ANNO REG. ELIZ. 1, ANNO DOM. 1558, 1559. 1. ELIZABETH, the only child then living of King Henry the Eighth, succeeded her sister in the throne on the 17th of November, anno 1558; Ferdinand of Austria being then Emperor, Henry the, Second King of the French, Philip the Second King of Spain, and Paul the Fourth commanding in the Church of Rome. Queen Mary not long before her death had called a Parliament, which was then sitting when the news thereof was brought unto the Lords in the house of Peers. The news by reason of the Queen’s long sickness not so strange unto them as to take them either unresolved or unprovided for the declaring of their duty to the next successor; though some of then, perhaps, had some secret wishes that the Crown might have fallen rather upon any other than upon her to whom it did of right belong; so that, upon a short debate amongst themselves, a message is sent to the Speaker of the House of Commons, desiring him and all the members of that house to come presently to them, upon a business of no small importance to the good of the kingdom. Who being come, the Lord Chancellor Heath, with a composed and settled countenance, not without sorrow enough for the death of the one, or any discontent for the succession of the other, declared unto them, in the name of the rest of the Lords, that God had taken to his mercy the late Queen Mary, and that the succession to the Crown did belong of right to the Princess Elizabeth, whose title they conceived to be free from all legal questions; that in such cases nothing was more necessary than expedition, for the preventing of all such plots and practices of any discontented or ambitious persons as might be set on foot to the disturbance of the common quiet: and therefore that their concurrence was desired in proclaiming the new Queen with all speed that might be, they being then so opportunely convened together as the representees of the whole body of the Commons of the Realm of England. Which being said, the Knights and Burgesses gave a ready consent to that which they had no reason to deny; and they which gave themselves some thoughts of inclining otherwise, conceived their opposition to the general vote neither safe nor seasonable. So that immediately the Princess Elizabeth was proclaimed by the King at Arms, first before Westminster Hall door in the Palace Yard, in 27 the presence of the Lords and Commons, and not long after at the Cross in Cheapside and other places in the City, in the presence of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and principal citizens, to the great joy of all peaceable and well affected people. 2. It was not long before the Princess had advertisement of the death of her sister, together with the general acknowledgement of her just and lawful title to the Crown Imperial. The news whereof being brought unto her by some of the Lords, she prepared for her removal from Hatfield on the Saturday after, (being the 19th of that month) and with a great and royal train set forwards to London. At Highgate, four miles from the city, she was met by all the Bishops then living, who presented themselves before her upon their knees, in testimony of their loyalty and affection to her. In which address as she seemed to express no small contentment, so she gave to each of them particularly her hand to kiss, except only unto Bonner of London, whose bloody butcheries had rendered him incapable in her opinion of so great a favor. At her first coming to the city she took her lodging in the Charterhouse, where she staid some days, till all things in the Tower might be fitted and prepared for her reception. Attended by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, with a stately train of lords and ladies and their several followers, she entereth by Cripplegate into the city, passeth along the wall till she came to Bishops-gate, where all the companies of the city in their several liveries waited her coming in their proper and distinct ranks, reaching from thence until the further end of Mark Lane, where she was entertained with a peal of great ordnance from the Tower. At her entrance into which place, she rendered her most humble thanks to Almighty God for the great and wondrous change of her condition, in bringing her from being a prisoner in that place to be the Prince of her people, and now to take possession of it as a royal palace in which before she had received so much discomfort. Here she remained till the 5th day of December then next following, and from thence removed by water unto Somerset House. In each remove she found such infinite throngs of people, who flocked from all parts to behold her, both by land and water, and testified their public joy by such loud acclamations as much rejoiced her heart to hear, and could not but express it in her words and countenance, by which she doubled their affections, and made herself the absolute mistress at all times of their hands and purses. She had been forged upon the anvil of adversity, which made her of so fine a temper that none knew better than herself how to keep her state, and yet descend unto the meanest of her subjects in a popular courtship. 3. In the meantime the Lords of the Council had given order for the stopping of all ports and havens, that no intelligence of the Queen’s death might be carried out of the realm by which any disturbance might be plotted or contrived against it till all things were settled here at home. But, finding such a general concurrence in all sorts of people in acknowledging her just and lawful title, testified by so many outward signs of a public joy, that there was no fear of any danger from abroad, that bar was speedily removed, and the ports opened as before to all sorts of passengers. And in the next place care was taken for sending new commissions unto such Embassadors as resided in the Courts of several Princes, both to acquaint them with the change, and to assure those Princes of the Queen’s desire to maintain all former leagues between them and the Crown of England; but more particular instructions were directed to her agent in the Court of Spain; to whom it was given in charge to represent unto the King the dear remembrance which she kept of those many humanities received from him in the time of her troubles. Instructions are sent also to Sir Edward Karn, the late Queen’s agent with the Pope, and now confirmed by her in the same employment, to make his Holiness acquainted with the death of Queen Mary, and her succession to the Crown, not without some desire that all good offices might be reciprocally exchanged between them. But the Pope answered hereunto (according to his accustomed rigor), “That the kingdom of England was held in fee of the apostolic see; that she could not succeed, being illegitimate; that he could not contradict the declarations of Clement the Seventh and Paul the Third; that it was a great boldness to assume the name and government of it without him; yet, being desirous to show a fatherly affection, if she will renounce her pretensions, and refer herself wholly to his free disposition, he will do whatsoever may be done with the honor of the apostolic see.” To the making of which sudden answer though there needed no other instigation of his own rough nature, yet many thought that he was put upon it by some ministers of the Court of France, who, fearing nothing more than that Philip will endeavor by a second marriage to assure himself of the possession of the realm of England, and to that end solicit for a dispensation to make way unto it, thought it expedient to prevent those practices in the first beginning, by putting the Pope upon such counsels as would be sure to dash all his hopes that way. 4. But the new Queen, having performed this office of civility to him as she did to others, expected not the coming back of any answer, nor took much thought of it when she heard it. She knew full well that her legitimation and the Pope’s Supremacy could not stand together, and that she could not possibly maintain the one without the discarding of the other. But in this case it concerned her to walk very warily, and not to unmask herself too much at once, for fear of giving an alarm to the Papal party before she had put herself into a posture of ability to make good her actions. Many who were, imprisoned for the cause of religion she restored to liberty at - her first coming to the