divided from him by outward ceremonies, which, they contended, obscured or contradicted their common faith, and could in no sense be regarded, even by the Archbishop, as vital to a man's salvation, ventured to appeal to him for indulgence on the ground that they were his brethren.1 But he was not to be approached by this way. What signifies,' he replied, 'their being brethren; Anabaptists, Arians, and other heretics would be accounted brethren; their haughty spirits will not suffer them to see their error; they deserve as great punishment as Papists, because both conspire against the Church. If they are shut up in Newgate, it is a meet reward for their disorderly doings.' In the same spirit he draws up his list of complaints against the learned clerk of the Council, Robert Beale, who had condemned as illegal the proceedings of the High Commission and Whitgift's administration generally. Two of his charges against Beale are as follows-presumably drawn up as points in an indictment to be presented before one of the ecclesiastical courts:

,2

13. He [Beale] condemneth (without exception of cause) racking of grievous offenders, as being cruel, barbarous, contrary to law, and unto the liberty of English subjects.

14. He thereupon giveth a caveat to those in Marches of Wales, that execute torture by virtue of instructions under her Majesty's hand, according to a statute, to look unto it, that their doings are well warranted.

No appeal to Whitgift's compassion availed in any case. 1 This was the view adopted by Dean Bridges in his Defence. There is a great difference (I graunt) both in matter and manner of these contentions, and in the qualities of the persons that breed these vexations; euen as much as is between him that would pluck my coate from off my backe, and so spoyle me; and him that would pull my skinne ouer mine eares, and so destroy me. The controversies between the common aduersaries and vs are pro Aris et focis; for matters, and that capitall matters, of the substance and life of our Christian religion; not trifles as some mortals would beare the people in hande [mislead them]. And therefore our aduersaries in matters of religion are incensed against vs with mortall, or rather, immortall hatred. Whereas the controuersies betwixt vs and our Brethren, are matters, or rather (as they call them) but manners, and formes of the Churches regiment.'-Defence, To the Christian Reader,' ¶ 3.

2 Neal, History of the Puritans, i. 238.

3 Vid. ante, 98.

Why should he be moved by the groans of the tortured prisoner on the rack, who had only to bolt out' his heart's secret to be relieved? Why should the minister dying of fetid prison fever touch his pity, when the rebellious man had only to wear the Popish vestments and declare there was nothing contrary to the Word of God in the Book of Common Prayer, including the 'Pontifical,' in order to go free? Interest was from time to time made by important persons about the Court in favour of an imprisoned reformer. In the case of a great noble or of one of the Queen's principal ministers of State, the Archbishop's reply was all that might be desired. Language failed him to express how glad he would be to favour the request of a person he esteemed so highly. But it was observed that never in any case did any alleviation of the lot of the persecuted man in whose interest the kindness of the Archbishop was solicited follow his smooth words. 'He never denied any man's desire, and yet never granted it,' says Fuller; 'pleasing them for the present with general promises, but still kept to his own resolution; whereupon the nobility in a little time, ceased making farther applications to him, as knowing them to be ineffectual,'1 We have seen that Burleigh himself was as helpless as the rest of men; indeed it was suspected that Brayne suffered the more severely for having moved the Lord Treasurer to intercede on his behalf. is still commonly repeated that he showed some pity to Sir Richard Knightley, who was convicted of allowing the second Marprelate Tract to be printed at his house at Fawseley. The plain historic truth is that, highly connected as he was, and one of the most eminent and powerful commoners of his age, Knightley had to spend seven months in the Fleet, and was only released by the payment of an enormous and ruinous fine. There is no record of a single case where motives of pity or compassion moved Whitgift to relent in his persecution of Nonconformists; or evidence that he ever forgave a man who once openly opposed him. The case of John Udall, the learned minister at Kingston-on-Thames, 1 Fuller, quoted by Neal, Hist. i. 347.

It

moved almost every person of consequence in the nation to compassion. There was much talk of the Archbishop's pity for this poor man, and the legend is still repeated by Church historians. But when this divine appeared at Croydon, laden with heavy chains so that he could not stand erect, as though he were some dangerous criminal needing this restraint, the pity was far to seek. And the fact remains that in spite of the extraordinary efforts made on his behalf, Udall lingered in prison till he died.

