There is no middle course, in dealing with religious sectaries, between the persecution that exterminates, and the toleration that satisfies. They were wise in their generation, the Loaisas and Valdes of Spain, who kindled the fires of the inquisition, and quenched the rising spirit of protestantism in the blood of a Seso and a Cazalla. But sustained by the favouring voice of his associates, and still more by that firm persuasion which bigots never know how to appreciate in their adversaries, a puritan minister set at nought the vexatious and arrogant tribunal before which he was summoned. Exasperated, not overawed, the sectaries threw off what little respect they had hitherto paid to the hierarchy. They had learned, in the earlier 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-prelate, a vizored knight of those lists, behind whose shield a host of sturdy puritans were supposed to fight. These were printed at a movable press, shifted to different parts of the country as the pursuit grew hot, and contained little serious argument, but the unwarrantable invectives of angry men, who stuck at no calumny to blacken their enemies.[331] If these insults upon authority are apt sometimes to shock us even now, when long usage has rendered such licentiousness of seditious and profligate libellers almost our daily food, what must they have seemed in the reign of Elizabeth, when the press had no acknowledged liberty, and while the accustomed tone in addressing those in power was little better than servile adulation?
A law had been enacted some years before, levelled at the books dispersed by the seminary priests, which rendered the publication of seditious libels against the queen's government a capital felony.[332] This act, by one of those strained constructions which the judges were commonly ready to put upon any political crime, was brought to bear on some of these puritanical writings. The authors of Martin Mar-prelate could not be traced with certainty; but strong suspicions having fallen on one Penry, a young Welshman, 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 by the court to entrap him into a confession that the imputed libel was of his writing, as to which their proof was deficient. Though he avoided this snare, the jury did not fail to obey the directions they received to convict him. So far from being concerned in Martin's writings, Udal professed his disapprobation of them and his ignorance of the author. This sentence appeared too iniquitous to be executed even in the eyes of Whitgift, who interceded for his life; but he died of the effects of confinement.[334]
Attempt to set up a Presbyterian system.—If the libellous pen of Martin Mar-prelate was a thorn to the rulers of the church, they had still more cause to take alarm at an overt measure of revolution which the discontented party began to effect about the year 1590. They set up, by common agreement, their own platform of government by synods and classes; the former being a sort of general assemblies, the latter held in particular shires or dioceses, agreeably to the presbyterian model established in Scotland. In these meetings debates were had, and determinations usually made, sufficiently unfavourable to the established system. The ministers composing them subscribed to the puritan book of discipline. These associations had been formed in several counties, but chiefly in those of Northampton and Warwick, under the direction of Cartwright, the legislator of their republic, who possessed, by 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 be fittest for their offence. But several of the council had more tender regards to sincere, though intractable, men; and in the end they were admitted to bail upon a promise to be quiet, after answering some interrogatories respecting the queen's supremacy and other points, with civility and an evident wish to avoid offence.[336] It may be observed that Cartwright explicitly declared his disapprobation of the libels under the name of Martin Mar-prelate.[337] Every political party, however honourable may be its objects and character, is liable to be disgraced by the association of such unscrupulous zealots. But, though it is an uncandid sophism to charge the leaders with the excesses they profess to disapprove in their followers, it must be confessed that few chiefs of faction have had the virtue to condemn with sufficient energy the misrepresentations which are intended for their benefit.
It was imputed to the puritan faction with more or less of truth, that, not content with the subversion of episcopacy and of the whole ecclesiastical polity established in the kingdom, they maintained principles that would essentially affect its civil institutions. Their denial indeed of the queen's supremacy, carried to such lengths as I have shown above, might justly be considered as a derogation of her temporal sovereignty. Many of them asserted the obligation of the judicial law of Moses, at least in criminal cases; and deduced from this the duty of putting 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 be fashioned after the model of the church.[340] But these it would not be candid to press against the more explicit declarations of all the puritans in favour of a limited monarchy, though they grounded its legitimacy on the republican principles of popular consent.[341] And with respect to the former opinions, they appear to have been by no means common to the whole puritan body; some of the deprived and imprisoned ministers even acknowledging the queen's supremacy in as full a manner as the law conferred it on her, and as she professed to claim it.[342]
The pretensions advanced by the school of Cartwright did not seem the less dangerous to those who cast their eyes upon what was passing in Scotland, where they received a practical illustration. In that kingdom, a form of polity very nearly conforming to the puritanical platform had become established at the reformation of 1560; except that the office of bishop or superintendent still continued, 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 Scottish clergy in their attacks upon the civil administration, this connection itself had probably given her such an insight into their temper as well as their influence, that she must have shuddered at the thought of seeing a republican assembly substituted for those faithful satraps, her bishops, so ready to do her bidding, and so patient under the hard usage she sometimes bestowed on them.
House of Commons averse to episcopal authority.—These prelates did not however obtain so much support from the House of Commons as from their sovereign. In that assembly a determined band of puritans frequently carried the victory against the courtiers. Every session exhibited proofs of their dissatisfaction with the state of the church. The Crown's influence would have been too weak without stretches of its prerogative. The Commons in 1575 received a message forbidding them to meddle with religious concerns. For five years afterwards the queen did not convoke parliament, of which her dislike to their puritanical temper might in all probability be the chief reason. But, when they met again in 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 church."[343] The committee reported that they found some of the bishops desirous of a remedy for the abuses they confessed, and of joining in a petition for that purpose to her majesty; which had accordingly been done, and a gracious answer, promising all convenient reformation, by laying the blame of remissness upon some prelates, had been received. This the house took with great thankfulness. It was exactly the course which pleased Elizabeth, who had no regard for her bishops, and a real anxiety that her ecclesiastical as well as temporal government should be well administered, provided her subjects would intrust the sole care of it to herself, or limit their interference to modest petitioning.
