Kitabı oku: «Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth», sayfa 18
The act of Uniformity ordained an exact compliance in all points with the established form of worship and a punctual attendance on its offices; it also rendered highly penal the exercise, public or private, of any other; and of this law it was not long before several unfortunate catholics were doomed to experience the utmost rigor.
Many parish priests who had been open and violent papists in the last reign, permitted themselves to take the oath of supremacy and retain their cures under the new order of things, a kind of compliance with the times which the court of Rome is said sometimes to have permitted, sometimes even to have privately enjoined,—on the principle of Peter Martyr, that it was better that its secret adherents should continue to occupy the churches, on whatever conditions, than that they should be surrendered entirely into the hands of an opposite party. The bishops, on the contrary, considered themselves as called upon by the dignity of their character and office to bear a public testimony against the defection of England from the holy see; and those of them who had not previously been deprived on other grounds, now in a body refused the oaths and submitted themselves to the consequences. All were deprived, a few imprisoned, several committed to honorable custody. The policy of Elizabeth, unlike the genuine bigotry of her sister, contented itself with a kind of negative intolerance; and as long as the degraded bishops abstained from all manifestations, by words or deeds, of hostility against her government and ecclesiastical establishment, and all celebration of the peculiar rites of their religion, they were secure from molestation; and never to them, as to their unfortunate protestant predecessors, were articles of religion offered for signature under the fearful alternative of compliance or martyrdom.
To supply the vacancies of the episcopal bench became one of the earliest cares of the queen and her ministers; and their choice, which fell on the most eminent of the confessors and exiles, was generally approved by the nation.
Dr. Parker, formerly her mother's chaplain and the religious instructor of her own childhood, was designated by Elizabeth for the primacy. This eminent divine had likewise been one of the chaplains of Edward VI., and enjoyed under his reign considerable church preferments. He had been the friend of Cranmer, Bucer, Latimer, and Ridley; of Cook, Cheke, and Cecil; and was the ardent coadjutor of these meritorious public characters in the promotion of reformed religion, and the advancement of general learning,—two grand objects, which were regarded by them as inseparable and almost identical.
On the accession of Mary, being stripped of all his benefices as a married priest, Parker with his family was reduced to poverty and distress; and it was only by a careful concealment of his person, by frequent changes of place, and in some instances by the timely advertisements of watchful friends, that he was enabled to avoid a still severer trial of his constancy. During this period of distress he found support and solace from the pious task of translating into English metre the whole of the Psalms. The version still exists in manuscript, and is executed with some spirit, and not inelegantly, in the old measure of fourteen syllables.
Parker's "Nolo episcopari" is supposed to have been more than ordinarily sincere: in fact, the station of metropolitan must at this juncture have been felt as one of considerable difficulty, perhaps even of danger; and the stormy temper of the queen afterwards prepared for the prelate so much of contradiction and humiliation as caused him more than once to bewail his final acceptance of the highest dignity of the English church.
With all her personal regard for the primate, Elizabeth could not always refrain in his presence from reflections against married priests, which gave him great pain.
During a progress which she made in 1561 into Essex and Suffolk, she expressed high displeasure at finding so many of the clergy married, and the cathedrals and colleges so filled with women and children; and in consequence she addressed to the archbishop a royal injunction, "that no head or member of any college or cathedral should bring a wife or any other woman into the precincts of it, to abide in the same, on pain of forfeiture of all ecclesiastical promotion." Parker regarded it as his duty to remonstrate with her in person against so popish a prohibition; on which, after declaring to him that she repented of having made any married bishops, she went on to treat the institution of matrimony itself with a satire and contempt which filled him with horror.
It was to his wife that her majesty, in returning acknowledgements for the magnificent hospitality with which she had been received at the archiepiscopal palace, made use of the well-known ungracious address; "Madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, and so I know not what to call you; but howsoever I thank you."
