The purification of the churches began promptly. [Sidenote: 1547] Images, roods and stained glass windows were destroyed, while the buildings were whitewashed on the inside, properly to express the austerity of the new cult. Evidence shows that these acts, countenanced by the government, were popular in the towns but not in the country districts.
[Sidenote: Book of Common Prayer, 1549]
Next came the preparation of an English liturgy. The first Book of Common Prayer was the work of Cranmer. Many things in it, including some of the most beautiful portions, were translations from the Roman Breviary; but the high and solemn music of its language must be credited to the genius of its translator. Just as the English Bible popularized the Reformation, so the English Prayer Book strengthened and broadened the hold of the Anglican church. Doctrinally, it was a compromise between Romanism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. Its use was enforced by the Act of Uniformity, [Sidenote: 1549] {313} the first and mildest of the statutes that bore that name. Though it might be celebrated in Greek, Latin or Hebrew as well as in English, priests using any other service were punished with loss of benefices and imprisonment.
At this time there must have been an unrecorded struggle in the Council of Regency between the two religious parties, followed by the victory of the innovators. [Sidenote: End of 1549] The pace of the Reformation was at once increased; between 1550 and 1553 England gave up most of what was left of distinctively medieval Catholicism. For one thing, the marriage of priests was now legalized. [Sidenote: Accelerated Reformation] That public opinion was hardly prepared for this as yet is shown by the act itself in which celibacy of the clergy is declared to be the better condition, and marriage only allowed to prevent vice. The people still regarded priests' wives much as concubines and the government spoke of clergymen as "sotted with their wives and children." There is one other bit of evidence, of a most singular character, showing that this and subsequent Acts of Uniformity were not thoroughly enforced. The test of orthodoxy came to be taking the communion occasionally according to the Anglican rite. This was at first expected of everyone and then demanded by law; but the law was evaded by permitting a conscientious objector to hire a substitute to take communion for him.
In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised in a Protestant sense. Bucer had something to do with this revision, and so did John Knox. Little was now left of the mass, nothing of private confession or anointing the sick. Further steps were the reform of the Canon Law and the publication of the Forty-two Articles of Religion. These were drawn up by Cranmer on the basis of thirteen articles agreed upon by a conference of three English Bishops, four English doctors, and two German missionaries, Boyneburg and Myconius, in {314} May, 1538. Cranmer hoped to make his statement irenic; and in fact it contained some Roman and Calvinistic elements, but in the main it was Lutheran. Justification by faith was asserted; only two sacraments were retained. Transubstantiation was denounced as repugnant to Scripture and private masses as "dangerous impostures." The real presence was maintained in a Lutheran sense: the bread was said to be the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ, but only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. It was said that by Christ's ordinance the sacrament is not reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
A reform of the clergy was also undertaken, and was much needed. In 1551 Bishop Hooper found in his diocese of 311 clergymen, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, ten could not say the Lord's Prayer in English, seven could not tell who was its author, and sixty-two were absentees, chiefly because of pluralities.
The notable characteristic of the Edwardian Reformation was its mildness. There were no Catholic martyrs. It is true that heretics coming under the category of blasphemers or deniers of Christianity could still be put to death by common law, and two men were actually executed for speculations about the divinity of Christ, but such cases were wholly exceptional.
[Sidenote: Social disorders]
The social disorders of the time, coming to a head, seemed to threaten England with a rising of the lower classes similar to the Peasants' War of 1525 in Germany. The events in England prove that, however much these ebullitions might be stimulated by the atmosphere of the religious change, they wore not the direct result of the new gospel. In the west of England and in Oxfordshire the lower classes rebelled {315} under the leadership of Catholic priests; in the east the rising, known as Kett's rebellion, took on an Anabaptist character. The real causes of discontent were the same in both cases. The growing wealth of the commercial classes had widened the gap between rich and poor. The inclosures continued to be a grievance, by the ejection of small tenants and the appropriation of common lands. But by far the greatest cause of hardship to the poor was the debasement of the coinage. Wheat, barley, oats and cattle rose in price to two or three times their previous cost, while wages, kept down by law, rose only 11 per cent. No wonder that the condition of the laborer had become impossible.
The demands of the eastern rising, centering at Norwich, bordered on communism. The first was for the enfranchisement of all bondsmen for the reason that Christ had made all men free. Inclosures of commons and private property in game and fish were denounced and further agrarian demands were voiced. The rebels committed no murder and little sacrilege, but vented their passions by slaughtering vast numbers of sheep. All the peasant risings were suppressed by the government, and the economic forces continued to operate against the wasteful agricultural system of the time and in favor of wool-growing and manufacture.
[Sidenote: Execution of Somerset, January 22, 1552]
After five years under Protector Somerset there was a change of government signalized, as usual under Henry VIII, by the execution of the resigning minister. Somerset suffered from the unpopularity of the new religious policy in some quarters and from that following the peasants' rebellion in others. As usual, the government was blamed for the economic evils of the time and for once, in having debased the coinage, justly. Moreover the Protector had been {316} involved by scheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, for this least bloody of all English ministers in that century, had executed his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious man rightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.
Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the class of mere adventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and the worst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only be deposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiated himself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council. Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name of royalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At his command Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote: Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, again using the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.
The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward lived and was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visibly declining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alter the succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick had been a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's will appointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1) Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there had been born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married Henry Grey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriage were three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, was picked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to {317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was now appealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter the succession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but his lukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant Lady Jane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession to the crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting to do this.
[1] See A. L. Lowell:Public Opinion and Popular Government, 1914.
[Sidenote: Proclamation of Queen Jane, July 10, 1553]
When Edward died on July 6, 1553, Northumberland had taken such precautions as he could to ensure the success of his project. He had gathered his own men at London and tried to secure help from France, whose king would have been only too glad to involve England in civil war. The death of the king was concealed for four days while preparations were being made, and then Queen Jane was proclaimed. Mary's challenge arrived the next day and she (Mary) at once began raising an army. Had her person been secured the plot might have succeeded, but she avoided the set snares. Charles V wished to support her for religious reasons, but feared to excite patriotic feeling by dispatching an army and therefore confined his intervention to diplomatic representations to Northumberland.
[Sidenote: Accession of Mary]
There was no doubt as to the choice of the people. Even the strongest Protestants hated civil turmoil more than they did Catholicism, and the people as a whole felt instinctively that if the crown was put up as a prize for unscrupulous politicians there would be no end of strife. All therefore flocked to Mary, and almost without a struggle she overcame the conspirators and entered her capital amid great rejoicing. Northumberland, after a despicable and fruitless recantation, was executed and so were his son and his son's wife, Queen Jane. Sympathy was felt for her on {318} account of her youth, beauty and remarkable talents, but none for her backers.
