters wherein breach of charity may be, and all matters of doctrine and manners, so far as appertaineth to conscience." They took away the temporal right of patronage to churches, leaving the choice of ministers to general suffrage.[339] There are even passages in Cartwright's Admonition, which intimate that the commonwealth ought to

ed, but with no paramount, far less arbitrary dominion, and subject even to the provincial synod, much more to the general assembly of the Scottish church. Even this very limited episcopacy was abolished in 1592. The presbyterian clergy, individually and collectively, displayed the intrepid, haughty, and untractable spirit of the English puritans. Though Elizabeth had from policy abetted the

n 1580, the same topic of ecclesiastical grievances, which had by no means abated during the interval, was revived. The Commons appointed a committee, formed only of the principal officers of the Crown who sat in the house, to confer with some of the bishops, according to the irregular and imperfect course of parliamentary proceedings in that age, "touching the griefs of this house for some things very requisite to be reformed in the church, as the great number of unlearned and unable ministers, the great abuse of excommunications for every matter of small moment, the commutation of penances, and the great multitude of dispensations and pluralities, and other things very hurtful to the churc

lingness towards reformation, they proposed themselves in convocation a few regulations for redress of abuses, none of which, however, on this occasion, though they received the royal assent, were submitted to the legislature;[345] the queen in fact maintaining an insuperable jealousy of all intermeddling on the part of parliament with her exclusive supremacy over the church. Excluded by Elizabeth's jealousy from entertaining these religious innovations, which would probably have met no unfavourable reception from a free parliament, the Commons vented their ill-will towards the dominant hierarchy in complaints of ecclesiastical grievances, and measures to redress them; as to which, even with the low notions of parliamentary right prevailing at court, it was impossible to deny their competence. Several bills were introduced this session of 1584-5 into the lower house, which, though they had little chance of receiving the queen's ass

hem and the common lawyers. The latter had always manifested a great jealousy of the spiritual jurisdiction, and had early learned to restrain its exorbitances by writs of prohibition from the temporal courts. Whitgift, as tenacious of power as the most ambitious of his predecessors, murmured like them at this subordination, for such it evidently was, to a lay tribunal.[349] But the judges, who found as much gratification in exerting their power as the bishops, paid little regard to the remonstrances of the latter. We find the reports of this and the succeeding reign full of cases of prohibition. Nor did other abuses imputed to these obnoxious judicatures fail to provoke censure, such as the unreasonable fees of their officers, and the usage of granting licences, and commuting penances for mon

[351] As this, on the one hand, like so many former statutes, helped to crush the unfortunate adherents to the Romish faith, so too did it bear an obvious application to such protestant sectaries as had professedly separated from the Anglican church. But it is here worthy of remark, that the puritan ministers throughout this reign disclaimed the imputation of schism, and acknowledged the lawfulness of continuing in the established church, while they demanded a further reformation of her discipline.[352] The real separatists, who were also a numerous body, were denominated Brownists or Barrowists, from the names of their founders, afterwards lost in the mor

Latimer and Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia, can be said to have acquired enough reputation to be generally known even by name, much less are read in the present day; and it is indeed not a little remarkable that England, until near the end of the sixteenth century, had given few proofs in literature of that intellectual power which was about to develop itself with such unmatchable energy in Shakspeare and Bacon. We cannot indeed place Hooker (but whom dare we to place?) by the side of these master spirits; yet he has abundant claims to be counted among the luminaries of English literature. He not only opened the mine, but explored the depths, of our native eloquence. So stately and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in sentences, so gra

n to all created beings, yielding thereto obedience by unconscious necessity, or sensitive appetite, or reasonable choice; reviewing especially those laws that regulate human agency, as they arise out of moral relations, common to our species, or the institutions of politic societies, or the inter-community of independent nations; and having thoroughly established the fundamental distinction between laws natural and positive, eternal and temporary, immutable and variable, he came with all this strength of moral philosophy to discriminate by the same criterion the various rules and precepts contained in the scriptures. It was a kind of maxim among the puritans, that scripture was so much the exclusive rule of human actions, that whatever, in matters at least concerning religion, could not be found to have its authority, was unlawful. Hooker devoted the whole second book of his work to the refutation of this principle. He proceeded afterwards to attack its application more particularly to the episcopal scheme of church government, and to the various ceremonies or usages which those sectaries treated as either absolutely

s he had laid down as to its nature in the first book. Those that intervene are mostly confined to a more minute discussion of the questions mooted between the church and puritans; and in these, as far as I have looked into them, though Hooker's argument is always vigorous and logical, and he seems to be exempt from that abusive insolence to which polemical writers were then even more prone than at pre

