mollify the spirit of the Queen. She had fully made up
her mind to have none of them. In an interview with
the archbishop, she rated him soundly for his dilatoriness
in carrying out her behests, told him plainly that there
were far too many preachers, tliat three or four for a
county were quite enough, and all that was needful was
that they should be able to read the Homilies. This
greatly scandalised the grave man, as Strype calls him,
and he was so moved that he wrote to tlie Queen in the
following terms:- — "I cannot marvel enough how this
strange opinion should once enter your mind, that it
should be good for the Church to have few preachers.
Alas ! Madam, is the Scripture more plain in any one
thing than that the gospel of Christ should be plentifully
preached ? " After showing the superiority of preaching
over the reading of the Homilies, he goes on to say —
" I cannot, with a safe conscience, and without the
offence of the majesty of God, give my assent to the
suppressing of the said Exercises : much less, send out
any injunction for the utter and universal subversion of
the same. If it be your Majesty's pleasure for this or
any other cause to remove me out of this place, I will,
^ See Griudal's Iiey illations, 1576. Orders for lie/orniation of
Abuses about the Learned Exercises and Conferences among the
Ministers of the Church. — Strype's Grindal, pp. 327, .328.
2 See Appendix to Strype's Grindal, p. 558,
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION 91
with all humility, yield thereto, and render again to
your Majesty what I received. ..." Bear with me, I
beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your
earthly Majesty than to offend the heavenly majesty of
God."
This courageous and noble letter had no effect upon
the Queen, save to rouse her Tudor spirit, and call forth
all her unbending determination. It was only through
the intervention of her counsellors that she was prevented
from carrying out a sentence of deprivation. This was
commuted into a sentence of suspension and sequestration.
Meanwhile, the Queen took upon herself the authority of
the degraded prelate, and wrote ^ to every bishop in
England, telling him " to see these dishonours against
the honour of God and the quietness of the Church
reformed," etc. With characteristic obsequiousness
(though not without considerable reluctance and hesi-
tation on the part of one or two) the bishops made
their submission to the Queen. Aylmer, bishop of
London, who had formerly been a favourer of the
Puritans, specially signaHsing himself for his zeal against
the prophesyings. Grindal alone stood firm, and for this
contumacious conduct he continued to lie under sentence
of suspension and sequestration till within a few months
of his death, in 1583. In "The Epistle Dedicatory" of
his Life of Grinded, Strype says, " Nothing to this day
sticks upon our archbishop but the matter of the Exer-
cises and his suspension." But it sticks not in the
way of opprobrium, but in way of glory and deatliless
^ The Queen's letter against Propliesyings, 1577, is given in
Professor Protliero's Statutes^ etc., pp. 205, 20G.
9 2 PURITANISM
renown in the pages of the illustrious Puritan poet,
Edmund Spenser —
"All ! good Algriud,^ liis liaj) was ill."
Grindal, like Hooper was a true Puritan. If any
doubt could exist in regard to that, it would surely be
removed by the truculent description of him in the
sermon preached by Sacheverell at St. Paul's, on the
5th of November 1709. In that sermon, Archbishop
Grindal was denounced as a false son of the Church,
because he was the first that tolerated the Puritans, —
those " miscreants begot in rebellion, born in sedition,
and nursed in faction." -
Archbishop Whitgift. — On the death of Grindal,
Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, was appointed to succeed
him in the primacy. His relation to the Puritans, and
the series of oppressive measures which he put in
execution against them, cause him to figure more pro-
minently in these pages than any of his predecessors
in the see of Canterbury.
Whitgif t's administration " embodied the worst passions
of an intolerant State priest. It knew no mercy ; it
exercised no compassion. It is vain to defend the
administration of Whitgift on the ground of the excesses
of the Puritans. Those excesses were provoked by his
cruelty. Neither can the archbishop be justified on
the plea that he acted on tlie commands of the Queen.
^ Algriml is simply a transposing of tlio syllables of Giindal's
name.
- Hunt's Reliyious ThoufjIU in Enjland, vol. iii. p. 12.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION 93
He was the Queen's adviser, tu whose judgment she
deferred, and uf whose hearty concurrence m every mea-
sure of severity and intolerance she was fully assured."