But these fits of ill-humor were transient; for Parker learned the art of dispelling them by submissions, or soothing them by the frequent and respectful tender of splendid entertainments and costly gifts. He did not long remain insensible to the charms of rank and fortune; and it must not be concealed that an inordinate love of power, and a haughty intolerance of all opposition, gradually superseded that candor and Christian meekness of which he had formerly been cited as an edifying example. Against that sect amongst the clergy who refused to adopt the appointed habits and scrupled some of the ceremonies, soon after distinguished by the appellation of Puritans, he exercised his authority with unsparing rigor; and even stretched it by degrees so far beyond all legal bounds, that the queen herself, little as she was inclined to tolerate this sect or to resent any arbitrary conduct in her commissioners, was moved at length to interpose and reverse some of his proceedings. The archbishop, now become incapable of yielding his own will even to that of his sovereign, complained and remonstrated instead of submitting: reproaches ensued on the part of Elizabeth; and in May 1575 the learned prelate ended in a kind of disgrace the career which he had long pursued amid the warmest testimonies of royal approbation.
The fairest, at least the most undisputed, claim of this eminent prelate to the gratitude of his contemporaries and the respect of posterity, is founded on the character which his high station enabled him to assume and maintain, of the most munificent patron of letters of his age and country. The study which he particularly encouraged, and to which his own leisure was almost exclusively devoted, was that of English antiquities; and he formed and presented to Corpus Christi college a large and valuable collection of the manuscripts relative to these objects which had been scattered abroad at the dissolution of the monasteries, and must have been irretrievably lost but for his diligence in inquiring after them and the liberality with which he rewarded their discovery. He edited four of our monkish historians; was the first publisher of that interesting specimen of early English satire and versification, Pierce Plowman's Visions; composed a history in Latin of his predecessors in the see of Canterbury, and encouraged the labors of many private scholars by acts of generosity and kindness.
Grindal, a divine of eminence, who during his voluntary exile at Frankfort had taken a strong part in favor of king Edward's Service-book, was named as the successor of Bonner in the bishopric of London; but a considerable time was spent in overcoming his objections to the habits and ceremonies, before he could be prevailed upon to assume a charge of which he deeply felt the importance and responsibility.
To the reputation of learning and piety which this prelate enjoyed in common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow prejudices and state-jealousies of an imperious mistress, and it soon became evident that strife and opposition awaited him.
His first difference was with archbishop Parker, whom he highly offended by his backwardness in proceeding to extremities against the puritans, a sect many of whose scruples Grindal himself had formerly entertained, and was still inclined to view with respect or pity rather than with indignation. Cecil, who was his chief friend and patron, apprehensive of his involving himself in trouble, gladly seized an occasion of withdrawing him from the contest, by procuring his appointment in 1570 to the vacant archbishopric of York; a hitherto neglected province, in which his efforts for the instruction of the people and the reformation of the state of the church were peculiarly required and eminently successful.
For his own repose, Grindal ought never to have quitted this sphere of unmolested usefulness; but when, on the death of Parker in 1575, the primacy was offered to him, ambition, or perhaps the hope of rendering his plans more extensively beneficial, unfortunately prompted its acceptance. Thus was he brought once more within the uncongenial atmosphere of a court, and subjected to the immediate control of his sovereign in matters on which he regarded it as a duty, on the double ground of conscience and the rights of his office, to resist the fiat of a temporal head of the church.
