persecution carried on under old in the sad story of catholic and protestant intolerance, which extends from the Lollard revolt down to the reign of James I., the Marian when executions for heresy came to an end.1 The Marian persecution was carried on under old statutes and in the old form, with an additional stimulus in the shape of commissions, by virtue of which certain high public officials were associated with the bishops as "co-assessors," 2 in order to insure their zeal in the sickening work which was executed with a fanatical ruthlessness never before known. statutes and in the old form. Statistics of the persecution; nearly all the victims The statistics of the persecution, drawn in the main from the narrative of Foxe, reveal the fact that from the execution of John Rogers, who was to "break the ice," on the 4th of February, 1555, down to the end of Mary's reign, about two hundred and seventy-seven persons, men and women, suffered by fire, of whom about two hundred and forty belonged to the laboring classes, while the remainder consisted of seven tradesmen, nine of the village gentry, sixteen priests, and five bishops, - Hooper, Ferrar, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. It further appears that nearly all the victims were taken from the southtaken from east of England, from a district having as its principal centres the south London and Canterbury, and in which it is reasonable to supEngland; pose protestantism was more general than elsewhere. And yet, despite the persecuting zeal which has wreathed Mary's name with a terrible epithet that will live forever, she utterly failed either to satisfy the papacy, or to drive the nation back into the fold of the older faith. In the desperate effort made to attain these ends the queen was ably supported, first by Gardiner as Gardiner, and then by Pole. Although the prior training of the former made him hesitate at first as to the restoration of the papal supremacy, he yielded to pressure as the reign advanced, while from the outset he committed himself by his conduct in parliament to the policy of active persecution. east of its failure to accom plish the desired end; a perse cutor; 3 death in became church and restore the and first fruits; restitution Not until after Mary's third parliament had passed the great act of reconciliation that swept away the whole legislative fabric which Henry VIII. had built up, and not until after the heresy statutes, at the same time reënacted, had been put into vigorous operation under Gardiner's personal supervision,1 did his death in November, 1555, leave Pole, after the manner of after his Wolsey, the supreme counsellor in all matters both of church November, and state. The only particular in which Pole fell short of 1555, Pole complete success in his effort to reestablish the condition of supreme in things that had existed before the schism began was his failure state; to restore to the monastic communities the abbey lands which failure to had been so widely distributed, and to the See of Rome the abbey lands annates 2 and firstfruits which had been annexed to the crown since the 20th of Henry VIII. As a partial compensation, Mary had of her own motion, and in the face of pressing obligations, given back to the church in March, 1555, all the abbey partial lands that remained to the crown, while in the parliament made by which met in the following October an act was passed, not restoring the annates and firstfruits to the pope directly, but providing that they should be devoted under the direction. of the legate to church purposes. Such concessions, which might have satisfied another pontiff, fell far short, however, of the absolute demands soon to be put forth upon the part of the papacy by Caraffa, who, as the uncompromising leader of the church party organized to meet the Reformation with the Inquisition, was elected to the papal throne in May, 1555, as Paul IV. On the day of the new pope's election arrived in edict of Rome the English ambassadors, who were sent to make formal announcement of the act restoring the papal supremacy; inalienable and on the 12th of July Paul, among his first acts, put forth a of church sweeping bull reasserting the decision of the canons as to the sacred and inalienable character of church estates, and threatening all who should dare to withhold them with spiritual penalties. In order to save Pole's work from destruction by 6 1 The heresy statutes were passed in December, 1554, and in the following January Gardiner presided at the trial of Hooper, Rogers, and others. Foxe's Acts and Mon., vol. vi. pp. 587, 598, 649. 2 As heretofore pointed out, although 23 Hen. VIII. c. 20 was re 5 pealed, the annates were not restored. 8 Burnet, vol. i. p. 514. 4 2 & 3 Phil. & Mar. c. iv. See Poli. Ep., vol. v. pp. 51, 53, 56. 5 Burnet, vol. i. p. 515. 