The relief with which the settlement was regarded gave the new queen at least the good will of the nation to start with. This she gradually lost. Just as Elizabeth instinctively did the popular thing, so Mary seemed almost by fatality to choose the worst course possible. Her foreign policy, in the first place, was both un-English and unsuccessful. [Sidenote: Marriage of Mary and Philip, July 25, 1554] Almost at once Charles V proposed his son Philip as Mary's husband, and, after about a year of negotiation, the marriage took place. The tremendous unpopularity of this step was due not so much to hostility to Spain, though Spain was beginning to be regarded as the national foe rather than France, but to the fear of a foreign domination. England had never before been ruled by a queen, if we except the disastrous reign of Mathilda, and it was natural to suppose that Mary's husband should have the prerogative as well as the title of king. In vain Philip tried to disabuse the English of the idea that he was asserting any independent claims; in some way the people felt that they were being annexed to Spain, and they hated it.
The religious aim of the marriage, to aid in the restoration of Catholicism, was also disliked. Cardinal Pole frankly avowed this purpose, declaring that
as Christ, being heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from the royal throne, to be at once Spouse and Son of the Virgin Mary and to be made the Comforter and Saviour of mankind; so, in like manner, the greatest of all princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms that he, too, might come hither into this land of trouble, to be the spouse and son of this virgin Mary . . . to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.
For Mary herself the marriage was most unhappy. {319} She was a bride of thirty-eight, already worn and aged by grief and care; her bridegroom was only twenty-seven. She adored him, but he almost loathed her and made her miserable by neglect and unfaithfulness. Her passionate hopes for a child led her to believe and announce that she was to have one, and her disappointment was correspondingly bitter.
So unpopular was the marriage coupled with the queen's religious policy, that it led to a rebellion under Sir Thomas Wyatt. Though suppressed, it was a dangerous symptom, especially as Mary failed to profit by the warning. Her attempts to implicate her sister Elizabeth in the charge of treason failed.
Had Mary's foreign policy only been strong it might have conciliated the patriotic pride of the ever present jingo. But under her leadership England seemed to decline almost to its nadir. The command of the sea was lost and, as a consequence of this and of the military genius of the Duke of Guise, Calais, held for over two centuries, was conquered by the French. [Sidenote: 1558] With the subsequent loss of Guines the last English outpost on the continent was reft from her.
[Sidenote: Religious policy]
Notwithstanding Mary's saying that "Calais" would be found in her heart when she died, by far her deepest interest was the restoration of Catholicism. To assist her in this task she had Cardinal Reginald Pole, in whose veins flowed the royal blood of England and whom the pope appointed as legate to the kingdom. Though Mary's own impulse was to act strongly, she sensibly adopted the emperor's advice to go slowly and, as far as possible, in legal forms. Within a month of her succession she issued a proclamation stating her intention to remain Catholic and her hope that her subjects would embrace the same religion, but at the same time disclaiming the intention of forcing them and forbidding strife and the use of {320} "those new-found devilish terms of papist or heretic or such like."
Elections to the first Parliament were free; it passed two noteworthy Acts of Repeal, [Sidenote: Repeal of Reforming acts] the first restoring thestatus quoat the death of Henry VIII, the second restoring thestatus quoof 1529 on the eve of the Reformation Parliament. This second act abolished eighteen statutes of Henry VIII and one of Edward VI, but it refused to restore the church lands. The fate of the confiscated ecclesiastical property was one of the greatest obstacles, if not the greatest, in the path of reconciliation with Rome. The pope at first insisted upon it, and Pole was deeply grieved at being obliged to absolve sinners who kept the fruits of their sins. But the English, as the Spanish ambassador Renard wrote, "would rather get themselves massacred than let go" the abbey lands. The very Statute of Repeal, therefore, that in other respects met Mary's demands, carefully guarded the titles to the secularized lands, making all suits relating to them triable only in crown courts.
The second point on which Parliament, truly representing a large section of public opinion, was obstinate, was in the refusal to recognize the papal supremacy. The people as a whole cared not what dogma they were supposed to believe, but they for the most part cordially hated the pope. They therefore agreed to pass the acts of repeal only on condition that nothing was said about the royal supremacy. To Mary's insistence they returned a blank refusal to act and she was compelled to wait "while Parliament debated articles that might well puzzle a general council," as a contemporary wrote.
Lords and Commons were quite willing to pass acts to strengthen the crown and then to leave the responsibility {321} for further action to it. Thus the divorce of Henry and Catharine of Aragon was repealed and the Revival of treason laws were revived. [Sidenote: Revival of treason laws] Going even beyond the limit of Henry VIII it was made treason to "pray or desire" that God would shorten the queen's days. Worse than that, Parliament revived the heresy laws. It is a strange comment on the nature of legislatures that they have so often, as in this case, protected property better than life, and made money more sacred than conscience. However, it was not Parliament but the executive that carried out to its full extent the policy of persecution and religious reaction.
The country soon showed its opposition. A temporary disarray that might have been mistaken for disintegration had been produced in the Protestant ranks by the recantation of Northumberland. The restoration of the mass was accomplished in orderly manner in most places. The English formulas had been patient of a Catholic interpretation, and doubtless many persons regarded the change from one liturgy to the other as a matter of slight importance. Moreover the majority made a principle of conformity to the government, believing that an act of the law relieved the conscience of the individual of responsibility. But even so, there was a large minority of recusants. Of 8800 beneficed clergy in England, 2000 were ejected for refusal to comply. A very large number fled to the Continent, forming colonies at Frankfort-on-the-Main and at Geneva and scattering in other places. The opinion of the imperial ambassador Renard that English Protestants depended entirely on support from abroad was tolerably true for this reign, for their books continued to be printed abroad, and a few further translations from foreign reformers were made. It is noteworthy that these mostly treat of the {322} question, then so much in debate, whether Protestants might innocently attend the mass.
Other expressions of the temper of the people were the riots in London. On the last day of the first Parliament a dog with a tonsured crown, a rope around its neck and a writing signifying that priests and bishops should be hung, was thrown through a window into the queen's presence chamber. At another time a cat was found tonsured, surpliced, and with a wafer in its mouth in derision of the mass. The perpetrators of these outrages could not be found.
[Sidenote: Passive resistance]
A sterner, though passive, resistance to the government was gloriously evinced when stake and rack began to do their work. Mary was totally unprepared for the strength of Protestant feeling in the country. She hoped a few executions would strike terror into the hearts of all and render further persecution unnecessary. But from the execution of the first martyr, John Rogers, it was plain that the people sympathized with the victims rather than feared their fate. Not content with warring on the living, Mary even broke the sleep of the dead.[1] The bodies of Bucer and Fagius were dug up and burned. The body of Peter Martyr's wife was also exhumed, though, as no evidence of heresy could be procured, it was thrown on a dunghill to rot.