The queen, whose dread and hatred of the puritans augmented with the severities which she exercised against them, had conceived a violent aversion to certain meetings called prophesyings, at this time held by the clergy for the purpose of exercising their younger members in expounding the Scriptures, and at which the laity had begun to attend as auditors in great numbers and with much interest. Such assemblies, her majesty declared, were nothing else than so many schools of puritanism, where the people learned to be so inquisitive that their spiritual superiors would soon lose all influence over them, and she issued positive commands to Grindal for their suppression. At the same time she expressed to him her extreme displeasure at the number of preachers licensed in his province, and required that it should be very considerably lessened, "urging that it was good for the world to have few preachers, that three or four might suffice for a county; and that the reading of the homilies to the people was enough." But the venerable primate, so far from consenting to abridge the means of that religious instruction which he regarded it as the most sacred duty of a protestant church to afford, took the freedom of addressing to her majesty a very plain and earnest letter of expostulation. In this piece, after showing the great necessity which existed for multiplying, rather than diminishing, opportunities of edification both to the clergy and the people, and protesting that he could not in conscience be instrumental to the suppression either of preaching or prophesyings, he proceeded to remonstrate with her majesty on the arbitrary, imperious, and as it were papal manner, in which she took upon herself to decide points better left to the management of her bishops. He ended by exhorting her to remember that she also was a mortal creature, and accountable to God for the exercise of her power, and that she ought above all things to be desirous of employing it piously for the promotion of true religion.
The event showed this remonstrance to be rather well-intended than well-judged. Indignation was the only sentiment which it awakened in the haughty mind of Elizabeth, and she answered it by an order of the Star-chamber, in virtue of which the archbishop was suspended from his functions for six months, and confined during the same period to his house. At the end of this time he was urged by Burleigh to acknowledge himself in fault and beg the queen's forgiveness but he steadily refused to compromise thus a good cause, and his sequestration was continued. It even appears that nothing but the honest indignation of some of her ministers and courtiers restrained the queen from proceeding to deprive him.
At the end of four or five years, her anger being somewhat abated, it pleased her to take off the sequestration, but without restoring the primate to her favor; and as he was now old and blind, he willingly consented to resign the primacy and retire on a pension: but in 1583, before the matter could be finally arranged, he died.
Archbishop Grindal was a great contributor to Fox's "Acts and Monuments," for which he collected many materials; but he was the author of no considerable work, and on the whole he seems to have been less admirable by the display of any extraordinary talents than revered and exemplary for the primitive virtues of probity, sincerity, and godly zeal. These were the qualities which obtained for him the celebration of Spenser in his "Shepherd's Calendar," where he is designated by the name of Algrind, and described as a true teacher of the Gospel and a severe reprover of the pride and worldliness of the popish clergy. The lines were written during the period of the prelate's disgrace, which is allegorically related and bewailed by the poet.
Another distinguished ornament of the episcopal bench was Jewel, consecrated to the see of Salisbury in 1560. It is remarkable that this learned apologist of the church of England had expressed at first a stronger repugnance to the habits than most of his colleagues; but having once brought himself to compliance, he thenceforth became noted for the rigor with which he exacted it of others.
In the time of Henry VIII. Jewel had become suspected of opinions which he openly embraced on the accession of Edward, and he was sufficiently distinguished amongst the reformers of this reign to be marked out as one of the first objects of persecution under Mary. As a preliminary step, on which proceedings might be founded, the Romish articles were offered for his signature, when he disappointed alike his enemies and his friends by subscribing them without apparent reluctance. But his insincerity in this act was notorious, and it was in contemplation to subject him to the fierce interrogatories of Bonner, when timely warning enabled him, through many perils, to escape out of the country. Safe arrived at Frankfort, he made a public confession, before the English congregation, of his guilt in signing articles which his conscience abhorred, and humbly entreated forgiveness of God and the church. After this, he repaired to Strasburgh and passed away the time with his friend Peter Martyr.
The erudition of Jewel was profound and extensive, his private life amiable, his performance of his episcopal duties sedulous; and such was the esteem in which his celebrated "Apology" was held, that Elizabeth, and afterwards James I., ordained that a copy of it should be kept in every parish-church in England.
Of Dr. Cox, elevated to the see of Ely, mention has already been made; and it would be superfluous here to enter more largely into the ecclesiastical history of the reign.
A careful consideration of the behaviour of Elizabeth towards the two successive primates Parker and Grindal, will furnish a sufficiently accurate notion of the spirit of her religious policy, besides affording a valuable addition to the characteristic traits illustrative of her temper and opinions.
