Chapter XVI (2)

On Elizabeth's accession to the throne she was by no means disposed to go so far as her brother Edward had gone, much less as far as the refugees--who now flocked back again from Geneva--would have carried her. They had imbibed the rigid independent notions of Calvin and Zwinglius, and that probably before their departure from England--a circumstance which there is little doubt directed their course to Switzerland, for the Reformers who resorted to Frankfort were much nearer to her standard--a standard very much the same as that of her father. She renounced all allegiance to the Pope and the Church of Rome, though she hesitated to declare herself the supreme head of the Church till it was conferred on her by Parliament. She issued orders to restrain the zeal of the Protestants, who began to pull down the images, and to restore the service to its state in King Edward's time. She gave directions that a part of the service should be read in English, and forbade the elevation of the Host; but at the same time she suspended all preaching.

Parliament, on meeting, passed an Act asserting the supremacy of the Crown over the Church, revived the Acts of Henry VIII. which abolished the power and jurisdiction of the Pope in England, and authorised the use of King Edward's Book of Common Prayer, with some alterations, chiefly in the Communion Service. Thus they cast off the Roman Catholics who would not conform, but did not go far enough for the more zealous Reformers. The oath of Supremacy was presented to the bishops, and it had the effect of clearing the Church of all but Kitchen of St. Asaph. The inferior clergy, however, were not so firm, and only six abbots, twelve deans, twelve archdeacons, fifteen heads of colleges, fifty prebendaries, and eighty rectors refused compliance. The monks returned to secular life, but the nuns mostly went abroad. The clergy were ordered to wear the habits in use in the latter part of King Edward's time; and their marriages, against which the queen showed a strong repugnance, were put under stringent regulations. The press also was laid under the most rigorous restrictions, and no book was to be printed or published without the licence of the queen, or of six of her privy council, or of her ecclesiastical commissioners, or the two archbishops, the Bishop of London, the chancellors of the universities, and the bishop and archdeacons of the place where it was produced. All persons were commanded to attend their parish churches under severe penalties. In 1562 the articles of religion of King Edward were reduced from forty-two to thirty-nine. In 1571 they underwent a further revision, and were made binding on the clergy before they could be admitted to orders.

Like her father, the longer she lived the more resolute she became to enforce her own dogmas on the whole body of her subjects. In the twenty-third year of her reign the penalty for non-attendance of the Established Church was raised to £20 per month. In the same year another Act was passed, declaring it high treason to attempt to draw any one to the Church of Rome; and the persons thus drawn were equally guilty of treason, and all their aiders, abettors, and concealers were made guilty of misprision of treason. These arbitrary laws against the freedom of opinion went on increasing in severity. In 1585 an Act was passed which made traitors of all Jesuits and other Popish priests who had been ordained abroad, and of all subjects whatever educated in Papal seminaries who did not immediately return home and take the oath of supremacy. The receivers of any such persons were declared felons without benefit of clergy. Whoever sent money to any foreign Jesuits or priests was liable to Præmunire; and parents sending their children to school abroad without licence from her Majesty were liable to a penalty of £100. Fresh Acts were added in 1581 and 1593, the former to make void all conveyances of property by Popish recusants, with the object of escaping the penalties imposed upon them, and to decree that the penalty of £20 a month for non-attendance at church should be levied by distress to the extent of all the offenders' goods and two-thirds of their lands; the latter ordered all Popish recusants above sixteen to repair to their proper places of abode, and never more to go more than five miles from them without special licence from the bishop of the diocese or lieutenant of the county, under penalty of forfeiture of their goods and of the profits of their lands for life; those having no goods or lands to be deemed felons.