6 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 791. At the time of the schism Henry VIII. had as crown and parliament; Paul IV. as to the ' character estates; an excep tion made save Pole's work; mosity to excepting England from the general edict, the ambassadors of England finally succeeded in obtaining from Paul a confirmation of the in order to dispensation of Julius III., the basis of the reconciliation, which was read in the commons on the 23d of the following October. But behind the reluctance with which Paul made this exception in order to uphold a bargain that embodied for Paul's ani- him less of triumph than humiliation stood an old animosity Pole; against the legate, which had grown out of personal rivalries and widely divergent views as to the methods by which Lutheranism should be confronted. As viewed by the violent orthodoxy of Paul, the more liberal theologians, led at that time by Contarini and Pole, were but little better than heretics. This prejudice against Pole and his work, which Paul was induced to stifle for a moment, manifested itself in no uncertain revoked his terms in the summer of 1557, when he revoked his legatine legatine commission commission,2 against the protest of both queen and council, in the summer of 1557; Pole accused at Rome of heresy ; the moment that Philip succeeded in dragging England into war with the pope's ally of France. Mary, with something of the Tudor spirit, resisted the attempt to force a new legatine upon her, while Paul went so far as to subject Pole to a formal accusation at Rome for heresy. To the sorrow thus brought upon the queen by the hostility of the one power for which she had sacrificed everything was added the growing consciousness that the very means that she had so zealously employed to drive the nation back to its spiritual allegiance had not only failed of their purpose, but had converted the broad popularity with which she had ascended the throne into a detestation at once deep and universal. At enmity with the pope, forsaken by Philip, and hated by the nation, the childless queen, who had struggled in vain to make her husband her successor, was doomed to see, as she sank to the grave, the nation the tide of popular enthusiasm rising around Elizabeth, whose right to the throne every parliament had protected against her loyalty of to Eliza beth; sumed the title of King of Ireland, 7th of June. The ambassadors were then received on the 23d. 1 Commons Journal, 2 & 3 Phil. & Mar. See Froude, vol. v. p. 566. 2 Burnet, vol. i. p. 546, and Collectanea; Strype, Mem. of the Reformation, vol. vi. p. 476. 3 Poli. Ep., vol. v. pp. 31-36; Lingard, vol. v. pp. 515-518. designs, and whom the nation itself had guarded in the midst of every peril as its deliverer. Thus overwhelmed by failure and disappointment, Mary, in the midst of the depression that both Mary followed the loss of Calais, died in the morning of the 17th died on the of November, 1558, and a few hours later Cardinal Pole, the 17th of zealous counsellor who had toiled in vain by her side, was no 1558. more. and Pole November, The last two stages lish Reformation: the third stage, coextensive with the Mary, in her CHAPTER V. ELIZABETH AND THE FINAL SETTLEMENT. I. WITH the death of Mary ended the third stage of the of the Eng. English Reformation, the period of reaction during which the nation wearied and disheartened by the political and religious chaos, the social and financial distress endured under Edward's selfish and despotic councillors, and alarmed at the reactionary prospect of a fresh dynastic struggle - sought peace and order reign of at the feet of the legitimate sovereign even upon terms that involved the surrender of the entire fruit of the religious revolution which Henry had inaugurated, excepting only the ecclesiastical property, whose wide distribution had made it almost a national endowment. The hope of a reconciliation upon such a basis, faint enough at best in view of the general aversion to the papal overlordship and to clerical domination culminated through the ecclesiastical courts, utterly vanished in the prefamous per- sence of the Marian persecution, which so deepened and intensisecution; fied the religious strife as to leave the nation more hopelessly divided than ever before into two irreconcilable and warring the fourth factions. The fourth and last stage began with the accession stage began of Elizabeth, upon whom devolved the difficult task of formuwith the ac-lating and enforcing a political programme through which the Elizabeth, nation was finally emancipated from papal and Spanish domination, and all parties and sects compelled to accept or acquiesce in a system of religious uniformity which rested upon parliamentary enactments, and which was enforced with all the despotic authority of the conciliar system. Utterly devoid of the religious enthusiasm that had in turn driven Edward and Mary in opposite directions, and viewing all theological differences in a purely political light, the new queen came to her task with a mental equipment which harmonized completely with that of the wise and wary counsellor who for forty years stood by her side. Foremost among that class of English statesmen known as "politicals," who accepted the new doctrine that every people possessed not only the right to determine for itself the form and last cession of who com pelled all parties to Elizabeth's political temper; |