course with their separated wives, were to be deprived irrevocably of their office, and only to be admitted to lay communion-thus reversing the policy of Cardinal Pole's injunctions. As all priests who had been married were obnoxious to the people, they were to be removed from the priesthood; or at least, on account of the scarcity of ministers, to act only as curates, and to be incapable of holding benefices until a proper course of penance should have washed away their sins. Even then, in no case were they to officiate in the dioceses wherein they had been married, but were to be removed to a distance of at least sixty miles; and if detected in any intercourse with their wives, they were to incur severe punishment, a single interchange of words being sufficient to call down the penalty. To ensure the observance of these rules, all synods were directed to make special inquiry into the lives of these unfortunates, who were thus to exist under a perpetual surveillance, at the mercy of inimical spies and informers.1 This may, perhaps, be considered a moderate expiation for men who, in those days of fierce religious convictions, possessed that flexibility of faith which enabled them to change their belief with every dynastic accident.

If the rigid rules now introduced were successful in nothing else, they at all events succeeded in restoring the old troubles with the old canons. Denied the lawful gratification of human instincts, the clergy immediately returned to the habits which had acquired for them so much odium in times past, and the rulers of the Church at once found themselves embarked in the sempiternal struggle with immorality in all its shapes and disguises.

1 Wilkins IV. 157. Thus in the visitation of the diocese of Lincoln, the vicar of Spaldwick was presented for scandalising his flock by carrying in his arms his child by a wife from whom he had been separated. At the same time a priest of Caisho named Nix was subjected to penance for consorting with his former wife, but was permitted to resume his functions.-Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 293.

If the scandalous chronicles of the period be worthy of credit, neither Gardiner nor Bonner, nor other active promoters of the canons, were without the visible evidences of the frailty of the flesh;1 and though they were above the reach of correction, the minor clergy were not so fortunate. The Convocation of 1557, which issued the stringent regulations just quoted, was also obliged to promulgate articles concerning the residence of women with priests, and the punishment of licentiousness, similar to those which we have seen reproduced so regularly for ten centuries. Cardinal Pole, too, in his visitation of the same year, directed inquiries to be made on these points in a manner which shows that they were existing and not merely anticipated evils."

Fortunately for the character of the Anglican clergy, the reign of reaction was short. On 17 November, 1558, Queen Mary closed her unhappy life, and Cardinal Pole followed her within sixteen hours. The Marian persecution had been long enough and sharp enough to give to heresy all the attractions of martyrdom, thus increasing its fervour and enlarging its circle of earnest disciples; and the sudden termination of that persecution, before it had time to accomplish its work of extirpation, left the reformers more zealous and dangerous than ever. Heresy had likewise been favoured by the discontent of the people arising from the disastrous and expensive war with France, which aided the improvident restoration of the Church lands in impoverishing the exchequer and in rendering necessary heavy subsidies from the nation, repaid only by cruelty and misfortune. Dread of Spanish influence also had a firm hold of the imagination of the masses, while the Church itself was especially unpopular, as the

1 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. 111–12.

2 Wilkins IV. 169.

conviction was general that the ill-success of Mary's administration was attributable to the control exercised by ecclesiastics over the public affairs. Under such auspices the royal power passed into the hands of a princess who, though by nature leaning to the Catholic faith and disposed to tread in the footsteps of her father, was yet placed by the circumstances of her birth in implacable hostility to Rome, and who held her throne only on the tenure of waging eternal warfare with reaction. The reformers felt that the doom of Catholicism was sealed. Emerging from their hiding-places and hastening back from exile, the religious refugees proceeded at once to practise the rites of Edward VI. Elizabeth, however, after ordering some changes in the Roman observances, forbade, on December 27, all further innovations until the meeting of Parliament, which was convoked for 23 January, 1559.

Parliament assembled on the appointed day, and sat until May 8. It at once passed Acts resuming the ecclesiastical crown lands and restoring the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and it repealed all of Mary's legislation concerning the power of the papacy. Several other bills were adopted modifying the religion of the kingdom, with a view of discovering some middle term which should unite the people in a common form of belief and worship.1 Anxious to avoid all extremes, it negatived the measures introduced by the ardent friends of the Reformation, and among the unsuccessful attempts was one which proposed to restore all priests who had been deprived on account of marriage. This, indeed, was laid aside by the special command of the Queen herself.2

The question of clerical marriage was thus left in a most perplexed and unsatisfactory condition. The Six Articles

1 1 Eliz. c. 1, 2, 4 (Parl. Hist. I. 646-76).

