to improve their learning, though, at the same time, he imposed rules upon them in order to avoid scandals. The Queen, however, who hated liberty of speech, and did not care for overmuch preaching, was dissatisfied with Grindal's rules,[1] and required him to suppress these meetings (exercises or prophesyings, as they were called) altogether. Grindal, like an honest man, refused, and intimated, in his letter to the Queen, in very plain terms, that he was a better judge in the matter than herself, and had a higher duty than that towards her. The result was that the Queen suppressed the prophesyings herself by a letter addressed to the bishops, and sequestrated the archbishop and confined him to his house, and would, if she had been able, have deprived him. This last proceeding, however, she found to be difficult, and was compelled to content herself with the former; and Grindal accordingly remained in disgrace, and practically suspended, until his death in July 1583.[2]
Thus Elizabeth's reign went on. The Catholics, most of whom probably had conformed up to the time of Pope Pius V.'s bull, became less conformable every day, and the Puritans set the example, so fatally followed by their opponents since, of obstinately retaining their preferments in the Church while deliberately violating the conditions on which they held them. Many of both parties were deprived, but it is obvious from such passages as that just quoted from Hooker, from the report of Archbishop Sandys on the condition of things in the North, and many similar writings
- ↑ See her letter to Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester, In Strype, Whitgift, vol. i. pp. 163-4.
- ↑ Convocation had petitioned for the removal of Grindal's sequestration in 1581, and in 1582 he made a submission, and was restored. The Queen even then wished him to resign, but the arrangements for his doing so were not completed at the time of his death, in July 1583.