Crown. Which occasioned Rainsford, a buffonly gentleman of the Court, to make a suit to her in the behalf of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who had been long imprisoned in a Latin translation, that they might also be restored to liberty, and walk abroad as formerly in the English tongue. To whom she presently made answer, “That he should first endeavor to know the minds of the prisoners, who perhaps desired no such liberty as was demanded.” Which not withstanding, upon a serious debate of all particulars, she was resolved to proceed to a Reformation, as the times should serve. In order whereunto she constitutes her Privy Council, which she compounds of such ingredients as might neither give encouragement to any of those who wished well to the Church of Rome, or alienate their affections from her whose hearts were more inclined to the Reformation. Of such as had been of the Council to the Queen her sister, she retained the Lord Archbishop of York, the Lord Marquess of Winchester, the Earls of Arundel, Shrewsbury, Darby, and Pembroke, the Lords Clynton and Effingham, Sir Thomas Cheiney, Sir William Petre, Sir John Mason, Sir Richard Sackvile, and Doctor Wotton; to whom she added of her own, the Marquess of Northampton, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Ambrose Cave, Sir William Cecil, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. To which last, being then Attorney of the Duchy of Lancaster, and one that had been much employed by her in some former services which had relation to the Law, she committed the custody of the Great Seal on the 22nd of December; the title of Lord Chancellor remaining to Archbishop Heath, as before it did, and that of the Lord Keeper being given to Bacon; which being a new title, and consequently subject unto some disputes, an Act was passed in the second Parliament of her reign for investing the new Lord Keeper, and all that should from thenceforth enjoy that office, with all the powers, privileges, and preeminences which anciently had been exercised and enjoyed by the Lord Chancellor of England, and for confirming of all sentences and decrees in Chancery which had or should be made by the said Lord Keepers in all times to come. The like mixture she also caused to be made amongst other her subordinate ministers, in adding such new Commissioners for the Peace in every county as either were known to be of the reformed religion or to wish well to it. 5. The preferring of so many of the Protestant party, as well to places of employment in their several countries as to the rank and dignity of Privy Councilors, and the refusal of her hand to Bishop Bonner at her very first coming to the Crown, were taken to be strong presumptions (as indeed they were), that she intended to restore the reformed religion. And as the Papists, in the first beginning of the reign of Queen Mary, hoping thereby the better to obtain her favor, began to build new altars and set up the Mass, before they were required so to do by any public authority; so fared it now with many unadvised zealots amongst the Protestants, who, measuring the Queen’s affections by their own, or else presuming that their errors would be taken for an honest zeal, employed themselves as busily in the demolishing of altars and defacing of images, as if they had been licensed and commanded to it by some legal warrant. It happened also, that some of the Ministers which remained at home, and others which returned in great numbers from beyond the seas, had put themselves into the pulpits, and bitterly inveighed against the superstitions and corruptions of the Church of Rome. The Popish preachers did the like, and were not sparing of invectives against the others, whom they accused of heresies, schisms, and innovation in the worship of God. For the suppressing of which disorders on the one side, and those common disturbances on the other, the Queen set out two Proclamations much about one time; by one of which it was commanded that no man, of what persuasion soever he was in the points of religion, should be suffered from thenceforth to preach in public, but only such as should be licensed by her authority; and that all such as were so licensed or appointed should forbear preaching upon any point which was matter of controversy, and might conduce rather to exasperate than to calm men’s passions. Which Proclamation was observed with such care and strictness, that no sermon was preached at St Paul’s Cross or any public place in London till the Easter following. At what time the sermons which were to be preached in the Spittle (according to the ancient custom) were performed by Doctor Bill, the Almoner to the Queen, and afterwards the first Dean of Westminster of the Queen’s foundation, Doctor Richard Cox, formerly Dean of Westminster, preferred in short time after to the see of Ely, and Mr Robert Horn (of whom mention hath been made before at the troubles of Franckfort), advanced not long after to the see of Winchester. The rehearsal sermon, accustomably preached at St Paul’s Cross on the Sunday following, was undertook by Doctor Thomas Sampson, then newly returned from beyond the seas, and after most unhappily made Dean of Christ-Church. But so it chanced that when he was to go into the pulpit the door was locked, and the key thereof not to be found, so that a smith was sent for to break open the door; and that being done, the like necessity was found-of cleansing and making sweet the place, which by a long disuse had contracted so much filth and nastiness as rendered it unfit for another preacher. 6. By the other Proclamation, which was published on the 30th of December, it was enjoined, That no man, of what quality or degree soever, should presume to alter anything in the state of religion, or innovate in any of the rites and ceremonies thereunto belonging, but that all such rites and ceremonies should be observed in all parish-churches of the kingdom as were then used and retained in her Majesty’s Chapel, until some further order should be taken in it. Only it was permitted, and withal required, that the Litany, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, should be said in the English tongue, and that the Epistle and the Gospel at the time of the High Mass should be read in English; which was accordingly done in all the churches of London on the next Sunday after, being New-Year’s day, and by degrees in all the other churches of the kingdom also. Further than this she thought it not convenient to proceed at the present, but that she had commanded the Priest or Bishop (for some say it was the one, and some the other), who officiated at the altar in the Chapel-Royal, not to make any elevation of the Sacrament, the better to prevent that adoration which was given unto it, and which she could not suffer to be done in her sight without a most apparent wrong to her judgment and conscience; which being made known in other places, and all other churches being commanded to conform themselves to the example of the Chapel, the elevation was forborne also in most other places, to the great discontent and trouble of the Popish party. And though there was no further progress toward a Reformation by any public act or edict, yet secretly a Reformation in the form of worship, and consequently in point of doctrine, was both intended and projected. For, — making none acquainted with her secret purposes but the Lord Marquess of Northampton, Francis, Earl of Bedford, Sir John Gray of Pergo, (one of the late Duke of Suffolk’s brothers,) and Sir William Cecil — she committed the reviewing of the former Liturgy to the care of Doctor Parker, Doctor Gryndal, Doctor Cox, Doctor Pilkington, Doctor Bill, Doctor May, and Mr Whitehead, together with Sir Thomas Smith, Doctor of the Laws, a very learned, moderate, and judicious gentleman. But what they did, and what preferments they attained to on the doing of it, we shall see anon, when we shall find the book reviewed, confirmed by Act of Parliament, and executed in all parts of the kingdom as that Act required. 