tide of royal favor turned. He conformed backward and forward as the king changed his mind. He assisted while Henry lived in condemning to the flames those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out as soon as Henry was dead that the doctrine was false. He was not at a loss, however, for people to burn. The authority of his station and of his gray hairs was employed to overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child regarded persecution. Intolerance in a man who thus wavered in his creed excites a loathing to which it is difficult to give vent without calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious obligation, the primate was first the tool of Somerset and then the tool of Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the course of the succession." These are all statements of facts baldly and caustically expressed. This, however, must be said for Cranmer. He lived in an age when independence of judg ment was at a discount. If he bent to the royal or ruling will, so, speaking generally, did everybody else. For instance, when Henry took a personal repulsion to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and insisted on a divorce, both convocation and parliament granted it without a word.' Who was responsible for the Marian persecution? Blunt, in a long and learned discussion, lays the blame chiefly on Philip, Mary's husband, and the influence of the Spanish divines and clergy who accompanied him.' Dixon controverts this at considerable length and lays the blame chiefly on Mary. An able critic of Dixon agrees with him in assigning to Mary the chief glory of this carnival of death, but disagrees with him in exonerating Philip: "We must allow the cold-blooded Spaniard a full share in the direful tragedies, and not load the unhappy queen with all the odium." The old opinion founded on Foxe, that Bonner, bishop 1 Cranmer's works are edited by Jenkins, 4 vols., Oxf., 1834, and by Cox, 2 vols., Camb., 1844-46; Lives, by Strype, new ed., 2 vols., 1840, and 3 vols., 1847-1854 (ed. for Eccl. Hist. Soc., best ed.); Todd, 2 vols., Lond., 1831; Le Bas, 2 vols., 1833; Collette, Lond., 1887; Mason, Lond. and Bost., 1898. ? Reformation of Church of England, ii, 226 ff. 'Hist. of Church of England, vol. iv. The Marian Persecution, in Church Quar. Rev., Lond., April, 1891, p. 2 190. of London, was chiefly responsible, modern research shows to be untenable, although his contemporaries summed up their own judgment in the terse characterization, "Bloody Bonner." RESPONSIBIL MARIAN PER But this question of responsibility is largely futile and ITY FOR THE perhaps insoluble. (1) Persecution was the spirit of SECUTIONS. the age. If Anglican Protestants suffered under Mary, Bible Protestants and Roman Catholics suffered under Elizabeth. (2) Heresy was punishable with death. According to the standards of orthodoxy interpreted by the Christendom of that time, the new English Churchmen were as truly heretics as Joan Bocher. (3) The attempt to set up another queen in the Protestant interest was as unfortunate for the Protestants as it was traitorous to the rightful ruler, and must have permanently embittered Mary. (4) The memories of her mother's wrongs, her own past bitter history, the circumstances of her home life, her consciousness of failure in winning the love of her subjects, and her ill-health, all tended to inflame and deepen Mary's conscientious convictions that Protestantism was a heresy dangerous to souls and to the commonwealth, and ought. to be suppressed. And when we reflect that on the Continent persecution of Protestantism was practiced on a horribly vast scale, the number of 277 who suffered in England under Mary, though sufficient to brand on the English heart forever an instinctive and unconquerable hatred of Roman Catholicism, seems paltry indeed. 2 CHAPTER VIII. THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. WHEN Elizabeth came to the throne, in 1558, it was very uncertain what course she would pursue, whether that of her half-brother Edward or that of her half-sister Mary. EARLY MEAS- During the reign of the latter she had conformed to the Roman Catholic religion. She still heard mass and was crowned with all the old ceremonial. Bishop Bonner, however, was immediately imprisoned in the Marshalsea, London, where he was kept until his death in 1569; the queen forbade the elevation of the host in her presence ; eight men of reforming views were added to the council; and the queen entertained a petition or paper from one of the councilors recommending (1) the restoration of the Church of England to its former purity, (2) the gradual abasement of those favorable to the late queen, (3) the giving over to the crown of the wealth of those bishops and clergy who had enriched themselves in the late reign—this to be secured by the pressure of the præmunire statute, (4) the disregard of those who wished to carry reform farther, (5) the revision of the English Prayer Book, and (6), until this revision was accomplished, the prohibition of all innovation. It was evident, therefore, that with all of Elizabeth's Roman views she had no intention whatever of keeping England in unity with the pope. Or, as Canon Perry comments on these proposals: "The main body of the nation, indifferent to the form of religion, was to be bribed by the spoil of the Church, and the restoration to the crown of those sources of revenue, the alienation of which they had so grudgingly conceded in the late reign; while the lovers of the Reformation were to be propitiated by the restoration of the reformed worship, changed, however, in some particulars, to conciliate and attract the more moderate of the Romanists." THE PRAYER 1549 AND 1552. In 1548 Edward VI published a new communion service in English-the same substantially as that now used.' In 'Hist. of the Church of England, Students' Series. Lond., 1887. 