Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

by Lucy Aikin

"Ireland," says Naunton, "cost her more vexation than any thing else; the expense of it pinched her, the ill success of her officers wearied her, and in that service she grew hard to please." She also arrived at a settled persuasion that the extreme of severity was safer than that of indulgence; an opinion which, being communicated to her officers and ministers, was the occasion, especially in Ireland, of many a cruel and arbitrary act.

When angry, she observed little moderation in the expression of her feelings. In the private letters even of Cecil, whom she treated on the whole with more consideration than any other person, we find not unfrequent mention of the harsh words which he had to endure from her, sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for which she was accustomed to make sudden amends to her faithful servants by new and extraordinary tokens of her favor.

There was no branch of prerogative of which Elizabeth was more tenacious than that which invested her with the sole and supreme direction of ecclesiastical affairs. The persevering efforts therefore of the puritans, to obtain various relaxations or alterations of the laws which she in her wisdom had laid down for the government of the church,—on failure of which they scrupled not to recall to her memory the strong denunciations of the Jewish prophets against wicked and irreligious princes,—at once exasperated and alarmed her, and led her to assume continually more and more of the incongruous and odious character of a protestant persecutor of protestants. But the puritans themselves must have seemed guiltless in her eyes compared with a new sect, the principles of which, tending directly to the abrogation of all authority of the civil magistrate in spiritual concerns, called forth about this time her indignation manifested by the utmost severity of penal infliction.

It was in the year 1580 that Robert Brown, having completed his studies in divinity at Cambridge, began to preach at Norwich against the discipline and ceremonies of the church of England, and to promulgate a scheme which he affirmed to be more conformable to the apostolical model. According to his system, each congregation of believers was to be regarded as a separate church, possessing in itself full jurisdiction over its own concerns; the liberty of prophesying was to be indulged to all the brethren equally, and pastors were to be elected and dismissed at the pleasure of the majority, in whom he held that all power ought of right to reside. On account of these opinions Brown was called before certain ecclesiastical commissioners, who imprisoned him for contumacy; but the interference of his relation lord Burleigh procured his release, after which he repaired to Holland, where he founded several churches and published a book in defence of his system, in which he strongly inculcated upon his disciples the duty of separating themselves from what he stated antichristian churches. For the sole offence of distributing this work, two men were hanged in Suffolk in 1583; to which extremity of punishment they were subjected as having impugned the queen's supremacy, which was declared felony by a late statute now for the first time put in force against protestants. Brown himself, after his return from Holland, was repeatedly imprisoned, and, but for the protection of his powerful kinsman might probably have shared the fate of his two disciples. At length, the terror of a sentence of excommunication drove him to recant, and joining the established church he soon obtained preferment. But the Brownist sect suffered little by the desertion of its founder, whose private character was far from exemplary: in spite of penal laws, of persecution, and even of ridicule and contempt, it survived, increased, and eventually became the model on which the churches not only of the sect of Independents but also of the two other denominations of English protestant dissenters remain at the present day constituted.

The death of archbishop Grindal in 1583 afforded the queen the long desired opportunity of elevating to the primacy a prelate not inclined to offend her, like his predecessor, by any remissness in putting in force the laws against puritans and other nonconformists. She nominated to this high dignity Whitgift bishop of Worcester, known to polemics as the zealous antagonist of Cartwright the puritan, and further recommended to her majesty by his single life, his talents for business, whether secular or ecclesiastical, his liberal and hospitable style of living, and the numerous train of attendants which swelled the pomp of his appearance on occasions of state and ceremony, when he even claimed to be served on the knee.

This promotion forms an important æra in the ecclesiastical history of the reign of Elizabeth: but only a few circumstances more peculiarly illustrative of the sentiments and disposition of Whitgift, of the queen herself, and of some of her principal counsellors, can with propriety find a place in a work like the present.