7. But first, some public acts of State and great solemnities of Court are to be performed. The funeral of the Queen deceased, solemnized on the 13th of December at the Abbey of Westminster, and the sermon preached by Doctor White, then Bishop of Winchester, seemed only as a preamble to the like solemnity performed at the said place about ten days after, in the obsequies of Charles the Fifth; which mighty Emperor, having first left the world by resigning his kingdoms and retiring himself into a monastery, as before was said, did after leave his life also in September last; and now, upon the 24th of this present December, a solemn obsequy was kept for him in the wonted form, — a rich hearse being set up for him in the Church of Westminster, magnificently covered with a pall of gold, his own Embassador serving as the principal mourner, and all the great lords and officers about the Court attending on the same in their ranks and orders. And yet both these, though stately’ and majestical in their several kinds, came infinitely short of those pomps and triumphs which were prepared and reserved for the Coronation. As a preparation whereunto, she passed from Westminster to the Tower on the 12th of January, attended by the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and other citizens, in their barges, with the banners and escutcheons of their several companies, loud music sounding all the way; and the next day she restored some unto their old, and advanced others to new honors, according to her own fancy and their descryings. The Marquess of Northampton, who had lain under an attaindure ever since the first beginning of the reign of Queen Mary, she restored in blood, with all his titles and estates. The Lord Edward Seimour, eldest son to the late Duke of Somerset, was by her reconfirmed in the titles of Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hartford, which had been formerly entailed upon him by Act of Parliament. The Lord Thomas Howard, second son of Thomas, the late Duke of Norfolk, and brother to Henry, Earl of Surrey, (beheaded in the last days of King Henry the Eighth) she advanced to the title of Viscount Howard of Bindon. She also preferred Sir Oliver St Johns, who derived himself frown the Lady Margaret, daughter of John, Duke of Somerset, from whom the Queen herself descended, to the dignity of Lord St John of Bletsoe; and Sir Henry Carie, son of Sir William Carie, Knight, and of Mary Bollen his wife, the only sister of Queen Anne Bollen, she promoted to the honor and degree of Lord Carie of Hunsdon. 8. The ordinary acts of grace and favor being thus dispatched, she prepares the next morning for a triumphant passage through London to her Palace at Westminster. But first, before she takes her chariot, she is said to have lifted up her eyes to heaven, and to have used some words to this or the like effect: — “O Lord, Almighty and everliving God, I give thee most hearty thanks that thou hast been so merciful unto me as to spare me to see this joyful day. And I acknowledge that thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with me as thou didst with thy true and faithful servant Daniel thy Prophet, whom thou deliveredst out of the den from the cruelty of the raging greedy lions. Even so was I overwhelmed, and only by thee delivered; to thee only be thanks, honor, and praise for ever. Amen.” Which said, she mounted into her chariot with so clear a spirit as if she had been made for that day’s solemnity. Entertained all the way she went with the joyful shouts and acclamations of “God save the Queen!” which she repaid with such a modest affability and so good a grace that it drew tears of joy from the eyes of some, with infinite prayers and thanksgiving from the hearts of all; but nothing more endeared her to them, than the accepting of an English Bible richly gilt, which was let down from one of the pageants by a child representing Truth. At the sight whereof she first kissed both her hands, with both her hands she received the book, which first she kissed and after laid unto her bosom, (as the nearest place unto her heart), giving the city greater thanks for that excellent gift than for all the rest which plentifully had been that day bestowed upon her, and promised to be diligent in the reading of it. By which and many other acts of popular piety, with which she passed away that day, she did not only gain the hearts of all them that saw her, but they that saw her did so magnify her most eminent graces that. they procured the like affections in the hearts of all others also. 9. On the next morning, with like magnificence and splendor, she is attended to the Church of St Peter in Westminster, where she was crowned according to the order of the Roman Pontifical by Dr Owen Oglethorp, Bishop of Carlisle, the only man among all the Bishops who could be wrought on by her to perform that office. Whether it. were that they saw some alteration coming, to which they were resolved not to yield conformity, so that they could not be in a worse case upon this refusal than they should be otherwise; or that they feared the Pope’s displeasure, if they should do an act so contrary unto his pretensions without leave first granted; or that they had their own particular animosities and spleens against her, (as the Archbishop of York particularly, for his being deprived of the Seal) — is not certainly known. None more condemned for the refusal than the Bishop of Ely, as one that had received his first preferment from the King her father, and who complied so far in the time of King Edward as to assist in the composing of the public Liturgy, and otherwise appeared as forward in the Reformation as any other of that order. So that no reason can be given either for his denial now to perform that service, or afterwards for his not complying with the Queen’s proceedings, but that he had been one of those which were sent to Ronge to tender the submission of the kingdom to the Pope still living, and could not now appear with honor in any such action as seemed to carry with it a repugnancy (if not a manifest inconsistency) with the said engagement. It cannot be denied but that there were three Bishops living of King Edward’s making, all of them zealously affected to the Reformation; and possibly it may seem strange that the Queen received not the Crown rather from one of their hands, than to put herself unto the hazard of so many denials as had been given her by the others. But unto this it may be answered, that the said Bishops at that time were deprived of their sees, — (but whether justly or unjustly, could not then be questioned) — and therefore not in a capacity to perform that service. Besides, there being at that time no other form established for a Coronation than that which had much in it of the ceremonies and superstitions of the Church of Rome, she was not sure that any of the said three Bishops would have acted in it, without such alterations and omissions in the whole course of that order as might have rendered the whole action questionable amongst captious men; and therefore finally she thought it more conductible to her reputation amongst foreign Princes to be crowned by the hands of a Catholic Bishop, (or one at least which was accounted to be such), than if it had been done by any of the other religion. 10. And now the Parliament draws on, summoned to begin on the 25th of that month, being the Anniversary day of St Paul’s Conversion; a day which seemed to carry some good omen in it in reference to that great work of the Reformation which was therein to be established. The Parliament opened with an eloquent and learned sermon, preached by Dr Cox, a man of good credit with the Queen, and of no less esteem with the Lords and Commons who carried any good affection to the memory of King Edward the Sixth. The choosing of which man to perform that service was able of. itself to give some intimation of the Queen’s design to most of the auditors; though, to say truth, the Bishops refusing to perform the ceremony of the coronation had made themselves incapable of a further trust. Nor could the Queen’s design be so closely carried, but that such lords and gentlemen as had the managing of elections in their several countries retained such men for members of the House of Commons as they conceived most likely to comply with their intentions for a Reformation. Amongst which none appeared more active than Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, whom the Queen had taken into her Council, Henry Fitz-Allen, Earl of Arundel, whom she continued in the office of Lord Steward, and Sir William Cecil, whom she had restored to the place of Secretary, to which he had been raised by King Edward the Sixth.

