course was not wholly a smooth one. Cranmer ordered a visitation in his province, and directed as one of the points for inquiry and animadversion, "Whether any do contemn married priests, and, for that they be married, will not receive the Communion or other sacraments at their hands,"1 which distinctly reveals the difficulties encountered in eradicating the convictions of centuries from the popular mind. Sanders says, and with every appearance of probability, that the Archbishop of York united with Cranmer in ordering a visitation of the whole kingdom, during which the visitors investigated particularly the morals of the clergy, and used every argument to impel them to marriage, not only declaring celibacy to be most dangerous to salvation, but intimating that all who adhered to it would be regarded as papists and enemies of the King.2 The active interest which Cranmer took in the question is manifested by the fact that when Dr. Richard Smith, who had fled to Scotland in consequence of having endeavoured to stir up a tumult at Oxford against Peter Martyr, desired to make his peace and return, the inducement which he offered to the Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain for him the King's pardon was that he would write a book in favour of priestly marriage, as he had previously done against it.3

The reformers speedily found that they were not to escape without opposition. The masses of the people

1 Wilkins IV. 26.—Cardwell's Documentary Annals, I. 59. Wilkins and Cardwell date this in 1547, which is evidently impossible. Burnet (II. 102) alludes to it under 1549, which is much more likely to be correct.

2 Sanderi Schisma Anglic. pp. 214-5.

3 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Bk. II. chap. 14.-Smith subsequently at Louvain continued to urge the necessity of celibacy, and was answered by Peter Martyr. Strype calls him a filthy fellow, notorious for lewdness, and his championship of chastity excited some merriment. There is an epigram upon him by Lawrence Humphrey

"Haud satis affabre tractans fabrilia Smithus

Librum de vita cœlibe composuit

Dumque pudicitiam, dum vota monastica laudat,

Stuprat, sacra notans fœdera conjugii."

(Ibid. Chap. 25.)

throughout England were in a state of discontent. The vast body of abbey lands acquired by the gentry and now enclosed bore hard upon many; the raising of rents showed that secular landlords were less charitable than the ancient proprietors of the soil; the increase of sheep-husbandry threw many farm labourers out of employ;1 and the savage enactments, already alluded to, against the unfortunate expelled monks show how large an element of influential disaffection was actively at work in the substratum of society. Those priests who disapproved of the rapid Protestantising process adopted by the court could hardly fail to take advantage of opportunities so tempting, and they accordingly fanned the spark into a flame. The enforcement of the new liturgy, on Whitsunday, 1549, seemed the signal of revolt. Numerous risings took place, which were readily quelled, until one in Devonshire assumed alarming proportions. Ten thousand men in arms made demands for relief in religious as well as temporal matters. Lord Russel, unable to meet them in the field, endeavoured to gain time by negotiation, and offered to receive their complaints. These were fifteen in number, of which several demanded the restoration of points of the old religion, and one insisted on the revival of the Six Articles. On their refusal, another set was drawn up, in which not only were the Six Articles called for, but also a special provision enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. This was likewise rejected; but during the delay another rising occurred in Norfolk, reckoned at twenty thousand men, and yet another of less formidable dimensions in Yorkshire. Russel finally scattered the men of Devon, while the Earl of Warwick succeeded in suppressing the

1 The vast growth of the sheep-farms had long been a subject of complaint. Even as early as 1516, Sir Thomas More describes with indignant energy the misery caused by the ejectment of the agricultural population in order to form enormous sheep-walks, which were found more profitable to the landlords than ordinary farming. He declares that the sheep" tam edaces atque indomita esse cœperant, ut homines devorent ipsos, agros, domos, oppida vastent ac depopulentur."-Utopia, Lib. I.

rebels of Norfolk, when the promise of an amnesty caused the Yorkshiremen to disperse.1

The question of open resistance thus was settled. Cranmer and his friends had now leisure to consolidate their advantages and organise a system that should be permanent. In 1551, he and Ridley prepared with great care a series of forty-two articles, embodying the faith of the Church of England, which was adopted by the Convocation in 1552, and was ordered to be signed by all men in orders and all candidates for ordination.2 Burnet speaks of it as bringing the Anglican doctrine and worship to perfection. It remained unaltered during the rest of Edward's reign, and under Elizabeth it was only modified verbally in the recension which resulted in the famous Thirty-nine Articles—the foundation-stone of the Episcopalian edifice. Of these forty-two articles, the thirty-first declared that "Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God's law to vow the estate of a single life or to abstain from marriage.'

