POLITICAL HISTORY 



These names of Lancashire knights and gentlemen are interesting and 

 important owing to the very prominent part borne by many of them or their 

 descendants in the next and following reigns. Again in 1556-7* a commis- 

 sion of array was issued to the sheriff and justices of the county for a muster 

 of its armed forces. Next year the queen died. 



The accession of the Princess Elizabeth in 1558 was doubtless a great 

 relief to the handful of Protestants in Lancashire, one or two of whom 

 were in prison for religion. The queen's policy, however, being a middle 

 one between the Edwardian iconoclasm and the Marian bigotry, did not 

 promise much satisfaction to the Puritans any more than to the Roman 

 Catholics of the county. She was intolerant of extremists. Her position 

 was rather that of her royal father, and by the Acts of Supremacy 

 and Uniformity passed in 1559 she assumed the right of deciding 

 the doctrine and worship which were to be taught and used in public. 

 Those who objected to the assumption were regarded as ' disobedient 

 subjects ' or even ' traitors,' and punishable accordingly. The Acts were 

 strenuously resisted by many in Lancashire ; ^ but the queen seems to have 

 set her heart and mind upon the spiritual and political conquest of the 

 county, for the more ' contumacious ' the people the greater were the efforts 

 put forth by the queen and her council. 



The loyalty of Lancashire was indeed of importance owing to its 

 nearness to Scotland, where in 1561 the young widowed queen of France, 

 then queen of Scots, had taken up her state. Her zealous adherence to Roman 

 Catholicism, her asserted claim to the English throne, made her a dangerous 

 rival on the northern border, and a possible combination with the zealous 

 Roman Catholics of Lancashire was far from being impracticable. 



By way of assuring herself and her council of its military strength the 

 queen ordered the lord-lieutenant to summon a muster of the troops of the 

 county. The array of January, 1560, showed 3,992 'harnessed and un- 

 harnessed men ' in it.* These probably were those whom the earl mentioned 

 in a letter to Sir William Cecil as being ordered to Newcastle for i February ' 

 to assist at the siege of Berwick. 



Owing to the tumult of events happening over the border, where in 

 1565 the Scottish queen had married the young earl of Darnley and 

 acquiesced in his murder two years later, Elizabeth and her council, headed 

 by Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, felt that greater attention should be 

 given to the forcible conversion of Lancashire from its religious leanings. 

 The county indeed swarmed with Roman Catholics, some of them having 

 sworn not to come to the Anglican communion and rejoicing in the report 

 of a projected Spanish invasion." Upon such nothing short of an organized 

 government campaign of prosecution was likely to take affect. Accordingly 

 in 1567 the queen wrote to Dr. Downham, bishop of Chester, urging him 

 to be more zealous in the suppression of recusancy and in the encouragement 

 of episcopacy," and pointing out how the earl of Derby had already proved 



• Pat. 3 & 4 Phil, and Mary (1556-7), m. \i d. 'Pat. i Eliz. m. ^zd. 



' Lanes. Lieutenancy, pt. i, 21, No. 6 (reprinted from the Shuttleworth MSS.). 

 ' Cal. S.P. Dom. 1547-80, p. 149. 



'" Letter from Rich. Hurleston to the earl of Pembroke concerning the king of Spain's preparations for 

 invading England ; ibid. 303. 



" Strype, Jnnals of the Reformation, i, 544-5. 



221 