Strype seeks to lay upon the Queen the blame for Whitgift's unrelenting severity towards Udall. But the statement is unsustained by any evidence, is contrary to all that we know concerning Whitgift, and to the actual facts concerning Udall's harsh treatment. Udall's offence was that he had written very strongly against the Episcopal rule and order; this by an outrageous travesty of law and justice was accounted to be, constructively, sedition; and for that offence the capital sentence was passed upon him. But such was the weight of influence in favour of Udall that Whitgift's servile tools, Chancellor Hatton and Serjeant Puckering, shrank from sending him to the gallows merely for having spoken against the Bishops. This is the whole ground of the statement that Whitgift exerted himself to obtain the commutation of the death sentence. As for any

anxiety on the part of Whitgift to show mercy to his ecclesiastical opponents we have only the unsupported statements of his eulogists. Wherever any evidence is available its testimony is uniformly to the contrary. Later, in 1593, his high connections and the distinguished persons who sued for his relief and pardon, could not save Henry Barrowe from the Archbishop's vengeance. It was their refusal to acknowledge his ecclesiastical authority that no doubt sent Barrowe and Greenwood to Tyburn. And when in great haste and unexpectedly, on a sudden rumour of his release, John Penry was hurried to his doom, the first name on the writ for his execution was that of the vindictive Primate.

7. Some Elizabethan Bishops.—Of the remaining Bishops

of the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, the second in importance in the indictment of Martin Marprelate is John Aylmer, the Bishop of London; of whom some account has already been given, and much will be found in the text of the TRACTS. As already stated, he was hated by the reformers as a renegade. Although Whitgift curiously enough was once, and only once, under suspicion of being a secret Puritan, yet the reformers never gave him credit for really appreciating the evangelical position. He had too watchful an eye for the main chance to be suspected of having ever secretly cherished the regal and uncompromisable principles of the faith professed by the reformers. He was the typical man of policy; an astute and calculating opportunist, from the time when the 'old Turner' Perne showed him how to dissemble, in the cruel days of Mary and the Spaniard. Aylmer, on the other hand, in the years of his poverty abroad was a thoroughgoing reformer, whose drastic policy of reforming the Bishops was not exceeded by any of those whom he now persecuted. Moreover he was a man more open to attack than Whitgift in the ordinary affairs of his life. His avarice became proverbial. The story of the Dyer's Cloth and of the Grocer's unpaid reckoning were matters of common gossip. Then it was not denied that he had a habit of using unclerical language; and while he persecuted the Nonconformists for disregarding the appointed priestly vestments and the Papistical ceremonies, he was himself so far emancipated from the external commandment that he played bowls and made merry at haymaking on the Sabbath.

Of the other Bishops whose names appear in Martin's

1 Vid. ante, 66.

2 Preaching at Paul's Cross, Aylmer declared that he was poor and had no money, and that, said he, Paules Churche can bear me witnesse.' Shortly afterwards he was robbed of certain hundred of pounds' by one of his servants for which he had three or four of them hanged, although he got back most of his money. At the trial some of the condemned protested that Aylmer to their knowledge had much more money at usury, and that his servants liued only vpon bribes.'-A Dialogue wherin is plainly laide open, sig. C 3. As noted elsewhere he died very rich; but this did not prevent him from commonly referring to his 'poor estate and great charges.' See THE EPISTLE, 50.

pages sufficient is stated elsewhere. They are not a distinguished body of men, taken as a whole; some of them were scandalously unfit for the Episcopal office. Jewel, the ablest man in the early appointments of Elizabeth, died in 1571. Within the communion of the Church the two ablest men never reached the Episcopal bench. William Fulke, the Master of Pembroke, died in 1589. The yet greater name, Richard Hooker, sometime Master of the Temple, died the incumbent of a country parish. Most of the ministers of marked ability and of conspicuous learning suffered in the ranks of Nonconformity. The Church never commanded the service of men of the calibre of the great statesmen and soldiers and still greater writers, who made the reign so illustrious in the annals of our country. When an official reply was required to attack Martin Marprelate the task was allotted to Bishop Thomas Cooper of Winchester. He was formerly a schoolmaster. Under Mary he abjured Protestantism and practised medicine. He 1 remained something of a pedagogue when he reached the degree of Bishop; fatherly, if not motherly, in his manner of address, full of wise saws, and moral reflections, he was capable of replying to a definite charge at great length, without touching the point at issue. But though there was an assumed bishoply moderation and an appeal to the candid mind in his apologia, he was as severe as any of the Bishops in his treatment of Nonconformists. Not less severe was his attitude towards Roman Catholics, whom he would have compelled to partake of the sacrament in their parish churches, or go to prison. Another characteristic suggestion of his was to send two hundred of the lustier sort of recusants to Flanders, as labour convicts. He seems to have owed his promotion, in the first instance, to Elizabeth's appreciation of his Thesaurus, a book of reference commonly known as Cooper's Dictionary; though the Bishop had only a fractional claim to its authorship. 'Elizabeth,' says Sir John Harington, 'gave Doctor Cooper the Bishoprick of Lincoln, only for making a Dictionary, or rather, but for mending that which Sir Thomas Eliot had