Besides, the Queen was young, unmarried, and like enough to entertain some thoughts of an husband; so that it can be no great marvel, not only if many of the nobility, but some even of the gentry also, flattered themselves with possibilities of being the man whom she might choose to be her partner in the regal diadem. Which hopes much smoothed the way to the accomplishment of her desires, which otherwise might have proved more rugged and unpassable than it did at the present. Yet notwithstanding all their care, there wanted not some rough and furious spirits in the House of Commons, who eagerly opposed all propositions which seemed to tend unto the prejudice of the Church of Rome. Of which number none so violent as Story, Doctor of the Laws, and a great instrument of Bonner’s butcheries in the former reign. Who, being questioned for the cruelty of his executions, appeared so far from being sensible of any error which he then committed, as to declare himself to be sorry for nothing more than that, instead of lopping off some few boughs and branches, he did not lay his axe to the root of the tree; and though it was not hard to guess at how high a mark the wretch’s malice seemed to aim, and what he meant by laying his axe to the root of the tree, yet passed he unpunished for the present, though Divine vengeance brought him in conclusion to his just reward. Others there were — and doubtless many others also — in the House of Commons, who had as great zeal as he to the Papal interess, but either had more modesty in the conduct of it, or preferred their duty and allegiance to their natural Prince before their zeal to the concernments of the Church of Rome. 11. In this Parliament there passed an Act for recognizing the Queen’s just title to the Crown; but without any Act for the validity of her mother’s marriage, on which her title most depended. For which neglect most men condemned the new Lord Keeper, on whose judgment she relied especially in point of law; in whom it could not but be looked on as a great incogitancy, to be less careful of her own and her mother’s honor than the Ministers of the late Queen Mary had been of hers. But Bacon was not to be told of an old law maxim, that “the Crown takes away all defects and stops in blood, and that, from the time that the Queen did assume the Crown, the fountain was cleared, and all attainders and corruption of blood discharged.” Which maxim, how unsafe soever it may seem to others, yet, since it goes for a known rule amongst our lawyers, could not be questioned at that present. And possible it is that he conceived it better for the marriage of the Queen’s mother to pass unquestioned, as a matter justly subject unto no dispute, than to build the validity of it on no better ground than an Act of Parliament, which might be as easily reversed as it was agreed to. There passed an Act also for restoring to the Crown the tenths and first-fruits, first settled thereon in the time of King Henry the Eighth, and afterwards given back by Queen Mary, as before was said. For the better drawing on of which concession, it was pretended that the patrimony of the Crown had been much dilapidated, and that it could not be supported with such honor as it ought to be, if restitution were not made of such rents and profits as were of late dismembered from it. Upon which ground they also passed an Act for the dissolution of all such monasteries, convents, and religions orders, as had been founded and established by the Queen deceased. By virtue of which Act the Queen was repossessed again of all those lands which had been granted by her sister to the Monks of Westminster and Shene, the Knights Hospitalers, the Nuns of Sion, together with the mansion-houses re-edified for the Observants at Greenwich, and the Black Friars in Smithfield. Which last, being planted in a house near the dissolved Priory of Great St Bartholomew’s, had again fitted and prepared the church belonging thereunto for religious offices; but had scarce fitted and prepared it when dissolved again, and the church afterwards made a parochial church for the use of the Close and such as lived within the verge and precincts thereof.

How she disposed of Sion House, hath been shown already; and what she did with the rich Abbey of Westminster, we shall see hereafter. 12. In the passing of these Acts there was little trouble; in the next, there was. For when the Act of the Supremacy came to be debated, it seemed to be a thing abhorrent even in nature and polity, that a woman should be declared to be the Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England. But those of the reformed party meant nothing less than to contend about words and phrases, so they might gain the point they aimed at, which was the stripping of the Pope of all authority within these dominions, and fixing the supreme power over all persons and estates, of what rank soever, in the Crown Imperial, — not by the name of Supreme Head, which they perceived might be made liable to some just exceptions; but, which comes all to one, of the Supreme Governess. Which, when it gave occasion of discourse and descant amongst many of the captious Papists, Queen Mary helped her sister unto one good argument for her justification, and the Queen helped herself to another, which took off the cavil. In the third Session of Parliament in Queen Mary’s time, there passed an Act declaring, “That the Regal power was in the Queen’s Majesty, as fully as it had been in any of her predecessors.” In the body whereof it is expressed and declared, “That the law of the realm is, and ever hath been, and ought to be, understood, that the kingly or regal office of the realm, and all dignities, prerogatives royal, power, preeminences, privileges, authorities, and jurisdictions thereunto annexed, united, or belonging, being invested either in male or female, are, be, and ought to be, as fully, wholly, absolutely and entirely, deemed, adjudged, accepted, invested, and taken, in the one as in the other. So that whatsoever statute or law doth limit or appoint that the King of this realm may or shall have, execute, and do any thing as King, etc., the same the Queen (being Supreme Governess, possessor, and inheritor to the Imperial Crown of this realm) may by the same power have and execute, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, without doubt, ambiguity, scruple, or question, any custom, use, or any, other thing to the contrary notwithstanding.” By the very- tenor of which Act Queen Mary grants unto her sister as much authority in all Church-concernments as had been exercised and enjoyed by her father and brother according to any Act or Acts of Parliament in their several tithes. Which Acts of Parliament, as our learned lawyers have declared upon these occasions, were not to be considered as introductory of a new power which was not in the Crown before, but only declaratory of an old, which naturally belonged to all Christian princes, and amongst others to the Kings and Queens of the realm of England. 13. And to this purpose it is pleaded by the Queen in her own behalf. Some busy and seditious persons had dispersed a rumor, that by the Act for recognizing of the Queen’s supremacy there was something further ascribed unto the Queen, her heirs, and successors, — a power of administering divine service in the Church, which neither by any equity or true sense of the words could from thence be gathered; and thereupon she makes this declaration unto all her subjects: — “That nothing was or could be meant or intended by the said Act, than was acknowledged to be due to the most noble King of famous memory, King Henry the Eighth, her Majesty’s father, or King Edward the Sixth, her Majesty’s brother.” And further she declareth, “That she neither doth nor will challenge any other authority by the same than was challenged and lately used by the said two Kings, and was of ancient time due unto the Imperial Crown of this realm; that is, under God to have the sovereignty and rule over all persons born within her realms or dominions, of what estate (either ecclesiastical or temporal) soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them.” Which explication, published in the Queen’s Injunctions, anno 1559, not giving such a general satisfaction to that groundless cavil as was expected and intended, the Bishops and Clergy in their Convocation of the year 1562, by the Queen’s authority and consent, declared more plainly; that is to say, “That they gave not to their Princes, by virtue of the said Act or otherwise, either the ministering of God’s word or sacraments, but that only prerogative which they saw to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scripture by God himself; that is to say, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers.” 14. By all which if the cavils of the adversary be not fully answered, it would be known upon what reason they should question that in a sovereign Queen which they allow in many eases to a Lady Abbess. For that an Abbess may be capable of all and all manner of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even to the denouncing of that dreadful sentence of excommunication, and that they may lawfully exercise the same upon all such as live within the verge of their authority, is commonly acknowledged by their greatest canonists. First, for suspension, it is affirmed by their Gloss that an Abbess may suspend such clerks as are subject to her, both from their benefice and office. And questionless either to suspend a Clerk, or to bring his Church under the sentence of an interdict, is one of the chief parts of ecclesiastical or spiritual censures. Nor have they this authority only by way of delegation from the Pope in some certain cases, — as is affirmed by Aquinas, Durandus, Sylvester, Dominicus Soto, and many other of their schoolmen, — but in an ordinary way, as properly and personally invested in them, — which is the general opinion of their greatest canonists.

