was partly due to the fact now widely known that the Bishops had themselves striven hard to dispense with the 'garments of the Amorites.' 'We who are now bishops,' says Grindal, on our first return, and before we entered on our ministry contended long and earnestly for the removal of those things which have occasioned the present dispute.'1 Multitudes were now familiar enough with the contents of the New Testament, and had satisfied themselves that by its authoritative teaching the old order of official and sacrificing priests was gone, and its tailoring and millinery gone along with it; nor was there any immediate and popular reply to the plain criticism of the common people, who said to the prelates in effect, 'You say you have given up the cruel Popish creed which lit the fires of Smithfield; but when you were away in exile we saw the men who set fire to the faggots dressed in garments such as you are now wearing. You call the Pope antichrist; why do you wear the vestments of his sacrificing priests?' The appeal to 'decency and order' was flouted. Why should 'decency and order' be evermore associated with the ceremonies and ornaments' of the Pope's Church? was therefore necessary to have recourse to a more powerful argument.

It

To meet the exigencies of the situation, the Queen's orders were obtained to further restrain the press. Already by the Injunctions of 1559 (Art. 51), no printed matter could be published without the permission of the Council or of the Bishops. The new Injunctions, issued the 29th of June 1566, are of a far severer character. They actually prohibit the publication of any adverse criticism on any law or statute, or any edict or injunction of the Queen or issued by her authority. Offending printers lost their licence and were imprisoned without bail or mainprise,' and every one concerned in the production or in the sale of an unauthorised publication was heavily fined—half the

1 Zurich Lett. i. 169.

2 The article is quoted by Arber, Sketch, 49. The injunctions are given in extenso in Sparrow's Collections (1675), p. 65; and in Cardwell's Documentary Annals, i. 178.

fine going to the informer. The Stationers' Company had rights of search and seizure.1 Such an injunction, if enforced effectively, would have made it impossible to obtain any further reform in Church or State. It was too oppressive to be effective. Laws which are over-strict and oppressive when applied to the discipline of strong races do not favour obedience; they breed defiance. For the next twenty years the secret press was always busy; although efforts were made to make the censorship more stringent in 1586, at the instigation of Archbishop Whitgift and his High Commission, by confining the possession of printing presses to London, and one each and no more, at the two Universities. The censors, also, were to be the Archbishop and the Bishop of London. Civil authorities, it was found, could not be relied on to carry out with thoroughness the work of repression and persecution. The edict of 1586, however, was an inefficient instrument, as the publication of the Marprelate Tracts proves. And less daring writings were printed secretly throughout the reign, either at home or abroad.

2

9. A Conventicle at Plumbers' Hall.-A number of the least tractable, though perhaps the most influential of the revolters, were divided out amongst the Bishops, as their prisoners, but were released before long; as much to the satisfaction of the gaolers, doubtless, as to their own. But the movement continued to spread; and the next year we have the first record of a number of Separatists being surprised while holding a 'conventicle'; an entry which was to become of painful frequency during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign, and under the Stuarts.

On the 19th June 1567, a company of London citizens and their wives, in all about a hundred persons, assembled in the Plumbers' Hall; ostensibly to celebrate a wedding; but, in fact, as the Sheriffs' officers who broke upon the gathering found out, to hear a sermon and to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Most of them were arrested and lodged for the

1 Strype, Life of Parker, i. 442.

2 Strype, Whitgift, i. 143. For the rules see his App. III. 160 [No. xxiv.].

night in the Compter. The next day the chief of them appeared before the Bishop, Dean Goodman of Westminster, Archdeacon Watts, and the Lord Mayor, Sir Roger Martin.' From their examination it was evident that the prisoners represented a new type of Nonconformist. Intolerance was

2

weeding out the weaker elements in the revolt, and by a sterner examination of their premises, making the revolters more thorough and consistent in their views. These men were forming the left wing of the movement and were the more formidable in that they dropped the old compromises and freely accepted the logic of the situation. They went beyond the pitiful complaint against elevating the 'host' and signing the cross and such like; for these disliked the whole constitution of the Church lately reformed.' They were of no mind to temporise with the old modified prelacy; to them the Church did not consist of its ministry; far less did its authority belong to a secular court; to appoint a pastor otherwise than through the choice of the Church itself, seemed to them infringing upon the prerogatives of the most august social institution in the world; one was their Master, and they all, ministers and people alike, were not a graded aristocracy, but brethren. They saw no successor to the Fisherman of Galilee in the gilded Prelate seated in his chariot, preceded by out-riders, and followed by a cavalcade of richly apparelled servitors and men-atarms to maintain his high dignity.

