the land found to be against him. But notwithstanding that exception, he continued in his place and ministry after to his death.' Whitgift rejoins: 'This is untrue, for if Mr. Whittingham had lived he had been deprived, without special grace and dispensation.' Now, as we have just seen, Travers was right in this point, as to the fact: Whittingham was not condemned, and did retain his deanery for the few months he lived. Whether he would have been condemned is a matter of opinion, in which it is at least as likely that Lord Huntingdon, one of his judges, should have been right as Whitgift, who had nothing at all to do with the case.
These two cases, taken together, serve to show how the rise of Puritanism, together with Elizabeth's determination to give it no quarter, were gradually hardening Anglicanism, and while leaving it still in its old attitude of uncompromising opposition to Eome, were gradually compelling or inducing it to take up a position of exclusiveness towards other Protestant churches, to which, for nearly the first half-century of its existence, it was a stranger.[1]
Another important event belonging to this period was the publication of the famous Martin Marprelate tracts, which began to be secretly printed in the year 1590.[2] These tracts and the literature arising out of them serve very well to show both what the relative situation of the Bishop's party and the Puritans was at the time, and how far it had changed from what it had previously been. It is impossible to read any of them, for instance, the 'Epistle to the Terrible Priests,' or even
- ↑ The evidence of a great High Churchman of a later age, Dr. John Cosin, afterwards Bishop of Durham, may be taken to show what the practice of the Church of England in this matter had been and was. (See Appendix, note vi.)
- ↑ This was the year of the publication of Penry's Appellation.
