privilege of opening the conference, and the Protestants were to reply; but it was speedily discovered that this gave immense advantage to the Protestants. The Roman Catholics called for a change of this mode; the lord-keeper refused to grant it; the bishops, therefore, protested that the conditions were not equal, and refused to attend. For this disobedience the Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln were committed to the Tower, and the other six disputants were bound to make their appearance at the bar of the Lords till judgment was pronounced, and they were compelled to do so till the end of the session, when they were fined in sums from £500 to forty marks.
The conduct of some of the bishops during the session was extremely violent, in consequence of the acts passed against their ascendancy. Bonner was particularly prominent, and others of the Romish party, with Dr. Storey at their head, seemed to lament that they had not cut off Elizabeth whilst they had the power in their hands. These were not measures, nor this the language, to do any good to their cause; and, in fact, the queen took the earliest opportunity to deprive these audacious enemies of their power to do mischief. Parliament was dissolved on the 8th of May, and within a week she summoned the bishops, deans, and other dignitaries before herself and Privy Council, and there admonished them to make themselves conformable to the laws just passed regarding religion. Heath, the archbishop, replied by boldly advising her majesty to remember her own coronation oath, not to alter the religion which she found by law established; adding that his conscience could not permit him to conform to the new regulations, and all the other prelates and dignitaries declared the same. The Council then charged Heath and Bonner, on the evidence of certain papers, with having, during the reign of Edward VI., carried on secret conspiracies with Rome, with the intent to overthrow the Government. To this they replied by pleading two general pardons, and the Council then proceeded to administer to them the oath of supremacy. This they all refused except Kitchen, the Bishop of Landaff, who had clung to his see through all changes for the last fourteen years, and clung to it still.
They were then deprived of their sees, and a considerable number of other Church dignitaries were also deprived by the same test. The bulk of the clergy, however, conformed, and to those who were ejected pensions for life were allowed—a policy far more considerate than had ever prevailed in such circumstances before. The refugees on account of the Marian persecution, who had now flocked home from Switzerland and Germany, were installed in the vacant livings, and before the end of this year the Church of Rome had lost the State patronage in this country for ever. Two statutes of this session, the one establishing the oath of supremacy, and the other of uniformity, became law, and pressed heavily and despotically on Papists and all classes of Dissenters till a very late period. So long as they were in force, no one except a member of the Church of England had the slightest chance of promotion or even of employment in the State. The statute of uniformity was the embodied spirit of intolerance. For absenting himself from the worship of the Established Church, a man was fined a shilling; for using any other than the State ritual, forfeiture of goods and chattels was incurred for the first offence, a year's imprisonment for the second, and imprisonment for life for the third. It was an attempt, of the kind which never succeeds, to put down a rival religion by force. It became the source of vast injustice and oppression, causing the most terrible heart-burnings and cruelties; throwing the firebrand of dissension into every neighbourhood, and producing eventually sanguinary civil wars. Till the accession of William and Mary, the Romanists were pursued by the most annoying surveillance, and often by the most intolerable tyranny; and the evil was not so much at first the work of the Government, as of the puritanic zealots who brought from their unfortunate exile in Switzerland the harsh, intolerant, persecuting spirit which sprang up there, and diffused its virus far and wide through Protestant Europe.
Under Elizabeth, the Roman Catholics could not worship according to their rites, except with the deepest secrecy, and were continually exposed to the vigilance of spies. In 1561 Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady were imprisoned in the Tower for having a domestic chaplain and attending mass in their own house. This was only one case amongst great numbers, and the consequence was, that numbers of Roman Catholics went abroad, for the quiet enjoyment of their religion. Cecil, Walsingham, Bacon, and others of the queen's ministers, had, in fact, to keep the Protestants in check, who demanded more severe treatment of their enemies. The injunctions of Edward VI., which were re-issued, were much modified, and opprobrious phrases, such as "kissing and licking images," were softened down, the licking being omitted. The injunctions of Elizabeth, contrary to those of Edward, forbade the destruction of paintings and painted windows in churches. On the other hand, the remaining monastic institutions were broken up, and the monks and nuns were turned adrift. Three convents were removed to the Continent, and many of the ejected clergy followed Feria, the Spanish ambassador, to Spain.
Five of the deprived bishops—Heath, Bonner, Bourn, Turberville, and Poole—presented a petition to the queen, praying her, without loss of time, to return to the pious path of her late sister, to restore the ancient faith, and put down the prevailing heresies, before the wrath of God fell on the nation. Elizabeth, in great indignation, reminded them that they were, in her father's time, amongst the most obsequious flatterers and followers of his innovations, committed them all to prison, excommunicated them, and retained Bonner in the Marshalsea for the remaining nine years of his life. The rest, after imprisonment for terms more or less long, were then put under the care of different bishops and deans.
To replace the expelled bishops was no very easy matter, not from the paucity of candidates, but from the revolutions which had taken place in the ordinal of the Church. Dr. Matthew Parker, who had been the chaplain of Anne Boleyn, and who had stood so faithfully by her, was appointed by Elizabeth Archbishop of Canterbury—but how was he to be consecrated? His election was to be confirmed by four bishops, and his consecration to be performed by them. Where were they