ey elevate ecclesiastical authority, even in matters of belief, with an exaggeration not easily reconciled to the protestant right of private judgment, and even of dangerous consequence in those times; as when he inclines to give a decisive voice in theological controversies to general councils; not indeed on the principles of the church of Rome, but on such as must end in the same conclusion, the high probability that the aggregate judgment of many grave and learned men should be well founded.[356] Nor would it be difficult to point out several other subjects, such as religious toleration, as to which he did not emancipate himself from the trammels of prejudice. But, whatever may be the imperfections of his Ecclesiastical Polity, the

e peaceable contentment on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed seemeth necessary." "The lawful power," he observes elsewhere, "of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority received at first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not, therefore, which public approbation hath not made so. But approbation not only they give, who personally declare their assent by voice, sign, or act; but also when others do it in their names, by righ

mulate; while the intrinsic evidence arising from the work itself, on which, in this branch of criticism, I am apt chiefly to rely, seems altogether to repel every suspicion. For not only the principles of civil government, presented in a more expanded form by Hooker in the eighth book, are precisely what he laid down in the first; but there is a peculiar chain of consecutive reasoning running through it, wherein it would be difficult to point out any passages that could be rejected without dismembering the context. It was his business in this part of the Ecclesiastical Polity, to vindicate the queen's supremacy over the church: and this he has done by identifying the church with the commonwealth; no one, according to him, being a member of the one who was not also a member of the other. But as the constitution of the Christian c

m the foundation of the commonwealth hath been laid; wherein though no manner of person or cause be unsubject unto the king's power, yet so is the power of the king over all, and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule. The axioms of our regal government are these: 'Lex facit regem'-the king's grant of any favour made contrary to the law is void;-'Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest'-what power the king hath, he hath it by law: the bounds and limits of it are known, the entire community giveth general order by law, how all things publicly are to be done; and the king, as the head thereof, the highest in authority over all, causeth, according to the same law, every particular to be

h commonwealth. Nor would such sentiments, we may surely presume, have been avowed by a man of singular humility, and whom we might charge with somewhat of an excessive deference to authority, unless they had obtained more currency, both among divines and lawyers, than the complaisance of courtiers in these two professions might lead us to conclude; Hooker being not prone to deal in paradoxes, nor to borrow from his adversaries that sturdy republicanism of the school of Geneva which had been their scandal. I cannot indeed but suspect th

usness that the goods of their church were speedily to pass into the hands of heretics.[359] Hence the alienation of their estates had gone so far that in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign statutes were made, disabling ecclesiastical proprietors from granting away their lands, except on leases for three lives, or twenty-one years.[360] But an unfortunate reservation was introduced in favour of the Crown. The queen, therefore, and her courtiers, who obtained grants from her, continued to prey upon their succulent victim. Few of her council imitated the noble disinterestedness of Walsingham, who spent his own estate in her service, and left not sufficient to pay his debts. The documents of that age contain ample proofs of their rapacity. Thus Cecil surrounded his

church estates for the benefit of their families, are very common-sometimes no doubt unjust, but too frequent to be absolutely without foundation.[363] The council often wrote to them, as well as concerning them, with a sort of asperity which would astonish one of their successors. And the queen never restrained herself in treating them on any provocation with a good deal of rudeness, of which

found no arguments so much relied on to refute it as that of force. Statesmen invariably take a better view of such questions than churchmen; and we may well believe that Cecil and Walsingham judged more sagaciously than Whitgift and Aylmer. The best apology that can be made for Elizabeth's tenaciousness of those ceremonies which produced this fatal contention I have already suggested, without much express authority from the records of that age; namely, the justice and expediency of winning over the catholics to conformity, by retaining as much as possible of their accustomed rites. But in the latter period of the queen's reign, this policy had lost a great deal of its application; or rather the same principle of policy would have dictated numerous concessions in order to satisfy the people. It appears by no means u

ching the Controversies of the Church of England;" a treatise written under Elizabeth, in that tone of dispassionate philosophy which the precepts of Burleigh sown in his own deep and fertile mind had taught him to apply. This treatise, to which I did not turn my attention in writing the present chapter, appears to coincide in every respect with the views it displays. If he censures the pride and obstinacy of the puritan

fered for it, I will refer the reader to a letter of Sir Francis Walsingham, written to a person in France, after the year 1580.[368] It is a very able apology for her government; and if the reader should detect, as he doubtless may, somewhat of sophist