Next, for the Sacraments, it is sufficiently known that the ministration of Baptism is performed by midwives and many other women, as of common course; not only as a thing connived at in extreme necessity, but as a necessary duty, in which they are to be instructed against all emergencies by their parish priests; for which we have the testimony of the late Lord Legate, in the articles published by him for his visitation. And finally, for excommunication, it is affirmed by Paludanus and Navarre (none of the meanest in the pack), that the Pope may grant that power to a woman also; higher than which there can be none exercised in the Church by the sons of men. And if a Pope may grant these powers unto a woman, as to a Prioress or Abbess or to any other, there can be then no incapacity in the sex for exercising any part of that jurisdiction which was restored unto the Crown by this Act of Parliament. And if perhaps it be objected that a Lady Abbess is an ecclesiastical or spiritual person in regard of her office, which cannot be affirmed of Queens, Pope Gregory himself will come in to help us, by whom it was not thought unfit to commit the cognizance of a cause concerning the purgation of a Bishop who stood charged with some grievous crime to Brunichildis, or Brunholt, Queen of France; of which although the Gloss upon the Decretals be pleased to say, That the Pope stretched his power too far in this particular, yet Gregory did no more therein but what the Popes may do, and have done of late times by their own confession; so little ground there is for so great a clamor as hath been made by Bellarmine and other of the popish Jesuits upon this occasion. 15. Brow for the better exercising and enjoying of the jurisdiction thus recognized unto the Crown, there are two clauses in the Act of great importance; the first whereof contains an oath, for the acknowledgement and defense of the Supremacy, not only in the Queen, but her heirs and successors; the said oath to be taken by all Archbishops, Bishops, and all other ecclesiastical persons, and also by all temporal judges, justiciaries, mayors, or any other temporal officers, etc. For the refusal whereof, when lawfully tendered to them by such as were thereto commissionated under the Great Seal of England, every such person so refusing was actually to stand deprived of his or their ecclesiastical preferments, or other temporal office, of what sort soever; only it was provided that the oath should not be imposed on any of the temporal peers, of whose fidelity the Queen seemed willing to assure herself without any such tie; though this exemption was esteemed by others but a piece of cunning, the better to facilitate the passing of that Act amongst them, which otherwise they might have hindered. But this provision was not made till the following Parliament, though for the reason before mentioned it was promised now. By the last clause it was enacted,” That it should and might be lawful to the Queen, her heirs, and successors, by letters patents under the Great Seal of England, to assign, name, and authorize, when and as often as her Highness, her heirs, or successors, should think convenient, such persons, being natural-born subjects to them, to exercise, use, and occupy, under her Highness, her heirs, and successors, all manner of jurisdictions, privileges, and pre-eminences, in any wise touching or concerning any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, within the realm of England and Ireland, or any other her Highness’ dominions or countries, and to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities whatsoever, which by any manner of spiritual or ecclesiastical power, authority, or jurisdiction, or can or may lawfully be reformed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended, to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue, and conservation of the peace and unity of this realm.” With a proviso notwithstanding, that nothing should from thenceforth be accounted for heresy, but what was so adjudged in the Holy Scripture, or in one of the four first general Councils, or in any other national or provincial Council, determining according to the Word of God; or, finally, which should be so adjudged in the time to come by the Court of Parliament, first having the assent of the Bishops and Clergy in their Convocation. This was the first foundation of that famous Court of High Commission, the principal bulwark and preservative of the Church of England against the practices and assaults of all her adversaries, whether popish or puritan. And from hence issued that Commission by which the Queen’s ministers proceeded in their visitation in the first year of her reign, for rectifying all such things as they found amiss, and could not be redressed by any ordinary episcopal power without the spending of more time than the exigencies of the Church could then admit of. 16. There also passed another Act for recommending and imposing the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, according to such alterations and corrections as were made therein by those who were appointed to revise it, as before is said. In the performance of which service, there was great care taken for expunging all such passages in it as might give any scandal or offense to the popish party, or be urged by them in excuse for their not coming to Church and joining with the rest of the congregation in God’s public worship. In the Litany first made and published by King Henry the Eighth, and afterwards continued in the two Liturgies of King Edward the Sixth, there was a prayer to be delivered “from the tyranny and all the detestable enormities of the Bishop of Rome;” which was thought fit to be expunged, as giving matter of scandal and disaffection to all that party, or that otherwise wished well to that religion. In the first Liturgy of King Edward, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body was delivered with this benediction, that is to say, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for the preservation of thy body and soul to life everlasting; The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” etc.

