stroyed by a royal commission under Queen Mary.* This commission cannot but call to mind the description of those who love darkness,' for wise and prudential reasons.

Any one who has travelled in a country purely catholic may form some notion of the mixture of fraud and folly which prevailed in the worship of images and relics, and in the practice of pilgrimages, of which the monasteries were the strong holds, the monks the earnest and not disinterested advocates. But the precedent even for this transaction is to be found among Roman catholics; not to mention the example of Henry V. Wolsey, with the express sanction of the Pope, suppressed many monasteries, and, what is singular, Cromwell was his agent in this usurpation upon the rights of the monastic bodies. Let us, however, be just to the memory of this great man, whose statesman-like foresight is conspicuous in this measure. Wolsey's object in this spoliation was the endowment of his splendid establishments in Oxford and Ipswich. Doubtless, with the sagacity' of a great politician, he had seen that the monasteries, useful as retreats of learning in barbarous and uncivilized times, were ill adapted to maintain the influence of the church over a more enlightened people; and that it was only by taking possession of the seats of education, and thus advancing with the advancement of knowledge, that the clergy could hope to preserve their authority. The Reformers entered into his views for the encouragement of education, but, with a more far-sighted confidence in the truth of their cause, augured from such institutions the advancement of real religion, rather than the maintenance of the existing system. Their hopes were in part disappointed by the predominance of the unprincipled and covetous. Cranmer and his friends remonstrated in vain against the improvident waste of funds, from which they hoped to see new episcopal sees created, provision made for the maintenance of the parochial clergy, and, above all, for public education. The advocate for the instruction

* Burnet's Preface, where the document is quoted.

+ Wolsey was preceded in this observance of the signs of the times by his patron Fox, the munificent founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He had meditated an establishment for monks and secular scholars, and the buildings were in progress; when Hugh Oldham, the Bishop of Exeter, is said to have reasoned with him thus: What, my lord, shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see? No, no; it is more meet a great deal that we should have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as who by their learning shall do good to the church and commonwealth. Fox's acute mind was struck with the observation; he changed his plan; and we owe to this change the existence of a College famous from its first foundation for the introduction of elegant literature into Oxford, small indeed in the number of its members, but not excelled by any House in any University for the wisdom and liberality of its institutions, or the splendid list of worthies whom it has produced. We may cite three-Jewell, Hooker and Hales.

B 4

of

of the poor will read with no common interest Cranmer's arguments on this subject.*

But the work of reformation became a work of plunder, and the Church of England experienced at its birth a blow, from the effects of which it has not yet recovered. Unhappily the covetousness of the monastic system had absorbed the revenues of those who were then called the seculars, and whom Mr. Brougham now denominates the Working Clergy.'

Most of the monasteries,' says Burnet,' had been enriched by that, which was indeed the spoil of the church; for in many places the tithes which belonged to the secular clergy were taken from them, and by the authority of papal bulls given to the monasteries. The abbots having possessed themselves of the tithes, and having left to those who served the cure, either some small donative or stipend, and at best the small tithes or vicarage, those who purchased the abbey lands from the crown in the former reign, had with them no other charge reserved for the incumbents, but that small pittance that the abbots had formerly given them.'

During all Henry's reign,' plans were devised, revenues fixed, the incumbents appointed upon paper;' a splendid design of Cranmer's for making the prebendal institutions of great use, was entertained; but improvidence and rapacity interfered, and neither in that reign nor subsequently, was the good work accomplished. The nobles, when the chantries were suppressed in Edward's time, (foundations manifestly not to be permitted under a religion which disclaimed prayers for the dead,) deceived and plundered as in the days of Henry; and thus the best plans were rendered

abortive.

From the accession of Edward the Reformation really commenced; then, and not till then, the influence of Cranmer and his coadjutors became completely predominant. It is not for us to eulogize the temper and prudence with which this great national change was conducted; yet we may be allowed to say thus much; that nothing was abolished till the proper substitute was prepared; the church was remodelled, not destroyed for the chance of erecting a more useful edifice; the excrescent errors and insititious corruptions were pruned away, but the tree was not cut to the quick, so as to drain off its healthful and invigorating juices. Cranmer was indeed interrupted in his great task by the violent intrigues and the rapacity of the nobles; from the former he withdrew as far as his situation would allow, to the latter he opposed vigorous but too often fruitless remonstrances. Had Edward lived, the prince, whose premature talents, with all allowance for the minute exceptions and detraction of Dr. Lingard, were of the most extraordinary nature; the youth, whose amiable disposition,

*Strype's Cranmer, book i. 22.

yielding

yielding only in abhorrent tears to sign the warrant for persecution, bore the best testimony to the purity of the principles which he had imbibed from the word of God; had his reign been prolonged, the Church of England would have risen under his auspices, when he became emancipated from the controul of his more unprincipled court, and when his early principles of toleration had gained the sanction of his mature judgment, without spot or blemish. The annals of the country would have been spared not only the atrocities of Mary's reign, but long centuries, perhaps, of mutual animosity and aggression between the conflicting parties of papists and protestants.