[Sidenote: Martyrs, October 16, 1555]
The most famous victims were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. The first two were burnt alive together, Latimer at the stake comforting his friend by assuring him, "This day we shall light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." A special procedure was reserved for Cranmer, as primate. Every effort was made to get him to recant. He at first signed four submissions recognizing the {323} power of the pope as and if restored by Parliament. He then signed two real recantations, and finally drew up a seventh document, repudiating his recantations, re-affirming his faith in the Protestant doctrine of the sacraments and denouncing the pope. By holding his right hand in the fire, when he was burned at the stake, he testified his bitter repentance for its act in signing the recantations. [Sidenote: March 21, 1556]
The total number of martyrs in Mary's reign fell very little, if at all, short of 300. The lists of them are precise and circumstantial. The geographical distribution is interesting, furnishing, as it does, the only statistical information available in the sixteenth century for the spread of Protestantism. It graphically illustrates the fact, so often noticed before, that the strongholds of the new opinions were the commercial towns of the south and east. If a straight line be drawn from the Wash to Portsmouth, passing about twenty miles west of London, it will roughly divide the Protestant from the Catholic portions of England. Out of 290 martyrdoms known, 247 took place east of this line, that is, in the city of London and the counties of Essex, Hertford, Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge. Thirteen are recorded in the south center, at Winchester and Salisbury, eleven at the western ports of the Severn, Bristol and Gloucester. There were three in Wales, all on the coast at St. David's; one in the south-western peninsula at Exeter, a few in the midlands, and not one north of Lincolnshire and Cheshire.
When it is said that the English changed their religion easily, this record of heroic opposition must be remembered to the contrary. Mary's reign became more and more hateful to her people until at last it is possible that only the prospect of its speedy termination prevented a rebellion. The popular epithet of {324} "bloody" rightly distinguishes her place in the estimate of history. It is true that her persecution sinks into insignificance compared with the holocausts of victims to the inquisition in the Netherlands. But the English people naturally judged by their own history, and in all of that such a reign of terror was unexampled. The note of Mary's reign is sterility and its achievement was to create, in reaction to the policy then pursued, a ferocious and indelible hatred of Rome.
[1] The canon law forbade the burial of heretics in consecrated ground, but it is said that Charles V refused to dig up Luther's body when he took Wittenberg.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth, 1558-1603]
However numerous and thorny were the problems pressed for solution into the hands of the maiden of twenty-five now called upon to rule England, the greatest of all questions, that of religion, almost settled itself. It is extremely hard to divest ourselves of the wisdom that comes after the event and to put ourselves in the position of the men of that time and estimate fairly the apparent feasibility of various alternatives. But it is hard to believe that the considerations that seem so overwhelming to us should not have forced themselves upon the attention of the more thoughtful men of that generation.
In the first place, while the daughter of Anne Boleyn was predestined by heredity and breeding to oppose Rome, yet she was brought up in the Anglican Catholicism of Henry VIII. At the age of eleven she had translated Margaret of Navarre'sMirror of the Sinful Soul, a work expressing the spirit of devotion joined with liberalism in creed and outward conformity in cult. The rapid vicissitudes of faith in England taught her tolerance, and her own acute intellect and practical sense inclined her to indifference. She did not scruple to give all parties, Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist, the impression, when it suited her, that she was almost in agreement with each of them. The accusation {325} that she was "an atheist and a maintainer of atheism" [Sidenote: 1601] meant no more than that her interests were secular. She once said that she would rather hear a thousand masses than be guilty of the millions of crimes perpetrated by some of those who had suppressed the mass. She liked candles, crucifixes and ritual just as she inordinately loved personal display. And politically she learned very early to fear the republicanism of Knox.
[Sidenote: Most of people Catholic]
The conservatism of Elizabeth's policy was determined also by the consideration that, though the more intelligent and progressive classes were Protestant, the mass of the people still clung to the Roman faith, and, if they had no other power, had at least thevis inertiae. Accurate figures cannot be obtained, but a number of indications are significant. In 1559 Convocation asserted the adherence of the clergy to the ancient faith. Maurice Clenoch estimated in 1561 that the majority of the people would welcome foreign intervention in favor of Mary Stuart and the old faith. Nicholas Sanders, a contemporary Catholic apologist, said that the common people of that period were divided into three classes: husbandmen, shepherds and mechanics. The first two classes he considered entirely Catholic; the third class, he said, were not tainted with schism as a whole, but only in some parts, those, namely of sedentary occupation such as weavers, cobblers and some lazy "aulici,"i.e.servants and humble retainers of the great. The remote parts of the kingdom, he added, were least tainted with heresy and, as the towns were few and small, he estimated that less than one per cent. of the population was Protestant. Though these figures are a tremendous exaggeration of the proportion of Catholics, some support may be found for them in the information sent to the Curia in 1567 that 32 English nobles were Catholic, 20 {326} well affected to the Catholics and 15 Protestants. Only slightly different is the report sent in 1571 that at that time 33 English peers were Catholic, 15 doubtful and 16 heretical. As a matter of fact, in religious questions we find that the House of Lords would have been Catholic but for the bishops, a solid phalanx of government nominees.
[Sidenote: But most powerful class Protestants]
But if the masses were Catholic, the strategically situated classes were Reformed. The first House of Commons of Elizabeth proved by its acts to be strongly Protestant. The assumption generally made that it was packed by the government has been recently exploded. Careful testing shows that there was hardly any government interference. Of the 390 members, 168 had sat in earlier Parliaments of Mary, and that was just the normal proportion of old members. It must be remembered that the parliamentary franchise approached the democratic only in the towns, the strongholds of Protestantism, and that in the small boroughs and in some of the counties the election was determined by just that middle class most progressive and at this time most Protestant.
Another test of the temper of the country is the number of clergy refusing the oath of supremacy. Out of a total number of about nine thousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, and most of these were Mary's appointees.
The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of the time. The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by the Parker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts, hymns and letters of this period. During the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther's works, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations from Melanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin. {327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, the English Reformation at this time resumed the national character temporarily lost during Mary's reign. John Jewel'sApologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae[Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the first methodical statement of the position of the church of England against the church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy."
Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the rising young men, were Protestants. The English sea-captains, wolves of the sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale, still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to Lutheran Germany as "a place where Christ's doctrine, the fear of God, punishment of sin, and discipline of honesty were held in special regard." Edmund Spenser's great allegory, as well as some of his minor poems, were largely inspired by Anglican and Calvinistic purposes.
