Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/360

346 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 55. Cecil, as Chancellor of the University, was beset with complaints of the wild views which the Margaret Pro- fessor was spreading among the students. Pluralities and non-residence, those comfortable stays and supports of the University dignitaries, he denounced as impious, and the Spiritual Courts 'as damnable, devilish, and detestable/ 'Poor men/ he said, 'did toil and travel, and princes and doctors licked up all. He maintained that those who held offices should do the duties of those offices ; that high places in the Gommonwealth belonged to merit, and that those who without merit were in- truded into authority were thieves and robbers.' In short, he professed the old creed with which all noble-minded men from the beginning have entered into life the old creed, of which they find in the end that the smallest ho- moaopathic element is the most that mankind will absorb. Whitgift, then master of Trinity, afterwards Arch- bishop of Canterbury, and Elizabeth's ' little black par- son/ soon sent up to the Court special charges against Cartwright. He had said that archbishop and arch- deacon should be abolished in name and office, and that bishops and deacons should be recalled to the Apos- tolic pattern. Bishops should be elected only by the Church, and ministers were only ministers when called to a spiritual charge. To kneel at the Communion he had called a feeble superstition. Unless opinions like these could be put down, it appeared to the Heads of Houses at Cambridge that all authority in Church and State would be overthrown. 1 1 TV. Chaterton to Cecil, June 2 ; Whitgift to Cecil, November 7, 1570: MSS. Domestic.