757 



ELIZABETH. 



ELIZABETH. 



758 



chancellor) was added to the number of the privy councillors, and 

 made at first lord privy seal, and next year lord keeper of the great 

 seal, on the resignation of Archbishop Heath. Cecil became lord high 

 treasurer on the death of the Marquis of Winchester in 1572, and con- 

 tinued to be Elizabeth's principal adviser till his death in 1598, when 

 he was succeeded by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (afterwards 

 made Earl of Dorset by James I.). Of the other persons who served 

 as ministers during Elizabeth's long reign, by far the most worthy of 

 note were Sir Francis Walsingham (who was principal secretary of 

 Btate from 1573 till his death in 1590, and was all the time they were 

 in office together the confidential friend and chief assistant of Cecil 

 the premier, under whose patronage he had entered public life), and 

 Burleigh's son, Robert Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury), who suc- 

 ceeded Walsingham as secretary of state, and held that office till the 

 end of the reign. Among the other persons of ability that were 

 employed in the course of the reign, in different capacities, may be 

 mentioned Sir Nicholas Throckmorton ; " a man," says Camden, " of 

 a large experience, piercing judgment, and singular prudence, who 

 discharged several embassies with a great deal of diligence and much 

 to his praise, yet could he not be master of much wealth, nor rise 

 higher than to those small dignities (though glorious in title) of chief 

 cupbearer of England and chamberlain of the Exchequer ; and this 

 becauss he acted in favour of Leicester against Cecil, whose greatness 

 he envied ; " Sir Thomas Smith, the learned friend of Cheke, who had 

 been one of the secretaries of state along with him under Edward VI., 

 and held the same office again under Elizabeth for some years before 

 his death in 1577 ; and Sir Christopher Hatton, who was lord 

 chancellor from 1587 till his death in 1591, and whom Camdeu, after 

 having related his singular rise from being one of the band of gentle- 

 men pensioners, to which he was appointed by the queen, who was 

 taken with his handsome shape and elegant dancing at a court masque, 

 characterises as " a great patron of learning and good sense, and one 

 that managed that weighty part of lord chancellor with that equity 

 and clearness of principle as to be able to satisfy his conscience and 

 the world too." 



The affair to which Elizabeth first applied her attention on coming 

 to the throne, and that in connection with which all the transactions 

 of her reign must be viewed, was the settlement of the national 

 religion. The opinions of Cecil strongly concurred with her own in 

 favour of the reformed doctrines, to which also undoubtedly the great 

 man of the people was attached. For a short time however she kept 

 her intentions a secret from the majority of the council, taking her 

 measures in concert only with Cecil and the few others who might be 

 said to form her cabinet. She began by giving permission, by pro- 

 clamation, to read part of the church-service in English, but at the 

 same time strictly prohibited the addition of any comments, and all 

 preaching on controversial points. This however was enough to show 

 the Roman Catholic party what was coming : accordingly, at her 

 coronation, on the 15th of January 1559, the bishops in general refused 

 to assist, and it was with difficulty that one of them, Oglethorp ol 

 Carlisle, was prevailed upon to set the crown on her head. The 

 principal alterations were reserved to be made by the parliament, 

 which met on the 25th of this month. Of the acts which were passed, 

 one restored to the crown the jurisdiction established hi the reign ol 

 Henry VIII. over the estate ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolished 

 all foreign powers repugnant to the same ; and another restored the 

 use of King Edward's book of common prayer, with certain alterations, 

 that had been suggested by a royal commission over which Parker 

 (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) presided. In accordance with 

 this last statute public worship began to be performed in English 

 throughout the kingdom on Whit-Sunday, which fell on the 8th ol 

 May. By a third act the first fruits and tenths of benefices were 

 restored to the crown ; and by a fourth, her Majesty was authorised, 

 upon the avoidance of any archbishopric or bishopric, to take certain 

 of the revenues intojher own hands ; and conveyances of the tempora- 

 lities by the holder for a longer term than twenty-one years, or three 

 lives, were made void. The effect of these laws was generally to 

 restore the church to the state in which it was in the reign o: 

 Edward VI., the royal supremacy sufficing for such further necessary 

 alterations as were not expressly provided for by statute. A strong 

 opposition was made to the bills in the House of Lords by the bishops 

 and fourteen of them, being the whole number, with the exception o; 

 Anthony, bishop of Llnndaff, were now deprived for refusing to take 

 the oath of supremacy. About one hundred prebendaries, deans 

 archdeacons, and heads of colleges, were also ejected. The number o 

 the inferior clergy however that held out was very small, amounting 

 to no more than eighty rectors and other parochial ministers, out o 

 between nine and ten thousand. On this subject it is only necessary 

 further to state that the frame of ecclesiastical polity now set up, being 

 in all essential particulars the same that still subsists, was zealous); 