[Sidenote: Conversion of the masses]
It was during Elizabeth's reign that the Roman Catholics lost the majority they claimed in 1558 and became the tiny minority they have ever since remained. The time and to some extent the process through which this came to pass can be traced with fair accuracy. In 1563 the policy of the government, till then wavering, became more decided, indicating that the current had begun to set in favor of Protestantism. The failure of the Northern rising and of the papal bull in 1569-70, indicated the weakness of the ancient faith. In 1572 a careful estimate of the {328} religious state of England was made by a contemporary, [Sidenote: Carleton's estimate] who thought that of the three classes into which he divided the population, papist, Protestant and atheist (by which he probably meant, indifferent) the first was smaller than either of the other two. Ten years later (1580-85) the Jesuit mission in England claimed 120,000 converts. But in reality these adherents were not new converts, but the remnant of Romanism remaining faithful. If we assume, as a distinguished historian has done, that this number included nearly all the obstinately devoted, as the population of England and Wales was then about 4,000,000, the proportion of Catholics was only about 3 per cent. of the total, at which percentage it remained constant during the next century. But there were probably a considerable number of timid Roman Catholics not daring to make themselves known to the Jesuit mission. But even allowing liberally for these, it is safe to say that by 1585 the members of that church had sunk to a very small minority.
Those who see in the conversion of the English people the result merely of government pressure must explain two inconvenient facts. The first is that the Puritans, who were more strongly persecuted than the papists, waxed mightily notwithstanding. The second is that, during the period when the conversion of the masses took place, there were no martyrdoms and there was little persecution. The change was, in fact, but the inevitable completion and consequence of the conversion of the leaders of the people earlier. With the masses, doubtless, the full contrast between the old and the new faiths was not realized. Attending the same churches if not the same church, using a liturgy which some hoped would obtain papal sanction, and ignorant of the changes made in translation from the Latin ritual, the uneducated did not trouble themselves {329} about abstruse questions of dogma or even about more obvious matters such as the supremacy of the pope and the marriage of the clergy. Moreover, there were strong positive forces attracting them to the Anglican communion. They soon learned to love the English prayer-book, and the Bible became so necessary that the Catholics were obliged to produce a version of their own. English insularity and patriotism drew them powerfully to the bosom of their own peculiar communion.
[Sidenote: Elizabeth's policy]
Though we can now see that the forces drawing England to the Reformation were decisive, the policy of Elizabeth was at first cautious. The old services went on until Parliament had spoken. As with Henry VIII, so with this daughter of his, scrupulous legality of form marked the most revolutionary acts. Elizabeth had been proclaimed "Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith &c," this "&c" being chosen to stand in place of the old title "Supreme Head of the Church," thus dodging the question of its assumption or omission. Parliament, however, very soon passed supremacy and uniformity acts to supply the needed sanction. The former repealed Philip and Mary's Heresy Act and Repealing Statute, revived ten acts of Henry VIII and one of Edward VI, but confirmed the repeal of six acts of Henry VIII. Next, Parliament proceeded to seize the episcopal lands. Its spirit was just as secular as that of Henry's Parliaments, only there was less ecclesiastical property left to grab.
The Book of Common Prayer was revised by introducing into the recension of 1552 a few passages from the first edition of 1549, previously rejected as too Catholic. Three of the Forty-two Articles of Religion of Edward were dropped, [Sidenote: The Thirty-nine Articles 1563] thus making the Thirty-nine Articles that have ever since been the authoritative {330} statement of Anglican doctrine. Thus it is true to some extent that the Elizabethan settlement was a compromise. It took special heed of various parties, and tried to avoid offence to Lutherans, Zwinglians, and even to Roman Catholics. But far more than a compromise, it was a case of special development. As it is usually compared with the English Dissenting sects, the church of England is often said to be the most conservative of the reformed bodies. It is often said that it is Protestant in doctrine and Catholic in ritual and hierarchy. But compared with the Lutheran church it is found to be if anything further from Rome. In fact the Anglicans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries abhorred the Lutherans as "semi-papists."
[Sidenote: The Church of England]
And yet the Anglican church was like the Lutheran not only in its conservatism as compared with Calvinism, but in its political aspects. Both became the strong allies of the throne; both had not only a markedly national but a markedly governmental quality. Just as the Reformation succeeded in England by becoming national in opposition to Spain, and remaining national in opposition to French culture, so the Anglican church naturally became a perfect expression of the English character. Moderate, decorous, detesting extremes of speculation and enthusiasm, she cares less for logic than for practical convenience.
Closely interwoven with the religious settlement were the questions of the heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy. Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the people and a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race and wholly by her first marriage to Francis II, she would have been most {331} distasteful to the ruling party in England. Elizabeth was therefore desired and finally urged by Parliament to marry. Her refusal to do this has been attributed to some hidden cause, as her love for Leicester or the knowledge that she was incapable of bearing a child. But though neither of these hypotheses can be disproved, neither is necessary to account for her policy. It is true that it would have strengthened her position to have had a child to succeed her; but it would have weakened her personal sway to have had a husband. She wanted to rule as well as to reign. Her many suitors were encouraged just sufficiently to flatter her vanity and to attain her diplomatic ends. First, her brother-in-law Philip sought her hand, and was promptly rejected as a Spanish Catholic. Then, there was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, apparently her favorite in spite of his worthless character, but his rank was not high enough. Then, there were princes of Sweden and Denmark, an Archduke of Austria and two sons of Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began when Elizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote: 1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides. Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make her flirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twice she forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwards consented to hear the petition, she was careful not to call another Parliament for five years.
[Sidenote: Financial measures]
Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largely owing to the debasement of the currency royal expenditure had risen from L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in the last year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way, and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By the wise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543, the hardest problems were solved.
[Sidenote: Underhand war]
Towards France and Spain Elizabeth's policy was one well described by herself as "underhand war." English volunteers, with government connivance, but nominally on their own responsibility, fought in the ranks of Huguenots and Netherlanders. Torrents of money poured from English churches to support their fellow-Protestants in France and Holland. English sailors seized Spanish galleons; if successful the queen secretly shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might be hanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now, was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very idea of neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying to harm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan England the anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possible this buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizes themselves been enough to attract the adventurous. Doubtless far more energy went into privateering than into legitimate commerce.
Peace was officially made with France, recognizing the surrender of Calais at first for a limited period of years. Though peace was still nominally kept with Spain for a long time, the shift of policy from one of hostility to France to one of enmity to Spain was soon manifest. As long, however, as the government relied chiefly on the commercial interests of the capital and other large towns, and as long as Spain controlled the Netherlands, open war was nearly impossible, for it would have been extremely unpopular with the merchants of both London and the Low Countries. In times of crisis, however, [Sidenote: 1569] an embargo was laid on all trade with Philip's dominions.