Macaulay speaks of him as " a narrow-minded man,
mean, tyrannical, who gained power by servility and
adulation, and em])l()yed it in persecuting both those who
agreed with Calvin about Church government and those
who differed from Calvin touching the doctrine of
reprobation." 1 To say that he was conscientious in what
he did, is only what might be said of Spanish inipiisitors
and the whole brood of religious persecutors. He is said
to have been " personally pious, liberal, and free from
harshness," — qualities by no means incompatible with a
depraved mind and the absence of high principle. The
calm and judicious Hallain is hardly less severe than
Macaulay in his animadversions upon Whitgift, and the
rigour and ruthlessness of his rule.
Whitgift had not been primate three months before he
showed the temper he was of, by promulgating the Test
Articles, generally described as the Whitgift Articles.*^
These were six in number, and their rigour may be antici-
pated in the initial words, " That the laws made against
the recusants be put in more due execution. That all
preaching, reading, catechising, and other such like exer-
cises in private places and families whereunto others do
resort, being not of the same family, be utterly inhibited."
" That none be permitted to preach or interpret the
Scriptures unless it be a priest or deacon at the least,
admitted thereto according to the laws of this realm.
1 Macaulay 's Essay on Lord Bacon.
2 Strype's Life of WhiUjift, vol. i. pp. 229-232.
94 PURITANISM
That none be permitted to preach, read, catechise, min-
ister the sacraments, or to execute any other ecclesiastical
function . . . unless he first consent and subscribe to
these articles following . . . videlicet : —
" (a) That Her Majesty, under God, hath, and ought to
have, the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons
born within her realms, dominions, and countries ; of
what estate, ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be ;
" (h) That the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering
bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth nothing contrary
to the word of God, and that the same may be lawfully
used, and that he himself will use the form of the said
book prescribed in public prayer and administration of
the sacraments, and none other."
Whitgift was determined that the Articles should not
only be imposed, but be resolutely enforced ; and in order
that objectors and waverers should have no loophole of
escape, he drew up a series of interrogations, " so com-
prehensive as to embrace the whole scope of clerical
uniformity, yet so precise and minute as to leave no
room for evasion." These interrogations, twenty-four in
number, were submitted by what was teclinically styled
the oath ex officio " to such of the clergy as were
surmised to harbour a spirit of puritanical disaffection."
These interrogations, among other things, obliged the
examinee to state whether he had refused to wear the
surplice, or to use the sign of the cross in baptism, the
ring in marriage, and the form of words prescribed in
burial ; and whether he had adhered strictly and in every
respect to the order and services of the Prayer-Book, etc.
The form in which the interrogatories were put was—
FURTHER DEVELORMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION 95
" Item ohjicitmcs, ponimus, et articulamur. That for
the space of these three years, two years, one year, half a
year, three, two, or one month last past, you,
have used and worn only your ordinary apparel, and not
the surplice, as is required. Declare how long, how often,
and for what cause, consideration, or intent you have so
done, or refused so to do.
" Item ohjiciimcs, etc. — That within the time aforesaid
you have baptized divers, or at least one infant, and have
refused to use, or not used, the sign of the cross in the
forehead with the words in the said Book of Common
Prayer, there prescribed to be used. Declare how many
you have so baptized, and for what cause, consideration,
and intent."
