THE

BRITISH MAGAZINE.

JULY 1, 1837.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

AN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH,

QUEEN OF ENGLAND, A DESIDERATUM. There is certainly no want of talent or effort in the body diffusive of the republic of literature of this country at the present time. The press sufficiently attests the fact. It might therefore be a just matter of surprise, that any work of importance, and much more so if the importance were obvious, should be overlooked and neglected. And yet, with all the superfluity of literary exertion which can hardly be regretted, it must be admitted by all who are interested in such subjects

, that we are still in want of anything like a complete or satisfactory history of the Church, or Christianity, in this country during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The secular history of that eventful and interesting reign has found an original and most satisfactory historiographer in Sharon Turner; although some small portions might have been spared with benefit.' I shall have to recur to this history before I conclude. The greater number of our ecclesiastical historians, who confine themselves to the period referred to, or, to speak more distinctly, the historians of the Reformation, content themselves with carrying on the narrative of that purgatorial revolution to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, when the reformed church first assumed the regular form which it has preserved to the present day. This was perfectly reasonable ; and we are quite satisfied that Heylin, without his authorities, and Burnet with them, together with Soames, who has gleaned everything from both, and from the indefatigable collector, Strype, should terminate their labours at the same point. But a great many additional considerations make it desirable that the historical inquiry should proceed further, and, indeed, run through the long reign of the virgin Queen to the very end, if not into the incipient reign of her successor. Strype's Annals of the Queen have done much; and the ecclesiastical student has contracted a debt of gratitude to the truly protestant compiler of our church's history which can never be discharged. But with all his qualifications and performances, Strype has not anticipated the wants or just expectations of the protestant

VOL. XII.-July, 1837.

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reader. His object was, to collect everything which either was or might turn out to be valuable. Such a plan must embrace much matter which to general readers would be superfluous. The work, too, was his last; and, of course, betrays much of the imperfection of its circumstances, particularly in the latter portion. The estimable author, likewise, appears to have had his attention but imperfectly awake to the more critical points of the fortunes of the reformed Christianity in this kingdom ; nor does he seem to have been so sensible as he might be to the calumnies which were industriously circulated in the countries of Europe, even in English, and much more in Latin, Italian, and Spanish, against the cause, agents, and subjects of the Anglican reformed church.

The defects just stated are perhaps, under present circumstances, more clamorous for supply than in the age of Strype, or any which has succeeded to the times in which we live. T'he historians of Romanism stalk over ground which they assume to be quite their own. Dodd of the last century, and Butler of this, exhibit the martyrs of the Vatican on British ground, as if their patent were unquestionable, and as if the descendants and adherents of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Philpots, &c. had nothing to do but to acknowledge their own defeat. Circumstances, too, favourable to the purpose, have introduced into this country of late a greater portion of papal books than usual. All descriptions of cotemporary works vilifying and calumniating the English Reformation, particularly in foreign languages, have found their way into the stocks of our first-rate bibliopolists. How far this may have been accidental is another question. But so the fact stands,

Now what I have in view in suggesting the history which forms the subject of this communication is, to obtain from some competent scholar something reasonably and effectually counteractive of the position assumed by our religious opponents. He who undertakes the task need not be afraid that he shall find nothing to do; although at the same time he may spare himself extravagant alarm. He should understand, besides his own language, not only the Latin, which is implied in the lowest pretensions to scholarship, but likewise the Italian and Spanish. He must study the works of Cardinal Allen, both vernacular and Latin, as well as those of Sanders and Parsons,--of the former, in particular, the Schisma, with Rishton's continuation, and the Monarchia Visibilis; of the latter, the De Persecutione Anglicana, with some others. These, indeed, or the chief of them, will be found in Bridgewater's Concertatio Eccl. Cath., a work containing other pieces of importance to the history of the time. Indeed, Allen's Defence, whether in English, or, as there, in Latin, is very serviceable, as enouncing plain, honest, papal doctrine, without phrases, reserve, or disguise, even to the acknowledgment and employment of the third canon of the fourth Lateran council. The Admonition found in Bridgewater's collection, compared with the Admonition to the Nobility, sanctioned, at least, by the cardinal, accompanying the celebrated Armada, will place in a strong and interesting light the union of the lamb and the wolf not uncommon in the composition of the Romanized character. The or might h matter

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smaller histories of the Schisma, by the Jesuit, Ribadeneyra, and by
the Florentine gentleman, Bernardo Davanzati, still popular, and re-
produced, (the Venetian edition of 1756 is before me,) ought not to
be neglected ; and much less the bulky histories, of Pollini, published
in Rome, with licence, 1594, and of Diego de Yepes, Confessor of
Don Felipe II., de gloriosa memoria, in Madrid, with privilege, 1599.
The imputed miracles should not be despised; for, false as they were
in reality, the belief of them and their effects are historical facts of no
little moment and instruction. The two Histories of the Jesuitic
Mission in England, by the two Jesuits, in separate works, Henry
Moore, and Daniel Bartoli, will claim a careful perusal, and furnish
facts of importance, which in after times it has been thought prudent
to make a portion of the Disciplina Arcani. The pictorial exhibitions
of Verstegan, in his Theatrum Crudelitatum Hæreticorum, as well as
the Eccl. Angl. Trophæa, published with the privilege of Gregory XIII.,
in Rome, 1581, with five additional plates and explanations, are per-
haps, still more than simple writings, a proof of what improvements
invention is capable, when no restraint from shame, or the fear of de-
tection, is present; and when the writer or designer is secure among
all-potent friends, and undique recalcitrat tutus.