Elizabeth's position was made extremely delicate by {333} the fact that the heiress to her throne was the Scotch Queen Mary Stuart, who, since 1568, had been a refugee in England and had been kept in a sort of honorable captivity. On account of her religion she became the center of the hopes and of the actual machinations of all English malcontents. In these plots she participated as far as she dared.
[Sidenote: The Catholic Powers]
Elizabeth's crown would have been jeoparded had the Catholic powers, or any one of them, acted promptly. That they did not do so is proof, partly of their mutual jealousies, party of the excellence of Cecil's statesmanship. Convinced though he was that civil peace could only be secured by religious unity, for five years he played a hesitating game in order to hold off the Catholics until his power should be strong enough to crush them. By a system of espionage, by permitting only nobles and sailors to leave the kingdom without special licence, by welcoming Dutch Protestant refugees, he clandestinely fostered the strength of his party. His scheme was so far successful that the pope hesitated more than eleven years before issuing the bull of deprivation. For this Elizabeth had also to thank the Catholic Hapsburgs; in the first place Philip who then hoped to marry her, and in the second place the Emperor Ferdinand who said that if Elizabeth were excommunicated the German Catholics would suffer for it and that there were many German Protestant princes who deserved the ban as much as she did.
Matters were clarified by the calling of the Council of Trent. Asked to send an embassy to this council Elizabeth refused for three reasons: (1) because she had not been consulted about calling the council; (2) because she did not consider it free, pious and Christian; (3) because the pope sought to stir up sedition in her realms. The council replied to this snub by excommunicating her, but it is a significant sign of the {334} times that neither they nor the pope as yet dared to use spiritual weapons to depose her, as the pope endeavored to do a few years later.
[Sidenote: Anti-Catholic laws]
Whether as a reply to this measure or not, Parliament passed more stringent laws against Catholics. Cecil's policy, inherited from Thomas Cromwell, to centralize and unify the state, met with threefold opposition; first from the papists who disliked nationalizing the church, second from the holders of medieval franchises who objected to their absorption in a centripetal system, and third from the old nobles who resented their replacement in the royal council by upstarts. All these forces produced a serious crisis in the years 1569-70. The north, as the stronghold of both feudalism and Catholicism, led the reaction. The Duke of Norfolk, England's premier peer, plotted with the northern earls to advance Mary's cause, and thought of marrying her himself. Pope Pius V warmly praised their scheme which culminated in a rebellion. [Sidenote: Rebellion, 1561] The nobles and commons alike were filled with the spirit of crusaders, bearing banners with the cross and the five wounds of Christ. At the same time they voiced the grievance of the old-fashioned farmer against the new-fangled merchant. Their banners inscribed "God speed the plough" bear witness to the agrarian element common to so many revolts. Their demands were the restoration of Catholicism, intervention in Scotland to put Mary back on her throne, and her recognition as heiress of England, and the expulsion of foreign refugees. Had they been able to secure Mary's person or had the Scotch joined them, it is probable that they would have seceded from the south of England.
But the new Pilgrimage of Grace was destined to no more success than the old one. Moray, Regent of Scotland, forcibly prevented assistance going to the {335} rebels from North Britain. Elizabeth prepared an overwhelming army, but it was not needed. The rebels, seeing the hopelessness of their cause, dispersed and were pursued by an exemplary punishment, no less than eight hundred being executed. Three years later Norfolk trod the traitor's path to the scaffold. His death sealed the ruin of the old nobility whose privileges were incompatible with the new régime. In the same year a parliamentary agitation in favor of the execution of Mary witnessed how dead were medieval titles to respect.
[Sidenote: Papal Bull, February 25, 1570]
Too late to have much effect, Pius V issued the bullRegnans in excelsis, declaring that whereas the Roman pontiff has power over all nations and kingdoms to destroy and ruin or to plant and build up, and whereas Elizabeth, the slave of vice, has usurped the place of supreme head of the church, has sent her realm to perdition and has celebrated the impious mysteries of Calvin, therefore she is cut off from the body of Christ and deprived of her pretended right to rule England, while all her subjects are absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The bull also reasserted Elizabeth's illegitimacy, and echoed the complaint of the northern earls that she had expelled the old nobility from her council. The promulgation of the bull, without the requisite warning and allowance of a year for repentance, was contrary to the canon law.
The fulmination was sent to Alva to the Netherlands and a devotee was found to carry it to England. Forthwith Elizabeth issued a masterly proclamation vouchsafing that,
her majesty would have all her loving subjects tounderstand that, as long as they shall openly continue inthe observation of her laws, and shall not wilfully andmanifestly break them by open actions, her majesty's meansis not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or{336}examination of their consciences in causes of religion, butto accept and entreat them as her good and obedient subjects.
But to obviate the contamination of her people by political views expressed in the bull, [Sidenote: Anti-papal laws] and to guard against the danger of a further rising in the interests of Mary Stuart, the Parliament of 1571 passed several necessary laws. One of these forbade bringing the bull into England; another made it treasonable to declare that Elizabeth was not or ought not to be queen or that she was a heretic, usurper or schismatic.
The first seventeen years of Elizabeth's reign had been blessedly free from persecution. The increasing strain between England and the papacy was marked by a number of executions of Romanists. A recent Catholic estimate is that the total number of this faith who suffered under Elizabeth was 189, of whom 128 were priests, 58 laymen and three women; and to this should be added 32 Franciscans who died in prison of starvation. The contrast of 221 victims in Elizabeth's forty-five years as against 290 in Mary's five years, is less important than the different purpose of the government. Under Mary the executions were for heresy; under Elizabeth chiefly for treason. It is true that the whole age acted upon Sir Philip Sidney's maxim that it was the highest wisdom of statesmanship never to separate religion from politics. Church and state were practically one and the same body, and opinions repugnant to established religion naturally resulted in acts inimical to the civil order. But the broad distinction is plain. Cecil put men to death not because he detested their dogma but because he feared their politics.
Nothing proves more clearly the purposes of the English government than its long duel with the Jesuit mission. [Sidenote: Jesuit mission] It is unfair to say that the primary purpose {337} of the Curia was to get all the privileges of loyalty for English Catholics while secretly inciting them to rise and murder their sovereign. But the very fact that the Jesuits were instructed not to meddle in politics and yet were unable to keep clear of the law, proves how inextricably politics and religion were intertwined. Immediately drawing the suspicion of Burghley, they were put to the "bloody question" and illegally tortured, even while the government felt called upon to explain that they were not forced to the rack to answer "any question of their supposed conscience" but only as to their political opinions. But one of these opinions was whether the pope had the right to depose the queen.
