greater part was distributed among the nobles and any Henry had now been completely victorious in his contest with the Pope; and the English clergy were so humbled and intimidated that they dared not offer open resistance to the royal will. So far as he had advanced on the road of ecclesiastical reform, with the single exception of the confiscation of the monasteries, the king had probably been heartily supported by a majority of the nation. But there was a growing minority who were eagerly desirous of essential changes in religious faith. With these Henry had no sympathy. Concurrently with the series of political and legal Amos, Reformation Parliament, p. 313. Mr. Amos enumerates among the real property statutes of this year, the statutes-of Wills; of limitations; of fines; for conveyances of tithes; for lessees of tenants in tail; for executions upon lands; for partitions; for disseisins; for grantees of reversions; for collusive recoveries; for arrearages of rent claimable by executors; and for buying of titles. Another indirect consequence of the partition of the church lands among the laity, to which Mr. Amos also calls attention, was to promote the extinction of villeinage. Sir Thomas Smith in his ⚫ Commonwealth of England' (b. 3, c. 10.) tells us that the clergy, while impressing upon the laity the duty of manumitting their villeins, had a scruple in conscience to impoverish and despoil the church so much as to manumit such as were bound to their churches, or to the manors which the church had gotten,' but 'the monasteries coming into temporal men's hands have been occasion that now they (the villeins) be almost all manumitted. Doctrines of the Articles. A.D. 1539. changes which had been effected in the ecclesiastical system, severe measures of repression had been taken against the holders of heretical doctrines, and many had from time to time suffered for their opinions. In his new character of supreme head of the Church, Henry now determined to vindicate its doctrinal orthodoxy by imposing on his people a compulsory belief in all the Act of the Six leading doctrines of the Romish Church. By the 'Statute of the Six Articles,' as it is commonly called, it was affirmed I. That in the eucharist there is really present the natural body of Christ, under the forms, but without the substance, of bread and wine. 2. That communion in both kinds is not necessary to salvation. 3. That priests may not marry by the law of God. 4 That vows of chastity ought to be observed. 5. That private masses ought to be retained in the English Church. 6. That auricular confession is expedient and necessary, and ought to be retained. The penalties for writing, preaching, or disputing against these articles were Against the first article, death as a heretic without the option of abjuring. Against the other five, the usual penalties of felony. The Act also declared the marriages of priests or nuns utterly void, ordered any such who were married to be immediately separated, and pronounced their future cohabitation to be felony. Lastly, persons contemptuously refusing to confess at the usual times, or to receive the sacrament, were, for the first offence to be fined and imprisoned; and for the second, to suffer the punishment of felony. In some other respects Henry was induced by Cromwell and Cranmer to English transla favour Protestant doctrines. An English translation of the Bible was directed to be set up in each parish church for the use of the people; and in the 'Institu tion of the Bible. A.D. 1538. 2 1 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14, 'An Act for Abolishing of Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion.' In 1543, by an Act for the advancement of true religion' (34 Hen. VIII. c. 1) the liberty formerly granted of reading the Bible was abridged. tion' and 'Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian man,'-books published by royal authority, explications were given which, if they did not absolutely proscribe most of the ancient opinions, threw at least much doubt upon them, and gave intimations which the people, now become attentive to these questions, were acute enough to interpret.'1 'Institution' and 'Erudition of a Christian man.' Edward VI. 1547-1553. under Edw. VI. The actual reformation in religion was established in the early part of the reign of Edward VI., mainly The Religious through the instrumentality of Cranmer and the Pro- Reformation tector Somerset. The first Act of Edward's first Parliament (which met on the 4th of Nov. 1547), directed the sacrament of the altar to be administered in both kinds, as being agreeable to primitive usage." In the following year was passed the Act for Uniformity of Service and Administration of the Sacraments,' ordaining that the 'order of divine worship,' contained in the book of Common Prayer which had been, 'with the aid of the Holy Ghost,' drawn up by a committee of bishops and other divines appointed for that purpose, should in future be the only one to be used by all ministers in any cathedral, parish, or other church. In the same session, the marriage of priests was declared lawful; and shortly afterwards images and pictures of saints in churches were ordered to be destroyed. But these changes were not Insurrections. carried out without considerable opposition from a part of the nation. Insurrections of a serious nature broke A.D. 1549. 