2 Burnet, II. 386-95.

had been repealed by Edward VI., and had been virtually revived by Mary; but Mary's efforts had been to restore the independent jurisdiction of the Church, and she had therefore not continued to regard the Six Articles as in force, the canons of synods and the legatine constitutions of Pole being the law of her ecclesiastical establishment. This was now all swept away; a statute to fill the void was refused, and men were left to draw their own deductions and act at their own peril. Elizabeth refused the sanction of law to sacerdotal marriage, and would not restore the deprived priests, yet she did not enforce any prohibitory regulations, and even promoted many married men. Dr. Parker, the religious adviser of Ann Boleyn, who had left him in charge of her daughter's spiritual education, was married, and one of Elizabeth's earliest acts was to nominate him for the vacant primacy of Canterbury, which after long resistance he was forced to accept. The uncertainty of the situation and the anxiety of those interested are well illustrated by a letter to Dr. Parker, dated April 30, just before the rising of Parliament, from Dr. Sandys, afterwards Bishop of Worcester: "The bill is in hand to restore men to their livings; how it will speed I know not . . . Nihil est statutum de conjugio sacerdotum, sed tanquam relictum in medio. Lever was married now of late. The Queen's majesty will wink at it, but not stablish it by law, which is nothing else but to bastard our children." In this Dr. Sandys spoke

1

1 Parker's Correspondence, p. 66.—Sanders does not fail to make the most of this refusal to legalise priestly marriage by Act of Parliament, and of the hesitation which rendered the final decision a mere toleration and not an approval. "Clerus enim in Anglia novus, partim ex apostatis nostris, partim ex hominibus mere laicis factus, ut est valde spiritualis, primo quoque tempore de nuptiis cogi. tabat; multumque sategit, ut conjugia Episcoporum Canonicorum et cæterorum ministorum legibus approbarentur; sed obtineri non potuit, quia vel turpe videbatur ministerio, vel reipublicæ perniciosum. Edovardus quidem sextus omnes canonicas et humanas prohibitiones circa clericorum aut etiam religiosorum connubia lege comitiali seu parlamentaria sustulerat; eam legem mox abrogavit Maria, nunc restituendam ac renovandam clamitant isti, sed non exaudiuntur : omnes tamen per totum fere regnum quia de dono [castitatis] (ut loquuntur) non sunt certi

nothing but truth, and those who were married were obliged formally to have their children legitimated, as even Dr. Parker found it necessary to do this in the case of his son Matthew.1

At length Elizabeth made up her mind, and in the exercise of her royal supremacy she asked for no Act of Parliament to confirm her decree. Archbishop Parker has the credit of being the most efficient agent in overcoming her repugnance to the measure, and the ungracious manner in which she finally accorded the permission shows how strong were the prejudices which he had to encounter. In June 1559 she issued a series of "Injunctions to the Clergy and Laity" which restored the national religion to nearly the same position as that adopted by Edward VI., and it is curious to observe that when she comes to speak of sacerdotal matrimony she carefully avoids the responsibility of sanctioning it herself, but assumes that the law of Edward is still in force. All that she does, therefore, is to surround it with such limitations and restrictions as shall prevent its abuse, and although this form had perhaps the advantage of establishing the legality of all preexisting marriages, yet the regulations promulgated were degrading in the highest degree, and the reason assigned for permitting it could only be regarded as affixing a stigma on every pastor who confessed the weakness of his flesh by seeking a wife."

non secundum leges, sed secundum indulgentiam; vel (ut illi dicunt) secundum scripturas, sed ad libidinem suam compositas, ineunt prima, secunda, vel etiam Certia conjugia, contra canones et morem non solum Latinorum sed etiam Græcorum; et prole ita abundant, ut ad illam sustentandam opibusque augendam, et populus supra modum gravetur, et ipsi misere beneficia sua expilent."-(De Schismate Anglicano, Lib. III. Ingoldstatii, 1586, p. 299.)

1 Strype's Annals, I. 81.

2 Royal Injunctions of 1559, Art. XXXIX. "Although there be no prohibition by the word of God, nor any example of the primitive Church, but that the priests and ministers of the Church may lawfully, for the avoiding of fornication, have an honest and sober wife, and that for the same purpose the same was by Act of Parliament in the time of our dear brother King Edward the Sixth made lawful, whereupon a great number of the clergy of this realm were married and so continue; yet, because