(C) BERNARD GILPIN. BERNARD GILPIN was born of a good family in Westmoreland, became a student of Christ Church, Oxford, in the early days of its foundation, and made himself conspicuous in the University by his able and eager defence of the old religion. Put forward in the next reign to dispute against Peter Martyr, his calm and candid examination of the controversy led him to doubt the truth of the doctrines for which he was combating. He was further influenced by the decree just then passed by the Council of Trent, that the traditions of the Church are to be held of equal authority with Scripture, and he formed the resolution of separating from the Roman Church. But as he was not a man to take any step hastily, he reached the reign of Queen Mary without having openly declared himself on the Protestant side. Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, his uncle, offered him preferment, but Gilpin preferred to travel and study abroad, and would not take a living the duties of which he could not perform. He returned into England in the midst of the persecution, and being presented to the living of Essingdon, bis preaching was so vigorous and so full of gospel truth that he was quickly denounced to Bishop Tonstal as a heretic. But the good bishop, who hated persecution, would not molest him, but, instead of doing so, conferred on him the large and important living of Houghton. Here he became a very apostle to a poor, neglected, and ignorant district, gaining the love of the people by his good deeds, and instructing them by his ministry. After the accession of Elizabeth he founded and endowed a school, which in due time produced a good crop of welltaught youths. His reputation was now so high that the queen nominated him to the Bishopric of Carlisle; and Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, his cousin, wrote, earnestly pressing him to accept the post, and promising in the queen's name that no manors should be filched from the see. But Gilpin was resolutely bent to keep to a humbler station. He foresaw many difficulties in administering a bishopric, whereas, with the immense influence which he had now gained, he was doing the work of a bishop without the cares and restraints. His house was a vast establishment for the entertainment of scholars and distinguished men. His alms to the poor were unceasing, his labours to instruct them infinite. "He was esteemed a very prophet," says his biographer, "and little less than adored by that half barbarous and rustic people." In these admirable labours he lived and died. 1 Carleton's Life of Gilpin; Words worth's E. B. iii. 398. CHAPTER XVII. THE ATTEMPT TO ENFORCE DISCIPLINE. 1563-1575. THE ADVERTISEMENTS. § 12. Puritanism at Cambridge. § 13. § 1. The Queen averse to doctrinal statements. § 2. Disordered state of the clergy. § 3. Bishops commanded to amend this. § 4. Disorderly clergy summoned to Lambeth. § 5. The Primate endeavours to get disciplinary articles published by royal authority, but the Queen refuses. § 6. He publishes the Advertisements by authority of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. § 7. Chief point in Advertisements prescribing a dress for the minister—the dress used in the time of Elizabeth. § 8. Parker prepares to enforce the Advertisements. § 9. London ministers again summoned to Lambeth. § 10. They publish pamphlets in defence. § 11. The press restrained. Difficulty in supplying the vacant churches. § 14. Parker desires the help of the Council. § 15. Some of the Puritanical ministers decide not to separate. § 16. Others separate from the Church. § 17. Foreign divines do not encourage separation. § 18. Attempts to enforce subscription by statute; the Queen angry with the Bishops. § 19. Some of the sectaries seized and imprisoned. § 20. The Bishops slandered to the foreign divines. § 21. The Council writes sharply to the Bishops. § 22. Puritanism in the Parliament of 1571. § 23. Passing of the Act for subscription to the articles. § 24. Convocation subscribes anew the Thirty-nine Articles. § 25. The Queen will not accept the Convocation Canons. § 26. Final attempt to establish the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. § 27. Queen stops religious legislation in Parliament. § 28. Puritans publish the Admonitions to Parliament. § 29. Queen appoints a Commission of Oyer and Terminer to suppress Nonconformity. § 30. The Bishops not well pleased. § 31. The manner of enforcing subscription. § 32. Death and character of Archbishop Parker. § 1. THE queen was not over-well pleased with the work of the bishops and clergy in their Convocation in setting out the Thirtynine Articles and the Second Book of Homilies. Statements of doctrine were distasteful to her, even if she were disposed heartily to accept the doctrinal teaching of the Reformers. There is reason, however, to believe that this was not the case. Thus she would only ratify the articles after making two important alterations in them, and the Book of Homilies she kept for a year under consideration before she would give it her approval. The archbishop was vexed by this hesitation. "I would gladly," he writes when about to commence his visitation in 1563, "the queen's majesty would resolve herself on our books of homilies, which I might deliver to the parishes as I go." That to which the queen really desired the bishops to apply themselves was the strict enforcement of coercive discipline, and from this many of them shrank. They were generally in favour of a lenient policy, hoping that the opponents would grow wiser and relax their stubbornness. But that a policy of decision and vigour on the part of the Church rulers was much needed seems to be shown by the general disorganisation and disorder which prevailed among the clergy. § 2. This is forcibly set before us in a paper drawn up by Cecil as a summary of returns received from the various dioceses in the year 1564. "Some say the service and prayers in the chancel, others in the body of the church; some say the same in a seat made in the church, some in the pulpit with their faces to the people; some keep precisely the order of the book, others intermeddle Psalms in metre ; some say in a surplice, others without a surplice; the table standeth in the body of the church in some places, in others it standeth in the chancel; in some places the table standeth altarwise, distant from the wall a yard, in some others in the middle of the chancel, north and south; in some places the table is joined, in others it standeth upon tressels; in some places the table hath a carpet, in others it hath not; administration of the Communion is done by some with surplice and cap, some with surplice alone, others with none; some with chalice, others with a communion cup, others with a common cup; some with unleavened bread, some