SECTION VIII. The Age of Elizabeth.

THE accession of Elizabeth was the crisis of the Reformation in Great Britain; as she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose marriage with Henry VIII. had not been sanctioned by the Romish Church, her title was not recognised by the Catholics, and the king of France permitted his daughter-in-law, Mary, queen of Scots, to assume the arms and title of England. Elizabeth secured herself by entering into secret alliance with the heads of the Protestant party in Scotland, who succeeded in withdrawing that kingdom from its allegiance to the pope, and so fettering the royal authority, that the queen dowager, who acted as regent for her daughter, was too much harassed at home to make any hostile attempt on England. Connected with the cause of the Reformation by her own interests, Elizabeth was naturally regarded as the head of the Protestants in Europe, while Philip II. was the champion of the Catholics. Hence England became the counterpoise to Spain in this age, as France had been in the preceding. But the ancient rivalry between France and Spain was of the highest importance to Elizabeth; it prevented a cordial union between the Catholic powers of Europe for checking the progress of the Reformation, and it secured support for her doubtful title, ere her noble qualities, becoming known, earned for her the best of all securities, the affections of the English nation.

Mary, queen of Scots, was the niece of Henry VIII., and next heir to his crown if the illegitimacy of Elizabeth were established; she was wedded to the heir-apparent of the French monarchy; her maternal uncles, the princes of Lorraine, were remarkable for capacity, valour, and daring ambition, and she had reasonable prospects of success at a time when Scotland was divided between the contending communions, Ireland was altogether Catholic, and Catholics predominated in the north of England. The death of Henry II., by a mortal wound in a tournament, raised Mary's husband, the feeble Francis II., to the French throne, and the young queen's influence transferred the power of the monarchy to the princes of Lorraine. The bigoted Philip II. was so alarmed at the probable accession of power to his great rivals, that he not only acknowledged Elizabeth's title, but proffered her marriage. She declined the offer, and Philip gave his hand to the princess Elizabeth of France, and concluded a treaty with that power at Cateau Cambresis. Though no express stipulations were made, it was well known that the extirpation of heresy formed a part of this alliance between the two great Catholic powers; it led to a furious war of religion, which ended in the establishment of a new European state.

Before entering on the history of the religious wars in France and the Netherlands, it is of importance to examine the state of England and Scotland during the early part of Elizabeth's reign. On the death of Francis II. (Dec. 1560), Mary was compelled to return to her native dominions by the jealousy of her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medicis, who secretly envied the power of the princes of Lorraine. She left France with a heavy heart, and from the very first moment of her landing had to endure indignities the most mortifying to her proud spirit. Popery had been overthrown in Scotland, but the Protestantism erected in its stead was just as bigoted and as intolerant as the ancient creed had been in the worst of times. Still the winning manners of the queen, and the weakness of her party, prevented any immediate outbreak; and the confidence of the Protestants in the earl of Moray restrained the violence of their fanaticism. The marriage of Mary to the young Lord Darnley, in spite of the remonstrances both of Elizabeth and Lord Moray (A.D. 1565), led to the first open breach between the queen and her subjects. Several lords, indignant at the refusal of indulgence to the Protestant religion, sought safety in England, and they soon gained Darnley himself to join their association. An Italian, of mean birth, David Rizzio, having been appointed private secretary to the queen, gained such an ascendency over her, that Darnley's jealousy was roused; he entered into a conspiracy with the exiled lords, introduced an armed band secretly into the palace, arrested Rizzio in the queen's presence, and murdered him at the door of her chamber. The birth of a son led to an apparent reconciliation between Mary and her husband; but its hollowness was proved by Darnley's being excluded from witnessing the baptism of his own child. The appearance of renewed affection was maintained notwithstanding this insult; Darnley fell sick, Mary visited him with apparent anxiety, and, under the pretence that quiet was necessary to an invalid, removed him to a solitary house called the Kirk of Field. On the 9th of February, 1567, this house was blown up with gunpowder, and the unfortunate Darnley's lifeless body carried to some distance, where it was found without any external mark of violence. The measures taken by Mary to screen Bothwell, universally regarded as the author of this crime, and her subsequent marriage to that nobleman, seemed to many conclusive evidence that she had countenanced her husband's murder. The Scottish lords flew to arms; Mary was forced to yield herself a prisoner to her irritated subjects, and Bothwell fled into exile.

The unfortunate queen, confined in Lochleven castle, was forced to abdicate in favour of her son, who was crowned with the title of James VI. She escaped from her prison, and soon found herself

at the head of a numerous army, but within eleven days from her deliverance she was completely defeated in the battle of Langside, and forced to seek refuge in England (A.D. 1568). Elizabeth placed the fugitive in close custody, a measure which her safety perhaps demanded, but which was scarcely consistent with her honour. The insurrections of the Catholic lords in the northern counties, and Mary's intrigues with the duke of Norfolk, combined with the open attempts of the Catholic states against Elizabeth, rendered the unfortunate queen's detention a matter of prudent expediency, if not of prime necessity.