But if the atrocities committed by the Roman Catholics in the reign of Mary, and the fears of their recurrence should the Papists regain the power, afforded some plea for these persecutions, what is to be said of the same rigours applied to the Reformers, who simply desired to form their religious opinions on the Bible--the Divine charter of Humanity? Thousands of these, from the earliest days of the Reformation, had claimed this privilege as their birthright; and many of those who came back from the Continent on the termination of the Marian persecution, were surprised and discouraged to find themselves equally excluded with the Catholics from the exercise of their own judgments by a Protestant queen. They were required to attend the preaching of those against whose doctrines they protested, and suffered the same monstrous fines if they absented themselves. Instead of that "glorious liberty of the gospel" which they had promised themselves, they had to accept with all homage the cut out and prescribed pattern of opinion dictated by an autocratic woman, who made a desperate stand against the removal of images from the churches, and practised many Popish ceremonies in her own private chapel. Instead of the form of service which the English refugees had established at Geneva, in which there were no Litany, no responses, and scarcely any rites or ceremonies, they were commanded to adopt a form which appeared to them little removed from Popery. The Genevan refugees--who, from their demand for the utmost purity and primitive simplicity in worship, were styled Puritans--would, had they been permitted, have planted a church far more like the church as it came to exist in Scotland than that which was established for England. They opposed the claims of the bishops to a superior rank or authority to the presbyters; they denied that they possessed the sole right of ordination, and exercise of church discipline; they objected to the titles and dignities which had been copied by the Anglican Church from the Roman, of archdeacons, deans, canons, prebendaries; to the jurisdiction of Spiritual Courts; to an indiscriminate admission of all persons to the Communion; to many parts of the liturgy, and of the offices of marriage and burial, including the use of the ring in marriage; they repudiated set forms of prayers, and the use of godfathers and godmothers, the rite of confirmation, the observance of Lent and holidays, the cathedral worship, the use of the organ, the retention of the reading of apocryphal books in church, pluralities, non-residence, the presentation to livings by the Crown, or any other patron, or by any mode but the free election of the people.

But in that age no conception of religious liberty was entertained. The Puritans were as resolute in their ideas of conformity to their notions as Elizabeth was to hers; and had they had the power, would have used the same compulsion. Knox exhibited that spirit of exclusiveness to the extreme in Scotland, even calling for the deposition of the queen as a "Jezebel" and "an idolatress," because she would not adopt his peculiar tenets and view of things. The Puritans exhibited the same spirit long after in America for the exercise of their faith. In fact, the great and divine principle of the entire liberty of the gospel was too elevated to be arrived at suddenly after so many ages of spiritual despotism, and required long and earnest study of the spirit and example of Christ. Severe struggles, bloody deaths, and incredible sufferings in those who came to see the truth, had to be undergone before the battle of religious freedom was fought out, and all parties could admit the plain fact which had revealed itself to Charles V. after his abdication of the throne, when he amused himself with clock making--that as no two clocks can be made to go precisely alike, it is folly to expect _all_ men to think precisely alike. "Both parties," says Neal, in his "History of the Puritans," "agreed too well in asserting the necessity of a uniformity of public worship, and in using the sword of the magistrate for the support and defence of their respective principles, which they made an ill use of in their turns whenever they could grasp the power in their hands. The standard of uniformity, according to the bishops, was the queen's supremacy, and the laws of the land; according to the Puritans, the decrees of provincial and national synods, allowed and enforced by the civil magistrate: but neither party were for admitting that liberty of conscience and freedom of profession which is every man's right as far as is consistent with the peace of the civil Government he lives under." Heresy was, in fact, punished by the Government as a purely political offence.

Elizabeth, having the power, compelled all those clergymen who conformed sufficiently to accept livings and bishoprics, not only to conform but more or less to persecute their brethren. Even men like Parker and Grindal, naturally averse from compulsion, were obliged to do her bidding, till Grindal rebelled and was set aside; but their places were supplied by Sandys, who had himself fled from Popish compulsion, and by Whitgift, who rigorously enforced the laws. Sandys actually sentenced the anabaptists who, in 1575, were burnt at the stake by order of the queen--for to this pass it came: Hammond, a ploughman, being burnt at Norwich in 1579, and Kett, a member of one of the universities, in the same place, ten years afterwards, under Elizabeth.

Such was the state of the Protestant Church at the termination of the period we are now reviewing. The queen discouraged preaching and instruction of the people, allowing many bishoprics, prebends, and livings to be vacant, and receiving their incomes. She declared that one or two preachers in a county was enough, probably fearing the prevalence of the more advanced opinions. Parker in his time had been ordered to enforce strict compliance with the rubric, and numbers of the most eminent and eloquent clergymen resigned their livings and travelled over the country, and preached where they could, "as if," says Bishop Jewell, "they were apostles; and so they were with regard to their poverty, for silver and gold they had none." Being, however, continually brought before the authorities and fined and otherwise punished, they determined to break off all connection with the public churches, and form themselves into an avowed separate communion, worshipping God in their own way and being ready to suffer for His sake. Here, then, commenced the great cause of Nonconformity, and the formation of all those sects which from time to time have since appeared, each claiming--and justly--the right to worship God and to regulate their particular church as seems conformable to their understanding of the Scriptures. These separate assemblies, however, were stigmatised as conventicles, and from this time many were the laws passed to put them down, as we shall hereafter find. Among the Nonconformists a most zealous and resolute sect arose called Brownists, from Robert Brown, a preacher in the diocese of Norwich, a man of good family, and said to be a relative of Lord Burleigh. His followers soon acquired the name of Independents, which they afterwards changed for that of Congregationalists, from their denial of all ecclesiastical dignities and authority whatever, asserting that each congregation constitutes a complete church, with the right to nominate their own minister and conduct their own affairs. This body of Christians, at this day so extensive and respectable, of course felt the especial weight of the persecution of the Established Church, with which it refused to hold the slightest communion; yet to such a degree did it flourish--a proof of the onward spirit of the time, that Sir Walter Raleigh declared in Parliament that there were before the death of Elizabeth not less than 20,000 members of that body in Norfolk, Essex, and the neighbourhood of London.