Which, being thought by Calvin and his disciples to give some countenance to the gross and carnal presence of Christ in the sacrament, which passeth by the name of transubstantiation in the schools of Rome, was altered into this form in the second Liturgy, that is to say, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. Take and drink this,” etc. But the revisers of the book joined both forms together, lest, under color of rejecting a carnal, they might be thought also to deny such a real presence as was defended in the writings of the ancient Fathers. Upon which ground they expunged also a whole rubric at the end of the Communion Service, by which it was declared that kneeling at the participation of the sacrament was required for no other reason than for a signification of the humble and grateful acknowledging of the benefits of Christ given therein unto the worthy receiver, and to avoid that profanation and disorder which otherwise might have ensued, and not for giving any adoration to the sacramental bread and wine there bodily received, “or in regard of any real and essential presence of Christ’s body and blood” And to come up the closer to those of the Church of Rome, it was ordered by the Queen’s Injunctions, that the sacramental bread (which the book required only to be made of the finest flour) should be made round, in fashion of the wafers used in the time of Queen Mary. She also ordered that the Lord’s table should be placed where the altar stood, that the accustomed reverence should be made at the name of Jesus, music retained in the Church, and all the old festivals observed with their several eves. By which compliances, and the expunging of the passages before remembered, the book was made so passable amongst the Papists, that for ten years they generally repaired to their parish-churches without doubt or scruple, as is affirmed not only by Sir Edward Coke, in his speech against Garnet, and his charge given at the assizes held at Norwich, but also by the Queen herself, in a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, then being her resident or Leiger-Embassador in the Court of-France; the same confessed by Sanders also in his book de Schismate. 17. And that the book might pass the better in both Houses when it came to the vote, it was thought requisite that a disputation should be held about some points which were most likely to be checked at; the disputants to be five Bishops and four other learned men of the one side, and nine of the most learned men, graduated in the schools, on the other side; the disputation to begin on the 30th of March, and to be holden in the Church of Westminster, in the presence of as many of the Lords of the Council and of the members of both Houses as were desirous to inform themselves in the state of the questions. The disputation for that reason to be held in the English tongue, and to be managed (for the better avoiding of confusion) by a mutual interchange of writings upon every point — those writings which were mutually given in upon one day to be reciprocally answered on another, and so from day to (lay till the whole were ended. To all which points the Bishops gave consent for themselves and the rest of their party, though they refused to stand unto them when it came to the trial. The points to be disputed on were three in number, that is to say: 1. “That it is against the Word of God and the - custom of the ancient Church, to use a tongue unknown to the people in Common Prayer, and in the administration of the Sacraments. 2. That every Church hath authority to appoint, take away, and change ceremonies and ecclesiastical rites, so the same be to edification. 3. That it cannot be proved by the word of God that there is in the Mass offered up a sacrifice propitiatory for the living and the dead.”

And for the disputants of each side, they were these that follow, that is to say, first, for the Popish party, Dr White, Bishop of Winchester, Dr Bayne, Bishop of Lichfield, Dr Scot, Bishop of.

Chester, and Dr Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, Dr Fecknam, Abbot of Westminster, Dr Henry Cole, Dean of St Patti’s, Dr Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, Dr Chadsey, Prebendary of St Paul’s, and Dr Langdale, Archdeacon of Lewis in Sussex. For those of the Protestant persuasion appeared Dr Scory, the late Bishop of Chichester, Dr Cox, the late Dean of Westminster, Dr Sandys, late Master of Katherine Hall, Mr Horn, the late Dean of Durham, Mr Elmar, late Archdeacon of Stow, Mr Whitehead, Mr Gryndal, Mr Guest, and Mr Jewel; all of which, except only Whitehead, attained afterwards to some eminent place in the sacred hierarchy. 18. The day being come, and the place fitted and accommodated for so great an audience, the Lord Keeper Bacon takes the chair as Moderator, — not for determining anything in the points disputed, but for seeing good order to be kept, and that the Disputation might be managed in the form agreed on. When, contrary to expectation, the Bishops and their party brought nothing in writing to be read publicly in the hearing of all the auditors, but came resolved to try it out by word of mouth, and to that end appointed Cole to be their spokesman. For which neglect being reproved by the Lord Keeper, they promised a conformity on the Monday following, being the second day of April; but would not stand unto it then, because they would not give their adversaries so much leisure as a whole night’s deliberation to return an answer. Desired and pressed by the Lord Keeper to proceed according to the form agreed on, for the better satisfaction and contentment of so great an audience, it was most obstinately denied; Watson and White behaving themselves with so little reverence (or so much insolency rather), as to threaten the Queen with excommunication in that public audience; for which they were committed to the Tower on the fifth of April. The rest of the Bishops were commanded to abide in London, and to give bond for their appearance at the Council-table whensoever they should be required. And so the whole assembly was dismissed, and the conference ended before it had been well begun, — the Lord Keeper giving to the Bishops this sharp remembrance, “Since,” (said he) “you are not willing that we should hear you, you shall very shortly hear from us.” Which notwithstanding produced this good effect in the Lords and Commons, that they conceived the Bishops were not able to defend their doctrine in the points disputed; which made the way more easy for the passing of the public Liturgy, when it was brought unto the vote.

Two speeches there were made against it in the House of Peers, by Scot and Fecknam, and one against the Queen’s supremacy by the Archbishop of York; but they prevailed as little in both points by the power of their eloquence, as they had clone in the first by their want of arguments. 19. It gave much matter of discourse to most knowing men, that the Bishops should so willfully fall from an appointment to which they had before agreed, and thereby forfeit their whole cause to a condemnation.

But they pretended for themselves that they were so straitened in point of time that they could not possibly digest their arguments into form and order; that they looked upon it as a thing too much below them to humble themselves to such a conference or disputation, in which Bacon, a mere layman and of no great learning, was to sit as judge; and finally, that the points had been determined already by the Catholic Church, and therefore were not to be called in question without leave from the Pope. Which last pretense if it were of any weight and moment, it must be utterly impossible to proceed to any Reformation in the state of the Church by which the power and pride of the Popes of Rome may be any thing lessened, or that the corruptions of the Church should be redressed, if it consist not with their profit. For want of time they were no more straitened than the opposite party, — none of them knowing with what arguments the other side would fortify and confirm their cause, nor in what forms they would propose them, before they had perused their reciprocal papers. But nothing was more weakly urged than their exception against the presidency of Sir Nicholas A Bacon, which could not be considered as a matter either new- or strange. Not strange, because the like presidency had been given frequently to Cromwel, in the late reign of King Henry the Eighth, and that not only in such general conferences, but in several convocations and synodical meetings. Not new, because the like had been frequently practiced by the most godly Kings and Emperors of the Primitive times; for in the Council of Chalcedon the Emperor appointed certain noblemen to sit as judges, whose names occur in the first action of that Council. The like we find exemplified in the Ephesine Council, in which, by the appointment of Theodosius and Valentinian, then Roman Emperors, Candidianus, a Count Imperial, sat as Judge or President, who in the managing of that trust over-acted anything which was done by Cromwel, as Vicar-General to that King, or Bacon was empowered to do as the Queen’s Commissioner. No such unreasonable condescension to be found in this as was pretended by the Bishops and the rest of that party, to save themselves from the guilt and censure of a tergiversation; for which and other their contempts we shall find them called to a reckoning within few months after. 20. In the Convocation which accompanied the present Parliament there was little done, and that little which they did was to little purpose.

