[312] Strype's Annals, ii. 219, 232; Life of Parker, 461.
[313] Strype's Life of Grindal, 219, 230, 272. The archbishop's letter to the queen, declaring his unwillingness to obey her requisition, is in a far bolder strain than the prelates were wont to use in this reign, and perhaps contributed to the severity she showed towards him. Grindal was a very honest, conscientious man, but too little of a courtier or statesman for the place he filled. He was on the point of resigning the archbishopric when he died; there had at one time been some thoughts of depriving him.
[314] Strype's Whitgift, 27 et alibi. He did not disdain to reflect on Cartwright for his poverty, the consequence of a scrupulous adherence to his principles. But the controversial writers of every side in the sixteenth century display a want of decency and humanity which even our anonymous libellers have hardly matched. Whitgift was not of much learning, if it be true, as the editors of the Biographia Britannica intimate, that he had no acquaintance with the Greek language. This must seem strange to those who have an exaggerated notion of the scholarship of that age.
[315] Strype's Whitgift, 115.
[316] Neal, 266; Birch's Memoirs of Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 42, 47, etc.
[317] According to a paper in the appendix to Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 60, the number of conformable ministers in eleven dioceses, not including those of London and Norwich, the strongholds of puritanism, was 786, that of non-compliers 49. But Neal says that 233 ministers were suspended in only six counties, 64 of whom in Norfolk, 60 in Suffolk, 38 in Essex. P. 268. The puritans formed so much the more learned and diligent part of the clergy, that a great scarcity of preachers was experienced throughout this reign, in consequence of silencing so many of the former. Thus in Cornwall, about the year 1578, out of 140 clergymen, not one was capable of preaching. Neal, p. 245. And, in general, the number of those who could not preach, but only read the service, was to the others nearly as four to one; the preachers being a majority only in London. Id. p. 320.
This may be deemed by some an instance of Neal's prejudice. But that historian is not so ill-informed as they suppose; and the fact is highly probable. Let it be remembered that there existed few books of divinity in English; that all books were, comparatively to the value of money, far dearer than at present; that the majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate, and many of them addicted to drunkenness and low vices; above all, that they had no means of supplying their deficiences by preaching the discourses of others; and we shall see little cause for doubting Neal's statement, though founded on a puritan document.
[318] Life of Whitgift, 137 et alibi pluries; Annals, iii. 183.
[319] Neal, 274; Strype's Annals, iii. 180.
The germ of the high commission court seems to have been a commission granted by Mary (Feb. 1557) to certain bishops and others to inquire after all heresies, punish persons misbehaving at church, and such as refused to come thither, either by means of presentments by witness, or any other politic way they could devise; with full power to proceed as their discretions and consciences should direct them; and to use all such means as they could invent, for the searching of the premises, to call witnesses, and force them to make oath of such things as might discover what they sought after. Burnet, ii. 347. But the primary model was the inquisition itself.