In the narration of the struggles of this period in Scotland we have sufficiently traced the persecution of the Protestants by the Romish Church--the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, Walter Mill, and others; the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and the final triumph of Knox and his compeers, from which period the organisation of the Protestant Church of Scotland went on rapidly. In 1560 the Lords of the Congregation entered Edinburgh in arms; and Parliament assembling, abolished for ever the Pope's jurisdiction, abolished the celebration of Mass, and authorised "The Confession of the Faith and Doctrine believed and professed by the Protestants of Scotland." An Act also was passed to pull down all cloisters and abbey-churches still left standing: and the Church, not waiting for any further enactment of the Parliament or Crown, went on exercising its own proper functions as an independent church, governed, not by the State, but by presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies. In 1580 the General Assembly, after having at various times diminished the power and rank of bishops, declared that episcopacy was unscriptural and unlawful--a dictum which the Parliament fully ratified in 1592, establishing the Presbyterian Church as the national one, with general assembly, provincial synods, presbyteries, and kirk sessions. In 1597 the Parliament admitted certain representatives of the clergy to seats in it, to which the General Assembly assented at its next meeting; and thus was completed the system of Church government in Scotland at that time.

The sixteenth century produced as great a revolution in Literature and Science as in religion. We still look back to this era for some of the greatest names and greatest works which have adorned and enlightened not only our own country, but the whole civilised world. When we enumerate Sir Thomas More, Lord Surrey, Roger Ascham, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bacon, Buchanan, Gawin Douglas, Dunbar, and Sir David Lyndsay, we remind our readers that we are moving amid a constellation of genius, than which Time has scarcely any brighter. But in the two words Shakespeare and Bacon, we pronounce the names and glorious births of dramatic and philosophic genius, which have placed England on the summit of intellectual fame, by works never surpassed before or since in any nation, and by discoveries in science and art which have flowed from the "Novum Organum" of Bacon as from an eternal and ever-strengthening fountain. True it is both men belong, by their works, rather to the succeeding period than to the present; but Bacon had, long before the death of Elizabeth, sketched out the plan of his immortal work, though he had not dared to publish it; and Shakespeare had not only written his poems, but had also written and acted in many of his most brilliant and original plays. By these great writers the English language was established as a classical language; and though it has since extended and connected itself with the progress of knowledge and most astonishing and varied discoveries, we can produce no purer, no stronger, nor more eloquent specimens of it than from the pages of Shakespeare, which continue to be read and listened to on our stage, the genuine speech of Englishmen--somewhat quaint occasionally, but always musical to the ear, familiar to the sense, and animating to the spirit.

The violent changes and spoliations of the Reformation did not check the foundation of new colleges and seminaries of learning--the fountains, under a more liberal order of things, certain to produce noble results. Even Henry VIII., in his wholesale destruction of endowed property, and though college property was included in the Acts which he procured from his obsequious Parliament, for the most part spared the resources of education. His reign was distinguished by the foundation, in Oxford, of Brazenose College, in 1509, by Sir William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Richard Sutton, of Prestbury, in Cheshire. Old Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who had been prime minister of Henry VII., and still was of the council of his son, in 1516 founded Corpus Christi. The only exception to Henry VIII.'s patronage of the colleges occurred in those founded by Wolsey--his Cardinal College at Oxford, and his college at Ipswich, which both fell with him. In 1545 Henry himself founded Christ Church instead of that of Wolsey, which he then dissolved. In 1554 Trinity College was founded on the basis of Durham College by Sir Thomas Pope. In 1555 Sir Thomas White, alderman and merchant tailor of London, founded St. John's College, on the site of Bernard College. These were in the reign of Queen Mary. In Elizabeth's time rose Jesus College, in 1571, from funds furnished by Dr. Hugh Price, and augmented by the queen herself.