Held under Bonner, in regard of the vacancy of the see of Canterbury, it began without the ordinary preamble of a Latin Sermon, all preaching being then prohibited by the Queen’s command. The Clergy for their Prolocutor made choice of Doctor Nicholas Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, — a man of more ability (as his works declare) than he had any opportunity to make use of in the present service. The Act of the submission of the Clergy to King Henry the Eighth and his successors Kings of England, had been repealed in the first year of Queen Mary, so that the Clergy might have acted of their own authority, without any license from the Queen; and it is much to be admired that Bonner, White, or Watson did not put them to it; but such was either their fear or modesty, or a despair of doing any good to themselves and the cause, that there was nothing done by the Bishops at all, and not much more by the lower Clergy than a declaration of their judgment in some certain points which at that time were conceived fit to be commended to the sight of the Parliament: that is to say, “1. That in the sacrament of the altar, by virtue of Christ’s assisting, after the word is duly pronounced by the Priest, the natural body of Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary, is really present under the species of bread and wine, as also his natural blood. 2. That after the consecration there remains not the substance of bread and wine, or any substance save the substance of God and man. 3. That the true body of Christ and his [true]. blood is offered for a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead. 4. That the supreme power of feeding and governing the militant Church of Christ, and of confirming their brethren, is given to Peter the Apostle, and to his lawful successors in the see Apostolic, as unto the vicars of Christ. 5. That the authority to handle and define such things which belong to faith, the sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical, hath hitherto ever belonged, and only ought to belong, unto the pastors of the Church whom the Holy Spirit hath placed in the Church, and not unto laymen.”

These Articles they caused to be engrossed, and so commended them to the care and consideration of the higher house. By Bonner afterwards, that is to say on the third of March, presented to the hands of the Lord Keeper Bacon, by whom they were candidly received. But they prevailed no further with the Queen or the House of Peers when imparted to them, but that possibly they might help forward the disputation which not long after was appointed to be held at Westminster, as before was said. 21. It was upon the eighth of May that the parliament ended, and on the 24th of June that the public Liturgy was to be officiated in all the Churches of the kingdom. In the performance of which service the Bishops giving no encouragement, and many of the Clergy being backward in it, it was thought fit to put them to the final test, and either to bring them to conformity, or to bestow their places and preferments on more tractable persons. The Bishops at that time had been reduced into a narrower number than at any other time before. The sees of Salisbury and Oxon had been made vacant in the year 1557, by the death of Capon in the one, and of King in the other; neither of which Churches had since been filled, and that of Oxon not in ten years after. Purefew of Hereford, Holyman of Bristow, and Glyn of Bangor, died some few weeks before the Queen; Cardinal Pole of Canterbury on the same day with her; Hopton of Norwich, and Brooks of Glocester, within few weeks after. Griffin of Rochester departed this life about the beginning of the parliament; about which time also Pates of Worcester forsook the kingdom, and was followed by Goldwel of St Asaph in the end of May; so that there were no more than fifteen living of that sacred order. And they, being called in the beginning of July by certain of the Lords of the Council, commissionated thereunto in due form of law, were then and there required to take the oath of Supremacy, according to the law made in that behalf. Kitchin of Landaff only takes it, who, having formerly submitted unto every change, resolved to show himself no changeling in not conforming to the pleasure of the higher powers. By all the rest it was refused; that is to say by Dr Heath, Archbishop of York, Bonner of London, Tonstall of Durham, White of Winchester, Thirlby of Ely, Watson of Lincoln, Pool of Peterborough, Christopherson of Chichester, Bourn of Wells, Turbervile of Exeter, Morgan of St David’s, Bayne of Lichfield, Scot of Chester, and Oglethorp Bishop of Carlisle. And yet these men (which makes it seem the greater wonder) had either taken the like oath as Priests or Bishops in some part or other of the reign of the two last Kings. 22. But now they had hardened one another to a resolution of standing out unto the last, and were thereupon deprived of their several Bishoprics, as the law required — a punishment which came not on them all at once, some of them being borne withal (in hope of their conformity and submission) till the end of September. And when it came, it came accompanied with so much mercy that they had no reason to complain of the like extremity as they had put upon their brethren in the late Queen’s time. So well were they disposed of and accommodated with all things necessary, that they lived more at ease, and in as prosperous a condition, as when they were possessed of their former dignities. Archbishop Heath was suffered to abide in one of his own purchased houses, never restrained to any place, and died in great favor with the Queen, who bestowed many gracious visits on him during this retirement. Tonstall of Durham spent the remainder of his time with Archbishop Parker, by whom he was kindly entertained, and honorably buried. The like civility afforded also in the same house to Thirlby of Ely, and unto Bourn of Wells by the Dean of Exon, in which two houses they both died about ten years after.