 and steadily maintained by Elizabeth and her ministers to the end o 

 her reign. The Church of England has good reason to look upon he 

 and Cec:i as the true planters and rearers of its authority. They had 

 soon to defend it against the Puritans on the one hand as well a 

 against the Roman Catholics on the other, and they yielded to the 

 former as little as to the latter. The Puritans had been growing in 

 the country ever since the dawn of the Reformation, but they firs 

 made their appearance in any considerable force iu the parliamen 



whish met in 1570. At first their attempts were met on the part of 

 he crown by evasive measures and slight checks; but in 1587, on 

 our members of the House of Commons presentinj to the house a 

 ill for establishing a new Directory of Public Worship, Elizabeth at 

 >nce gave orders that they should be seized and sent to the Towar, 

 where they were kept some time. The High Commission Court also, 

 which was established by a clause in one of the acts for the settlement 

 >f religion passed in the first year of her reign, was, occasionally at 

 east, prompted or permitted to exercise its authority in the punish- 

 ment of what was called heresy, and in enforcing uniformity of worship 

 with great strictness. The determination upon which the queen acted 

 n these matters, as she expressed it in a letter to the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, was, " that no man should be suffered to decline either to 

 the left or to the right hand, from the drawn line limited by authority, 

 and by her laws and injunctions." Besides the deprivation of their 

 ivings, which many of the clergy underwent for their refusal to comply 

 with certain particulars of the established ritual, many other persons 

 suffered imprisonment for violations of the Statute of Uniformity. It 

 was against the Roman Catholics however that the most severe 

 measures were taken. By an act passed in 1585 (the 27th Eliz., c. 2), 

 every Jesuit or other popish priest was commanded to depart from 

 ;he realm within forty days, on pain of death as a traitor, and every 

 Derson receiving or relieving any such priest was declared guilty of 

 ielony. Many priests were afterwards executed under this act. 



It was the struggle with popery that moved and directed nearly the 

 whole policy of the reign, foreign as well as domestic. When Elizabeth 

 came to the throne she found the country at peace with Spain, the 

 lead of which kingdom had been her predecessor's husband, but at 

 war with France, the great continental opponent of Spain and the 

 Empire. Philip, with the view of preserving his English alliance, 

 almost immediately after her accession offered himself to Elizabeth in 

 marriage ; but, after deliberating on the proposal, she determined 

 upon declining it, swayed by various considerations, and especially, as 

 it would appear, by the feeling that, by consenting to marry her 

 sister's husband on a dispensation from the pope, she would in a 

 manner be affirming the lawfulness of her father's marriage with 

 Catharine of Aragon, the widow of his brother Arthur, and condemning 

 his subsequent marriage with her own mother, the sole validity of 

 which rested on the alleged illegality of that previous connection. A 

 general peace however, comprehending all the three powers and also 

 Scotland, was established in April 1559, by the treaty of Gateau 

 Cambresis. By this treaty it was agreed that Calais, which had been 

 taken by France in the time of Quesn Mary, and formed the only 

 difficult subject of negociation, should be restored to England in eight 

 years, if no hostile act should be committed by Elizabeth within that 

 period. Scarcely however had this compact been signed when the war 

 was suddenly rekindled, in consequence of the assumption by the new 

 French king, Francis II., of the arms and royal titles of England, in 

 right, as was pretended, of his wife, the young Mary, queen of Scots. 

 Elizabeth instantly resented this act of hostility by sending a body of 

 5000 troops to Scotland, to act there with the Duke of Chatelherault 

 and the Lords of the Congregation, as the leaders of the Protestant 

 party called themselves, against the government of the queen and her 

 mother, the regent, Mary of Guise. The town of Leith soon yielded 

 to this force- ; and the French king was speedily compelled both to 

 renounce his wife's pretensions to the English throne and to withdraw 

 his own troops from Scotland, by the treaty of Edinburgh, executed 

 7th of July 1560. The treaty however never was ratified either by 

 Francis or his queen, and in consequence the relations between the 

 three countries continued in an unsatisfactory state. Charles IX. 

 succeeded his brother on the throne of France before the end of tliis 

 year, and in a few months afterwards Mary of Scotland returned to 

 her own country. 



Meanwhile, although the two countries continued at peace, Eliza- 

 beth's proceedings in regard to the church had wholly alienated Philip 

 of Spain. The whola course of events, and the position which she 

 occupied, had already in fact caused the English queen to be looked 

 upon as the head of the Protestant interest throughout Europe as 

 much as she was at home. When the dispute therefore between the 

 Roman Catholics and the Huguenots, or reformed party, in France 

 came to a contest of arms in 1562, the latter immediately applied for 

 assistance to Elizabeth, who concluded a treaty with them, and sent 

 them succour both in men and money. The war that followed 

 produced no events of importance in so far as England was concerned, 

 and was terminated by a treaty signed at Troyes, llth of April 1564. 

 A long period followed, during which England preserved in appearance 

 the ordinary relations of peace both with France and Spain, though 

 interferences repeatedly took place on each side that all but amounted 

 to actual hostilities. The Protestants alike in Scotland, in France, and 

 in the Netherlands (then subject to the dominion of Philip), regarded 

 Elizabeth as firmly bound to their cause by her own interests ; and 

 she on her part kept a watchful eye on the religious and political 

 contentions of all these countries, with a view to the maintenauce and 

 support of the Protestant party, by every species of countenance and 

 aid short of actually making war in their behalf. With the Protestant 

 government in Scotland, which had deposed and impriaoned the queen, 

 she was in open and intimate alliance ; in favour of the French 

 Huguenots she at one time negociatod or threatened, at another even 



