him. When Burghley remonstrated with Archbishop Whitgift for requiring the clergy, not only to subscribe to the Royal Supremacy, the lawfulness of the Prayer Book, and the Thirty-nine Articles, but also to answer articles of inquiry respecting their mode of conducting public worship, Elizabeth stood by the Primate, and would allow none of her Council to molest him. No doubt, the Puritans gave valuable support to her government in the struggle with Rome; but she was not going to allow them to disfigure the Church. As to points of detail, she believed that, like so many difficulties in her reign, if time was allowed, they would settle themselves. It is not easy to believe that Elizabeth herself was a religious woman. But she knew the importance of religion both for individuals and for nations; and she was convinced that a mean ritual, and cramped discipline and creed, would never produce a great and free people.

Thus the Queen's determination, backed by her inexhaustible popularity, saved the Church from disaster, She had a higher view of episcopacy than the Bishops had themselves, and she forced them to maintain uniformity.

On the other hand, she was a most shameless plunderer of Church property, compelling Bishops to alienate their estates to herself and her favourites, and sometimes making them promise to do this as a condition of appointing them. She kept Ely vacant for eighteen years, and gave so much of the revenues to the King of Portugal, that he was

jokingly called "Bishop of Ely." But the often quoted letter to Heton, who ultimately became Bishop of Ely,-" Proud Prelate, . . . I will unfrock you,”—is a forgery of the eighteenth century. Hallam (Hist. of Eng., i. p. 224) makes the letter to be addressed to Cox, Heton's predecessor at Ely.

During the reign of Elizabeth the theology of the Church of England attained form and fulness. Jewel defended our Church's position against the Romanists, while Whitgift, Bancroft, and Hooker answered the objections of the Puritans. It is grievous, in treating of this period, to Devonshire people, to give to Richard Hooker, born at Heavitree and educated at Exeter School,-only a passing mention. But it would require several lectures to do justice to Hooker. In some ways he is the greatest theologian that the English Church has ever produced. But he was a great deal more than an extraordinarily learned, accurate, and philosophic theologian. He showed that it was possible to accept all the light of the New Learning without losing what was best in Christian antiquity; and that fidelity to religion did not involve hostility to the many-sidedness of the world. In an age of bitter and virulent controversy, he showed how a book that is wholly controversial could be written, not only without bitterness, but with a chivalrous determination never to give needless pain. He writes with the charity of a Christian and the courtesy of a perfect gentleman. And beyond all this, he was master of a matchless style. Till he

wrote, no one knew what great things could be done with English prose: and to this day, for stateliness, richness, and force, the language of Hooker remains unexcelled. Merely as literature, the Ecclesiastical Polity stands in the first rank.

We must hasten to a close.

In 1592 there appeared on the Continent a pamphlet, written in English and Latin, Responsio ad Edictum Reginae Angliae, criticizing with reckless vehemence the repressive measures against Roman Catholics which were taken by the English Government after the Armada. It was attributed to the crafty controversialist, Parsons. It was too clever to be ignored, and Bacon was commissioned to write a reply. Such a reply could not be impartial. "Besides that it was written to order, no man in England could then write impartially in that quarrel; but it is not more one-sided and uncandid than the pamphlet which it answers, and Bacon is able to recriminate with effect, and to show gross credulity and looseness of assertion on the part of the Roman Catholic advocate. But religion had too much to do with the politics of both sides for either to be able to come into the dispute with clean hands the Roman Catholics meant much more than toleration, and the sanguinary punishments of the English law against priests and Jesuits were edged by something even keener than the fear of treason (Dean Church on Bacon's Observations on a Libel).

From 1593 to 1603 there was not very much religious strife. In 1594 there was another plot to

assassinate the Queen. The trial of Rodrigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew, for this attempt to compass a Christian's death, very possibly suggested Shylock to Shakespeare.1

In October 1601, Elizabeth called her Last Parliament, which made a strong protest against the increase of monopolies. Elizabeth promised immediate reform. The Commons sent a deputation to thank her and assure her of their unabated loyalty and devotion; and she replied in a speech of the most queenly and touching affection. She loved absolute

power; but, when the time for yielding came, she knew how to yield gracefully. It is no paradox to say that her very abuses of power were popular, for she never dragooned her subjects into submission. In her long reign of forty-five years only thirteen sessions of Parliament were held; yet the people did not clamour for more. She shocks us by her many mean and unworthy acts; and she irritated them by her ceaseless evasions of the problems which came before her. But all the time she was enabling the free spirit of the people to grow. Foreign ambassadors often remarked on the national love of liberty. And when she passed away, early on 24th March 1603,2 she left a nation which neither needed, nor could long tolerate, the despotic government of either queen or king.

1 Mr. Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, places The Merchant of Venice in the period 1596-1600.

2 The account of the death of Elizabeth in Dodd's Church History is said to have been written by Lady Southwell, who was present. The picture of it by Paul Delaroche (1827), now in the Louvre, will be remembered by those who have seen it.