Like his father Charles V., Philip was ambitious of universal monarchy, but he used different means; he hoped to gain the clergy by his zeal, to win the nobles by bribes which the wealth of Spanish America enabled him to offer, and to subdue the people by the united efforts of ecclesiastical and aristocratic influence. But in the Netherlands, as in France, the proposal to establish the Inquisition was a fatal error of despotism; it provoked the fierce resistance of all who were worthy of their country, it identified the papacy with cruelty and slavery, it gave to the reformed leaders the proud title of deliverers of their country. The election of Pius IV. to the chair of St. Peter precipitated the civil war in France (A.D. 1560). A conspiracy was formed for removing the Guises, in which many ardent Catholics joined; it was discovered and defeated, but the sanguinary cruelty of the Lorraine princes rendered their victory injurious to their cause; the memory of the martyrs they slaughtered won proselytes, and confirmed opposition. So powerful were the Huguenots that liberty of conscience was sanctioned in an assembly of the Notables at Fontainebleau; and it was proposed to convoke a national council for regulating the affairs of the Gallican Church. Had France been ruled by an energetic sovereign, acquainted with the interests of his crown and the wishes of the nation, the French Church at this moment might have been rendered as independent of Rome as the English; the pope saw the danger, and he induced Francis to abandon the national synod, by promising the speedy convocation of a general council. Both the emperor and the king of France objected to re-assembling the bishops at Trent, declaring that its name was odious to the Protestants; but the ill health of Francis II., who was fast sinking into the grave, induced Pius to quicken his proceedings, and bulls for the continuation of the council were issued. In the mean time the States-General assembled in France. The prince of Condé and the king of Navarre, the great leaders of the Huguenot party, were arrested when they appeared at court, and the former received sentence of death. But the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, dreading that the regency would be seized

by the Guises when the king died, secretly intrigued with the Huguenots to secure their support, and the life of Condé was the pledge and the reward of their assistance. But while she thus courted the alliance of the Protestants, she secretly informed Philip II. that her hatred of the Reformation was unabated, and that she only waited a favourable opportunity to imitate his example of merciless butchery and persecution. She intrigued with both parties, a fatal error; for had she frankly embraced one she would have stamped the other with the character of revolt: her Italian cunning only served to render civil war inevitable.

The duke of Guise saw clearly that to sustain the part he designed to act it was necessary to attempt something of more than ordinary magnitude; he raised the cry, 'The Church is in danger;' ignorance and bigotry responded to the summons; he placed himself at the head of the zealous supporters of papal infallibility, hoping to destroy, by one blow, the queen-regent. Like his opponents he appealed to the people, and attempted to guide public opinion; like them, too, he declared himself the stedfast friend of the monarchy; thus the struggle between the two parties had for its prize the throne of France, and for its pretext the defence of royalty.

In the mean time the council of Trent continued its deliberations, without showing any symptom of a desire to conciliate the spirit of the age by improving either the doctrine or the discipline of the Church. The bishops wasted their time in scholastic disputations, and proved how delusive were their professions of a desire for peace by celebrating the victory obtained over the Huguenots at Dreux by a public thanksgiving. In fact, the council terrified nobody but Pius IV., who saw his power attacked on every side. Maximilian, the son of the Emperor Ferdinand, having been elected king of the Romans, refused for a long time to receive the sanction of his election from the pontiff, and finally accepted it as a mere ceremony, venerable on account of its antiquity; it would have been better for the Holy See to have abjured such a privilege than to have it preserved as a subject of ridicule and mockery.

But though the public proceedings at Trent were far from injuring the progress of the Reformation, there were secret plans devised fraught with imminent peril to the Protestants. One of these was revealed, by the imprudence of the cardinal of Lorraine. On the 10th of May, 1563, he read a letter from his niece, Mary, queen of Scots, 'submitting herself to the council, and promising that, when she succeeded to the throne of England, she would subject both her kingdoms to the obedience due to the Apostolic See.' He added, verbally, that she would have sent prelates, as

representatives of Scotland, to the council, had she not been restrained by the necessity of keeping terms with her heretical councillors. The Italians were engaged everywhere alarming monarchs with the republican tendency of the Reformation; a charge which seemed to derive some support from the revolts of the peasants in Germany, the troubles in Flanders, and the confusion of France. Philip II. was not the only sovereign who regarded heretics as rebels, and believed that the papacy would be found an efficient aid to despotism in crushing civil as well as religious liberty.

At length the council of Trent terminated its sittings; eighteen years of debate had produced no plan of reform for ecclesiastical morals, discipline, or doctrine (A.D. 1564). One of the last acts of the assembled fathers was to issue an anathema against heretics, which justified the Protestants in their refusal to recognise the acts of the council. But we should commit a great error if we supposed that this last of the general councils produced no change in the constitution of the papacy; it organised the spiritual despotism of the popes, clearly perceiving that the temporal empire was irrecoverably lost, and it placed the Holy See in the position of an ally to the monarchs who were eager to maintain despotic power. From the time of this council to the present day, every sovereign of France and Spain remarkable for hostility to constitutional freedom has been equally conspicuous for his attachment to the Holy Sée and the articles of faith ratified by the council of Trent. It was by this assembly that the marriage of priests was definitely prohibited. We have already shown how necessary an element this law has been to the spiritual despotism possessed, and the temporal supremacy claimed, by the pope. Family and country had no ties on the bishops of the Catholic church; Rome enjoyed exclusive possession of every feeling that can render a man a good subject or a good citizen; the infallibility and omnipotence of the pope were made articles of faith by prelates whose hearts were engaged in supporting the supremacy of the Holy See; the popes could rouse nations to revolt, and trouble empires, because they had obedient emissaries in every parish; the doctrine of implicit submission to the successors of St. Peter was taught by priests, when it could not be enforced by armies, and it was found sufficiently efficacious to harass Europe with a century of war. Pius IV. comprehended the immense value of an unmarried clergy; though he had violently condemned the administration of the eucharist in both kinds, he relaxed the prohibition at the instance of the Emperor Maximilian, and permitted the cup to be given to the laity in Germany; but on the point of celibacy he was inflexible, for he was justly convinced that it was the great bond by which all the portions of papal