In any case, however, he was reckoning without his host, and was brought up somewhat abruptly by a letter from Sir R. Cecil, written by the Queen's order, which completes the view of the situation so graphically that I give it at length as it is quoted by Strype:—
'That her Majesty had heard, as of Mr. Whitaker's death, so of some business that he came up about. And that she had commanded him to send unto his Grace to acquaint him that she misliked that any allowance had been given by his Grace and the rest of any such points to be disputed: being a matter tender and dangerous to weak, ignorant minds. And thereupon that she required of his Grace to suspend them. That he could not tell what to answer, but did this at Her Majesty's commandment and left the matter to his Grace, who, he knew, could best satisfy her in these things. And thus he humbly took his leave. From the Court, the 5th December, 1595.
'Your Grace's to command,
'Ro. Cecill.'
The Sabbatarian controversy[1] also arose towards the close of this reign, certain preachers, more or less inclined to the Puritan party, having begun to preach in various parts of the country that the command to observe the Sabbath was moral and perpetual, and that infringements of it were to be put upon the same level with crimes such as murder and adultery. This doctrine was met by the archbishop and the Lord Chief Justice with their usual methods— viz., citations before the courts and prohibition of printing. The intervention of the latter functionary serves to show that in this, as in other cases, the Church and State were at
- ↑ Strype, Whifgift, vol. ii. p. 415.