CHAPTER XIIIa
1561
Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.—Translations of ancient tragedies.—Death of Francis II.—Mary refuses to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh—returns to Scotland.—Enmity between Mary and Elizabeth.—Philip II. secretly encourages the English papists.—Measures of rigor adopted against them by Elizabeth.—Anecdote of the queen and Dr. Sampson.—St. Paul's struck by lightning.—Bishop Pilkington's sermon on the occasion.—Paul's Walk.—Precautions against the queen's being poisoned.—The king of Sweden proposes to visit her.—Steps taken in this matter.
The eighteenth of January 1561 ought to be celebrated as the birthday of the English drama; for it was on this day that Thomas Sackville caused to be represented at Whitehall, for the entertainment of Elizabeth and her court, the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, otherwise called Gorboduc, the joint production of himself and Thomas Norton. From the unrivalled force of imagination, the vigor and purity of diction, and the intimate knowledge and tasteful adaptation of the beauties of the Latin poets displayed in the contributions of Sackville to the Mirror of Magistrates, a lettered audience would conceive high expectations from his attempt in a new walk of poetry; but in the then barbarous state of our Theatre, such a performance as Gorboduc must have been hailed as not only a novelty but a wonder. It was the first piece composed in English on the ancient tragic model, with a regular division into five acts, closed by lyric choruses.
It offered the first example of a story from British history, or what passed for history, completely dramatized and represented with an attempt at theatrical illusion; for the earlier pieces published under the title of tragedies were either ballads or monologues, which might indeed be sung or recited, but were incapable of being acted. The plot of the play was fraught with those circumstances of the deepest horror by which the dormant sensibilities of an inexperienced audience require and delight to be awakened. An unwonted force of thought and dignity of language claimed the patience, if not the admiration, of the hearers, for the long political disquisitions by which the business of the piece was somewhat painfully retarded.
The curiosity of the public respecting a drama which had been performed with general applause both at court and before the society of the Middle Temple, encouraged its surreptitious appearance in print in 1565, and a second stolen edition was followed, some years after, by a corrected one published under the inspection of the authors themselves. The taste for the legitimate drama thus awakened, may be supposed to have led to the naturalization amongst us of several of its best ancient models. The Phœnissæ of Euripides appeared under the title of Jocasta, having received an English dress from Gascoigne and Kinwelmershe, two students of Gray's Inn. The ten tragedies of Seneca, englished by different hands, succeeded. It is worthy of note, however, that none of these translators had the good taste to imitate the authors of Ferrex and Porrex in the adoption of blank verse, and that one only amongst them made use of the heroic rhymed couplet; the others employing the old alexandrine measure, excepting in the choruses, which were given in various kinds of stanza. Her majesty alone seems to have perceived the superior advantages, or to have been tempted by the greater facility of Sackville's verse; and amongst the MSS. of the Bodleian library there is found a translation by her own hand of part of Seneca's Hercules Oetæus, which is in this measure. Warton however adds, that this specimen "has no other recommendation than its royalty."
The propensity of Elizabeth, amid all the serious cares of government and all the pettinesses of that political intrigue to which she was addicted, to occupy herself with attempts in polite literature, for which she possessed no manner of talent, is not the least remarkable among the features of her extraordinary and complicated character.
At the period of her reign however which we are now considering, public affairs must have required from her an almost undivided attention. By the death of Francis II. about the end of the year 1560, the queen of Scots had become a widow, and the relations of England with France and Scotland had immediately assumed an entirely novel aspect.