White, though at first imprisoned for his hauts and insolencies, after some cooling of himself in the Tower of London, was suffered to enjoy his liberty, and to retire himself to what friend he pleased. Which favor was vouchsafed unto Turbervile also, who, being by birth a gentleman of an ancient family, could not want friends to give him honest entertainment. Watson, of Lincoln, having endured a short restraint, spent the remainder of his time with the Bishops of Rochester and Ely, till, being found practicing against the state, he was finally shut up in Wisbich castle, where at last he died. Oglethorp died soon after his deprivation, of an apoplexy, Bayne of the stone, and Morgan of some other disease in December following; but all of them in their beds, and in perfect liberty. Pool, by the clemency of the Queen, enjoyed the like freedom, courteously treated by all persons amongst whom he lived, and at last died upon one of his own farms in a good old age,. And as for Christopherson, he had been in his time so good a benefactor to Trinity College in Cambridge, whereof he had been sometimes Master, that he could not want some honest and ingenious retribution, if the necessity of his estate had required the same. Bonner alone was doomed to a constant imprisonment, which was done rather out of care for his preservation than as a punishment of his crimes; the prison proving to that wretch his safest sanctuary, whose horrid tyrannies had otherwise exposed him to the popular fury. So loud a lie is that of Genebrard, (though a good chronologer) that the Bishops were not. only punished with imprisonment and the loss of their livelihoods, but that many of them were destroyed by poison, famine, and many other kinds of death. 23. The Bishops being thus put to it, the oath is tendered next to the Deans and Dignitaries, and by degrees also to the rural Clergy; refused by some, and took by others, as it seemed most agreeable to their consciences or particular ends. For the refusal whereof, or otherwise not conforming to the public Liturgy, I find no more to have been deprived of their preferments, than fourteen Bishops, six Abbots, Priors, and Governors of religious Orders, twelve Deans, and as many Archdeacons, fifteen Presidents or Masters of Colleges, fifty Prebendaries of Cathedral Churches, and about eighty Parsons or Vicars; — the whole, number not amounting to 200 men, which, in a realm consisting of nine thousand parishes, and twenty-six Cathedral Churches, could be no great matter. But then we are to know withal that many who were cordially affected to the interess of the Church of Rome dispensed with themselves in these outward conformities, which some of them are said to do upon a hope of seeing the like revolution by the death of the Queen as had before happened by the death of King Edward; and otherwise that they might be able to relieve their brethren, who could not so readily frame themselves to present compliance. Which notwithstanding, so it was, that, partly by the deprivation of these few persons, but principally by the death of so many in the last year’s sickness, there was not a sufficient number of learned men to supply the cures; which filled the Church with an ignorant and illiterate Clergy, whose learning went no further than the Liturgy or the Book of Homilies, but otherwise conformable (which was no small felicity) to the rules of the Church. And on the other side, many were raised to great preferments, who, having spent their time of exile in such foreign Churches as followed the platform of Geneva, returned so disaffected to Episcopal Government, unto the rites and ceremonies here by law established, as not long after filled the Church with most sad disorders; not only to the breaking of the bond of peace, but to the grieving and extinguishing of the spirit of unity. Private opinions not regarded, nothing was more considered in them, than their zeal against Popery and their abilities in learning to confirm that zeal. On which account we find the, Queen’s Professor in Oxford to pass amongst the Nonconformists, though somewhat more moderate than the rest; and Cartwright, the Lady Margaret’s in Cambridge, to prove an unextinguished firebrand to the Church of England; Whittingham, the chief ringleader of the Franckfort schismatics, preferred unto the Deanery of Durham, from thence encouraging Knox and Goodman in setting up Presbytery and sedition in the Kirk of Scotland; Sampson advanced unto the Deanery of Christ Church, and within few years after turned out again for an incorrigible Nonconformist; Hardiman, one of the first twelve Prebendaries of the Church of Westminster, deprived soon after for throwing down the altar, and defacing the vestments of the Church. Which things I only touch at now, leaving the further prosecution of them to another place. 24. Of all these traverses the Pope received advertisement, from the first to the last. But, being of a rugged humor, he fell most infinitely short of that dexterity which the case required for finding out a fit expedient to prevent the rupture. When his first sullen fits had left him, he began to treat more seriously with the English Agent; not that the Queen should sue unto him for the Crown, which she was possessed of, but that no alteration of religion might be driven at by her. To which Karn answered according to such instructions as he had received, That he could give him no assurance in that point, unless the Pope would first declare, that the marriage of King Henry with Queen Anne Bollen had been good and lawful. Which cross request so stumbled both the Pope and the Conclave, that they made choice rather of doing nothing than to do that of which they could not promise to themselves any fortunate issue. Roused at the last by the continual alarms which came from England, he entertains some secret practices with the French, and on the sudden signifies his commands to Karn that he should not depart out of Rome without his leave, and that in the mean time he should take upon him the government of the English hospital in the city. In which command each of them is affirmed to have had his own proper ends: for Karn affected that restraint, which he was thought to have procured under hand because he had no mind to return into England, where he was like to find a different religion from that which he embraced in his own particular. And the Pope had his own ends also, in hindering, as he thought, the discovering of that secret intelligence which he maintained with the French King, to the Queen’s destruction, i£ his designs had took effect. But his design was carried with so little cunning that presently it discovered itself, without the help of a revelation from the English Agent. For — whether it were by his instigation, or by the solicitation of the French King, or the ambition of the Daulphin, who had then married the Queen of Scots, (as before was said) — the Queen of Scots assumes unto herself the style and title of the Queen of England, quartereth the arms thereof upon all her plate, and in all armories and escutcheons, as she had occasion. And this she did as cousin and next heir to the Queen deceased; which could not be without imputing bastardy to the Queen then living. A folly which occasioned such displeasure in the heart of Elizabeth, that it could neither be forgotten, nor so much as forgiven, till that unfortunate lady was driven out of her kingdom, hunted into a close imprisonment., and finally brought out to the fatal block. 25. This, as it somewhat startled the new Queen of England, so it engaged her the more resolutely in that Reformation which was so happily begun.

And to that end she sets out, by advice of her Council, a certain body of Injunctions, the same in purpose and effect with those which had been published in the first of King Edward, but more accommodated to the temper of the present time. Nothing more singular in the-same than the severe course taken about ministers’ marriages, the use of singing, and the reverences in divine worship to be kept in Church, the posture of the Communion table, and the form of bidding prayers in the congregation.

This last almost the same verbatim with that which is prescribed, Can. 55, anno 1603, and therefore not so necessary to be here repeated. The first worn long since out of use, and not much observed neither when it first came out; as if it had been published in the way of caution, to make the clergymen more wary in the choice of their wives, than with a purpose of pursuing it to an execution. But as for that concerning the use of singing, and the accustomed reverences to be kept in churches, they are these that follow. — Touching the last it is enjoined, “That whensoever the name of Jesus should be in any lesson, sermon, or otherwise, in the Church pronounced, that due reverence be made of all persons, young and old, with lowliness of courtesy, and uncovering of the heads of the men kind, as thereunto did necessarily belong, and heretofore hath been accustomed.”

For the encouragement of the art, and the continuance of the use of singing in the Church of England, it was thus enjoined, that is to say, “That because in divers Collegiate, as also in some Parish-churches, heretofore there hath been livings appointed for the maintenance of men and children for singing in the Church, by means whereof, the laudable exercise of Music hath been had in estimation, and preserved in knowledge; the Queen’s Majesty, neither meaning in any wise the decay of anything that might conveniently tend to the use and continuance of the said science, neither to have the same so abused in any part of the Church, that thereby the Common Prayer should be the worse understood by the hearers, willeth and commandeth, that first no alterations be made of such assignments of livings as