Grindal was very patient with them and tried to win them over by his conciliatory reasoning. He confessed he had performed the Mass, but he was sorry that he had. His prisoners told him he still went about in the habits of a Mass priest; but he demurred. It was but a cope

and a surplice he wore, and that only when at St. Paul's. The prisoners acknowledged that they had used an unauthorised service book, but they made an almost dramatic point when John Smith, the ancientest of them,' said it

1 The names of the prisoners examined before this court can be seen in Brook, Lives, i. 134, sub nom. 'R. Hawkins.'

2 Strype, Grindal, 169.

was the book used by the secret Church in London, in the terrible days of Mary; the Church whose honourable but perilous office of pastor was filled by Master Bentham, promoted by the Queen to the See of Lichfield and Coventry, and Master Scory, promoted to Peterborough.' Shown Beza's letter by the Bishop, they replied that they were well acquainted with its contents; that it told against the Bishops, not against them. In the end, twenty-four men and seven women of the company went to Bridewell. Grindal made every effort to reclaim them'; but in vain. He therefore got the Council to discharge them with a warning.

The Bishop estimated the number of this section of Nonconformists in and about London to be about two hundred; of whom there were more women than men. It is probably an under-estimate. He represents them as citizens of the lowest order, with whom were associated four or five ministers, remarkable neither for their judgment nor for their learning; an account which reads like an extract from the Acts of the Apostles. He reports, as something outrageous, that they openly separated; meeting and administering the sacraments 'in private houses, sometimes in the fields, and occasionally in ships.' But the head and front of their offending was, that 'they ordained ministers, elders and deacons, after their own way, and have even excommunicated some who had seceeded from their church.' They were by no means to be won over by the authority of great names; even to be told that all the learned in Europe were against them did not suffice. The 'auncient man' John Smith said, 'We revere the learned at Geneva and in all other places. Yet we build not our faith and religion upon them.' 'But who,' asked Goodman, 'will you have to judge the word of God?' Robert Hawkins replied, 'That was the cavil of the Papists in the time of Queen Mary. I have myself heard them say, when the truth was defended by the word of God, Who shall judge the word of God?

2

1 Fowle, John Rough the martyr, Bernher, Latimer's faithful Swiss, also held this dangerous post. See Strype, Memorials, 111. ii. 132.

2 Zur. Lett. i. 210; date, June 11th, 1568.

The Catholic Church must be the judge.'1 It was evident that these Separatists intended to cleave to the right of private judgment.

10. The Attitude of the Romanists and National Progress. -The national weakness induced by the scandalous misgovernment of the three previous reigns, never more flagrant than during the Spanish-Catholic régime under Mary, was sufficiently remedied by the year 1570 to enable the Queen to assume a more independent attitude in her diplomacy than hitherto her prudence permitted her to assume. The peril of the initial period of her reign was successfully weathered; thanks to Elizabeth's frugality and the prompt action of Cecil and the able men associated with him, in restoring the fleet and the national means of defence. Many other things had contributed to the position of advantage now occupied by Elizabeth; not least among them the action of the Romanists within her own borders. They were representatives of an alien system, subjects of a foreigner who claimed a temporal as well as a spiritual jurisdiction; and from time to time little facts transpired, which showed that a section of them, at least, were traitors. The Rising in the North' was an untimely splutter; badly managed, where even the cleverest generalship would have nothing availed. If anything were wanting to make Catholicism impossible it was the effrontery of Pius V. in promulgating his bull of excommunication against Elizabeth, in February 1570. One Felton affixed it to the town house of the Bishop of London, and for his pains became a Catholic martyr. By the terms of this bull the subjects of Elizabeth were absolved from the oath of allegiance and every other thing due unto her whatsoever; and those which from henceforth obey her are innodated [bound up] with the anathema.' In various parts of the country copies of this traitorous document were distributed. No function could be more popular with the people, however, than a gathering to see it burnt by the common hangman. Many Catholics who shared the rising 1 Brook, Lives, 138, 142.