[Sidenote: Character of Jesuits]
The history of these years is one more example of how much more accursed it is to persecute than to be persecuted. The Jesuits sent to England were men of the noblest character, daring and enduring all with fortitude, showing charity and loving-kindness even to their enemies. But the character of their enemies correspondingly deteriorated. That sense of fair play that is the finest English quality disappeared under the stress of fanaticism. Not only Jesuits, but Catholic women and children were attacked; one boy of thirteen was racked and executed as a traitor. The persecution by public opinion supplied what the activity of the government overlooked. In fact it was the government that was the moderating factor. The act passed in 1585 banishing the Jesuits was intended to obviate sterner measures. In dealing with the mass of the population Burghley made persecution pay its way by resorting to fines as the principal punishment. During the last twenty years of the reign no less than L6,000 per annum was thus collected.
The helpless rage of the popes against "the Jezebel of the north" waxed until one of them, Gregory XIII, {338} sanctioned an attempt at her assassination. [Sidenote: Conspiracies] In 1580 there appeared at the court of Madrid one Humphrey Ely, later a secular priest. He informed the papal nunciature that some English nobles, mentioned by name, had determined to murder Elizabeth but wished the pope's own assurance that, in case they lost their lives in the attempt, they should not have fallen into sin by the deed. After giving his own opinion that the bull of Pius V gave all men the right to take arms against the queen in any fashion, the nuncio wrote to Rome. From the papal secretary, speaking in the pope's name, he received the following reply:
As that guilty woman of England rules two so noble realms of Christendom, is the cause of so much harm to the Catholic faith, and is guilty of the loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that any one who puts her out of the world with the proper intention of serving God thereby, not only commits no sin but even wins merit, especially seeing that the sentence of the late Pius V is standing against her. If, therefore, these English nobles have really decided to do so fair a work, your honor may assure them that they commit no sin. Also we may trust in God that they will escape all danger. As to your own irregularity [caused to the nuncio as a priest by conspiracy to murder] the pope sends you his holy blessing.[1]
A conspiracy equally unsuccessful but more famous, because discovered at the time, was that of Anthony Babington. Burghley's excellent secret service apprised the government not only of the principals but also of aid and support given to them by Philip II and Mary Queen of Scots. Parliament petitioned for the execution of Mary. Though there was no doubt of her guilt, Elizabeth hesitated to give the dangerous example of sending a crowned head to the block. {339} With habitual indirection she did her best to get Mary's jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to put her to death without a warrant. Failing in this, she finally signed the warrant, [Sidenote: Mary beheaded, February 8, 1587] but when her council acted upon it in secret haste lest she should change her mind, she flew into a rage and, to prove her innocence, heavily fined and imprisoned one of the privy council whom she selected as scapegoat.
[Sidenote: War with Spain]
The war with Spain is sometimes regarded as the inevitable consequence of the religious opposition of the chief Catholic and the chief Protestant power. But probably the war would never have gone beyond the stage of privateering and plots to assassinate in which it remained inchoate for so long, had it not been for the Netherlands. The corner-stone of English policy has been to keep friendly, or weak, the power controlling the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. The war of liberation in the Netherlands had a twofold effect; in the first place it damaged England's best customer, and secondly, Spanish "frightfulness" shocked the English conscience. For a long time the policy of the queen herself was as cynically selfish as it could possibly be. She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva, but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince of Orange, now betraying his cause in a way that may have been sport to her but was death to the men she played with. Her aim, as far as she had a consistent one, was to allow Spain and the Netherlands to exhaust each other.
Not only far nobler but, as it proved in the end, far wiser, was the action of the Puritan party that poured money and recruits into the cause of their oppressed fellow-Calvinists. But an equally great service to them, or at any rate a greater amount of damage to Spain, was done by the hardy buccaneers, Hawkins and Drake, who preyed upon the Spanish treasure {340} galleons and pillaged the Spanish settlements in the New World. These men and their fellows not only cut the sinews of Spain's power but likewise built the fleet.
[Sidenote: England's sea power]
The eventual naval victory of England was preceded by a long course of successful diplomacy. As the aggressor England forced the haughtiest power in Europe to endure a protracted series of outrages. Not only were rebels supported, not only were Spanish fleets taken forcibly into English harbors and there stripped of moneys belonging to their government, but refugees were protected and Spanish citizens put to death by the English queen. Philip and Alva could not effectively resent and hardly dared to protest against the treatment, because they felt themselves powerless. As so often, the island kingdom was protected by the ocean and by the proved superiority of her seamen. After a score of petty fights all the way from the Bay of Biscay to the Pacific Ocean, Spanish sailors had no desire for a trial of strength in force.
But in every respect save in sea power Spain felt herself immeasurably superior to her foe. Her wealth, her dominions, recently augmented by the annexation of Portugal, were enormous; her army had been tried in a hundred battles. England's force was doubtless underestimated. An Italian expert stated that an army of 10,000 to 12,000 foot and 2,000 horse would be sufficient to conquer her. Even to the last it was thought that an invader would be welcomed by a large part of the population, for English refugees never wearied of picturing the hatred of the people for their queen.
But the decision was long postponed for two reasons. First, Spain was fully employed in subduing the Netherlands. Secondly, the Catholic powers hoped for the accession of Mary. But after the assassination of Orange in 1584, and after the execution of the Queen {341} of Scots, these reasons for delay no longer existed. Drake carried the naval war [Sidenote: 1585] to the coasts of Spain and to her colonies. The consequent bankruptcy of the Bank of Seville and the wounded national pride brought home to Spaniards the humiliation of their position. All that Philip could do was to pray for help and to forbid the importation of English wares. [Sidenote: April 1587] In reply Drake fell upon the harbor of Cadiz and destroyed twenty-four or more warships and vast military stores.
So at last the decision was taken to crush the one power that seemed to maintain the Reformation, to uphold the Huguenots and the Dutch patriots and to harry with impunity the champions of Catholicism. Pope Sixtus V, not wishing to hazard anything, promised a subsidy of 1,000,000 crowns of gold, the first half payable on the landing of the Spanish army, the second half two months later. Save this, Philip had no promise of help from any Catholic power.
The huge scale of his preparations was only equaled by their vast lack of intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of ship adopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy but totally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 ships carried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small, intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against the ships themselves. The necessary geographical information for the invasion of Britain in the year 1588 was procured from Caesar'sDe Bello Gallico. The admiral in chief, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had never even commanded a ship before and most of the high officers were equally innocent of professional knowledge, for sailors were despised as inferior to soldiers. Three-fourths of the crews were soldiers, all but useless in naval warfare of the new type. Blind zeal did little to supply the lack {342} of foresight, though Philip spent hours on his knees before the host in intercession for the success of his venture. The very names of the ships, though quite in accordance with Spanish practice, seem symbolic of the holy character of the crusade:Santa Maria de Gracia, Neustra Señora del Rosario, San Juan Baptista, La Concepcion.