In Cambridge three colleges arose during the reign of Henry VII.--the only educational endowments of any note during that period. In 1496 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, founded Jesus College. In 1505 Margaret Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., founded Christ's College, and also in 1511, very shortly before her son's death, St. John's College. In 1519 Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, commenced the College of Magdalene; but as he was executed for high treason in 1521, Lord Audley, the Lord Chancellor, completed it. Henry VIII. founded Trinity College in 1546, and at the same time four new professorships in the university; namely, for theology, law, Greek, and Hebrew. Henry was proud of his learning, and had the good sense to support, with all the imperative force of his character, the new study of Greek, when it was violently assailed by the Church and professors. Dr. Caius founded the college named after him, and popularly pronounced "Keys," on the basis of the old hall of Gonville, in 1558--the only extension of Cambridge University under Queen Mary. Sir Walter Mildmay founded Emmanuel College in 1584, and in 1598 Sidney-Sussex College was founded by Lady Frances Sidney, widow of Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex.

The universities of Scotland were greatly extended during this period. That of Aberdeen was founded in 1494 under the name of King's College, James IV. having procured a bull for that purpose from Pope Alexander VI., though the bishop was the main benefactor. In 1593 Marischal College, in the same university, was erected by George, Earl Marischal. At St. Andrews the college of St. Leonard's was established in 1512 by Archbishop Stuart and John Hepburn, prior of the metropolitan church. This was afterwards united with that of St. Salvator (founded in 1456), and together bore the name of the United College. St. Mary's, in the same university, was founded, in 1537, by Beaton. In 1582 James VI. founded the University of Edinburgh. In 1591 Elizabeth founded in Dublin the University of Trinity College.

Contemporaneous with these colleges and universities rose a great number of grammar-schools, designed to extend the knowledge of Latin to the mass of the people. Among the magnificent endowments, since too much withdrawn, by the influence of wealth, from the poor and the orphan, for whom they were designed, and devoted to the use of the affluent, for whom they were not designed, we may name St. Paul's School, London, founded by Dean Colet in 1509; Christ's Hospital, London, founded by Edward VI. in 1553, the year of his death; Westminster School, established by Elizabeth, 1560; and Merchant Taylors School, founded by that guild in 1561. In Scotland the High School of Edinburgh was founded by the magistrates of that city in 1577.

It is a curious fact that the revival of the Greek language and literature was coincident with the Reformation. Widely opposed as the spirit of Christianity and of the Greek mythology are, yet in one particular they are identical, in breathing a spirit of liberty and popular dominance which were not long in showing their effects in Great Britain. The Scriptures were now translated and made familiar to the people, at least by means of Puritan preachers, who were thus proclaiming that God had made of one blood all the nations of the earth, and that He was no respecter of persons; thereby laying the foundations of eternal justice in the public mind, and teaching, as a necessary consequence, that the end and object of all human government was not the good of kings or nobles, but of the collective people. The poets, the historians, the dramatists, and the philosophers of republican Greece were made to bring all the force of their fiery eloquence, their glowing narratives, and their subtle reasoning to bear upon the same theme; presenting not only arguments for general liberty and a popular polity, but examples of the most sublime struggles of a small but glorious people against domestic tyrants and the vast hordes of barbarism without, of noblest orators thundering against the oppression of the mighty, of awful tragedians steeping their stage in the imaged blood of tyrants and of traitors, of patriots perishing in joy for the salvation of their country.

It was not to be wondered at that on the bursting of these novel elements like a sudden and strong torrent into the arena of human life, there should arise a fearful struggle and combat between the old intellectual ideas and the new. The two-fold inundation pouring from the hills of Palestine and of Greece, and in united vastness deluging Europe, threatened to destroy all the old land-marks of the schoolmen, and to drown Duns Scotus and Aquinas along with the owls and bats of the monkish cells and dream chambers. It was soon seen that this new language was the language of the very book from which the Reformers drew their words winged with the fire of destruction to the ancient slavery of popular ignorance and popular dependence on priests and Popes, and no time was lost in denouncing it as a gross and new-fangled heresy. It was a heresy from which not only freedom in Church but in State was to spring; the seed from which grew, in the next age, our Hampdens, Marvels, Pyms, Prynnes, Cromwells, and Miltons.

Yet it is only due to Henry VIII., to his ministers Wolsey, Fox, and More, and to other eminent dignitaries--amongst them Cardinal Pole in Queen Mary's reign--to state that they were zealous advocates and promoters of the Greek learning. The very first public school in which Greek is said to have been taught in England was the new foundation of Dean Colet, St. Paul's school, where the celebrated scholar William Lilly, who had studied in Rhodes, was the master. Wolsey introduced it into his new colleges, and Henry VIII. being at Woodstock, and hearing of a furious harangue made at Oxford against the study of the Greek Testament in the University, immediately ordered the teaching of it, and established a professorship of it also in Cambridge.

