The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

to our princes. By

them she had been called into existence, nursed through a feeble

infancy, guarded from Papists on one side and from Puritans on

the other, protected against Parliaments which bore her no good

will, and avenged on literary assailants whom she found it hard

to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attachments, common

enmities, bound her to the throne. All her traditions, all her

tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a point of professional

honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which distinguished

them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the

Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other

respects, regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the

temporal power on the domain of the spiritual power. Both

Calvinists and Papists maintained that subjects might justifiably

draw the sword against ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists

resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists resisted Henry the Fourth:

both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry the Third. In Scotland

Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of the Trent Papists

took arms against the English throne. The Church of England

meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly

boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated

by her than that of submission to princes.


The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance

with the Established Church were great; but they were not without

serious drawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from

the first been considered by a large body of Protestants as a

scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the

worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of

Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown

great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth

came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.

Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of

Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after

the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were

warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days,

taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably

received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of

the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been,

during, some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a

more democratical form of church government, than England had yet

seen. These men returned to their country convinced that the

reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far

less searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion

required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any

concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it

differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the

worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith,

to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance on their

own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong

in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common

exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke

of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to

expect that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would

patiently submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed,

when the priest lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces

to the earth, as before a present God, they had learned to treat

the mass as an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the

Pope as the successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer

of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him

as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be

expected that they would immediately transfer to an upstart

authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican;

that they would submit their private judgment to the authority of

a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be

afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from

what had lately been the universal faith of western Christendom.

It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have been felt

by bold and inquisitive spirits, glorying in newly acquired

freedom, when an institution younger by many years than

themselves, an institution which had, under their own eyes,

gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a

court, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome.


Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that

they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural

effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To

their hatred of the Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The

two sentiments were intermingled; and each embittered the other.

The opinions of the Puritan concerning the relation of ruler and

subject were widely different from those which were inculcated in

the Homilies. His favourite divines had, both by precept and by

example, encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His

fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in

arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too,

respecting, the government of the state took a tinge from his

notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of the

sarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without

much difficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the

arguments which were used to prove that spiritual power was best

lodged in a synod seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal

power was best lodged in a parliament.


Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest,

from principle, and from passion, zealous for the royal

prerogatives, the Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and

from passion, hostile to them. The power of the discontented

sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they were

strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among

the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of

Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of

Commons. And doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to

fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife

between the Crown and the Parliament would instantly have

commenced. But that was no season for internal dissensions. It

might, indeed, well be doubted whether the firmest union among

all the orders of the state could avert the common danger by

which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe and reformed

Europe were struggling for death or life. France divided against

herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in

Christendom. The English Government was at the head of the

Protestant interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at

home, extended a powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches

abroad. At the head of the opposite party was the mightiest

prince of the age, a prince who ruled Spain, Portugal, Italy, the

East and the West Indies, whose armies repeatedly marched to

Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of Devonshire and Sussex

in alarm. It long seemed probable that Englishmen would have to

fight desperately on English ground for their religion and

independence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from

apprehensions of some great treason at home. For in that age it

had become a point of conscience and of honour with many men of

generous natures to sacrifice their country to their religion. A

succession of dark plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the

life of the Queen and the existence of the nation, kept society

in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it

was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of

all reformed Churches was staked on the security of her person

and on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands

was, therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and

that duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of

the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no

simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of the

assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and

that her arms might be victorious by sea and land. One of the

most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately after his hand

had been lopped off for an offence into which he had been hurried

by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was

still left him, and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment

with which these men regarded her has descended to their

posterity. The Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them,

have, as a body, always venerated her memory.5


During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in

the House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no

disposition to array themselves in systematic opposition to the

government. But, when the defeat of the Armada, the successful

resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm

establishment of Henry the Fourth on the throne of France, and

the death of Philip the Second, had secured the State and the

Church against all danger from abroad, an obstinate struggle,

destined to last during several generations, instantly began at

home.


It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had,

during forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding

strength, fought its first great battle and won its first

victory. The ground was well chosen. The English Sovereigns had

always been entrusted with the supreme direction of commercial

police. It was their undoubted prerogative to regulate coin,

weights, and measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and ports.

The line which bounded their authority over trade had, as usual,

been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual, encroached on

the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature. The

encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became

serious. But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant

patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the

realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and

extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar,

coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could

be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in

an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly

minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's

Highness to be called in question. The language of the

discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the

voice of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the

crown was surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the

monopolies, and exclaimed that the prerogative should not be

suffered to touch the old liberties of England. There seemed for

a moment to be some danger that the long and glorious reign of

Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end. She, however,

with admirable