In opposition to this array of papal strength, the protestant historian
will first and duly avail himself of the materials which that very array
supplies—the gratuitous character of many of the assertions, and the
self-contradictions into which the authors sometimes fall—to pass over
counter-evidence which belongs to other sources. He will make him-
self well acquainted with the general train of the history of the time
in Camden, and Strype likewise, who, on account of his documents, is
to be read as a cotemporary. Among particular defenders of the
ecclesiastical acts of the rulers during the reign of Elizabeth, the first,
or earliest, place is perhaps due to the opponents of Sanders' Magnum
Opus, Bartholomew Clerk, in his Fidelis Servi, Subdito Infideli Responsio,
and George Ackworth, in his De Visibili Rom' anarchia, both in 1573.
They would have been better had they been less rhetorical. For the
earlier part of the period, however, they are valuable. There succeeds
chronologically another work of more merit, and I apprehend very
little known, by Laurence Humfrey, Jesuitismi Pars I.: sive de Praxi
Romanæ Curiæ contra Resp. et Principes : Et de nova legatione
Jesuitarum in Angliam, &c. 1582. It is particularly directed against
Parsons' De Persecutione Anglicana, and contains a triumphant de-
fence of severities rendered necessary by the sufferers. Burghley's
Execution of Justice follows, the first edition in 1583, the second (more
common) the beginning of the next year. The student will observe
how feebly, though adroitly, the attempt is made to answer it in Allen's
Defence. These works, in point of time, fall considerably short of the
entire extent of the reign under notice ; and perhaps the general his-
tory of the country, the public trials of the prisoners, afford sufficient
data by which to determine both their guilt and its peculiar character.
But of all writers on this critical portion of our history, none is better
entitled to attention than the secular priest William Watson, in his
Important Considerations, exculpating the queen and government from

severity not made necessary by the sufferers, by their treason and their defiance of the law. The Jesuits owed him a mortal grudge ; and they never suffer such debts to go unpaid. In the course of the studies necessary in the task here proposed, it will occur, as a procedure absolutely necessary, to direct attention–a deliberate and intense attention to the synchronous events of the continent, to the consistory of the pope, and the cabinets of the sovereigns called catholic,-to the solemn confederacy for the destruction of the reformed religion, particularly in England, to the acts projected and executed in consequence of that confederacy, and to the immense amount of hostile force threatening the existence, not only of protestantism, but of the kingdom itself. It was in the sovereignties of Europe, spiritual and temporal, and in the councils of their rulers, that the destinies of England were discussed and settled. What inquisitions had done in Spain and Italy, and a sweeping massacre in France, was to be effected in Britain by its entire subjugation, and the consequent purifying process. Christian England was to be blotted out from the nuinber of nations. This is the true secret and justification of the preventive severity of her government. An attentive and impartial inquirer need go no further for proof of this fact than to the anathematizing bull of Pius V. against the queen of England. It has been said in apology, that his holiness was misinformed : and there is great reason to believe he was: and the misrepresentations given before the bull will account for those continued to the present time after it. They mutually reflect the light of truth on each other.

One word upon the pretended martyrdoms of the sufferers. The bull just alluded to absolutely identified the character of priest and traitor: they were thenceforward inseparable. This afforded the pretence that the individuals suffered for their religion. To the complete and eternal refutation of this pretence, it is provable fact, that had not these persons superadded the character of traitor to that of subject of the Roman religion, whether lay or ecclesiastic, they would have incurred do material molestation ; slight forfeitures would have been the worst. The acknowledged quiet enjoyed by Romanists during the first ten years of Elizabeth places this fact beyond any rational question; and no claim can be advanced to the praise of martyrdom by those of the Roman priesthood who were executed in her reign, except treason convey it

There is a book which I have almost wittingly omitted on this subject, because it may best be introduced here it is the Pseudomartyr of the celebrated John Donne, published in 1610. I may run some risk of underrating the reading of the readers of the British Magazine, but I am half inclined to suspect that I have named a volume hardly known in the present age further than the mere title ; and it deserves much better acquaintance. It was a hasty but not ill-considered work. It was written, as the biographer, Isaac Walton, relates, in the space of six weeks; but the contents had been laid in long before. It is a work containing passages of sound argument and research on an important subject, with flashes of sustained eloquence to be met with only in productions of the highest order. The sketch of the