Notwithstanding, a violent opposition arose against the study of Greek in consequence of the authority it gave to the doctrines of the Reformers, rendering an appeal to the original text invincible. Erasmus informs us that the preachers and declaimers against his edition of the Greek Testament really appeared to believe that he was by its means attempting to introduce some new kind of religion. The book was prohibited in the University of Cambridge, and a heavy penalty decreed for any one found with it in his possession. Erasmus attempted to teach the Greek grammar of Chrysoloras there, but a terrible outcry was raised against him, and his scholars soon deserted his benches. As the contest went on, however, the Universities, both here and abroad, became divided into the factions of the Greeks and Trojans, the Trojans being those who were advocates for Latin, but not for Greek. The Greeks, however, victorious, as of old, expelled the works of the famous Duns Scotus from the schools; they were torn up and trodden under foot; and the King sent down a Commission which altogether abolished the study of this old scholastic philosophy which had had so long and absolute a reign.

Yet the new knowledge appears for some time after the first excitement to have made less progress in the schools than at Court and amongst the aristocracy. On the surface, therefore, the age appeared a very learned one. All the chief churchmen on both sides of the question in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.--Wolsey, Fox, Gardiner, Cranmer, Ridley, Tunstall, Cardinal Pole--were men of great acquirements. Henry was a fine scholar, and, despite his harsh treatment of his wives and children, gave to the latter educations perhaps superior to those of any princes or princesses of the time. Edward was steeped in learning, to the injury of his overtaxed constitution. Mary and Elizabeth were both accomplished linguists, speaking Latin, French, and Spanish fluently; and Elizabeth adding to these Greek and Italian, with a smattering of Dutch and German. Mary was studiously instructed in the originals of the Scriptures, and made a translation of the Latin paraphrase of St. John, by Erasmus, which was printed and read as part of the Church service, till it was ordered to be burnt by herself in her own reign with other heretical books. She was deeply read in the fathers, and in the works of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and selected portions of Horace, Lucan, and Livy. Elizabeth was a poetess of no mean pretensions and, besides her knowledge of the classical and modern languages, read by preference immense quantities of history. Roger Ascham, the teacher of Lady Jane Grey, said that "numberless honourable ladies" of the time surpassed the daughters of Sir Thomas More, but that none could compete with the Princess Elizabeth; that she spoke and wrote Greek and Latin beautifully; that he had read with her the whole of Cicero, and great part of Livy; that she devoted her mornings to the New Testament in Greek, select orations of Isocrates, and the tragedies of Sophocles, whilst she drew religious knowledge from St. Cyprian and the "Common-places" of Melanchthon; that she was skilful in music, but did not greatly delight in it.

With such examples, no wonder that there were such learned ladies at Court as Lady Jane Grey, Lady Tyrwhit, Mary Countess of Arundel, Joanna Lady Lumley, and her sister Mary the Duchess of Norfolk--all learned in Greek and Latin, and authoresses of translations from them; the two daughters of Sir Thomas More, and the three daughters of the learned Sir Anthony Cooke--one of them the wife of the all-powerful statesman Burleigh, another the mother of the illustrious Francis Bacon, and the third, Lady Killigrew, a famous Hebrew scholar, as well as profound in Latin and Greek. It is extraordinary that learning, which had been so ardently taken up by these accomplished women, should have languished in the schools and amongst the people. Yet such was the fact, and is explained by the violent and continual changes which were taking place in Church and State. A great part of the reign of Henry VIII. was engrossed by the conflict with the Court of Rome regarding his divorce from Catherine, and then by his stupendous onslaught on the monastic and cathedral property. As no man at the Universities could tell where promotion was to come from in the Church under a king who equally took vengeance on Romanist and Protestant who dared to differ from him, and as it was equally uncertain whether, in some new fit of anger or caprice, he might not suppress the colleges as he had suppressed monasteries, ministers, and chantries, it is not surprising to hear Latimer exclaim, "It would pity a man's heart to hear what I hear of the state of Cambridge. There be few that study divinity, but so many as of necessity must furnish the college."

Under Edward VI. things became far worse. Then it was a scramble amongst his courtiers who should get the most of the property devoted to religion or learning. Bishoprics, good livings, the rest of the monastic lands which yet remained with the Crown did not suffice. These cormorants clutched at the University resources. They appropriated exhibitions and pensions, and, says Warton, in his "History of English Poetry," "Ascham, in a letter to the Marquis of Northampton, dated 1550, laments the ruin of grammar-schools throughout England, and predicts the speedy extinction of the universities from this growing calamity. At Oxford the schools were neglected by the professors and pupils, and allotted to the lowest purposes. Academical degrees were abrogated as anti-Christian. Reformation was soon turned into fanaticism. Absurd refinements, concerning the inutility of human learning, were superadded to the just and rational purgation of Christianity from the Papal corruption." He adds that the Government visitors of the University totally stripped the public library, established by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, of all its books and manuscripts; and Latimer, in one of his sermons about that time, declared his belief that there were then 10,000 fewer students than there had been twenty years before.