A new parliament having been assembled, soon after Whitgift on his elevation to the primacy had begun to enforce an universal conformity, the lower house drew up a petition in sixteen articles, to which they requested the Lords' concurrence, complaining of the oath ex officio, the subscription to the three new articles, the abuses of excommunication, licences for non-residence, and other ecclesiastical grievances. The Lords replied coolly, that they conceived many of those articles, which the Commons had proposed, to be unnecessary, and that others of them were already provided for; and that the uniformity of the common prayer, the use of which the Commons had requested to leave in certain respects to the minister's discretion, had been established by parliament. The two archbishops, Whitgift and Sandys, made a more particular answer to each article of the petition, in the name of their brethren.[344] But, in order to show some willingness 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 assent, manifest the sense of that assembly, and in all likelihood of their constituents. One of these imported that bishops should be sworn in one of the courts of justice to do nothing in their office contrary to the common law. Another went to restrain pluralities, as to which the prelates would very reluctantly admit of any limitation.[346] A bill of the same nature passed the Commons in 1589, though not without some opposition. The clergy took so great alarm at this measure, that the convocation addressed the queen in vehement language against it; and the archbishop throwing all the weight of his advice and authority into the same scale, the bill expired in the upper house.[347] A similar proposition in the session of 1601 seems to have miscarried in the Commons.[348] In the next chapter will be found other instances of the Commons' reforming temper in ecclesiastical concerns, and the queen's determined assertion of her supremacy.
The oath ex officio, binding the taker to answer all questions that should be put to him, inasmuch as it contravened the generous maxim of English law that no one is obliged to criminate himself, provoked very just animadversion. Morice, attorney of the court of wards, not only attacked its legality with arguments of no slight force, but introduced a bill to take it away. This was on the whole well received by the house; and Sir Francis Knollys, the stanch enemy of episcopacy, though in high office, spoke in its favour. But the queen put a stop to the proceeding, and Morice lay some time in prison for his boldness. The civilians, of whom several sat in the lower house, defended a mode of procedure that had been borrowed from their own jurisprudence. This revived the ancient animosity between them 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 money.[350] The ecclesiastical courts indeed have generally been reckoned more dilatory, vexatious, and expensive than those of the common law. But in the present age that part of their jurisdiction, which, though coercive, is professedly spiritual, and wherein the greatest abuses have been alleged to exist, has gone very much into disuse. In matrimonial and testamentary causes, their course of proceeding may not be open to any censure, so far as the essential administration of justice is concerned; though in the latter of these, a most inconvenient division of jurisdictions, following not only the unequal boundaries of episcopal dioceses, but the various peculiars or exempt districts which the church of England has continued to retain, is productive of a good deal of trouble and needless expense.
Independents liable to severe laws.—Notwithstanding the tendency towards puritanism which the House of Commons generally displayed, the court succeeded in procuring an act, which eventually pressed with very great severity upon that class. This passed in 1593, and enacted the penalty of imprisonment against any person above the age of sixteen, who should forbear for the space of a month to repair to some church, until he should make such open submission and declaration of conformity as the act appoints. Those who refused to submit to these conditions were to abjure the realm, and if they should return without the queen's licence, to suffer death as felons.[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 more general appellation of Independents. These went far beyond the puritans in their aversion to the legal ministry, and were deemed in consequence still more proper subjects for persecution. Multitudes of them fled to Holland from the rigour of the bishops in enforcing this statute.[353] But two of this persuasion, Barrow and Greenwood, experienced a still severer fate. They were indicted on that perilous law of the 23rd of the queen, mentioned in the last chapter, for spreading seditious writings, and executed at Bury. They died, Neal tells us, with such expressions of piety and loyalty that Elizabeth regretted the consent she had given to their deaths.[354]
Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." Its character.—But, while these scenes of pride and persecution on one hand, and of sectarian insolence on the other, were deforming the bosom of the English church, she found a defender of her institutions in one who mingled in these vulgar controversies like a knight of romance among caitiff brawlers, with arms of finer temper and worthy to be proved in a nobler field. Richard Hooker, master of the Temple, published the first four books of his Ecclesiastical Polity in 1594; the fifth three years afterwards; and dying in 1600, left behind three which did not see the light till 1647. This eminent work may justly be reckoned to mark an æra in our literature. For if passages of much good sense and even of a vigorous eloquence are scattered in several earlier writers in prose, yet none of these, except perhaps 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 grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vulgarity in his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that I know not whether any later writer has more admirably displayed the capacities of our language, or produced passages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity. If we compare the first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity with what bears perhaps most resemblance to it of any thing extant, the treatise of Cicero de Legibus, it will appear somewhat perhaps inferior, through the imperfection of our language, which with all its force and dignity does not equal the Latin in either of these qualities, and certainly more tedious and diffuse in some of its reasonings, but by no means less high-toned in sentiment, or less bright in fancy, and far more comprehensive and profound in the foundations of its philosophy.