The canon law had thus invested the marriage of the clergy with all the sanctity that the union of man and wife could possess. Yet still the deep-seated conviction of the people as to the impropriety of such proceedings remained, troubling the repose of those who had entered into matrimony, and doubtless operating as a restraint upon the numbers of the imitators of Cranmer. Among the interrogatories drawn up by John Hooper for the visitation of his diocese of Gloucester, in 1552, is one which inquires whether any midwife refuses to attend the confinement of women who are married to ministers of the Church—a suggestion which indicates how rooted was the

1 Burnet II. 117-9.

2 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, II. 420.

a Burnet II. Collect. 217. In the Latin version, "Episcopis, presbyteris et diaconis non est mandatum ut ¡cælibatum voveant; neque, jure divino coguntur matrimonio abstinere" (Wilkins IV. 76).

• Strype's Eccles. Memorials, II. 355.

popular aversion from such matches. If Strype's description of the clergy of the period indeed be correct, there was nothing in the character of the body to overcome the popular aversion in consideration of its purity and devotion to its sacred duties.1 The Act of 1549 had to a certain extent justified these prejudices by admitting the preferableness of a single life in the ministers of Christ, and it was resolved to remove every possible stigma by a solemn declaration of Parliament. A bill was therefore prepared and speedily passed (10 February, 1552), which reveals how strong was the popular opposition, and how uncertain the position of the wives and children of the clergy. It declares "That many took occasion, from the words in the Act formerly made about this matter, to say that it was only permitted, as usury and other unlawful things were, for the avoidance of greater evils, who thereupon spoke slanderously of such marriages, and accounted the children begotten in them to be bastards, to the high dishonour of the King and Parliament, and the learned clergy of the realm, who had determined that the laws against priests' marriages were most unlawful by the law of God; to which they had not only given their assent in the Convocation, but signed it with their hands. These slanders did also occasion that the Word of God was not heard with due reverence." It was therefore enacted "That such marriages made according to the rules prescribed in the Book of Service should be esteemed good and valid, and that the children begot in them should be inheritable according to law."

A still further confirmation of the question was designed in a body of ecclesiastical law which was for several years in preparation by various commissions appointed for the purpose. In this it was proposed to

1 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, II. p. 445. "Our curate is naught, an Assehead, a Dodipot, a Lack-Latine, and can do nothing."

2 5-6 Edw. VI. c. 12 (Parl. Hist. I. 594).-Burnet II. 192.

make the abrogation of celibacy even more distinctly a matter of faith, for in the second Title among the various heresies condemned is that which, through the suggestion of the Devil, asserts that admission to holy orders takes away the right to marry. This work, however, though completed, had not yet received the royal assent when the death of Edward VI. caused it to pass out of sight until 1571, when it was printed by Foxe and brought to the attention of Parliament, but was laid aside owing to the opposition of Queen Elizabeth."

If the Protestants indulged in any day-dreams as to the permanency of their institutions, they were not long in finding that a change of rulers was destined to cause other changes disastrous to their hopes. Even the funeral of Edward, on the 8th of August, 1553, afforded them a foretaste of what was in store. Although Cranmer insisted that the public ceremonies in Westminster Abbey should be conducted according to the reformed rites, Queen Mary, still resident in the Tower, had private obsequies performed with the Roman ritual, where Gardiner celebrated mortuary Mass in presence of the Queen and some four hundred attendants. When the incense was carried around, after the Gospel, it chanced that the chaplain who bore it was a married man, and the zealous Dr. Weston snatched it from him, exclaiming, "Shamest thou not to do thine office, having a wife as thou hast? The Queen will not be censed by such as thou!"2

Trifling as was this incident, it foreboded the wrath to come. Though Mary was not crowned until October 1st, she had issued writs for a Parliament to assemble on the 10th,

1 Reform. Legg. Eccles. Tit. de Hæresibus, cap. xx. (Cardwell's Ed., Oxford, 1850, p. 20).-Cf. Tit. de Matrimonio c. ix. (p. 44).

2 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 20. This story derives additional piquancy from the fact that this Dr. Weston was somewhat notorious for uncleanness, and was subsequently deprived of the Deanery of Windsor for adultery (Ibid. pp. 111–2).