'The people of Lancashire refused utterly to come any CHAP XX more to divine service in the English tongue.' Lord Derby forbade the further use of the Liturgy in his private chapel.1 Grindal, who had been appointed Archbishop of York, found on arriving at his diocese that 'the gentlemen' were not affected to godly religion.' They observed 'the old fasts and holidays.' 'They prayed still on their strings of beads.' In London he had been chiefly troubled with the overstraight Genevans. In the North he was in another world.2 Disguised priests flitted about like bats in the twilight, or resided in private houses in serving men's apparel.' Corpse candles were lighted again beside the coffins of the dead, while clerks and curates' sang requiems at their side. In other parts of England ecclesiastical officials, 'nusselled in the Canon Law,' recommenced the iniquities of the spiritual courts, 'maintaining the Pope's authority,' 'propounding questions at the visitation and sessions,' 'rebuking the Protestant preachers,' 'encouraging or winking at persons accused of Papistry, never giving them a sharp word.' They provoked the people to blaspheme God, and ministered occasion to sedition;' and again with the doctrines they brought back the pleasant practices of the good old times-commuting penances for money, compounding for moral enormities, and grinding the widow and the orphan by their fees and extortions.3

1 The Bishop of Carlisle to Sussex,

Oct. 16, 1570.-MSS. Border.

2 Grindal to Cecil, Aug. 29.

3 Appeals in causes of reformation of life are daily committed in the Arches, and prosecuted there contrary to the express law of the decretals, and thereby notorious faults

left unreformed and the offenders
covered or justified, contrary to
God's Holy Word. As for example:
'Mrs. Neames of Woodnesborough,
a woman not only of evil life herself,
but also a broodmother of others,
and James Augustine of Staplehurst,
who had deflowered two maids and

CHAP XX

The reaction was especially marked in Norfolk and Suffolk. An incipient rebellion had been smothered there; but the Duke was passionately loved by the people, who were described as being wildly minded.' Protestantism had been, as usual, injudicious, when judgment was particularly required. The services in Norwich Cathedral had been denuded of all which could savour of Babylon.' 'Certain of the prebendaries' had changed the administration of the Sacrament, pauperized the ceremonial, broken down the organ, and, so far as lay in them, had turned the quire into a Genevan conventicle.1 Where the tendencies to Rome were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn

got them with child. These twain
being heinous offenders, and of the
diocese of Canterbury, were justified
and restored to their Romish honesty
again by the Arches.

'Louis of Sommerby, having
deflowered two maids and got them
with child, appealed to the Arches
and is not reformed but restored to
his Romish priestly iniquity again.

'Baker of Bury, in Suffolk, who was taken with another man's wife, by appeal first to the Arches and then to the Delegates, is by them justified and not reformed.

'Appeals in cases of controversy between party and party, contrary to both law and equity, do pass, whereby the judges, advocates, and proctors do much enrich themselves and burden and weary the poor people.

'The enormities and abuses of spiritual judges in extorting money

with the corrupt dealing of Chancellors and Commissaries. It is to be noted further of Archdeacons who savour of Rome and favour not good religion, they abusing their authority do more harm than any preacher doth profit in divine sermons, partly by severe handling the preachers and sometimes by cruel threatenings, withdrawing the people from God's Word and keeping them in doubt in matters of faith. In the late visitation at Norwich very few preachers escaped without an open rebuke at the lawyers' hands. Neither was any Papist reformed or touched with any sharp word.'— Abuses in the Canon Law, 1569, 1570. MSS. Domestic. Endorsed in Cecil's hand.

1 The Queen to the Bishop of Norwich, Sept. 25.- MSS. Domestic. Cecil's hand.

But

570

of the world, in their passionate desire to consociate CHAP XX themselves in life and death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the Catholic saints. they had not the wisdom of the serpent, and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove.

Had they been let alone had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of revolution and a return of the persecutions-they, too, were not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton, of what English Protestantism could become under favouring conditions. Under the combined management of the Bishop of Peterborough and the Mayor and Corporation of the city, the laity and clergy of Northamptonshire worked harmoniously together. On Sundays and holydays, the usual services were read from the Prayer-book. In the morning there was a sermon; in the afternoon, when prayers were over, the 'youth' were instructed in Calvin's Catechism. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, a 'lecture of Scripture' was read, with extracts from the Liturgy, and afterwards there was a general meeting of the congregation, with the Mayor in the chair, for 'correction of discord, blasphemy, whoredom, drunkenness, or offences against religion.' On Saturdays, the ministers of the different neighbourhoods assembled to compare opinions and discuss difficult texts; and once a quarter all the clergy of the county met for mutual survey of their own general behaviour. Offences given or taken were mentioned, explanations heard, and reproof administered when necessary. Communion was held four times a-year. The clergyman of each parish visited from house to house during the preceding fortnight, to prepare his flock. The

เ

1570

CHAP XX table was in the body of the church, at the far end of the middle aisle;' and while the people were communicating, 'a minister in the pulpit read to them comfortable scriptures of the Passion.'

From these arrangements it is clear that the Genevan element preponderated, but there follows a remarkable proof that even Calvinism, when left to itself, did not necessarily imply 'ecclesiastical despotism.' The congregation of Northampton, as a confession of faith,' accepted Holy Scripture as the Word of God, to be read alike by all, learned and unlearned;' but 'they did condemn as a tyrannous yoke whatever men had set up of their own invention to make articles of faith or bind men's consciences to their laws and statutes; they contented themselves with the simplicity of the pure Word of God and doctrine thereof, a summary abridgment of which they acknowledged to be contained in that Confession of Faith used by all Christians, commonly called the Creed of the Apostles.' 1

The fury of the times unhappily forbad the maintenance of this wise and prudent spirit. As the powers of evil gathered to destroy the Church of England, fiercer temper was required to combat with them, and Protestantism became impatient, like David, of the uniform in which it was sent to the battle. It would have fared ill with England had there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic fanaticism; and if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of their convictions, snapped their traces and flung off their harness, it was they, after all, who saved

1 Order of the services in the Church of Northampton, June 5, 1571-MSS. Domestic, Rolls House.

1570

the Church which attempted to disown them, and with CHAP XX the Church saved also the stolid mediocrity to which the fates then and ever committed and commit the government of it.

In the months which followed the suppression of the Northern rebellion, the peace of Cambridge was troubled by the apparition of a man of genius. Thomas Cartwright, now about thirty-five years old, had entered at St. John's in 1550. He left the University during the Marian persecution, and kept terms as a law student in London. He returned on the accession of Elizabeth, became a Fellow, and continued in residence, till the Vestment Controversy of 1564 sickened him for a time with English theology, and he went over to Geneva. In Calvin's atmosphere he recovered his spirits, came back to Cambridge, and by some accident was appointed Margaret Professor of Divinity. Cartwright was no doubt at this time a questionable occupant of an English ecclesiastical office. He was at the age when men of noble and fiery natures are impatient of unrealities. He had been ordained deacon, but he had come to understand that the socalled 'Holy Orders,' in their transcendental sense, were things of the past. He destroyed his licence. The sole credentials of a teacher which he consented to recognise were the intellect and spirit which had been received direct from God; and Cecil, as Chancellor of the University, was beset with complaints of the wild views which the Margaret Professor was spreading among the students. Pluralities and non-residence, those comfortable stays and supports of the University dignitaries, he denounced as impious, and the Spiritual Courts as damnable, devilish, and detestable.' 'Poor