considerable diversity of opinion and belief on points on which different minds can in general arrive at a similar conclusion only by a tacit agreement to accept words without too close inquiry as to their meaning. The bishops, though retaining their old position and dignity, and though permitted to revive many of their old courts and jurisdictions, nevertheless did so only as officers under the Grown, and the only one who ventured to oppose the Queen's views found himself, as we have seen, reduced to utter helplessness for the remainder of his life; and when, some quarter of a century later, the earliest attempt was made to claim Divine right for them, it was done under the pressure of controversy, and was guarded by a distinct claim of the whole Papal power for the Crown. The limitations on the Protestant side of the line, which occupy so prominent a position in the latter part of the reign, were in themselves nothing new. There was a heresy commission, in the days of Edward, against the Anabaptists, and Joan Bocher was put to death in the same reign; but in Elizabeth's time the extension of Puritan opinions among the ruling classes—Sir Francis Knollys, Leicester, and Burleigh himself being more or less affected by them—gave them more importance, and rendered her repressive policy more difficult.
Whatever moral criticisms we may make upon Queen Elizabeth's ecclesiastical policy, it must be admitted that she contrived to establish a system which has been in many respects wonderfully successful. If it satisfied the extreme of neither party, it has certainly continued, for three centuries and a half, so to conciliate to itself a large portion oi the English people, that it has followed them to whatever parts of the world they have since spread, and now reckons among its members