Classical literature did not fare better during the persecuting reign of Mary, though Cardinal Pole was a warm friend of the introduction of Greek, notwithstanding the use made of it by the Protestants. When he urged Sir Thomas Pope to establish a professorship of that language in his new college of Trinity, Sir Thomas replied, "I fear the times will not bear it now. I remember, when I was a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace, the study of which is now a-late much decayed." Nor was it likely when Elizabeth discouraged preaching even, saying that "one or two preachers in a county was enough," that Classical studies would be much encouraged. In fact, nothing could be lower than the condition into which both learning and preaching had fallen in Elizabeth's Church. The Bishop of Bangor stated that he had but two preachers in all his diocese. Numbers of churches stood vacant, according to Neal, where there was no preaching, nor even reading of the homilies for months together, and in many parishes there could be found no one to baptise the living or bury the dead; in others, unlearned mechanics, and even the gardeners of those who had secured the clerical glebes and income, performed the only service that there was. But no doubt this afforded good scope to the Puritans, who had now the Bible in English, Cranmer's, Coverdale's, and Parker's, or the Bishops' Bible; and these zealous men, despite the crushing penalties, would find constant opportunities of diffusing their knowledge. In Oxford there were only three divines in 1563 who were considered able to preach a sermon, and these three were Puritans. The knowledge of the Classics was fallen so low that all that Archbishop Parker required of the holders of his three new scholarships in Cambridge, in 1567, was that they should be well instructed in grammar and be able to make a verse. The classical qualifications in the two Universities were below contempt.

It is a satisfaction to turn from this humiliating state of things to the great lights of genius and learning which were burning brightly amid this thick darkness. Here there meets us the illustrious constellation of names of More, Ascham, Puttenham, Sidney, Hooker, Bacon, Barclay, Skelton, Sackville, Heywood, Surrey, Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others--names which cast a lustre over this period, and in whose blaze all its faults and failings are forgotten.

Of the prose writers Sir Thomas More (_b_. 1480, _d_. 1535) is one of the earliest and most famous. He was equally remarkable for the suavity of his manners, his wit, his independence of character, and the eloquence and originality of his writings. We have seen how he served and was served by Henry VIII. Erasmus, who stayed some time at his house, says, "With him you might imagine yourself in the academy of Plato. But I should do injustice to his house by comparing it to the academy of Plato, where numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were the subjects of discussion. It would be more just to call it a school, and an exercise of Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, although piety was their first care. No wrangling, no angry word was heard in it, no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness."

More's chief work is his "Utopia," and it may be pronounced the first enunciation of a system of Socialism since the Apostolic age. It may surprise many, but More, in fact, was the forerunner of Proudhon and Fourrier. His "Utopia" describes an island in which a commonwealth is established completely on Socialistic principles. No one is allowed to possess separate property; because such possession produces an unequal division of the necessaries of life, demoralising those who become inordinately rich and, in a different direction, depraving and degrading those who are obliged to labour incessantly. What is remarkable, More in his imaginary commonwealth admits the fullest toleration of religious belief, though he fell so far in practice as to join in the persecutions of his time. His principles were too noble for his practice; yet with this one flaw he was one of the most admirable men who ever lived. His "Utopia" was written by him in Latin, but was translated into English in 1551, afterwards by Bishop Burnet, and in 1808 by Arthur Cayley. In addition to this, he wrote a life of Richard III., and various compositions in Latin and English, besides a number of letters which have been published in his collected works. As a specimen of the prose style and state of the language in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., we may quote a short passage from a letter to his second wife, Alice Middleton, in 1528, on hearing that his house at Chelsea was burnt down:--

"Maistress Alyce, in my most harty wise I recommend me to you; and whereas I am enfourmed by my son Heron of the losse of our barnes and of our neighbours also, with all the corne that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is grit pitie of so much good corne loste; yet sith it hath liked Hym to sende us such a chaunce, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of His visitacion. He sente us all that we have loste; and sith He hath by such a chaunce taken it away againe, His pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never grudge thereat, but take in good worth, and hartily thank Him, as well for adversitie as for prosperite; and peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our losse than for our winning; for His wisdome better seeth what is good for us than we do our selves. Therefore I pray you be of good chere, and take all the howshold with you to church, and there thanke God, both for what He hath given us, and for that He hath taken from us, and for that He hath left us, which, if it please Hym He can encrease when He will. And if it please Hym to leave us yet lesse, at His pleasure be it. I pray you to make some good insearche what my poore neighbours have loste, and bid them take no thought therefore; for an I shold not leave myself a spone, there shal no poore neighboure of mine bere no losse by any chaunce happened in my house. I pray you be with my children, and your howshold mery in God."

