became an intolerant instrument of oppression. The minister was required to declare that the Book of Common Prayer, and the 'Pontifical,' that prescribing the ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 'contained nothing contrary to the word of God.' It was an Article which, apart fron the specific objections which thorough Protestants had o certain survivals of Romanism in the ritual, no enlightered man, who made his solemn subscription a matter of onscience, could sign, or indeed ought to sign. Again ind again in the persecutions of the clergy, before the Eigh Commission, the more peaceable and moderate among them offered to sign the first and third Articles, also to use the Book generally, but they scrupled to sign the scond Article. It committed them, for instance, to the statment that the absurd legends contained in the portions of the Apocrypha included in the lectionary were not 'contary to the word of God.'1 1 The following edifying colloquy between Whitgift and Thoms Underdown, the able minister of Lewes, at an interview held at Laibeth on December 5th, in this same year, is typical of much that followed aring the first half of Whitgift's primacy, except that hereafter the Noncnformists appeared as accused persons, and were treated with an ever-increang harshness. Underdown, among other things, had objected to the Apocrypha ; the conversation then proceeds Archbishop. All the apocrypha is not appointed to be read, butthose parts which are most edifying. And the ancient fathers permitted themto be read in the church. Underdown. Not some detached parts only, my Lord, but who! books are appointed. Arch. What errors in doctrine and practice do they contain? Und. Raphael maketh a lie, Tobit v. 15. Arch. If this be a lie, then the angels lied to Abraham, by seeing to have bodies and to eat, when they had no bodies and did not eat: AndChrist, when He seemed to intend going farther than Emmaus: And God, when de destroyed not Nineveh. Und. The cases are not alike.-Again, the devil is said to hay loved Sara, Tobit vi. 16, which is fabulous. Arch. Is it strange to you that the devil should love men anewomen? Do you think the devil doth not love? Und. In Ecclesiasticus xlvi. 20 it is said that Samuel preached aftr he was dead. Arch. What point of faith is it to believe it was Samuel? Und. A principal point, my Lord. For (Rev. xiv. 13) it is said that the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and rest from their laburs; which is not true, if they be at the call of a witch or sorcerer to do the things which while they lived they would not have done. The conference was continued the following day, when te Archbishop 1 These Visitation Articles had also an eye to the Catholic propaganda, now strenuously pushed by a new order of priest. The old easy-going and, generally, ignorant Masspriest, who had served under the last three reigns, and found little to trouble him in accommodating himself to the scheme of Elizabeth, having grown accustomed to the successive changes of formula, was a vastly different person from the young priest, a regular probably of the Society of Jesus, trained in one of the Romish colleges opened in various parts of the Continent for the education of English students, now stealing furtively into the country. By the necessities of his situation he lost any national feeling he may have ever had; he was a servant of one of two foreigners, or of both; the Pope and Philip of Spain. He had come to destroy any loyalty the old English Catholic families may have retained for their Queen. He had come to enlist traitorous stipendiaries in the name of Philip. When the great blow should in due course be given, half | the battle would be won by the time the invading army approached the English shores, by the uprising of the disloyal Papists within the gates. This new order of soldierpriest was under the generalship of the Jesuit Parsons. He carried about with him copies of Campion's Ten Reasons, Alert, eager, desperate, prepared for the rack or the gallows, he was a foe to be reckoned with. Elizabeth's tortuous diplomacy, and the necessity she was under from time to time of pretending to be under the sway of Catholic ideas; her love of the theatrical in the cult of Rome; her periodic trifling with the ill-starred idol,' the silver crucifix; her casual whim to have altar-lights in her private chapel,—all made the task of a courtier-prelate the more perplexing. Secretly she most feared the power of the Papist; but beyond all doubt she hated most the scruple of the Puritan. rehearsed the substance of the first day's proceedings, ، with some enlargement upon the devil's loving women.' Bishop Aylmer then adding his wisdom to the views of the Primate, said, 'If you had read either divinity or philosophy, it would not be strange to you that the devil should love women.' To which Underdown simply replied, My Lord, we have not learned any such divinity.'-Brook, Lives, i. 266, 269. In relation to Popery she stood in marked contrast to her father. Henry's innovations were in the external machinery of the Church; the creed of Rome he professed to the last. Elizabeth accepted the faith of Protestantism without demur; but she retained as much of the external form and vesture of Rome as the new situation would suffer her to have. Section II.-The New 'High Commission' 1. The Demand for a more Formidable Court.