This is a fair specimen of the whole series of interro-
gatories.^
The Court of High Commission. — The special
machinery relied upon for the enforcement of these Test
Articles was that set in motion by that terrible engine of
oppression known as the Court of High Commission,
which was created under the Act of Supremacy, and
specially designed to deal with all offences against this
Act and the Act of Uniformity. It was armed with
powers so absolute and inquisitorial, that no obnoxious
opinion could be professed, no non-attendance at church
could be indulged, no service be conducted in chapel
or private house, without bringing down upon delinquents
fine and imprisonment, and even death. It had power
to " visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all
1 See Appendix to Strype's lVhit<jiff, vul. iii. p. 81.
9 6 PURITANISM
errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and
enormities whatsoever." ^
" By the mere establishment of such a court half the
work of the Eeformation was undone." It made the
primate for the time being — for the powers of the Com-
mission fell practically into his hands — absolute dictator,
and master of the lives and liberties of the (Queen's sub-
jects. " No Archbishop of Canterbury," says Mr. Green,
" had wielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic,
as that of Parker and Whitgift, and Bancroft and Abbot
and Laud." The most terrible feature of this tyranny on
the part of the bishops was its personal character. No
fireside was safe from the intrusion of his officers and
pursiuvants. No act, no word, was so innocent but it
could be construed into a crime. The primates created
their own tests of doctrine with an utter indifference to
those created by law. In one instance, Parker deprived
a vicar of his benefice for the denial of the verbal inspira-
tion of the Bible. This is but a sample of the charge of
heresy which was liable to be brought home to anyone
who expressed an opinion upon religious subjects. This
and the mode of taking evidence in the court, which was
contrary to the " most simple ideas of justice and equity,"
made it a terrible engine of oppression, and, according to
Hume, its jurisdiction was more terrible than that of the
Star Chamber.'^
1 See Statutes and Constitutional Documents illustrative of the Reigns
of Elizabeth and James J., edited by G. W. Protliero, Fellow of King's
College, Cambridge, p. 227.
2 The Court of Star Chamber was a court where " great riots and
contempts" were punished. Its jurisdiction was civil rather than
ecclesiastical, and extended to everything that might be supposed to
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION 97
No wonder that tlie Ecclesiastical Commission " stank
in the nostrils of the English clergy." It was even more
detestable to the English laity ; to them it remained, as
Eroude says, " an inexpressible detestation and scorn.
All sides united in dread and hatred of those ecclesiastical
tribunals, whose yoke had been broken by Henry, and
which had so fearfully abused their recovered power."
In the Court of High Commission, Whitgift had all the
machinery he required made ready to his hand for carry-
ing out his Test Articles. In 1583, on Whitgift's acces-
sion to the primacy, a new Commission was appointed.
It is generally believed that this Commission was invested
with greatly expanded powers, and became, for this reason,
a more terrible instrument of oppression ; but this belief,
though resting on the authority of Hallam (in this fol-
lowing Neal), does not seem to be substantiated.^
The power which the Court put at Whitgift's command
was practically absolute and unlimited, and he proceeded
to use it without mercy in the case of all persons known
to be incriminated by the Test Articles, — a species of
ecclesiastical tyranny utterly at variance alike with our
English laws and all principles of natural equity.'-^
Lord Burghley, who, though at first rather friendly to
disturb or endanger tlie government, and to misdemeanours, such
as liLels. Hence it regulated and controlled the censorship of the
]>ress. The court consisted of all the meml)ers of tlie Privy Council,
together with two Chief Justices.
^ " It is true that under Whitgift the Commission was more active
and efficient than before ; but this change was apparently due, not to
any additional powers, but to the energetic and uncompromising
character of its new head." — Introduction to Select Statutes and other
Constitutional Documents, by Professor Prothero, p. xlii.
•• See Hallam, in loco.
7
9 8 PURITANISM
Whitgift, was soon disgusted by his intolerant and arbi-
trary behaviour, wrote in strong terms of remonstrance
against these articles of examination, " which I have read,
and find so curiously penned, so full of branches and
circumstances, as I think the inquisitors of Spain use
not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their
preys. . . . According to my simple judgment, this kind
of proceeding is too much savouring of the Eomish In-
quisition, and is rather a device to seek for offenders than
to reform any." ^ Burghley was no Puritan, but, like
Bacon, his " calm and sagacious mind " was affronted and
scandalised by such high-handed proceeding. Whitgift,
however, was as little inclined as his royal mistress to
resile from a position which he had once taken up. With
him it was war to the knife and to the bitter end.
1 See Aj^pendix to Strype's TVhitgift, vol. iii. pp. 104-107.
ZTbe Conflict between pnritaniam m\b
tbe Cbnrcb
Memorable Events and Dates
Richard Hooker .... born 1553, died 1600
Francis Bacon 1561 „ 1626
Contents of Chapter VI
Oppression of tlie Puritans — Result of — Sympathisers with
Puritans — Popular sympathy — Queen inexorable — Predominance of
Puritans— Growth of Puritanism — Hooker and his Ecclesiastical
Polity — Law or Reason — Hooker and Puritanism — Misconceptions
as to Puritanism — Not opposed to reason — Lord Bacon — Note on
Hooker's theory of Church and State.
