A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. II

by François Guizot

Chapter XXI.
Social And Literary Progress Of England Under Elizabeth.

When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, she found England profoundly divided by religious questions, impoverished by the excessive exactions of her father and sister, still agitated by the bloody dissensions of the great nobles and the popular riots under the reigns which had just elapsed. She governed for forty-five years, amidst religious dissensions yet subsisting, although stifled by her powerful hand. She oppressed the Catholics, and their number, which at her accessions perhaps balanced that of the Protestants, rapidly diminished under the measures which she applied them. Men who cannot practise their religion, or quit the kingdom, who cannot leave their homes without authorization, who are incessantly exposed to vexation and acts of injustice, not to mention the terrible risk of an accusation of treason, abandon their worship if they are weak, or take refuge in exile if they are energetic and zealous. Upon this ruin of the liberty of her Catholic subjects, Elizabeth firmly established the Anglican Church; but the protection with which she surrounded it, while injuring the rights of the Catholics and the nonconforming Protestants, did not prevent the Catholic nucleus from subsisting in England, or the Puritan faith from developing itself. With all their exaggerations, their narrow minds, the severity of their principles, the Puritans were to become for their country the salt of the earth. They were to save it successively from despotism and moral corruption, from the ruin both of liberty and of manners. Few things contributed more towards this progress of the Protestant faith in its austere simplicity, than the reading of the Bible in the English tongue. The translation of Miles Coverdale had replaced that of Wycliffe, and the venerable translator, imprisoned in his youth under Henry VIII., a bishop under Edward VI., and again persecuted under Mary, had dearly paid for the privilege of placing within the reach of his brethren the bread of life; but with the progress of literature and science, his translation was found to be bad and full of errors. Parker, the first Archbishop of Canterbury under the reign of Elizabeth, caused the undertaking of a new version, which was ardently carried out by a commission of learned men. It was completed in 1572, and published under the name of the Bible of Bishop Grindall, the latter having, in 1575, succeeded Parker as Primate. Grindall was, in favour of the reading of the Scriptures and even of the Puritans, who developed under his episcopate, notwithstanding the harshness of the queen towards them, and the severe measures everywhere employed to bring about uniformity of worship. Notwithstanding the fines of twenty pounds sterling per month, declared against those who did not attend the services of their parish church, the "Brownists," a Puritan sect of the strongest tinge, originated at this period and endured without flinching a violent persecution. Many of the Fathers of the American Republic frequented the assemblages of the Brownists, before taking the course of abandoning their country to worship God in liberty. After the death of Grindall, in 1583, the Puritans found an implacable foe in the new Archbishop, Whitgift. The struggle began between the Primate and the nonconformist clergy; it lasted for a long time; but during the last years of the life of Elizabeth it had relaxed. The Puritans at that time grounded, upon the succession to the throne of a Presbyterian prince, hopes which were to be cruelly deceived.

If Queen Elizabeth oppressed at home those of her subjects who did not purely and simply accept the religious doctrines which she offered to them, she always supported upon the Continent the political and religious efforts of the Reformers. We have seen with what prudence she acted, and how her powerful instinct of government, her taste for absolute power and her horror of rebellion, often compelled Cecil to urge her into the way of that great policy which tended to make England the protector and chief of Protestantism in Europe. Throughout all the duplicities, timid councils, and meannesses of Queen Elizabeth towards the French Huguenots or the Dutch Protestants, it must yet be admitted that it was the continental reformers alone who obtained her constant favour, and it was solely through an economy hitherto unknown in the royal expenditure, that she could cope with so many repeated demands. Her father, Henry VIII., had confiscated the property of the monasteries, and that of the subjects whom he caused to be executed, and he had overwhelmed his people with unheard of taxes. Her brother and her sister, from different motives, had left their finances in the saddest disorder. Under the wise direction of Cecil, and thanks to the economy of Queen Elizabeth, the treasury of England was enabled to satisfy the constant calls from without, and to provide for the requirements within, notwithstanding the decrease in the public burdens. The developement of commerce and industry was encouraged. "The money which is in the pockets of my subjects is as useful to me as that in my treasury,"—a great economical maxim, which the kings, her predecessors, had neither known nor practiced.