The change was in one respect highly to the advantage of Elizabeth. By the loss of her royal husband, Mary was deprived of that command over the resources of the French monarchy by which she had hoped to render effective her claim to the English crown, and she found it expedient to discontinue for the present the use of the royal arms of England. The enmity of the queen-mother had even chased her from that court where she had reigned so lately, and obliged her to retire to her uncle, the cardinal of Lorrain at Rheims. But from the age and temper of the beautiful and aspiring Mary, it was to be expected that she would ere long be induced to re-enter the matrimonial state with some one of the princes of Europe; and neither as a sovereign nor a woman could Elizabeth regard without jealousy the plans for her reestablishment already agitated by her ambitious uncles of the house of Guise. Under these circumstances, it was the first object of Elizabeth to obtain from her rival the formal ratification, which had hitherto been withheld, of the treaty of Edinburgh, by one article of which Mary was pledged never to resume the English arms; and Throgmorton, then ambassador to France, was instructed to urge strongly her immediate compliance with this certainly not inequitable demand. The queen of Scots, however, persisted in evading its fulfilment, and on pleas so forced and futile as justly to confirm all previous suspicions of her sincerity.
Matters were in this state between the two sovereigns, when Mary came to the resolution of acceding to the unanimous entreaties of her subjects of both religions, by returning to govern in person the kingdom of her ancestors; and she sent to request of Elizabeth a safe-conduct. The English princess promptly replied, that the queen had only to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and she should obtain not merely a safe-conduct but free permission to shorten the fatigues of her voyage by passing through England, where she should be received with all the marks of affection due to a beloved sister. By this answer Mary chose to regard herself as insulted; and declaring to the English ambassador in great heat that nothing vexed her so much as to have exposed herself without necessity to such a refusal, and that she doubted not that she should be able to return to her country without the permission of Elizabeth, as she had quitted it in spite of all the vigilance of her brother, she abruptly broke off the conference.
Henceforth the breach between these illustrious kinswomen became irreparable. In vain did Mary, after her arrival in Scotland, endeavour to remedy the imprudence which she was conscious of having committed, by professions of respect and friendship; for with these hollow compliments she had the further indiscretion to mingle the demand that Elizabeth should publicly declare her next heir to the English throne; a proposal which this high-spirited princess could never hear without rage. Neither of the queens was a novice in the arts of dissimulation, and as often as it suited the interest or caprice of the moment, each would lavish upon the other, without scruple, every demonstration of amity, every pledge of affection;
but jealousy, suspicion, and hatred dwelt irremoveably in the inmost recesses of their hearts. The protestant party in Scotland was powerfully protected by Elizabeth, the catholic party in England was secretly incited by Mary; and it became scarcely less the care and occupation of each to disturb the administration of her rival than to fix her own on a solid basis.
Mary had been attended on her return to Scotland by her three uncles, the duke of Aumale, the grand prior and the marquis of Elbeuf, with a numerous retinue of French nobility; and when after a short visit the duke and the grand prior took their leave of her, they with their company consisting of more than a hundred returned through England, visiting in their way the court of Elizabeth. Brantome, who was of the party, has given incidentally the following particulars of their entertainment in the short memoir which he has devoted to the celebration of Henry II. of France.
"Bref, c'estoit un roy tres accomply & fort aymable. J'ay ouy conter a la reigne d'Angleterre qui est aujourd'huy, que c'estoit le roy & le prince du monde qu'elle avoit plus desiré de voir, pour le beau rapport qu'on luy en avoit fait, & pour sa grande renommée qui en voloit par tout. Monsieur le connestable qui vit aujourd'huy s'en pourra bien ressouvenir, ce fut lorsque retournant d'Escosse M. le grand prieur de France, de la maison de Lorreine, & luy, la reigne leur donna un soir a soupper, où après se fit un ballet de ses filles, qu'elle avoit ordonné & dressé, representant les vierges de l'evangile, desquelles les unes avoient leurs lampes allumées & les autres n'avoient ny huile ny feu & en demandoient. Ces lampes estoient d'argent fort gentiment faites & elabourées, & les dames étoient tres-belles & honnestes & bien apprises, qui prirent nous autres François pour danser, mesme la reigne dansa, & de fort bonne grace & belle majesté royale, car elle l'avoit & estoit lors en sa grande beauté & belle grace. Rien ne l'a gastée que l'execution de la pauvre reigne d'Escosse, sans cela c'estoit une tres-rare princesse.