1 Hallam, Const. Hist. i. 82. 21 Edw. VI. c. 1, An Act against such as shall irreverently speak against the sacrament of the altar, and the receiving thereof under both kinds.' 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 1. The penalties for refusing to use, or speaking or writing in derogation of, the Book of Common Prayer, were, for the first or second offence, a fine; for the third, forfeiture of goods and imprisonment for life. In 1552, a second Act of Uniformity (5 & 6 Edw. VI. c. 1) was passed, reciting that the Book of Common Prayer had been perused, explained, and made fully perfect,' and ordering the new version alone to be used. * 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 21. 5 3 & 4 Edw. VI. c. 10. Persecution. Mary. 1553-1558. Re-establishment of the Papal religion. The Marian The Reformation promoted by it. out in Devonshire, Norfolk, and several other counties; and religious persecution, 'the deadly original sin of the reformed churches' was employed as vigorously, if not so extensively, as in the succeeding reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. During the short reign of Mary the Papal religion was completely re-established, probably with the entire approval of a large portion, if not of a majority, of the nation, for whom the progress of the reformation doctrines had been too precipitate. All the laws made against the supremacy of the See of Rome, since the 20th year of Henry VIII., were formally repealed; but it was found impossible to restore the ecclesiastical property in the hands of subjects; and even the bill for restoring to the Church the first-fruits and impropriations in the queen's hands was passed not without difficulty. The cruel and wide-spread persecution of the Protestants under Mary, far from eradicating the reformed faith was instrumental in promoting it. The abhorrence and disgust excited in the people against Mary and the Romish hierarchy were extended to the doctrines which they professed. Many persons,' remarks Hallam, are said to have become Protestants under Mary, who, at her coming to the throne, had retained the contrary persuasion. And the strongest proof of this may be drawn from the acquiescence of the great body of the people in the re-establishment of Protestantism by Elizabeth, when compared with the seditions and discontent on that account under Edward.' 1 1 & 2 Phil. & Mary, c. 8, repealing 'all Statutes, Articles, and Provisions made against the See Apostolic of Rome, since the 20th year of King Henry VIII. and also for the Establishment of all Spiritual and Ecclesiasti cal possessions and hereditaments conveyed to the Laity.' The preamble recites that much false and erroneous doctrine hath been taught, preached and written, partly by divers the natural-born subjects of this realm, ard partly being brought hither from sundry other foreign countries, had been sown and spread abroad within the same.' 2 Const. Hist. i. 107. CHAPTER XII. THE TUDOR PERIOD. REIGN OF ELIZABETH. (A.D. 1558-1603.) THE reign of Elizabeth spans a period of very great political and religious ferment throughout Europe. It is the glory of this great queen that by her courage and wisdom, aided by the able policy of her statesmen, Cecil, Nicholas Bacon, and Walsingham, she safely guided the nation through a sea of troubles, foreign and domestic, and achieved for England a position in the foremost rank of European monarchies. In commercial and naval enterprise, in every branch of material prosperity, the country advanced with sure and rapid strides, while literature was adorned by the writings of Shakspere, Spenser, Sidney, Hooker, and Jewel. But of constitutional progress during the greater part of Elizabeth's reign there is little to be recorded. From her father she had inherited the arbitrary Tudor notions of the royal prerogative. Her government was eminently despotic both in church and state; and it was only at intervals that the gradually reviving spirit of liberty manifested itself in the House of Commons. A brief consideration of the principal features of Ecclesiastical Elizabeth's ecclesiastical polity-so important in its in- Elizabeth. polity of fluence on later English constitutional history-will appropriately precede a discussion of the civil government during her reign. |