Chapter VIII: Second Stage of the Reformation in England: to the Death

OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603).

REIGN OF EDWARD VI. (1547-1553).--_Henry VIII_., with Parliament, had determined the order of succession, giving precedence to _Edward_, his son by _Jane Seymour_, over the two princesses, _Mary_, the daughter of _Catherine_, and _Elizabeth_, the daughter of _Anne Boleyn_. _Edward VI_., who was but ten years old at his accession, was weak in body, but was a most remarkable instance of intellectual precocity. The government now espoused the Protestant side. _Somerset_, the king's uncle, was at the head of the regency. The _Six Articles_ (p. 407) were repealed. Protestant theologians from the Continent were taken into the counsels of the English prelates, _Cranmer_ and _Ridley_. Under the leadership of _Cranmer_, the Book of Common Prayer was framed, and the _Articles_, or creed, composed. The clergy were allowed to marry. The Anglican Protestant Church was fully organized, but the progress in the Protestant direction was rather too rapid for the sense of the nation. _Somerset_, who was fertile in schemes and a good soldier, invaded Scotland in order to enforce the fulfilling of the treaty which had promised the young Princess _Mary_ of Scotland to _Edward_ in marriage. He defeated the Scots at _Pinkie_, near Edinburgh; but the project as to the marriage failed. _Mary_ was sent by the Scots to France, there to become the wife of _Francis II_. Land belonging to the Church was seized by _Somerset_ to make room for _Somerset House_. A Catholic rebellion in Cornwall and Devonshire, provoked by the Protector's course, was suppressed with difficulty. The opposition to him on various grounds, which was led by the _Duke of Northumberland_, finally brought the Protector to the scaffold. But _Northumberland_ proved to be less worthy to hold the protectorate than he, and labored to aggrandize his relatives. He was one of the nobles who made use of Protestantism as a means of enriching themselves. He persuaded the young king, when he was near his end, to settle the crown, contrary to what Parliament had determined, on _Lady Jane Grey_, Northumberland's daughter-in-law, a descendant of _Henry's_ sister.

THE REIGN OF MARY.--Notwithstanding the Protector's selfish scheme, _Mary_ succeeded to the throne without serious difficulty. _Northumberland_ was beheaded as a traitor. An insurrection under _Wyat_ was put down, and led to the execution of the unfortunate and innocent _Lady Jane Grey_. From her birth and all the circumstances of her life, _Mary_ was in cordial sympathy with the Church of Rome and with Spain. She proceeded as rapidly as her more prudent advisers, including her kinsman _Philip II._, would allow, to restore the Catholic system. The married clergy were excluded from their places, and the Prayer-Book was abolished. The point where Parliament showed most hesitation was in reference to the royal supremacy. The nobles were afraid of losing their fields and houses, which had belonged to the Church. It was stipulated that the abbey lands, which were now held by the nobles and gentry as well as by the crown, should not be given up. Personally, _Mary_ was inclined to any measure which obligation to the Catholic religion might dictate. Contrary to the general wish of her subjects, she married _Philip II_. Rigorous measures of repression were adopted against the Protestants. A large number of persons, eminent for talents and learning, were put to death on the charge of heresy. Among them were the three bishops, _Cranmer_, _Ridley_, and _Latimer_, who were burned at the stake at Oxford (1556). _Gardiner_, _Bonner_, and the rigid advocates of persecution, had full sway. These severe measures were not popular; and, although the queen was not in her natural temper cruel, they have given her the name of the "Bloody Mary." Each party used coercion when it had the upper hand. A great number of the Protestant clergy fled to the Continent. _Mary_ sided with Spain against France, and, greatly to the disgust of the English, lost _Calais_ (1558). Pope _Paul IV._ was disposed to press upon England the extreme demands of the Catholic Reaction. He was, moreover, hostile to the Spanish-Austrian house. There was great fear respecting the confiscated Church property: her own share in it, the queen persuaded Parliament to allow her to surrender. Cardinal _Pole_, a moderate man, no longer guided her policy. He was deprived of the office of papal legate. General discontent prevailed in the kingdom. The queen herself was dispirited, and her life ended in anxiety and sorrow.

CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603).--The nation welcomed Elizabeth to the throne. Her will was as imperious as that of her father. Her character was not without marked faults and foibles. She was vain, unwisely parsimonious, petulant, and overbearing, and evinced that want of truthfulness which was too common among rulers and statesmen at that period. But she had regal virtues,--high courage, devotion to the public good, for which she had the strength to sacrifice personal inclinations, together with the wisdom to choose astute counselors and to adhere to them. Her title to the throne was disputed. She had to contend against powerful and subtle adversaries. Her defense lay in the mutual jealousy of France and Spain, and in the determination of Englishmen not to be ruled by foreigners. Her reign was long and glorious.

HER RELIGIOUS POSITION.--In her doctrine, _Elizabeth_ was a moderate Lutheran, not bitterly averse to the Church of Rome, but, in accordance with the prevalent English feeling which _Henry VIII_. represented, clinging to the royal supremacy. The Protestant system, with the Prayer-Book, and the hierarchy dependent on the sovereign, was now restored.

PROTESTANTISM IN SCOTLAND.--In case _Elizabeth's_ claim to the crown were overthrown, the next heir would be _Mary, Queen of Scots_. Her grandmother was the eldest sister of Henry VIII. Her claim to the English crown was a standing menace to _Elizabeth_. When _Mary's_ father, _James V_., died (1542), she was only a few days old. Her mother, _Mary of Guise_, became regent. The Reformation had then begun to gain adherents in Scotland. On the accession of _Elizabeth_, at a time when the religious wars in France were about to begin, the Scottish regent undertook repressive measures of increased rigor. The principal agent in turning Scotland to the Protestant side was _John Knox_, an intrepid preacher, honest, and rough in his ways, deeply imbued with the spirit of Calvinism, and free from every vestige of superstitious deference for human potentates. He returned from the Continent in 1555. Many of the turbulent nobles, partly from conviction and partly from covetousness, adopted the new opinions. More and more, however, _Knox_ gained a hold upon the common people. His preaching was effective: one of its natural consequences was an outburst of iconoclasm. Even _Philip II_. was willing to have the nobles helped in the contest with the regent, Scotland being the ally of _France_. The queen-regent died in 1560. The Presbyterians now had full control, and Calvinistic Protestantism was legally established as the religion of the country.

THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.--Such was the situation when _Mary_, the young widow of _Francis II._, came back to Scotland to assume her crown. A zealous Catholic, she undertook to rule a turbulent people among whom the most austere type of Protestantism was the legal and cherished faith. She had personal charms which _Elizabeth_ lacked, but as a sovereign she was wanting in the public virtue which belonged to her rival. _Mary_ was quick-witted and full of energy; but she had been brought up in the court of _Catherine de Medici_, in an atmosphere of duplicity and lax morals. She had the vices of the _Stuarts_,--an extravagant idea of the sacred prerogatives of kings, a disregard of popular rights, a willingness to break engagements. Her levity, even if it had been kept within bounds, would have been offensive to her Calvinistic subjects. She had at heart the restoration of the Catholic system. In _Knox_ she found a vigilant and fearless antagonist, with so much support among the nobles and the common people that her attempts at coercion, like her blandishments, proved powerless. Contrary to the wishes and plans of _Elizabeth_, she married _Darnley_, a Scottish nobleman (1565), whom, not without reason, she soon learned to despise. Her half-brother _Murray_, a very able man, and the other Protestant nobles, had been opposed to the match. She allowed herself an innocent, but unseemly, intimacy with an Italian musician, _Rizzio_. With the connivance of her husband, he was dragged out of her supper-room at Holyrood, and brutally murdered by _Ruthven_ and other conspirators. In 1567, the house in which Darnley was sleeping, close by Edinburgh, was blown up with gunpowder, and he was killed. Whether _Mary_ was privy to the murder, or not, is a point still in dispute. Certain it is that she gave her hand in marriage to _Bothwell_, the prime author of the crime. A revolt of her subjects followed. She was compelled to abdicate: _Murray_ was made regent, and her infant son, _James VI._, was crowned at Stirling (1567). Escaping from confinement at _Lochleven_, she was defeated at _Langside_, and obliged to fly to England for protection.

EXECUTION OF MARY.--Elizabeth had no liking for the new religious system in Scotland. She hated the necessity of aiding rebels against their sovereign. But there was no alternative. In 1569 the defeat of the Huguenots in France was followed by a Catholic rebellion in the North of England. Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope _Pius V_. There was a determination to dethrone her, and to hand over her crown to Mary. The drift of events was towards a conflict of England with _Spain_. The Duke of _Norfolk_, a leader in conspiracy and rebellion, who acted in concert with _Philip_ and with _Mary_, was brought to the scaffold (1572). _Elizabeth_ secretly aided the revolted subjects of _Philip_ in the Netherlands, as _Philip_ encouraged the malcontents in England and Ireland. The Queen of Scots was the center of the hopes of the enemies of England and of _Elizabeth_. When her complicity in the conspiracy of _Babington_, which involved a Spanish invasion and the dethronement and death of Elizabeth, was proved, _Mary_, after having been a captive for nineteen years, was condemned to death, and executed (1587) at Fotheringay Castle.