6th ed., 1894, ii, 255. ? This service is given in full in Appendix to Cardwell, Two Liturgies of Edward VI Compared, pp. 425 ff. 1549 the first Prayer Book came forth from a committee of divines. It was based primarily on the old Latin service books, and secondarily on Archbishop Hermann's consultation, which was drawn up by Melanchthon and Bucer on the basis of Luther's Nuremberg services.' This book was too Catholic to suit Edward and some of the council; it was therefore subjected to a revision. The new book was published in 1552. It was more Protestant than the other, thus sacrificing much, says Perry, that succeeding generations of Churchmen would have gladly retained." In the book of 1549 the direction in the delivery of the bread in the sacrament was: "And when he delivereth the sacrament of the body of Christ he shall say to everyone these words: The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."" In the book of 1552 the words were: "And when he delivereth the bread he shall say: "Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." Protestants, however, considered even the second book of Edward as too RoCalvin called it "intolerable stuff" and "tolerable fool man. eries." 999 4 ELIZABETH'S It was this book which Elizabeth ordered revised in 1558,' and for fear that in the meantime her subjects would worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences she put out this proclamation: She "charges and commands all manner of her subjects, as well RELIGION. those called 'The divines who did most of the work were Cranmer (chief), Ridley, Goodryke, bishop of Ely; Holbeach, bishop of Lincoln: May, dean of St. Paul's; Dr. John Taylor, dean (afterward bishop) of Lincoln; Haynes, dean of Exeter; and Cox, the king's almoner, afterward bishop of Ely. See Procter, Hist. of Book of Common Prayer, with the Sources and Rationale of its Officers, ed. 1892, p. 268, note 4. Francis Procter was the vicar of a village in Norfolk, and his modest but scholarly book, first printed in 1855, is an illustration how good work makes for itself a perennial life. The chief revisers were Cox, Taylor, Cranmer, and Ridley. 'L. c., ii, 212. The two Prayer Books are reprinted in full in parallel columns, with a valuable introd. by E. Cardwell, Oxf., 3d ed., 1852. The words quoted from the Second Book were taken from the Liturgy of John à Lasco, a Polish nobleman and clergyman, who had established in 1549 a foreign Protestant congregation in London. See Cardwell, p. xxviii, note q. The committee of revision was Parker, Pilkington, Bill, May, Cox, Grindal, and Whitehead, supervised by Cecil, the new premier, with the assistance of Guest. Parker was prevented by illness, and Guest, afterward bishop of Rochester, seems to have been the dominating mind on the committee. to the ministry of the Church as all others, that they do forbear to teach or preach, or to give audience to any manner of teaching or preaching other than to the gospel and epistle of the day, and to the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, without exposition of any manner, sense, or meaning, to be applied and added; or to use any other manner of public prayer, rite, or ceremony in the church but that which is already used and by law received as the common litany, used at this present in her majesty's own chapel, and the Lord's Prayer and the creed in English, until consultation may be had by parliament, by her majesty, and her three estates of this realm for the better conciliation and accord of such cases as at this present are moved in matters and ceremonies of religion." This proclamation, which ended by threatening punishment to all who disobeyed, assured both Protestants and Catholics that the Church of England was to be restored according to Henry's plan, and that they should govern themselves accordingly-an assurance that was supported by the declaration of the Lord Chancellor at the opening of parliament in January, 1559. REVISION OF The Prayer Book committee was anxious to conciliate the Protestant element, while Elizabeth was thinking of the Catholics. She had Cecil, therefore, deliver to the revisers a paper asking them whether they could not provide for the retention of the image of the cross, of processions, of copes for holy communion, the presence of noncommunicants at that sacrament, of prayers for the dead, of the prayer of consecration of the elements in the supper, of the placing the elements in the mouth, and of kneeling at reception. These requests were not granted, and Guest, the principal reviser, wrote a letter to Cecil giving reasons. "Ceremonies once taken away as illused should not be taken again. No image should be used in the church. Procession is superfluous; it is better to pray in the church. Because it is sufficient to use but a surplice in baptizing, reading, preaching, and praying, therefore it is enough also for the communion. Noncommunicants should be dismissed before the consecration, and (as it seems) after the offertory. The creed is ordained to be said only of the communicants. Prayer for the dead is not used, because it seems to make for sacrifice; as used in the first book it makes some of the faithful to be in heaven, and to need no mercy, and some of them to be in another place, and to lack help and mercy. The prayer in the first book 1 This interesting document is given in full by Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Church of England, i, 176, 177 (Oxf., 1839). |