-Whitgift soon realised that he could not rest with issuing his injunctions. He found that the dogged spirit of the reforming party cared little for ecclesiastical censures. He required power to coerce men into conformity to his ideas. His controversial experiences with the chief Puritans were not encouraging. Men like Underdown, and Dr. Sparke, who, as Martin Marprelate frequently reminded him, gave Whitgift the 'non plus';1 like the quaint and vivacious Wigginton, and others, effectually cured him of any expectation that he could further and popularise his ecclesiastical compromise by personal argument, or substantiate his position by a reference to the text of Scripture. He became frankly a persecutor; of him it was as true as of Laud, that he would never waste time in persuading an opponent if he had power to suppress him. He therefore appealed to the Queen, in a paper of reasons, for a new Commission for Causes Ecclesiastical, to enable him more effectively to search for unlawful books, and to deal effectively with disordered persons commonly called Puritans.' For without the coercive High Commission, to give it its popular name, the Ecclesiastical Law, he declared, was ‘a carcase without a soul.' He was urgent in his request; even six months' delay might be disastrous. His plea was granted by the Queen. The new Commission was constituted in the December following his assumption of the primacy.2 This was the sixth Commission granted by Elizabeth; 2 Strype, Whitg. i. 266. 1 THE EPISTLE, 45. it was distinctly the most tyrannical of the series. At its formation it consisted of forty-four members, twelve Bishops, certain chief ministers of the Crown, Sir Francis Knollys and Sir Francis Walsingham among them, the chief legal officers of State, and a number of deans, archdeacons, and civil lawyers. Its function was to 'inquire into all heretical opinions, seditious books, conspiracies, false rumours,' etc., 'to hear, and determine concerning the premises, and to correct, reform, and punish all persons... obstinately absent from church'; 'to visit and reform all errors, heresies, and schisms, etc., which may be lawfully reformed or restrained by censures ecclesiastical, deprivation or otherwise, according to the power and authority, limited and approved by the laws, etc.'; also to deprive of their benefices all who maintained any doctrine contrary to the Thirty-nine Articles. The chief engine of Whitgift's tyranny remains to be noted. The Commission was given authority to examine all suspected persons on their corporal oath'; those who proved 'obdurate and disobedient' were to be punished by excommunication, censures ecclesiastical, fine, or imprisonment; the imprisonment to continue until the Court enlarge them, and they have paid 'such costs and expenses of suit as the cause shall require.' This, coupled with the authority to seize, apprehend, or to compel the sheriffs and their officers to apprehend, such persons as they thought meet to be convened' before them, make this instrument of ecclesiastical oppression complete. At one stroke it practically neutralised every liberty achieved by the nation from Magna Charta downwards. Large numbers of reformers of all sections, and of every social rank, were apprehended under this authority, but advanced no further in their examination than their refusal to take the preliminary 'corporal oath.' This, of itself, was accounted sufficient proof that they were 'obdurate and disobedient.' On this ground they were summarily condemned to prison, some of them remaining there for years without knowing the nature of the charge which led to their apprehension. 2. The Unpopularity of the New Court.-So intolerable did the tyranny of the High Commission become during the next seven or eight years, so great was the storm of obloquy and indignant protest which it brought upon Whitgift, that, though himself the inventor of its draconic clauses and a firm believer in their merit, he was fain at last to get recalcitrant Nonconformists tried, by preference, before the Court of Star Chamber.1 The alleged legality of the High Commission rested upon the statute 1 Eliz.-the Act of Supremacy, a clause in which empowered the Queen to exercise this branch of her prerogative through Commissioners appointed under the great seal. But its legality was always strongly contested, constitutional authorities maintaining that no clause in an Act whose chief end was the reviving of the instruments of law as they existed in previous reigns, could override the whole body of the common law of the land. The authority claimed by the Bishops for this clause not only made Elizabeth an irresponsible autocrat in affairs ecclesiastical,-in those days a very comprehensive term,-but, even worse, transferred that irresponsible autocracy to a Court ruled by a narrow, vindictive priest like Whitgift. The full tale of the iniquitous oppressions of this Court might well be gathered into a separate volume. 'It was,' says Hume, 'a real Inquisition, attended with similar iniquities and cruelties.' Even Lingard, the Roman historian, who had to recognise, as an honest writer, the indefensible cruelties perpetrated by his own Church, could point the moral of this abhorrent institution in these words: 'Whoever will compare the powers given to this tribunal with those of the Inquisition, which Philip II. endeavoured 1 Let it not here be forgotten, that because many did question the legality and Authority of the High Commission; Archbishop Whitgift so contrived the matter, that the most sturdy and refractory Nonconformists (especially if they had visible estates) were brought into the Star Chamber. This took the Odium from the Archbishop, which in the High Commission lightened chiefly, if not only upon him.' Fuller's Church Hist. of Britain, ed. 1655, bk. ix. p. 187. 21 Eliz. cap. 1, sec. 18 (1599). 3 History, Reign of Eliz. xii, |