Latimer (_b._ 1470, _d._ 1555) was the son of a Leicestershire farmer, and rose to be Bishop of Worcester, and to the far higher rank of a martyr for his faith. He has been pronounced by writers of this age as a good but not a great man. To our mind he was a very great man. Not in worldly wisdom, for he was simple as a child; but he was a genius, true, racy, and original. He was made, as his sermons show, for a preacher to the people rather than to princes, though to them he bore a bold and unblenching testimony. But to the people he was a prophet and an awakener. He had been amongst them; he knew their deepest feelings, their most secret thoughts their language and their desires; and he addressed them from the pulpit with the loving and picturesque familiarity which he used at their firesides. There is occasionally much rudeness in his discourses, his images are often bizarre, his allusions grotesque; but there is a life that kindles, there is a poetry that warms, a spirit that arouses, a bold aggressive truth which must have made his hearers look into their souls and think. We take a short passage from a sermon preached before Edward VI. in 1549--twenty-one years after the composition of More just given, and yet how much more old-fashioned is the language. After telling the king that so plain was his preaching that it had been called seditious, and that his friends, with tears in their eyes, assured him he would get into the Tower, he says:--"There be more of myne opinion than I. I thought I was not alone. I have now gotten one felowe more, a companyon of sedytyon, and wot ye who is my felowe? Esaye the prophete. I spake but of a lytle preaty shyllynge; but he speaketh to Hierusalem after another sorte, and was so bold to meddle with theyr coine (Isaiah i. 22). Thou proude, thou covetous, thou hautye cytye of Hierusalem, _argentum tuum versum est in scoriam_; thy sylver is turned into what? into testyiers. _Scoriam_--into drosse. Ah, sediciouse wretch, what had he to do wyth the mynte? Why should not he have lefte that matter to some master of policy to reprove? Thy sylver is drosse, it is not fine, it is counterfeit, thy sylver is turned, thou haddest good sylver. What pertayned that to Esaye? Mary, he espyeth a piece of divinity in that policie; he threatened them God's vengeance for it. He went to the rote of the matter, which was covetousness. He espyed two poyntes in it: that eythere it came of covetousnesse, whych became hym to reprove; er els that it tended to the hurte of the pore people, for the naughtyness of the sylver was the occasion of dearth to all thynges in the realme. He imputeth it to them as a great cryme. He may be called a mayster of sedicion in dede. Was this not a sidicyouse varlet to tell them thys to theyr beardes, to theyr face?"

Amongst writers of this age who tended to purify and perfect the language were Sir Thomas Wilson, and Puttenham, who wrote the "Art of English Poesy," which was published in 1582. Wilson (_b._ 1520, _d._ 1581) wrote his "Art of Rhetorique" thirty years before, only three years later than the sermon of Latimer's just quoted; yet what an advance in both style and orthography:--"What maketh the lawyer to have such utterance? Practice. What maketh the preacher to speake so soundly? Practice. Yea, what maketh women go so fast awai with their wordes? Marie, practice, I warrant you. Therefore in all faculties, diligent practice and earnest exercise are the only thynges that make men prove excellent."

Contemporary with More was Sir Thomas Elyot (_b._ 1495, _d._ 1546), whose treatise called "The Governor" is a fine example of vigorous English. Cranmer and Ridley were not less distinguished for their fine style than for their liberal principles; and Roger Ascham (_b._ 1515, _d._ 1568), the instructor of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, was equally famed for his caligraphy, his musical talents, his proficiency in the new learning--Greek--for his classical Latin, and his English composition. To relieve the severities of study he practised archery, and wrote his "Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge," to recommend that old English art. In it he strongly advocated the old English language, and the abstinence from foreign terms, a recommendation which succeeding generations wisely declined, to the vast enrichment of the language. But Ascham was a genuine Englishman, and advised his countrymen to follow the counsel of Aristotle, and "speak as the common people do, but think as wise men do." His next principal work was the "Scholemaster: a plaine and perfite way of teaching children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tong"--a work which has become more known than any other of his, because in it he mentions his visit to Lady Jane Grey at Bradgate Park, near Leicester, where he found her deep in Plato's "Phædo" while the rest of the family were hunting. But besides these works he wrote on the affairs of Germany; and Latin poems, Latin letters, and his celebrated Apology for the Lord's Supper, in opposition to the Mass.