Elizabeth had taken steps to second the industrial efforts of her people. In order to give an impetus to national manufactures, a sumptuary law, from 1581 to 1582, prohibited to certain persons silk clothing and precious laces manufactured abroad: at the same time, as the exportation of wool formed the greater part of the commerce of England, the rearing of sheep was everywhere encouraged. Pasture-grounds had increased in all directions, replacing in many parts the ploughed lands, and the cloth manufactories every day employed more hands. Linen cloth also began to be manufactured. The persecutions of Philip II. in the Low Countries brought to England skilled workmen, who gave fresh life to different branches of manufacture. It was at this period the happiness and honour of England to receive those who fled from the tyranny of the Spaniards, and she was subsequently to be the refuge of the French Huguenots after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Commerce and industry prospered, in fact, at home under the reign of Elizabeth; but the predominent achievement of this period was the formation of the English navy, which at her accession was yet only in its infancy, but which had become queen of the seas before her death. The protectionist system, practised in all its rigour by King Henry VIII., soon gave way to the wise liberality of Cecil. An act of the first Parliament of Elizabeth relaxed the navigation laws, authorized trading by foreign vessels on certain conditions, and favoured the development of great commercial companies. In 1566 the Royal Exchange of London was built under the auspices of Sir Thomas Gresham, and the relations with the Low Countries, Germany, and the kingdoms of the North suddenly took a fresh impulse, making up for the progressive decrease of the fisheries. "No more fish is eaten," said Cecil regretfully.

A new trade for England, the monopoly of which had hitherto been left to Spain and Portugal, was the odious slave-trade. An English sailor, John Locke was the first to embark in this traffic. Hawkins engaged in it with success, taking possession of a shipload of negroes upon the coast of Guinea, and selling them in St. Domingo; but this detestable commerce was not to attain its full development until later: it was the Spaniards and their colonies, not the unhappy blacks, whom the English sailors of the time of Elizabeth regarded as their legitimate prey.

Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth began the great voyages of discovery, which gave rise to the abuses of buccaneering, but at the same time opened up a vast field to human enterprise and research. Martin Frobisher first entered the field in 1567. He desired to find a new passage to India; but he was stopped in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay, where he took possession of certain territories in the name of England, and discovered the strait which still bears his name. From this the first idea was conceived of a passage by the north-west, subsequently sought for ardently by John Davis, who, as well as his forerunner, also gave a name to a strait. Frobisher made three voyages to this region, where he thought that he had found gold, but he was finally employed in the service of the queen, commanded one of the vessels which repulsed the Spanish Armada, and was killed, in 1594, while attacking a fortress near Brest, which held out for the Leaguers against Henry IV.

While Frobisher was seeking the polar passage, Drake accomplished the journey round the world, an undertaking which had as yet only been attempted by the Portuguese Fernando Magellan, who gave his name to a celebrated strait. His voyage was secretly authorized by Elizabeth, in defiance of the claim of the Spaniards to the islands and seas of America, which they said, were solemnly conceded to them by the Pope. Drake took no heed of their claims, pillaged the coasts, captured ships, and accumulated by his acts of piracy enormous wealth, of which he brought her share to the sovereign, who treated him honourably in return, though without recognizing his missions. The little vessel in which Drake sailed was preserved at Deptford until it crumbled through decay.

The projects of Sir Walter Raleigh were not exclusively directed, like those of Hawkins and Drake, to the parts of the world occupied by the Spaniards. He had conceived the hope of enriching his country and himself otherwise than by buccaneering, and had attempted several successive expeditions towards the southern part of North America. He had already failed twice and lost his brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in one of his voyages, when he set sail, in 1584, with the authorization of the queen, to take possession, with full ownership, of the lands he might discover, upon the condition of reserving a fifth part of the produce of the mines for the crown. It was in this expedition that he accidentally discovered the territory which now composes, in the United States, Virginia and North Carolina, possessions which Queen Elizabeth deigned to distinguish by the name of Virginia. The letters patent granted to Raleigh were confirmed by an act of Parliament, and in the following year Sir Richard Greville, a relative of Sir Walter's, conducted to the new colony eight hundred emigrants, who established themselves on the island of Roanoke. They were nearly dead from hunger and privations, when, in the following year. Sir Francis Drake, returning from an expedition against the Spanish territories, received them on board his ship. Two other attempts at colonization had the same result, and Virginia remained abandoned to the savages without having yielded any other result to England than the discovery of tobacco, which for a long time bore the name of Virginian grass.