"…Estant ainsi à table devisant familierement avec ces seigneurs, elle dit ces mots, (après avoir fort loüé le roy): C'estoit le prince du monde que j'avois plus desiré de voir, & luy avois deja mandé que bientost je le verrois, & pour ce j'avois commandé de me faire bien appareiller mes galeres (usant de ces mots) pour passer en France exprès pour le voir. Monsieur le connestable, d'aujourd'huy, qui estoit lors Monsieur d'Amville, respondit, Madame, je m'asseure que vous eussiez esté tres-contente de le voir, car son humeur & sa façon vous eussent pleu; aussi lui eust il esté tres-content de vous voir, car il eust fort aimé vôtre belle humeur & vos agreables façons, & vous eust fait un honorable accueil & tres-bonne chere, & vous eust bien fait passer le temps. Je le croy & m'en asseure, dit elle." &c.
By the death of the king of France, and the increasing distractions of that unhappy country under the feeble minority of Charles IX., the politics of the king of Spain also were affected. He had not now to fear the union of the crowns of England France and Scotland under the joint rule of Francis and Mary, which he had once regarded as a not improbable event; consequently his strongest inducement for keeping measures with Elizabeth ceased to operate, and he began daily to disclose more and more of that animosity with which he could not fail to regard a princess who was at once the heroine and patroness of protestantism. From this time he began to furnish secret aids which added hope and courage to the English partisans of popery and of Mary; and Elizabeth judged it a necessary policy to place her catholic subjects under a more rigid system of restraint. It was contrary to her private inclinations to treat this sect with severity, and she was the more reluctant to do so as she thus gratified in an especial manner the wishes of the puritanical or Calvinistic party in the church, their inveterate enemies; and by identifying in some measure her cause with theirs, saw herself obliged to conform in several points to their views rather than her own wishes.
The law which rendered it penal to hear mass was first put in force against several persons of rank, that the example might strike the more terror. Sir Edward Waldegrave, in Mary's reign a privy-councillor, was on this account committed to the Tower, with his lady and some others; and lord Loughborough, also a privy-councillor much favored and trusted by the late queen, was brought into trouble on the same ground. Against Waldegrave it is to be feared that much cruelty was exercised during his imprisonment; for it is said to have occasioned his death, which occurred in the Tower a few months afterwards. The High Commission court now began to take cognisance of what was called recusancy, or the refusal to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; it also encouraged informations against such as refrained from joining in the established worship; and numerous professors of the old religion, both ecclesiastics and laity, were summoned on one account or other before this tribunal. Of these, some were committed to prison, others restricted from entering certain places, as the two universities, or circumscribed within the limits of some town or county; and most were bound in great penalties to be forthcoming whenever it should be required.
As a further demonstration of zeal against popery, the queen caused all the altars in Westminster abbey to be pulled down; and about the same time a remarkable scene occurred between her majesty and Dr. Thomas Sampson dean of Christ-church.
It happened that the queen had appointed to go to St. Paul's on New Year's day to hear the dean preach; and he, thinking to gratify her on that day with an elegant and appropriate present, had procured some prints illustrative of the histories of the saints and martyrs, which he caused to be inserted in a richly bound prayer-book and laid on the queen's cushion for her use. Her majesty opened the volume; but no sooner did the prints meet her eye, than she frowned, blushed, and called to the verger to bring her the book she was accustomed to use. As soon as the service was ended, she went into the vestry and inquired of the dean who had brought that book? and when he explained that he had meant it as a present to her majesty, she chid him severely, inquired if he was ignorant of her proclamation against images, pictures, and Romish reliques in the churches, and of her aversion to all idolatry, and strictly ordered that no similar mistake should be made in future. What renders this circumstance the more curious is, that Elizabeth at this very time kept a crucifix in her private chapel, and that Sampson was so far from being popishly inclined, that he had refused the bishopric of Norwich the year before, on account of the habits and ceremonies, and was afterwards deprived of his deanery by archbishop Parker for nonconformity.
