do Great serHe vices of Archbishop his Whitgift. been a princess under whom a temperate and judi- Chap. I. cious Church Reform was extremely difficult. Probably, to no man in our Church history we owe more than to Archbishop Whitgift. understood and accepted the necessities of position he was severe, perhaps harsh; but his tendency was towards toleration, as is shown by his politic treatment of Cartwright and Travers, his humane solicitations for Udall, and the authors and abettors of the Mar-Prelate libels.* As far as the difficulties of his position permitted him he studied peace with all men. But that which was most admirable in him was his bold and undaunted spirit. Let it not be supposed that the Puritan clergy were without powerful backers in the Queen's Council. No less than eight Privy Councillors signed a letter addressed to the Archbishop censuring him for his vigorous measures to produce conformity. But this did not daunt him. He feared not to withstand the Earl of Leicester, that great spoiler of the Church, when in the zenith of his influence, and he scrupled not to speak to the Queen those noble words: "Madam, give me leave to do my duty and tell you that princes are deputed nursing fathers of the Church, and owe it a protection; and therefore, as you are by a late Act of Parliament entrusted with a great power to preserve or waste the Church's lands, yet dispose of them for Jesus' sake, as you have promised to 'Qui crimen gravi mulctâ in camerâ stellatâ erogatâ luissent, nisi Archiepiscopus Cantuarensis quâ fuit ille lenitate, reginam ægrè exorasset."-Camdenus, sub anno 1588. Chap. I. men, and vowed to God. Let neither falsehood or flattery beguile you to do otherwise."* It is scarcely too much to say that to Whitgift we owe the preservation of our Church endowments. That the whole of them were seriously imperilled we may well believe when we reflect on how much the Queen actually sanctioned, and on the utterly unscrupulous character of some of her courtiers, who even openly avowed their desire of bringing the Church to poverty that they might repress and destroy its influence. Elizabeth had precedent enough in the wholesale confiscations of her father; but Whitgift did not hesitate to warn her from following his sad example: " And though I shall forbear to speak reproachfully of your father, yet I beg you to take notice that a part of the Church's rights added to the vast treasure left him by his father, hath been conceived to bring an unavoidable consumption upon both, notwithstanding all his diligence to preserve them. And consider that after the violation of those laws to which he had sworn in Magna Charta, God did deny him His restraining grace, that as King Saul after he was forsaken of God fell from one sin to another, * Wordsworth's Eccles. Biog., iii., 488. Archbishop Grindal in the matter of the Prophesyings was equally bold but not equally successful. He wrote to the Queen requesting her "That when your Majesty deals in matters of religion, you would not pronounce so peremptorily as you may do in Civil Matters, but remember that in God's cause His will, and not the will of any earthly creature is to take place. "Tis the Antichristian motto of the Pope, Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas.'"- Neal's Puritans, i., 283. so he; till at last he fell into greater sins than I am Chap. I. willing to mention."* It was high time indeed that some one should Poverty of the parochial speak plainly to the arbitrary Queen. The revenues clergy. of the parochial clergy had so greviously fallen off by the seizure of the impropriations by the crown, that the ministers were impoverished to an almost incredible extent. They were driven to become tailors or shoemakers, or to do anything else which would find them a morsel of bread. The stern Queen's remedy was to forbid them matrimony, or at any rate to throw every difficulty in the way. No priest or deacon was to marry without the consent of the bishop, and two justices of peace for the county, nor without the consent of the parents or relatives of the woman, or of the master or mistress with whom she was at service. Perhaps a more fitting remedy would have been to have caused her courtiers to disgorge some of their spoils. This penury continued to prey upon the § Walton's Life of Hooker. iii., 488. Wordsworth's Eccles. Biog., + Short's, Church History, § 410, 430. Strype quoted by Short, § 406. Note. §Élizabeth restored the Reformation it is true, but in many places left little provision to maintain it. She drew back the patrimony of the Church restored by her sister Mary, and reached somewhat unkindly into the remainder. The one made martyrs in the church, the other beggars. The one executed the men and the other the estates. And therefore reserving the honour of the Reformation to Queen Elizabeth, the question will be, whether the resuming the first-fruits and tenths, putting many of the vicarages in this deplorable condition, and settling a perpetuity of poverty on the Church, was not much more prejudicial than fire and fagot?"-Collier, B. vii., ap. fin. After Chap. I. parochial clergy. The excellent and learned Joseph Hall, when he was Parson of Halsted, in that "sweet and civil county of Suffolk," could not succeed in obtaining from his patron (as he calls him) Sir Robert Drury, "that parcel of his due maintenance which was kept back from his not over-deserving predecessor.' Consequently he was at last obliged to abandon his cure. wards when promoted to a prebend at Wolverhampton, a similar difficulty stood in his way. The revenues of this "goodly Church consisting of a dean and eight prebendaries completely endowed," had been granted in perpetual fee-farm, that is to say, commuted for some small annual payment to be made by one Sir Walter Leveson. As manifest and gross fraud was discovered to have been used in this case, Hall and a brother prebendary who joined with him in the suit, succeeded in obtaining a verdict "after many years;" but this only involved them in fresh difficulties, and at length the matter appears to have ended in a sort of composition, Hall resigning the prebend to a Mr. Lee, "who should constantly reside there, and painfully instruct that long neglected people." It was this scandalous robbery of Church funds which reduced the clergy in so many instances to be hangers on to great houses, and dependents on "worshipful patrons," to the great peril of their independence of character.t *Hall's Autobiography. Wordsworth's Eccles. Biog., iv., 273. + Shall we trust them (the clergy) in some goodly gentleman's house, there to perform holy things? With all my heart, so that persecution The State was not altogether therefore the de- Chap. I. vout protector of the Church in its temporal Church interests, nor was its policy always of a character dragged into most suited to advance the growth of its religious by the State. life. Elizabeth dragged it with her in her arbitrary and blood-stained career, and made it partaker to some extent in the guilt of her violence and tyranny. But by far the principal part of the guilt of the oppressions of that time belonged to the Queen. Of her three archbishops, Parker was compelled to a greater strictness than he desired by her unflinching severity;* Grindal experienced they be not called down from their studies, to say grace to every health; that they may have a little better wages than the cook or butler, as also that there be a groom in the house besides the chaplain (for sometimes to the ten pounds a year, they crowd the looking after a couple of geldings); and that he may not be sent from table, picking his teeth and sighing, with his hat under his arm, whilst the knight and my lady eat up the tarts and chickens. It may be also convenient if he were suffered to speak now and then in the parlour, besides at grace and prayer time; and that my cousin Abigail and he sit not too near one another at meals, nor be presented together to the little vicarage. All this, sir, must be thought of, for in good earnest a person at all thoughtful of himself and conscience, had much better choose to live with nothing but beans and peas-pottage (so that he may have the command of his own thoughts and time) than to have his second and third courses, and to obey the unreasonable humours of some families."- Causes of Contempt of the Clergy, p. 17. Thus too it is said in the Life of Peter Heylin: "After the manner of great men's chaplains, who fill their bellies with the first course, and then rise up and wait for the coming in of the second." Laud endeavoured to abate this servile dependence of the clergy by the Injunctions, published 1629, which forbad any under the condition of barons, to keep chaplains in their houses. * In 1573, the Queen was very indignant with the bishops for not proceeding against the Puritans with sufficient strictness. "The Lord Treasurer also made a long speech before the Commissioners in the Star Chamber, in which by the Queen's order |