CHAPTER VI
The Conflict between Puritanism and the Church
When, durino- tlie primacy and rule of Parker, tlie Act
for enforcing subscription to the Articles in 1572 was
put into execution, a hundred clergymen, according to
Strype's estimate, resigned their benefices rather than
subscribe. But if Parker chastised the refractory Puritans
with whips, Whitgift chastised them with scorpions. The
Test Articles were an instrument of torture that was to
be remorselessly applied. And applied it was, regardless
of consequences. The archbishop's " peremptory requisi-
tion encountered the resistance of men pertinaciously
attached to their own tenets, and ready to suffer the
privations of poverty rather than yield a simulated
obedience." ^
Result of the enforced severities. — Two hundred
and thirty - three ministers were suspended, of whom
forty-nine were deprived absolutely and at once, without
time to consider whether they would or would not com-
ply with the obnoxious Articles. Sixty-four ministers
were suspended in Norfolk alone, sixty in Suffolk, thirty-
eight in Essex by Bishop Aylnier, thirty in Sussex,
1 Hallain.
102 PURITANISM
twenty in Kent, and twenty-one in Lincolnshire. This
was a small number compared with the two thousand
ministers ejected in 1662, but it must be remembered
that at that time there were not more than two thousand
clergymen in the whole country. In 1586, "after
twenty - eight years establishment of the Church of
England, there were only two thousand preachers to serve
near ten thousand parishes, so that there were almost
eight thousand parishes without preaching ministers."
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. " The Puritans," says Hallam, " 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," says Neal,
"about the year 1578, out of one hundred and forty
clergymen, not one was capable of preaching."^
Puritans not without friends and sympathisers
even in high places. — It must not be supposed that
^ "This may be deemed by some an instance of Neal's prejudice,"
adds Hallam. " But that historian is not so ill-informed as they
suppose; and the fact is highly i)r()l)al)le. Let it be remembered that
there existed few books of dixinity in English ; tliat 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 ; alcove all, that they had
no means of supplying tlieir deficiencies by preacliing tlie discourses
of others,— and we shall see little cause for doubting Neal's statement,
though founded on a Puritan document." — Hallam's History, vol. i.
p. 270, note.
1
CONFLICT P.ETWEE>; PURTTANTSNT AND THE CHUIU'ir 103
Archbishop Whitgift had upon his side all who were
socially influential in Church and State. The Queen's
most eminent ministers of State — Lord Burghley, the
Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Erancis Wal-
shigham. Sir Francis Knollys, and Sir Nicholas Bacon —
disapproved strongly of the archbishop's measures, and
the rigour with wdiich they were carried out by him and
his suffragans. The Lords of the Council wrote to the
archbishop and the Bishop of London, " That they had
lieard of a great number of zealous and learned preachers
suspended from their cures ; the vacancy of the places for
the most part without any ministry or preaching, prayer,
and sacraments, and in some places of certain appointed
to those void rooms being persons neither of learning nor
of good name ; and in other places of that county
(Essex) a great number of persons occupying the cures
being notoriously unfit, most for lack of learning, many
charged or chargeable with great and enormous faults,
as drunkenness, filthiness of life, gaming at cards, haunt-
ing of alehouses, and such like ; against whom they (the
Council) heard not of any proceedings, but that they
were quietly suffered to the slander of the Church, to
the offence of good people, yea, to the famishing of them
for the lack of good teaching. . . .
" That there was a third sort, being a number having
double livings with cure, and not resident upon their
cures. That against all these sorts of lewd, evil, unpro-
fitable, and corrupt members they (the Council) heard
of no inquisition, nor of any kind of proceeding to the
reformation of those horrible offences in the Church ;
but yet of great diligence, yea, and extreme usage, against
)
104 rUPJTANlSM
those that were known diligent preachers. . . . That
the people of the realm might not be deprived of their
pastors being diligent, learned, and zealous, though in
some points of ceremonial they might seem doubtful only
in conscience, and not of wilfulness," etc.