with leavened; some receive kneeling, others standing, others sitting; some baptize in a font, some in a basin; some sign with the sign of the cross, others sign not. Apparel-some with a square cap, some with a round cap, some with a button cap, some with a hat.” 2 § 3. Such disorder as this angered the queen, whose love of order and ceremonial was her strongest religious sentiment. By her command Cecil addressed a letter to the bishops through the Primate. In this she complains that by neglect of the bishops "there is crept into the Church an open and manifest disorder and offence, specially in the external, and decent, and lawful rites and ceremonies to be used in the Church." She had hoped that the bishops would have checked this, but on the contrary she observes it rather to increase than diminish. Wherefore she gives the bishops to understand "that she means not to endure and suffer these evils thus to proceed, spread, and increase in her realm, but has certainly determined to have them reformed, and repressed, and the ceremonies of the Church brought to one manner of uniformity throughout the realm, that the slanders spread abroad 1 Parker Correspondence, p. 177. 2 Strype's Parker, ii. 19 (folio ed.) thereupon in foreign countries may be caused to cease." The archbishop is therefore bid to confer with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the ordinaries, and finding out the things which need reformation, to proceed by order, injunction, or censure, according to the Act of Parliament, that uniformity may be fully established, and he is bid to use all expedition in the matter.1 The Primate, on receiving this letter immediately addressed a circular to his suffragans, bidding them strictly to put the laws in force, and to return to him by the last day of February next (1565) a certificate as to the state of their dioceses. § 4. He himself, together with some of the bishops who were Ecclesiastical Commissioners, summoned before him at Lambeth some of the disorderly London ministers and certain divines from the universities who upheld this opposition to the law, and endeavoured to reduce them to obedience.2 § 5. It was perceived, however, that the queen's object would not be fully carried out unless a larger and more specific code of rules for the ministration of the clergy than any which had yet appeared, were put forth. This code of rules the Primate desired to have published by the royal authority in conformity with the provision in the Act of Uniformity. On March 3, 1565, Parker sent to Cecil a "Book of Articles," "partly of old agreed upon among us, and partly of late these three or four days considered,” to obtain his judgment upon them.3 Apparently Cecil approved of the book, for on March 8 the archbishop wrote again, sending the book to obtain, if possible, the queen's authorisation. "If the queen's majesty will not authorise them, the most part be likely to lie in the dust for execution on our parts. Laws be so much against our private doings. The queen's majesty with consent,' etc., I trust shall be obeyed."4 But the queen refused to have anything to do with the Book of Articles. She was determined to have conformity, and equally determined that the bishops should be at the trouble of enforcing it without any special help from her. The archbishop was greatly annoyed at this. He writes to Cecil: "I would ye had not stirred istam camarinam, or else have set it on to some order at the beginning."5 disinclined to publish the articles without the royal authorisation, and desired to let the matter drop. After a year's waiting, however, he made one more attempt to obtain the queen's authority. March 12, 1566, he writes to Cecil, enclosing a letter to the queen. He recalls to the secretary's mind that "last year certain of us agreed and consulted upon some particularities in apparel, 1 Parker Correspondence, 223-7. Strype, Annals, ii. 129. Parker Correspondence, p. 233. 4 Ib. p. 234. 5 lb. p. 236. 2 He was and for that by statute we be inhibited to set out any constitutions without license obtained of the prince, I send them to your honour to be presented. They could not be allowed then, I cannot tell of what meaning, which I now send again, humbly praying that if not all, yet so many as be thought good be returned with some authority, at the least way for particular apparel, or else we shall not be able to do so much as the queen's majesty expecteth of us to be done." The queen, however, was inexorable. "1 § 6. The archbishop then changed the Book of Articles into a Book of "Advertisements partly for the due order in the public administration of common prayers and using the holy sacraments, and partly for the apparel of all persons ecclesiastical, by virtue of the queen's majesty's letters commanding the same." With this changed title he sent the document again to Cecil, March 28, 1566,2 with a letter praying him to peruse this draft of letters, and the Book of Advertisements, with his pen. "I am now fully bent," he says, "to prosecute this order, and to delay no longer, and I have weeded out of the articles all such of doctrine which peradventure stayed the book from the queen's majesty's approbation, and have put in things advouchable, and, as I take it, against no law of the realm. And when the queen's highness will needs have me assay with mine own authority what I can do for order,3 I trust I shall not be stayed hereafter, saving that I would pray your honour to have your advice to do that more prudently in this common cause which needs must be done.” 4 The code of rules thus set out by the authority of the Primate and other bishops," in obedience to the queen's letters," declares that it does not lay down these rules as laws equivalent with the eternal Word of God, and as of necessity to bind the conscience, but as temporal orders, mere ecclesiastical, and as rules for decency, distinction, and order for the time.”5 § 7. The principal point in which these Advertisements of the Metropolitan differed from the queen's Injunctions of 1559 was in prescribing a dress for the ministration of the sacraments and for 1 Parker Correspondence, p. 263. 2 The Advertisements therefore could not have been published until after this date, and not in 1564 as Strype erroneously supposes, in which error he is followed by Dr. Cardwell and others. 3 As it has frequently been contended that these Advertisements received the queen's sanction, and thus became, under the Statute of Uniformity, a legal modification of the provisions of that Act, it is well to observe this expression. Further proofs that the Advertisements were never sanctioned by the queen will be found in Notes and Illustrations to this chapter. 297. 4 Parker Correspondence, p. 272. 5 For the text of the Advertisements, see Cardwell, Doc. Annals, i. 287 U |