third year of the Queen's Majesty's reign, and entitled "An Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their due obedience,"' and two others in the year 1593 (35 Eliz. c. 1 and 2) called respectively 'An Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their due obedience,' which inflicted penalties on those who did not come to church, on those who persuaded others to impugn the Queen's authority in ecclesiastical causes, or who were present at unlawful conventicles for religious purposes, and required any such person, if he did not conform within three months, to abjure the realm or to forfeit to the Queen all his lands, tenements, and goods during his life; and 'An Act for restraining Popish recusants to some certain places of abode'—a measure whose scope is pretty fairly indicated by its title. These also, it should be observed, were to abjure the realm if they refused to submit themselves.
Such measures as these are certainly vigorous, and to modern ears they sound arbitrary and even tyrannical to an extreme degree, but they have at least the merit of dealing pretty equal measure to offenders on both sides, and showing little or no more favour to the Protestant Nonconformist than to the Popish. They bear evident witness also to the truth of what has already been stated as to the increasing bitterness of the Puritan leaders and how they progressed from one thing to another; and whereas they had begun with few or no objections to the doctrines of the Church, but merely to the habits and a few of the ceremonies, the two parties had by this time talked and written themselves gradually wider apart, until in some of Cartwright's diatribes against it we find the Church of England spoken of in language little different from that which was commonly applied to Rome.