To bring back the clergy to that exact uniformity with respect to doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, from which the lenity of his predecessor had suffered them in many instances to recede, appeared to the new primate the first and most essential duty of his office; and the better to enforce obedience, he eagerly demanded to be armed with that plenitude of power which her majesty as head of the church was authorized to delegate at her pleasure. His request was granted with alacrity, and the work of intolerance began. Subscriptions were now required of the whole clerical body to the supremacy; to the book of Common-prayer; and to the articles of religion settled by the convocation of 1560. In consequence of this first step alone, so large a number of zealous preachers and able divines attached to the Calvinistic model were suspended from their functions for non-compliance, that the privy-council took alarm, and addressed a letter to the archbishop requesting a conference; but he loftily reproved their interference in matters of this nature, declaring himself amenable in the discharge of his functions to his sovereign alone. In the following year he prevailed upon her majesty to appoint a second high-commission court, the members of which were authorized, ex officio, to administer interrogatories on oath in matters of faith;—an assumption of power not merely cruel and oppressive, but absolutely illegal, if we are to rely on Beal, clerk of the council, an able and learned but somewhat intemperate partisan of the puritans, who published on this occasion a work against the archbishop. To enter into controversy was now no part of the plan of Whitgift; he held it as a maxim, that it was safer and better for an established church to silence than to confute; and a book of Calvinistic discipline having issued from the Cambridge press, he procured a Star-chamber decree for lessening and limiting the number of presses; for restraining any man from exercising the trade of a printer without a special license; and for subjecting all works to the censorship, of the archbishop or the bishop of London. At the same time he vehemently declared that he would rather lie in prison all his life, or die, than grant any indulgence to puritans; and he expressed his wonder, as well as indignation, that men high in place should countenance the factious portion of the clergy, low and obscure individuals and not even considerable by their numbers, against him the second person of the state. The earl of Leicester was not however to be intimidated from extending to these conscientious sufferers a protection which was in many instances effectual: Walsingham occasionally interceded in behalf of Calvinistic preachers of eminence; and sir Francis Knolles, whose influence with the queen was considerable, never failed to encounter the measures of the primate with warm, courageous, and persevering opposition. Even Burleigh, whom Whitgift had regarded as a friend and patron and hoped to number among his partisans, could not forbear expressing to him on various occasions his serious disapprobation of the rigors now resorted to; nor was he to be silenced by the plea of the archbishop, that he acted entirely by the command of her majesty. On the contrary, as instances multiplied daily before his eyes of the tyranny and persecution exercised, through the extraordinary powers of the ecclesiastical commission, on ministers of unblemished piety and often of exemplary usefulness, his remonstrances assumed a bolder tone and more indignant character: as in the following instance. "But when the said lord treasurer understood, that two of these ministers, living in Cambridgeshire, whom for the good report of their modesty and peaceableness he had a little before recommended unto the archbishop's favor, were by the archbishop in commission sent to a register in London, to be strictly examined upon those four and twenty articles before mentioned, he was displeased. And reading over the articles himself, disliked them as running in a Romish style, and making no distinction of persons. Which caused him to write in some earnestness to the archbishop, and in his letter he told him, that he found these articles so curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstances, as he thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their preys. And that this juridical and canonical sifting of poor ministers was not to edify and reform. And that in charity he thought, they ought not to answer to all these nice points, except they were very notorious offenders in papistry or heresy: Begging his grace to bear with that one fault, if it were so, that he had willed these ministers not to answer those articles, except their consciences might suffer them[94]."

