a supreme effort was needed on his part and on May the 15th, 1570, the Bull Regnans in excelsis was found nailed to the gate of the Bishop of London's palace.

What the Bull lacks in strict veracity, it gains in vigour. It accuses the 'pretended Queen of England' of the monstrous usurpation of the place of Supreme Head of the Church and of turning bishops, rectors, and other Catholic priests out of their churches and benefices. Further, that 'she has abolished the sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, fasts, distinction of meats, celibacy, and Catholic rites; has commanded books containing manifest heresy to be put forth throughout the kingdom and that impious mysteries, and institutes according to the order of Calvin received and observed by herself, be also kept by her subjects'.1 He therefore excommunicates and anathematizes Elizabeth, deprives her of her rank, and absolves her subjects from their oaths of allegiance. Pius V hoped to bring about the dethronement of Elizabeth and he failed completely. Gradually Philip II came to the same certainty as Pius that the haughty island kingdom must be broken if his empire was to be secure. And his Armada, like the Pope's Bull, failed, and infected the English with hatred of Rome and of the missionary priests who came hither from the Continent restrained by no obstacle and daunted by no defeat.

In 1571, the year after Elizabeth's excommunication, Archbishop Grindal issued Advertisements which throw considerable light on English religion. The north was then intensely conservative, clinging to old customs, some of which were harmless and even edifying. And the Archbishop worried his flock with inquisitive tyranny. He reduced the majority to subjection. But many definitely threw in their lot with the Pope, though in the time of

2

2 J. Strype, History of Edmund Grindal, pp. 164 ff. (London, 1710).

Edward VI the English feeling against the Pope was so strong that the Venetian envoy wrote that 'no one, either of the old or new religion, can bear to hear him mentioned'. A hideous persecution of the Roman Catholics of the north of England followed in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. The Gunpowder Plot was manipulated from abroad; but Guy Fawkes and the other Yorkshire gentlemen who helped him in his desperate adventure had bitter memories to goad them into crime. The story of the bishops whom Mary burnt in Oxford is indeed terrible. But for a hundred Englishmen who have read that story there is perhaps hardly one who has read the tale of the execution of Robert Bickerdike of Farnham, or of Margaret Clitheroe of York, who was slowly crushed to death naked on the bridge across the Ouse. If ever there was a bridge of sighs, it was that ancient bridge at York which at last the more ancient river swept away.

In Oxfordshire during the time of Elizabeth and for many years of the seventeenth century, Roman Catholicism was strongly represented among the country gentry and their dependants. There was little hostility between the two rival communions. Cases are recorded where recusants, whether they attended their parish church or not, were shown leniency when they were not satisfied in their conscience that they might receive the holy communion. And as late as 1660 Mr. Thomas Stonor, a recusant, presented a bell to the parish church of Watlington.

Though at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Church of England had begun to recover, the opposition to it had been and continued to be dangerous in the extreme. Every day the Church of Rome was growing intellectually more formidable, as it was growing practically more formidable. The time past might suffice for the common sense which had ridiculed false relics and even obscene

relics, pretended miracles and magical images, and the taxing of Englishmen to support boy cardinals and Roman harems. But something more than common sense was needed to confront a Baronius who spent thirty years in collecting materials for his ecclesiastical history; a Bellarmin who not only wrote copiously but tried to quote his opponents fairly; a Mariana who loved what was true, and, though a Jesuit, dared to criticize the Society of Jesus.1 To meet such men learning was necessary.

And learning was required to meet the Puritans. They had come back from Geneva and Zürich fiercely opposed to the religion of Queen Mary who had driven them into exile, completely under the spell of Calvin, and with Calvin's passion for convincing others and forcing others to obey. The year after the Pope's excommunication of the Queen, the Puritans began a violent and well-organized attack upon the English hierarchy and the Prayer Book.2 The main body had no intention of separating from the Church of England. They opposed separation. They were determined to transform the Church after the Calvinist - and Presbyterian model, and the great ability of Thomas Cartwright enabled them to start the working of their scheme, a scheme to be imposed on the Church by the State. At the other extreme of sectarianism were the Anabaptists. They had no creed of general binding force and they differed greatly among themselves. But they united in breaking up the ancient conception of the Church by opposing the baptism of infants; and they also broke up the whole mediaeval conception of the relation between

1 In his work Discours des grands defauts qui sont en la forme du gouvernement des Jesuites, Traduict d'Espagnol en François. No printer's name, or place, 1625. It was printed in Latin at Bordeaux and reprinted by order of Charles III when he expelled the Jesuits from Spain in 1767.

2 W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, Puritan Manifestoes (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1907). These manifestoes are most important for any real understanding of Puritanism.

Church and State by maintaining that each congregation of believers should be independent of all external control, civil or ecclesiastical, and that no believer should hold the office of a magistrate.

Between these extremes were the Congregationalists or Independents who retained infant baptism while rejecting the Church's doctrine of baptism. The left wing of the Congregationalists was associated with Robert Browne and approximated to the Anabaptists. All authority of the civil magistrate in matters of religion was denied, the necessity of separating from the Church of England was upheld, and it was taught that each local congregation must be independent and founded upon a covenant which the believers make with God and with one another. The tendency of this left wing was strongly democratic, and Browne is the parent of modern English Congregationalism.

The right wing of the Congregationalists was that led by Henry Barrowe. The Barrowists agreed with the Anabaptists and the Brownists in regarding the Church of England as too inclusive and comprehensive, and refused to look upon all baptized and non-excommunicate persons as members of the Church. But they differed from the Brownists in being less democratic and in allowing a more substantial authority to the elders chosen by the congregation. The elders were a ruling class, and the distinction between them and the rest of the congregation was more marked than in the Brownist system.

Let us bear in mind that whereas English Congregationalism is the work of Browne, American Congregationalism in New England was in its origin mainly a blend of Barrowism and the original Puritanism. It is true that the men who on Christmas Day 1620 planted New Plymouth on the site of an Indian village depopulated by disease were Separatists. But the men who settled in Massachusetts Bay in 1628 were not. They were Puritans who had been determined

to reform the Church till it should be without spot or wrinkle, without a college cap or a 'Babylonish' surplice. Seeing that it was impossible to get what they wanted in England, they determined to go to America. The polity of the Church was held to be immutably prescribed by the word of God. Each local congregation was autonomous, but the civil magistrate had the right to interfere in doctrine and in practice so that the State might itself become more perfect. The alliance between Church and State was of the strictest kind, and the American Congregationalists, so far from being the friends of religious equality, made their Church an established Church and a persecuting Church, and in Massachusetts it remained established until the nineteenth century was well advanced.

The Congregationalists, like the Elizabethan Puritans, were Calvinists.1 The British Westminster Confession of 1646, the American Cambridge Platform of 1648, the English Savoy Declaration of 1658, are all in substantial agreement in teaching a strict Calvinism, powerfully summarizing the doctrines which had been held by the respective parties for two generations. We see therefore that apart from the more ignorant sectaries, such as were most of the Anabaptists, the English Church was threatened by three Protestant parties which were united by their acceptance of Calvinism and their repudiation of episcopacy. Their two darling convictions were first that Christ brings salvation only to those who are irresistibly predestined, and, secondly, that the Pope is Antichrist.2 Those two convictions form a key to the history of this entire period.

The work of defending and reconstructing religion in England was in a peculiar degree accomplished by Archbishop Parker, Richard Hooker, Bishop Andrewes, and Archbishop Laud.

See app. note 9, p. 263.

2 See app. note 10, p. 264.