Cranmer's Cha

racter.

Loss of Calais.

first to receive punishment. On the kindling of the fire he accordingly thrust his right hand into the flames, and in a few moments his sufferings were ended.

The picture before us is a terrible one; and it shows how hard the path is of those who do not walk in a single-minded love of truth for its own sake. It has been said of Cranmer by Lord Macaulay, that "Intolerance is always hateful; but the sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed excites a loathing to which it is difficult to give vent without calling foul names." There can be no question that under the old system there were many evils which Cranmer might well feel called on to put down at all costs, while there were other points about which there might be honestly some question. His great offence was not so much the ebb and flow of his own belief, as the cool calculation with which he took his measures for crushing those who reached conclusions opposed to his own. It is said that he defined liberty to be the power of doing what you liked yourself, and making every one else do the same. The result of such a theory is not unity, but uniformity; and the latter is as worthless as the former is precious.

Mary's reign was to close in thick darkness. The Death of Mary. hope that she was about to become a mother was a false notion drawn from the progress of a fatal disease. The death of Gardiner deprived her of her most trusty counsellor. Her restoration of some of the suppressed monasteries drained her treasury, and still more alarmed the possessors of the old conventual lands. A demand from Pope Paul IV. for a surrender of these lands, the possession of which had been confirmed by parliament to their

present owners, added to this alarm. The transference of the legatine powers from Pole to an obscure Franciscan friar, convinced the queen that even the Pope cared little for her friendship or her aid; and the sudden capture of Calais, the last English possession on the Continent, by a French army, completed her humiliation. Her strength failed rapidly, and her death, Nov. 17, 1558, was followed in a few hours by that of her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Canterbury.

CHAPTER LXXI.

THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

England and Scotland.

Elizabeth. 1558.

AT the outset of her reign Elizabeth was free from Accession
the anxieties which had oppressed her sister Mary
and her innocent kinswoman Jane Grey. No one
disputed her title, and knowing that on her sister's
death, which was looked for from day to day, the
crown must come to herself, she was prepared to
receive with a set and studied speech the counsellors
who came to announce her accession. Sir William
Cecil, the secretary of Edward VI., who had suggested
the terms of her answer, was appointed to the same
post under his sister, and with his immediate friends
he formed a cabinet which carried on the real work
of government, while the general body of the
council served rather for the purposes of show.

of

and

the Pope.

Her first controversy was with the Pope, Paul IV., a Elizabeth man more than eighty years of age. Her ambassador

Dangers of Papal Interference.

Rejection of an

riage from

announced her accession as "by hereditary right and the consent of the nation." Sir Thomas More (p. 324) had long ago consented to admit this title, although he did not believe that her mother was Henry's lawful wife; but the Pope had been told that if he made the acknowledgment he would be approving a union which he held to be null and void, and prejudging the claim of Mary queen of Scots, whom he regarded as the legitimate heir. His answer, therefore, was, that Elizabeth must submit her claim to his arbitration, and that it should be weighed, so far as it might be possible to do so, in her favour.

Elizabeth and her ministers saw that, if the country was to maintain its independence, this question of her title was one with which no foreign ruler must be permitted to meddle. The answer of the Pope showed that he was not satisfied with a title which the people of England seemed willing to accept. Nor was this the full extent of the danger. A claimant of her crown was already in the field, in the person of Mary Stuart, the grand-daughter of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. It was therefore in the Pope's power to play off one competitor against another, the only thing certain as to the result being that the Pope must remain supreme. Against this danger the only safeguard was a complete severance of the kingdom not only from all subjection to the head of Latin Christendom, but from Latin Christendom itself.

This necessity had really predetermined almost Offer of Mar- from the first the answer finally given to the proposals Philip of Spain. of Philip of Spain. Within two months of her accession the widower of Mary asked Elizabeth to But Philip could not marry her 1 See Genealogy VI.

become his wife.

without a dispensation from the Pope, and to ask for such a dispensation would at once bring up the question of her title for the judgment of the Holy See. This alliance was therefore rejected, and Philip gave way to the long series of suitors, from whose hopes or ambitions she might, without committing herself irrevocably to any, derive some political advantage.

Her first serious task was to bring together a parliament which should carry out her plans; nor was she in this less successful than her immediate predecessors. The ecclesiastical work of Mary's reign was at once undone, and the royal supremacy reestablished (1559). The chief opposition came from the bishops, who were all deprived, with the exception of one, who conformed to the new order. The archbishopric of Canterbury had been left vacant by the death of Cardinal Pole; and, according to the existing law, the archbishop must be consecrated by four bishops. But four bishops consecrated according to the Roman pontifical were not to be found. The difficulty was met by appointing four bishops deprived under Mary, to consecrate the new primate, Matthew Parker, who, with their help, proceeded to consecrate the prelates named to the other sees.

The Establish

ment of the Royal Supremacy. 1559.

Pius IV.

If these decisive steps had been delayed some- offers of Pope what longer, the subsequent religious history of the country might have been very different. The new Pope, Pius IV., was no sooner elected than he sent a nuncio, offering to sanction the English Prayer-Book, and demanding only the recognition of the papal supremacy. But Elizabeth had committed herself to what is called the Protestant side, and she forbade the nuncio to enter England. The breach with Rome was complete.

Efforts of Philip of Spain in the

olicism,

But although Elizabeth was Protestant, so far as the rejection of papal claims was concerned, she had no sympathy with the forms of thought and belief which are denoted by the term Puritanism, or with the worship which Puritans would have established if they could. Nor had she any idea of allowing Puritans to set up any order or society of their own. As in the times preceding Henry VIII., so now, the English Church was only the English nation in its religious aspect (p. 39); and a minority could be no more suffered to oppose the ecclesiastical than it could be permitted to overthrow the political

constitution of the land.

For the present the great controversy to be settled Cause of Cath- was that of the authority by which the Pope challenged the obedience of all Christendom; and of the quarrel which had sprung from this claim all Europe was now the battlefield. To the cause of the Pope, or, as it was called, Catholicism, Philip II. of Spain devoted himself with a zeal which surpassed that of the Popes themselves. It was in the hope of restoring the unity of Latin Christendom that he had become the husband of Mary, and offered to become the husband of Elizabeth; and he had now to turn his eye northwards for aid in the prosecution of the great work which he had most of all at heart.

Mary, Queen of
Scotland.

This aid would, he thought, be effectually given by Mary, who, on the death of her father, James V., had become queen of Scotland in her cradle, who had been married to the French Dauphin, and who, as his wife, had become queen of France a few months after the accession of Elizabeth to the English throne. The union of Scotland and France under the same sovereigns might have had momentous results for Europe generally; but in less than eighteen months