The archbishop, in a long and labored answer, expressed his surprise at his lordship's "vehement speeches" against the administering of interrogatories, "seeing it was the ordinary course in other courts: as in the star-chamber, in the courts of the marches, and in other places:" and he advanced many arguments, or assertions, in defence of his proceedings, none of which proved satisfactory to the lord treasurer, as appeared by his reply. In the end, the archbishop found himself obliged to compromise this dispute by engaging that in future the twenty-four articles should only be administered to students in divinity previously to their ordination; and not to ministers already settled in cures, unless they should have openly declared themselves against the church-government by law established. But this instance of concession extorted by the urgency of Walsingham appears to have been a solitary one; the high commission, with the archbishop at its head, proceeded unrelentingly in the work of establishing conformity, and crushing with a strong hand all appeals to the sense of the public on controverted points of discipline or doctrine. The queen, vehemently prepossessed with the idea that the opposers of episcopacy must ever be ill affected also to monarchy, made no scruple of declaring, after some years experience of the untameable spirit of the sect, that the puritans were greater enemies of hers than the papists; and in the midst of her greatest perils from the machinations of the latter sect, she seldom judged it necessary to conciliate by indulgence the attachment of the former. Several Calvinistic ministers, during the course of the reign, were subjected even to capital punishment on account of the scruples which they entertained respecting the lawfulness of acknowledging the queen's supremacy: on the other hand, the attempts of sir Francis Knowles to inspire her majesty with jealousy of the designs of the archbishop, by whom some advances were made towards claiming for the episcopal order an authority by divine right, independently of the appointment of the head of the church, failed entirely of success. No ecclesiastic had ever been able to acquire so great an ascendency over the mind of Elizabeth as Whitgift; there was a conformity in their views, and in some points a sympathy in their characters; which seem to have secured to the primate in all his undertakings the sanction and approval of his sovereign: his favor continued unimpaired to the latest hour of her life: it was from his lips that she desired to receive the final consolations of religion; and regret for her loss, from the apprehension of unwelcome changes in the ecclesiastical establishment under the auspices of her successor, is believed to have contributed to the attack which carried off the archbishop within a year after the decease of his gracious and lamented mistress.

Elizabeth took an important though secret part in the struggles for power among the Scottish nobles of opposite factions by which that kingdom was now agitated during several years. It has been suspected, but seems scarcely probable, that she was concerned in the conspiracy of the earl of Gowry for seizing the person of the young king; she certainly however interposed afterwards to mitigate his just anger against the participators in that dark design. On the whole, she was generally enabled to gain all the influence in the court of Scotland which she found necessary to her ends; for James could always be intimidated, and his minions most frequently bribed or cajoled. She regarded it however as an object of some consequence to gain an accurate knowledge of the character and capacity of her young kinsman, from one on whom she could rely; and for this purpose she prevailed on Walsingham, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, to undertake an embassy into Scotland, of which the ostensible objects were so trifling that its real purpose became perfectly evident to the more sagacious of James's counsellors. Melvil confesses, that it cost him prodigious pains to equip the king, at short notice, with so much of artificial dignity and borrowed wisdom as might enable him to pass successfully through the ordeal of Walsingham's examination. But his labor was not thrown away; for James, who really possessed considerable quickness of parts and a competent share of book learning, played with such plausibility the part assigned him, that even this sagacious statesman is believed to have returned impressed with a higher opinion of his abilities than any part of his after conduct was found to warrant.

Her increasing apprehensions from the hostility of the king of Spain, caused Elizabeth to cultivate with added zeal the friendship of the northern powers of Europe, and in 1582 she sent the garter to the king of Denmark as a pledge of amity; making at the same time a fruitless endeavour to obtain for English merchant ships some remission of the duties newly levied by the Danish sovereign on the passage of the Sound. It was the prudent practice of her majesty to intrust these embassies of compliment to young noblemen lately come into possession of their estates, who, for her favor and their own honor, were willing to discharge them in a splendid manner at their private expense. The Danish mission was the price which she exacted from Peregrine Bertie, lately called up to the house of peers as lord Willoughby of Eresby in right of his mother, for her reluctant and ungracious recognition of his undeniable title to this dignity. On the occurrence of this first mention of a high-spirited nobleman, afterwards celebrated for a brilliant valor which rendered him the idol of popular fame, the remarkable circumstances of his birth and parentage must not be omitted. His mother, only daughter and heir of the ninth lord Willoughby by a Spanish lady of high birth who had been maid of honor to queen Catherine of Arragon, was first the ward and afterwards the third wife of Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk, by whom she had two sons, formerly mentioned as victims to the sweating-sickness.