This letter of expostulation, signed by Lord Burghley,
the Earls of Warwick, Shrewsbury, and Leicester, the
Lord Charles Howard, Sir James Croft, Sir Christopher
Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State,^
misjht as well never have been written. Convinced in his
own way, and secure of Elizabeth's support, the archbishop
nailed his colours to the mast, and went on his deter-
mined course.
Popular sympathy on the Puritan side. — The high-
handed proceedings of Whitgift and the bishops, armed
with the powers of the High Commission, and the trucu-
lence of the officials to whom the carrying out of their
measures was entrusted, outraged the humanity and
right feeling of all sections of the community, and the
result was a marked and notable reaction in favour of
the Puritans and their doctrines. A body of public
opinion, growing every day in strength, declared against
the legality of these proceedings, of the use of excom-
munication, and of the oath " ex officio!' ^ This found
expression in a petition presented to the House of Lords
by the House of Commons in 1584, in which it was
1 Stiype's WhiUjift, vol. i. \)\). 328-330.
2 "Tlieoath ex officio, binding tlie taker to answer all (jiiestions
that sliould be put to him, inasnuicli as it contravened the gvnerons
maxim of Engli.sli law, that no one is ol)hged to criminate liimself,
provoked very just animadversion." — Ilallam.
CONFLICT BETWEEN TURTTANTSM AND THE CIIURCIT 105
prayed that certain reforms should l)e made and certain
abuses removed, — among others, tliat ministers diligent in
their calling, and of good conversation and life, should
not be " molested . . . for omitting small portions of
some ceremony prescribed in the Book of Common
Prayer," that the scandal of such ministers being
" openly disgraced by officials and commissaries, who
daily call them to their courts to answer complaints of
their doctrine and life, or breach of orders prescribed by
the ecclesiastical laws and statutes of this realm," should
be removed, and that all alleged offences of this descrip-
tion should be brought before the bishops themselves.
" That for the better increase of knowledge, it might be
permitted to the ministers of every archdeaconry ... to
have some common exercises and conferences among them-
selves, to be limited and prescribed by their ordinaries."
Perhaps the most significant of all the reforms pressed
upon the attention of the " Lords spiritual and temporal "
was that part of the petition which prayed that a cer-
tain number of the clergy might be associated with
the bishops in performing the rite of ordination.
This, however, is much more strongly emphasised in
another petition ^ presented about the same time to the
Queen, and which is said to have been endorsed by Lord
Burghley, openly proposing that the authority with
which the bishops had liitherto been invested should be
transferred to provincial synods and national and general
councils. The Presbyterian drift of this latter petition is
^ The two petitions — that of therHoiise of Coiuiiions and tliat of
private individuals to the Queen — are given in Str^-pe's Whitgift,
vol. iii. pp. 118-124.
106 PUIJITANISM
unmistakable ; but it shows tlie strong sympathy there
was with it, even among the ruling classes, that the
Privy Council was itself divided in regard to it ; while in
the House of Commons the feeling was so strong, that
had its will prevailed, Whitgift would have been deposed
and his Articles abolished, and the whole system of
Church and State as it then existed would have been
profoundly modified.
But the presenters of these petitions might as well
have whistled to the wind. Whitgift remained firm, and
the Queen was inexorable. She gave one more proof of
her unyielding temper in the speech she made on pro-
roguing Parliament in 1585, in which she declared that
the Church and herself, " whose over-ruler God hath
made me," would be guilty of a " negligence " which
" cannot be excused, if any schisms or errors heretical
were suffered." She had made up her mind to " tolerate
no new-fangledness." This quelled for the time at least
all hope of reform. Elizabeth and her archbishop were
masters of the situation. It may be interesting to note
in this connection what Hallam says about the
Predominance of Puritan influence in Parliament.
— " I conceive," he says, " tlie Church of England party,
that is, the party adverse to any species of ecclesiastical
change, to have been the least numerous of the three —
i.e. those who were neutral, those attached to tlie ancient
Church, and tliose who wished for further alterations in
the new. The Puritans, or at least those who rather