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DEATH OF MARY.

299

one sessions 1; a pestilence depopulating the country to such a degree as to excite fears of a French invasion by reason of the nation's weakness; for the inhabitants of the villages ceased, might Elizabeth say on her accession; they ceased in Israel, until that I arose, that I arose a mother in Israel; so that at length it was discovered that the Roman Catholic cause, for which alone Mary had lived, and would have been content to die, had by her own measures or misfortunes been brought to nought; and above all, that the fires of Smithfield had shed upon it a baleful and disastrous light. Instead of any attempt being made to alter the succession, though the Queen of Scots was at hand as a candidate for the crown-of such pretensions, too, as would have been likely to secure her some support at another time- Elizabeth, Protestant as she was known to be, was advanced to the throne by acclamation; bonfires lit in the streets before Mary was cold; tables spread for merry-making in honour of her successor; costly pageants prepared for her as she traversed the city, the children crying out, God save Queen Elizabeth!2 the moderate revolted from a religion which spake of peace, but had shed blood upon the earth like water; and all parties weary of a reign of terror under which every man's safety, to whatever party he belonged, was only upon sufferance.

1 Bishop Jewel's View of the Bull, - towards the end. 2 Id.

CHAPTER XIII.

ELIZABETH. HER ACCESSION. HER CAUTION.

REFORMATION AGAIN TRIUMPHANT.

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RETURN OF

INJUNCTIONS OF ELIZA

BETH COMPARED WITH THOSE OF EDWARD. PROGRESS OF THE PURITANS. THE REFORMATION NOT COMPLETED. CONCLUSION.

SUCH was the great agony through which the Reformation was doomed to pass. But that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and so it proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the grave of the cause for a short season, and that of Elizabeth was now to be its triumphant resurrection. It will not, however, be necessary to pursue our subject much further, which, from a History of the Reformation, would soon run into a History of Puritanism, the extreme to which it degenerated for a while. Into this question it is not our intention to enter. For the present, little remained to be done, but to repeal the several laws by which Mary had superseded the acts of Henry and Edward, and to resume the use of those services and rituals which the martyrs had provided, and of which the nature and number have been already told. But Elizabeth proceeded warily. Well as her religious sentiments were understood, none but the most attentive observer could have at first

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detected them in her conduct. A figure of Truth greets her with a translation of the Bible in its hand; she takes the book and reverently kisses it. A court buffoon beseeches her to restore to freedom four prisoners long bound in fetters, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; she answers that she must first endeavour to know the minds of the prisoners themselves. At her coronation in Westminster Abbey, she partakes of the mass1; on Christmas-day, which was about a month later, she demurs to hear it.2 The Puritans make haste to pull down the images; she bids them hold their hand. Unlicensed preachers, be they of what denomination they may, Catholic or Protestant, she silences alike. The marriage of the clergy, much as the measure was desired by the leaders of the Reformation, she refuses, connives at, at last reluctantly concedes. She offends the zealots of both parties, for she openly espouses the cause of neither"; but she makes that party her own, which represents the sober, the stable, the somewhat phlegmatic good sense of the English people; a party without which no government, however brilliant, can be safe; and with which none, however unattractive, can be long in danger. Such policy was natural to herself; "My sweet sister Temperance," was the name by which her brother loved to call her; and, moreover, she had been nursed in the school of caution, and for years one word or deed of indis

1 Strype's Annals, p. 29.

2 Ellis's Letters, Second Series, ii. 261.
3 Strype's Annals, p. 41.

cretion might have cost her her head. Such policy, too, was after the heart of Cecil, perhaps the sagest of her counsellors, who now taught his mistress to thread her way, as he had hitherto threaded his own, through most dangerous and difficult times, with the sagacity of a wizard. The outset of Elizabeth's reign, indeed, was perhaps the masterpiece of his tactics; and years afterwards, when the crisis was passed and the Reformation established, he appealed to that period, as well he might, in proof of his successful devotion to the cause of truth. Still Elizabeth was working her way underground, and by measures which, whilst they did not provoke notice, would not fail to produce fruits. Thus, though she would not exclude Roman Catholics from her privy council, she would yoke them with such colleagues as were friendly to the Reformation, and were at the same time of talents so extraordinary as would readily obtain the mastery in debate. Though she would not weed out of the commission of the peace Roman Catholic magistrates, she would regulate her new appointments with a view to serving the cause she had secretly at heart. She would not compel, or attempt to compel, a Roman Catholic parliament by force to make the laws she desired, but she would take care to influence the elections in such a manner as to secure the return of members who would do so. Her first object appears to have been to soothe the country; to maintain the authority of law, be it as yet what it might; to establish her own po

1 Strype's Annals, p. 82.

ACTS OF SUPREMACY AND UNIFORMITY. 303

sition as monarch; and thus to possess herself of a basis on which she might proceed to build, at her leisure, the permanent prosperity of her realm.

Her parliament assembled; and never did a parliament meet under circumstances more imperative to its wisdom it was left to order and settle all things upon the best and surest foundations; and accordingly it passed the two great acts by which the alliance between church and state was established, those of Supremacy and Uniformity; neither of them, indeed, now enacted for the first time, but both statutes of Henry or Edward, with certain amendments, revived.

Against the Act of Supremacy some objections were urged in the parliament, and some scruples out of it; both, no doubt, proceeding from the same quarter. It was a scandal to place a woman at the head of the church, whose voice was not to be heard in it; yet the principle (it was argued) was acknowledged in a degree by the Catholics themselves, who had no difficulty in recognising the authority of an abbess, though of a nature in many respects much more strictly ecclesiastical, than that with which it was proposed to invest the queen. Neither was there any disposition in her Majesty to challenge an authority to minister in the church (as was maliciously given out), or, indeed, any other authority than such as had been enjoyed by her father and brother of famous memory.2 By the

1 Heylyn, p. 109. fol.

2 Sparrow's Collection, p. 82.

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