Part 52 (1/2)

In 1552 were published the well-known Forty-two Articles of Religion, which formed a compendious creed of the reformed faith. These Articles, reduced finally to thirty-nine, form the present standard of faith and doctrine in the Church of England.

PERSECUTIONS TO SECURE UNIFORMITY.--These sweeping changes in the old creed and in the services of the Church would have worked little hards.h.i.+p or wrong had only everybody, as in More's happy republic, been left free to follow what religion he would. But unfortunately it was only away in ”Nowhere” that men were allowed perfect freedom of conscience and wors.h.i.+p.

By royal edict all preachers and teachers were forced to sign the Forty- two Articles; and severe enactments, known as ”Acts for the Uniformity of Service,” punished with severe penalties any departure from the forms of the new prayer-book. The Princess Mary, who remained a firm and conscientious adherent of the old faith, was not allowed to have the Roman Catholic service in her own private chapel. Even the powerful intercession of the Emperor Charles V. availed nothing. What was considered idolatry in high places could not be tolerated.

Many persons during the reign were imprisoned for refusing to conform to the new wors.h.i.+p; while two at least were given to the flames as ”heretics and contemners of the Book of Common Prayer.” Probably a large majority of the English people were still at this time good Catholics at heart.

5. REACTION UNDER MARY (1553-1558).

RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.--Upon the death of Edward, an attempt was made, in the interest of the Protestant party, to place upon the throne Lady Jane Grey, [Footnote: The leaders of this movement were executed, and Lady Jane Grey was also eventually brought to the block.] a grand-niece of Henry VIII.; but the people, knowing that Mary was the rightful heir to the throne, rallied about her, and she was proclaimed queen amidst great demonstrations of loyalty. Soon after her accession, she was married to Philip II. of Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARY TUDOR.]

Mary was an earnest Catholic, and her zeal effected the full reestablishment of the Catholic wors.h.i.+p throughout the realm. Parliament voted that the nation should return to its obedience to the Papal See; and then the members of both houses fell upon their knees to receive at the hands of the legate of the Pope absolution from the sin of heresy and schism. The sincerity of their repentance was attested by their repeal of all the acts of Henry and of Edward by which the new wors.h.i.+p had been set up in the land. The joy at Rome was unbounded.

But not quite everything done by the reformers was undone. Parliament refused to restore the confiscated Church lands, which was very natural, as much of this property was now in the hands of the lords and commoners (see p. 548). Mary, however, in her zeal for the ancient faith, restored a great part of the property still in the possession of the crown, and refounded many of the ruined monasteries and abbeys.

PERSECUTION OF THE PROTESTANTS.--With the reestablishment of the Roman wors.h.i.+p, the Protestants in their turn became the victims of persecution.

The three most eminent martyrs of what is known as the Marian persecutions were Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. Altogether, between two and three hundred persons suffered death, during this reign, on account of their religion.

For the part she took in the persecutions that marked her reign, Mary should be judged not by the standard of our time, but by that of her own.

Punishment of heresy was then regarded, by both Catholics and Protestants alike, as a duty which could be neglected by those in authority only at the peril of Heaven's displeasure. Believing this, those of that age could consistently do nothing less than labor to exterminate heresy with axe, sword, and f.a.got.

THE LOSS OF CALAIS.--The marriage of Philip and Mary had been earnestly wished for by the Emperor Charles V., in order that Philip, in those wars with France which he well knew must be a part of the bequest which he should make to his son, might have the powerful aid of England. This was Philip's chief reason in seeking the alliance; and in due time he called upon Mary for a.s.sistance against the French king. The result of England's partic.i.p.ation in the war was her mortifying loss of Calais (see p. 487), which the French, by an unexpected attack, s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the hands of its garrison (1558). The unfortunate queen did not live out the year that marked this calamity, which she most deeply deplored.

6. FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM UNDER ELIZABETH (1558-1603).

THE QUEEN.--Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. She seems to have inherited the characteristics of both parents; hence the inconsistencies of her disposition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH INTO LONDON. (Showing the costumes of the time.)]

When the death of Mary called Elizabeth to the throne, she was twenty-five years of age. Like her father, she favored the reformed faith rather from policy than conviction. It was to the Protestants alone that she could look for support; her t.i.tle to the crown was denied by every true Catholic in the realm, for she was the child of that marriage which the Pope had forbidden under pain of the anathemas of the Church.

Elizabeth possessed a strong will, indomitable courage, admirable judgment, and great political tact. It was these qualities which rendered her reign the strongest and most ill.u.s.trious in the record of England's sovereigns, and raised the nation from a position of insignificance to a foremost place among the states of Europe.

Along with her good and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. ”In the profusion and recklessness of her lies,” declares Green, ”Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom.”

HER MINISTERS.--One secret of the strength and popularity of Elizabeth's government was the admirable judgment she exercised in her choice of advisers. Around her Council-board she gathered the wisest and strongest men to be found in the realm. The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh), a man of great sagacity and ceaseless industry, to whose able counsel and prudent management is largely due the success of Elizabeth's reign. He stood at the head of the Queen's Council for forty years. His son Robert, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Sir Francis Walsingham were also prominent among the queen's advisers.

REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCH.--As Mary undid the work in religion of Henry and Edward, so now her work is undone by Elizabeth. The religious houses that had been reestablished by Mary were again dissolved, and Parliament, by two new Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, relaid the foundations of the Anglican Church.

The Act of Supremacy required all the clergy, and every person holding office under the crown, to take an oath declaring the queen to be the supreme governor of the realm in all spiritual as well as temporal things, and renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate. For refusing to take this oath, many Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and many more endured within the Tower the worse horrors of the rack.

The Act of Uniformity forbade any clergyman to use any but the Anglican liturgy, and required every person to attend the Established Church on Sunday and other holy days. For every absence a fine of one s.h.i.+lling was imposed. The persecutions which arose under this law caused many Catholics to seek freedom of wors.h.i.+p in other countries.

THE PROTESTANT NON-CONFORMISTS.--The Catholics were not the only persons among Elizabeth's subjects who were opposed to the Anglican wors.h.i.+p. There were Protestant non-conformists--the Puritans and the Separatists--who troubled her almost as much as the Romanists.

The Puritans were so named because they desired a _purer_ form of wors.h.i.+p than the Anglican. To these earnest reformers the Church Elizabeth had established seemed but half-reformed. Many rites and ceremonies, such as wearing the surplice and making the cross in baptism, had been retained; and these things, in their eyes, appeared mere Popish superst.i.tions. What they wanted was a more sweeping change, a form of wors.h.i.+p more like that of the Calvinistic churches of Geneva, in which city very many of them had lived as exiles during the Marian persecution.

They, however, did not at once withdraw from the Established Church, but remaining within its pale, labored to reform it, and to shape its doctrines and discipline to their notions.

The Separatists were still more zealous reformers than the Puritans: in their hatred of everything that bore any resemblance to the Roman wors.h.i.+p, they flung away the surplice and the Prayer-book, severed all connection with the Established Church, and refused to have anything to do with it.