On the English side there was also plenty of fanatical fury, but it was accompanied by practical sense. The grandfathers of Cromwell's Ironsides had already learned, if they had not yet formulated, the maxim, "Fear God and keep your powder dry." Some of the ships in the English navy had religious names, but many were called by more secular appellations:The Bull, The Tiger, The Dreadnought, The Revenge. To meet the foe a very formidable and self-confident force of about forty-five ships of the best sort had gathered from the well-tried ranks of the buccaneers. It is true that patronage did some damage to the English service, but it was little compared to that of Spain. Lord Howard of Effingham was made admiral on account of his title, but the vice-admiral was Sir Francis Drake, to whom the chief credit of the action must fall.
[Sidenote: July, 1588]
The battle in the Channel was fought for nine days. There was no general strategy or tactics; the English simply sought to isolate and sink a ship wherever they could. Their heavier cannon were used against the enemy, and fire-ships were sent among his vessels. When six Spanish ships had foundered in the Channel, the fleet turned northward to the coasts of Holland. During their flight an uncertain number were destroyed by the English, and a few more fell a prey to the Sea Beggars of Holland. The rest, much battered, turned north to sail around Scotland. In the storms nineteen ships were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland; of thirty-five ships the Spaniards themselves {343} could give no account. For two months Philip was in suspense as to the fate of his great Armada, of which at last only a riddled and battered remnant returned to home harbors.
The importance of the victory over the Armada, like that of most dramatic events, has been overestimated. To contemporaries, at least to the victors and their friends it appeared as the direct judgment of God: "Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt." The gorgeous rhetoric of Ranke and Froude has painted it as one of the turning points in world history. But in reality it rather marked than made an epoch. Had Philip's ships won, it is still inconceivable that he could have imposed his dominion on England any more than he could on the Netherlands. England was ripening and Spain was rotting for half a century before the collision made this fact plain to all. The Armada did not end the war nor did it give the death blow to Spanish power, much less to Catholicism. On the Continent of Europe things went on almost unchanged.
But in England the effect was considerable. The victory stimulated national pride; it strengthened the Protestants, and the left wing of that party. Though the Catholics had shown themselves loyal during the crisis they were subjected, immediately thereafter, to the severest persecution they had yet felt. This was due partly to nervous excitement of the whole population, partly to the advance towards power of the Puritans, always the war party.
[Sidenote: Puritans]
Even in the first years of the great queen there had been a number of Calvinists who looked askance at the Anglican settlement as too much of a compromise with Catholicism and Lutheranism. The Thirty-nine Articles passed Convocation by a single vote [Sidenote: 1563] as against a more Calvinistic confession. Low-churchmen (as they would now be called) attacked the "Aaronic" {344} vestments of the Anglican priests, and prelacy was detested as but one degree removed from papacy.
The Puritans were not dissenters but were a party in the Anglican communion thoroughly believing in a national church, but wishing to make the breach with Rome as wide as possible. They found fault with all that had been retained in the Prayer Book for which there was no direct warrant in Scripture, and many of them began to use, in secret conventicles, the Genevan instead of the English liturgy. Their leader, Thomas Cartwright, [Sidenote: Cartwright, 1535-1603] a professor of divinity at Cambridge until deprived of his chair by the government, had brought back from the Netherlands ideals of a presbyterian form of ecclesiastical polity. In his view many "Popish Abuses" remained in the church of England, among them the keeping of saints' days, kneeling at communion, "the childish and superstitious toys" connected with the baptismal service, the words then used in the marriage service by the man, "with my body I thee worship" by which the husband "made an idol of his wife," the use of such titles as archbishop, arch-deacon, lord bishop.
It was because of their excessively scrupulous conscience in these matters, that the name "Puritan" was given to the Calvinist by his enemy, at first a mocking designation analogous to "Catharus" in the Middle Ages. But the tide set strongly in the Puritan direction. Time and again the Commons tried to initiate legislation to relieve the consciences of the stricter party, but their efforts were blocked by the crown. From this time forth the church of England made an alliance with the throne that has never been broken. As Jewel had been compelled, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, [Sidenote: 1562] to defend the Anglican church against Rome, so Richard Hooker, in his famous {345}Ecclesiastical Polity[Sidenote: 1594] was now forced to defend it from the extreme Protestants. In the very year in which this finely tempered work was written, a Jesuit reported that the Puritans were the strongest body in the kingdom and particularly that they had the most officers and soldiers on their side. The coming Commonwealth was already casting its shadow on the age of Shakespeare.
As a moral and religious influence Puritanism was of the utmost importance in moulding the English—and American—character and it was, take it all in all, a noble thing. If it has been justly blamed for a certain narrowness in its hostility, or indifference, to art and refinement, it more than compensated for this by the moral earnestness that it impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible into English life and literature, to impress each man with the idea of living for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state to ethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically, it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense of personal worth that made democracy possible and necessary.
[Sidenote: Browne, 1550?-1633?]
To the left of the Puritans were the Independents or Brownists as they were called from their leader Robert Browne, the advocate ofReformation without Tarrying for Any. He had been a refugee in the Netherlands, where he may have come under Anabaptist influence. His disciples differed from the followers of Cartwright in separating themselves from the state church, in which they found many "filthy traditions and inventions of men." Beginning to organize hi separate congregations about 1567, they were said by Sir Walter Raleigh to have as many as 20,000 adherents in 1593. Though heartily disliked by re-actionaries and by thebeati possidentesin both church {346} and state, they were, nevertheless, the party of the future.
[1] A. O. Meyer:England und die katholische Kirche unter Elizabeth, p. 231.
If the union of England and Wales has been a marriage—after a courtship of the primitive type; if the union with Scotland has been a successful partnership—following a long period of cut-throat competition; the position of Ireland has been that of a captive and a slave. To her unwilling mind the English domination has always been a foreign one, and this fact makes more difference with her than whether her master has been cruel, as formerly, or kind, as of late.
[Sidenote: English rule]
The saddest period in all Erin's sad life was that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when to the old antagonism of race was added a new hatred of creed and a new commercial competition. The policy of Henry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of God and obedience of Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that God might "call them to the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to assist the Almighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. The government of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime some considerations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded the Irish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, as savages to be killed and driven off to make room for a higher civilization. Had England been able to apply the method of extermination she would doubtless have done so and there would then be no Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "to enterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all the Irishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge and great difficulty."