6

The reign of Queen Mary is now left almost without defence; the more respectable Roman catholic writers join in the cry of execration which has been raised from generation to generation by protestants of every description. Their utmost endeavours are limited to palliate its atrocities, to diminish the number of sufferers, and to cast the blame from the principles of their religion upon the spirit of the age. In the first of these objects they are eminently unsuccessful. We have before stated our opinion as to the general veracity of Fox; but the number of those who suffered in the great persecution is carried even higher than his computation by the indefatigable and accurate Strype. Dr. Lingard states the number of sufferers at almost 200, after all allowances made.' Strype's account gives 288 actually executed, besides those that dyed of famine in sundry prisons.' The convenient tenderness of Dr. Lingard's nature, which will not allow him to dwell on such atrocities, we have already noticed. But the following is still worse, Burnet and Hume assert that the commission for the extirpation of heresy was an attempt to introduce an Inquisition, because at the same time instructions were issued (which they quote) for the application of torture and the employment of informers. Dr. Lingard dwells entirely on the commission, (for part of which he quotes the words of another document,) omits entirely the torture and the informers, and thus obtains an easy triumph over his antagonists.

We shall postpone the discussion of the more important question, namely, the connection of the Roman catholic creed with intolerance and persecution, and proceed to that which the Romanists consider their final and triumphant argument, recrimination. Let protestants cease to reproach the Roman catholics with Mary's fury, and Roman catholics shall be equally silent on the sanguinary code of Elizabeth, and the savage executions under it.' Such was the proposition of Dr. Milner, and it is now reiterated by Mr. Butler: let us dispassionately examine the circum

stances

stances of either case, and inquire into the points of coincidence and disagreement. The following is the theory of Elizabeth's reign, devised by the Roman catholic writers, developed with great industry and skill by Dr. Lingard, and zealously maintained by all the chivalrous apologists whom the beauty and sufferings of Mary Queen of Scots still fascinate and who are always ready to break a lance in her service. • Elizabeth' they say, at her accession was indifferent to both forms of religion; she threw herself into the arms of the protestants, and, under the influence of protestant advisers, re-established that church, commenced a series of unprovoked, and therefore unjustifiable intrigues in neighbouring states, in Scotland, France, and the Low Countries; went on enacting unnecessary laws against the unoffending Roman catholics, and executing them with equally unnecessary severity. Her ministers, to preserve their own influence, invented plots against her life, fomented insurrections, the guilt of which they falsely laid upor the catholics; until the merited vengeance of the Roman catholic princes burst upon her in the memorable invasion by the Armada. After the defeat of the Armada, she went on in her course of unrelenting and sanguinary judicial murder, without end or object, especially against the missionary priests, who visited England for the sole purpose of exercising their functions peaceably.'

All this is moulded up with insinuations against her private character, not always the most delicate, nor to be received without the mistrust with which such scandal is always to be heard in public as well as in private. With this, however, we have at present no concern; as to the former point, we fearlessly assert our conviction, that Elizabeth, from education, from the hard usage of her sister Mary, and from the strength of her own character, deliberately adopted the protestant faith; that she was forced by necessity as well as by policy to place herself at the head of the protestant interest; that she chose her ministers with wisdom and retained them from well-grounded confidence in their measures; that after the deposing bull of the Pope, plot followed upon plot, insurrection upon insurrection; in all of which the agency of the Romanists was conclusively detected; that the statutes against Roman catholics were enacted on this account, but only put in force against men who were sworn and devoted to her ruin, namely the priests educated in the foreign seminaries, and those who entertained them; that her alarm at assassination was kept naturally alive by the successive murders of the Prince of Orange and Henry III.; that self-expatriated Englishmen excited and vindicated the invasion by the Armada; that the Roman catholic intrigues were continued till her death, in hopes, if not of wresting

the

the crown from off her head, at least of securing the succession in the Roman catholic line.

The facts on which we build this conviction, we shall state as much as possible on Roman catholic authority. Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558: all parties acquiesced in her accession with seeming unanimity; but the Roman catholic prelates, who had acknowledged her right to the crown, having discovered her leaning to the Reformation, with ill-judged inconsistency refused, one only excepted, to crown her. They were deprived of their sees; but all, even the bloody Bonner, (we cannot justify ourselves in any other epithet,) remained prisoners at large, except Watson, who, at a somewhat later period, was confined in Wisbech Castle. The greater part of the clergy acquiesced in the change of religion. On the part of Elizabeth, it is admitted that moderate and conciliatory measures were at first adopted. She rejected the clause in the Litany denouncing the Pope and his detestable enormities.'

'They (the catholics), writes Dodd in his History, were entertained by her in the army, and now and then in the cabinet, till such times as the misbehaviour of some persons drew a persecution upon the whole body, and occasioned those penal and sanguinary laws to which their substance and lives have ever since been exposed.'-vol. ii. 18. And what the parsimony of her disposition makes remarkable, she ordered the arrears due to the ecclesiastics ejected from the abbeys to be paid to a farthing.'*

How was this spirit met? Elizabeth's title was dubious. 'The Pope's ear had been pre-occupied by the diligence of the French ambassador.' (Lingard.) Paul accordingly denied her legitimacy and right to the crown, and asserted that of Mary Queen of Scots. Francis, upon this, quartered the arms of England, and returned an evasive and contemptuous answer to Elizabeth's remonstrance. To disable Mary from asserting this dangerous claim, she leagued with the Reformers in Scotland, and this was unquestionably the primary cause which led to Elizabeth's crime and Mary's fate. This hostile measure on the part of Francis necessarily produced also her support of his domestic enemies; and hence her connexion with the French Reformers. In 1563 occurred the conspiracy of the Poles, who, on the event of Elizabeth's expected death, intended to proclaim Mary Queen of Scots. They were convicted but pardoned. In 1565, the memorable meeting of Catherine of Medicis and the Duke of Alva took place at Bayonne, in which the universal testimony of history asserts designs to have been formed for the entire extinction of

* Camden's Elizabeth, quoted by Rapin.

Pro