THE SPANISH ARMADA.--In 1585 Elizabeth openly sent troops to the Netherlands under the command of her favorite, _Leicester_. The contest with Spain was kept up on the sea by bold English mariners, who captured the Spanish treasure-ships, and harassed the Spanish colonies. It was a period of maritime adventure, when men like _Frobisher_, _Hawkins_, and _Raleigh_ made themselves famous, and when _Sir Francis Drake_ sailed around the world. In the course of this voyage, Drake had seized from the Spanish vessels, and from the settlements on the coast of Peru and Chili, a vast amount of silver and gold. When it was known that _Philip_ was preparing to invade England, Drake sailed into the harbor of _Cadiz_, and destroyed the ships and stores there (1587). He burned every Spanish vessel that he could find. He boasted on his return that he had "singed the king of Spain's beard." _Philip_ made ready a mighty naval expedition, the "Invincible Armada," for the conquest of England. The fame of it resounded through Europe. A Spanish force in the Netherlands, under _Parma_, was to coöperate with it. In _England_, there were preparations to meet the attack. Catholics and Protestants were united for the defense of the kingdom. At _Tilbury_, Queen _Elizabeth_ reviewed her troops on horseback, saying to them in a spirited speech, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too." The tempest, aiding the valor of the English seamen, dispersed the great fleet. No landing was effected, and the grand enterprise proved a complete failure. Only fifty-four out of the one hundred and fifty vessels succeeded in making their way back to Spain.

MONOPOLIES.--The queen knew how to yield to the people when she saw that they were determined upon a measure. This she did near the close of her reign, when the Commons called upon her to put an end to the monopolies which she had been in the habit of granting to individuals whom she specially liked.

THE EARL OF ESSEX.--The queen had her personal favorites. Among them, _Robert Dudley_, whom she made the Earl of Leicester, was the one of whom she was most fond. She esteemed him much above his merits. Another of her favorites was the young _Earl of Essex_, who was vain and ambitious. He went in 1596 with _Lord Howard_ in an expedition which took and plundered _Cadiz_. Then he was sent to Ireland in command of an army. He failed, and came back to England without leave. He made a foolish attempt at insurrection, was tried for treason, and convicted; and Elizabeth reluctantly signed the warrant for his execution (1601).

CONQUEST OF IRELAND.--After the return of _Essex_ from Ireland, where he had done nothing well, _Lord Mountjoy_ was sent to conquer _Tyrone_, the _Desmonds_, and other Irish chiefs. It was a long and fierce contest. He succeeded in subduing the country; but the effect of his conquest was a terrible famine in the North, where the food had been destroyed. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, all Ireland was subject to England.

THE PURITANS.--Uniformity in the forms of religious worship was ordained by law in England, and the queen was bent on enforcing it. A _Court of High Commission_ was established to punish heresy and nonconformity. This policy early brought on a conflict, not only with the Roman Catholics, but also with the large and growing class of Protestants who were called "Puritans." These wished to carry the Reformation farther than it had been carried by the Tudors in England, and to make the English Church more like the Calvinistic churches in Scotland and on the Continent. They disliked surplices and other vestments worn by the clergy, which they pronounced "badges of popery," the sign of the cross used in baptism, and like customs retained in the Church as established by law. Many of them became opposed to the whole prelatical organization. They did not admit the supremacy of the sovereign, as _Elizabeth_ claimed it, in things having to do with the Church and religion. Many of the Puritans conformed to the existing system of Church government and worship, but under a protest and with the hope of seeing it changed. Others were _nonconformists_; that is, they did not formally break off from the English Church, but avoided taking part in the forms of worship of which they disapproved. This class was numerous. A third and smaller class, the "Independents," separated from the Established Church, and disbelieved in national churches, or a national organization of religion, altogether. They formed religious societies of their own. Thus English Protestants were divided among themselves. Upon both Puritans and Roman Catholics--upon the latter, partly on political grounds--severe penalties were inflicted. Churchman and Puritan, while they agreed substantially in theology, stood at variance in regard to Church government and modes of worship.