Being unable to accomplish this or to put Ireland at {347} the bottom of the sea, where Elizabeth's minister Walsingham often wished that it were, the English had the alternatives of half governing or wholly abandoning their neighbors. The latter course was felt to be too dangerous, but had it been adopted, Ireland might have evolved an adequate government and prosperity of her own. It is true that she was more backward than England, but yet she had a considerable trade and culture. [Sidenote: Irish misery] Certain points, like Dublin and Waterford, had much commerce with the Continent. And yet, as to the nation as a whole, the report of 1515 probably speaks true in saying: "There is no common folk in all this world so little set by, so greatly despised, so feeble, so poor, so greatly trodden under foot, as the king's poor common folk of Ireland." There was no map of the whole of Ireland; the roads were few and poor and the vaguest notions prevailed as to the shape, size and population of the country. The most civilized part was the English Pale around Dublin; the native Irish lived "west of the Barrow and west of the law," and were governed by more than sixty native chiefs. Intermarriage of colonists and natives was forbidden by law. The only way the Tudor government knew of asserting its suzerainty over these septs, correctly described as "the king's Irish enemies," was to raid them at intervals, slaying, robbing and raping as they went. It was after one of these raids in 1580 that the poet Spencer wrote:
The people were brought to such wretchedness that anystrong heart would have rued the same. Out of everycorner of the woods and glens they came, creeping forthupon their hands, for their legs would not bear them.They looked like anatomies of death; they spoke likeghosts crying out of their graves. They did eat the deadcarrions, happy where they could find them; yea and one{348}another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses theyspared not to scrape out of their graves; and if theyfound a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there theythronged as to a feast for a time.
The Irish chiefs were not to be tamed by either kindness or force. Henry and Elizabeth scattered titles of "earl" and "lord" among the O's and Macs of her western island, only to find that the coronet made not the slightest difference in either their affections or their manners. They still lived as marauding chiefs, surrounded by wild kerns and gallowglasses fighting each other and preying on their own poor subjects. "Let a thousand of my people die," remarked one of them, Neil Garv, "I pass not a pin. . . . I will punish, exact, cut and hang where and whenever I list." Had they been able to make common cause they might perhaps have shaken the English grasp from their necks, for it was commonly corrupt and feeble. Sir Henry Sidney was the strongest and best governor sent to the island during the century, but he was able to do little. Though the others could be bribed and though one of them, the Earl of Essex, conspired with the chiefs to rebel, and though at the very end of Elizabeth's reign a capable Spanish army landed in Ireland to help the natives, nothing ever enabled them to turn out the hated "Sassenach."
[Sidenote: English colonization]
England had already tried to solve the Irish problem by colonization. Leinster had long been a center of English settlement, and in 1573 the first English colony was sent to Ulster. But as it consisted chiefly of bankrupts, fugitives from justice and others "of so corrupt a disposition as England rather refuseth," it did not help matters much but rather "irrecuperably damnified the state." The Irish Parliament continued to represent only the English of the Pale and of a few towns outside of it. Though the inhabitants of the {349} Pale remained nominally Catholic, the Parliament was so servile that in 1541 it destroyed the monasteries and repudiated the pope, [Sidenote: Religion] shortly after which the king took the title of Head of the Irish Church. Not one penny of the confiscated wealth went to endow an Irish university until 1591, when Trinity College was founded in the interests of Protestantism. Though almost every other country of Europe had its own printing presses before 1500, Ireland had none until 1551, and then the press was used so exclusively for propaganda that it made the very name of reading hateful to the natives. There were, however, no religious massacres and no martyrs of either cause. The persecuting laws were left until the following century.
[Sidenote: Commercial exploitation]
The rise of the traders to political power was more ominous than the inception of a new religion. The country was drained of treasure by the exaction of enormous ransoms for captured chiefs. The Irish cloth-trade and sea-borne commerce were suppressed. The country was flooded with inferior coin, thus putting its merchants at a vast disadvantage. Finally, there was little left that the Irish were able to import save liquors, and those "much corrupted."
With every plea in mitigation of judgment that can be offered, it must be recognized that England's government of Ireland proved a failure. If she did not make the Irish savage she did her best to keep them so, and then punished them for it. By exploiting Erin's resources she impoverished herself. By trying to impose Protestantism she made Ireland the very stronghold of papacy. By striving to destroy the septs she created the nation.
{350}
One of the most important effects of modern means of easy communication between all parts of the world has been to obliterate or minimize distinctions in national character and in degrees of civilization. The manner of life of England and Australia differ less now than the manner of life of England and Scotland differed in the sixteenth century. The great stream of culture then flowed much more strongly in the central than in the outlying parts of Western Europe. The Latin nations, Italy and France, lay nearest the heart of civilization. But slightly less advanced in culture and in the amenities of life, and superior in some respects, were the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and the southern and central parts of Germany. In partial shadow round about lay a belt of lands: Spain, Portugal, Northern Germany, Prussia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland.
[Sidenote: Scotland]
Scotland, indeed, had her own universities, but her best scholars were often found at Paris, or in German or Italian academies. Scotch humanists on the continent, the Scotch guard of the French king, and Scotch monasteries, such as those at Erfurt and Würzburg, raised the reputation of the country abroad rather than advanced its native culture. Printing was not introduced until 1507. Brantôme in the sixteenth century, like Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth, remarked the uncouthness of the northern kingdom.
Most backward of all was Scotland's political development. No king arose strong enough to be at once {351} the tyrant and the saviour of his country; under the weak rule of a series of minors, regents and wanton women a feudal baronage with a lush growth of intestine war and crime, flourished mightily to curse the poor people. When Sir David Lyndsay asked, [Sidenote: 1528] Why are the Scots so poor? he gave the correct answer:
Wanting of justice, policy and peace,Are cause of their unhappiness, alas!
Something may also be attributed to the poverty of the soil and the lack of important commerce or industries.
[Sidenote: Relations with England]
The policy of any small nation situated in dangerous proximity to a larger one is almost necessarily determined by this fact. In order to assert her independence Scotland was forced to make common cause with England's enemies. Guerrilla warfare was endemic on the borders, breaking out, in each generation, into some fiercer crisis. England, on the other hand, was driven to seek her own safety in the annexation of her small enemy, or, failing that, by keeping her as impotent as possible. True to the maxims of the immoral political science that has commonly passed for statesmanship, the Tudors consistently sought by every form of deliberate perfidy to foster factions in North Britain, to purchase traitors, to hire stabbers, to subsidize rebels, to breed mischief, and to waste the country, at opportune intervals, with armies and fleets. Simply to protect the independence that England denied and attacked, Scotch rulers became fast allies of France, to be counted on, in every war between the great powers, to stir up trouble in England's rear.