As a prose writer Edmund Spenser (_b._ 1553, _d._ 1599), the author of the "Faerie Queene," must be mentioned for his "View of the State of Ireland," which contained many judicious recommendations for the improvement of that country, and presents in its serious statesmanlike views a curious contrast to the allegorical fancy of his great poem. But far greater as prose writers of the latter portion of this period stand forth Sir Philip Sidney and the "judicious Hooker." Sir Philip Sidney (_b._ 1554, _d._ 1586), who was celebrated as the most perfect gentleman of his time, or as, in the phrase of the age, "the Mirror of Courtesy," was killed at the age of thirty-three at Zutphen. Yet he left behind him the "Arcadia," a romance; the "Defence of Poesie," and various minor poems and prose articles, which were published after his death. The person and writings of Sidney have been the theme of unbounded panegyric. He was a gentleman finished and complete, in whom mildness was associated with courage, erudition mollified by refinement, and courtliness dignified by truth. He is a specimen of what the English character was capable of producing when foreign admixtures had not destroyed its simplicity, or politeness debased its honour. In his own day he was the object of the most enthusiastic praises, and has been lauded in the most vivid terms by writers of every period since. Near his own times Nash, Lord Brooke, Camden, Ben Jonson, Naunton, Aubrey, Milton, and Cowley, were his eulogists; Wordsworth and the writers of our own day are equally complimentary. Perhaps, after so continuous and high-toned a hymning, a modern reader, taking up his "Arcadia" for the first time, would find it stiff, formal, and pedantic. He might miss that fervid spirit which animates the fictions of the great masters of our own age, and wonder at the warmth of so many great authorities upon what failed to warm him. In fact, it must be confessed, that it is a noble specimen of what pleased the taste of the time in which it was written. It displays imagination, though often on stilts instead of on wings, and breathes the spirit which animated its author, of a refined nature, a chivalrous temperament, a generous heart, and the instincts of the perfect scholar. Of that period it is a noble monument; in this it is a unique work of art, which, however, strikes us as fair, mild, and antiquated. "The Defence of Poesie," with much of the same mannerism, is worthy of a poet, and of a man whose life was the finest poem, from its generous patronage of talent, its high literary taste, and the hero's death, in the very agonies of which he gave from his own scorched lips the draught of cold water to the dying soldier at his side.

The list of the prose writers of this period presents no more honourable name than that of the great champion of the Church of England, Richard Hooker (_b._ 1553, _d._ 1600), whose composition is as remarkable for its cogent reasoning and elevated style, as Sidney's is for fancy and grace of sentiment. His "Ecclesiastical Polity," in eight books, is regarded as the most able defence of church establishments that ever appeared. From the breadth of its principles it drew the applause of Pope Clement VIII. as well as of the royal pedant, James I. To those who study it as an example of the intellect, learning, and language of the time, it presents itself, even to such as dissent from its conclusions, as a labour most honourable to the country and age which produced it.

A still greater man was yet behind. Bacon (_b._ 1561, _d._ 1626) was figuring as the great lawyer, the eloquent advocate and senator; but under the duties of these offices lay hid the master who was to revolutionise philosophy and science; the father of the new world of discovery, and the most marvellous career of social and intellectual advance. To this period he is the sun sending its rays above the horizon, but not yet risen. His speeches, his "Essays Civil and Moral," and "Maxims of Law," already foretold his fame.

A very different writer was John Lyly, the Euphuist (_b._ 1553, _d._ 1601). Lyly was a poet and dramatist of repute; but in 1579 he published "Euphues; or, Anatomy of Wit," which was followed, in 1581, by a second part, called "Euphues and his England." In this he invented a style and phraseology of his own, which seized the fancy of the public like a mania, and set the Court, the ladies, the dandies, and dilettanti of the day speaking and writing in a most affected, piebald, and fantastic style. Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Arcadia," ridiculed it, not without being in a considerable degree affected by it himself. Shakespeare, in "Love's Labour's Lost," and Sir Walter Scott, in his Sir Piercie Shafton, in "The Monastery," have made the modern public familiar with it. Yet, after all, probably Lyly was only laughing in his sleeve at the follies of others, and was, as has been asserted, aiming at the purification of the language; for in his dramas his diction is simple enough, considering the taste of the age.

Among the rising writers was also Sir Walter Raleigh; but his literary reputation belongs rather to the age that was coming. On the whole, the period from the reign of Henry VII. to the end of that of Elizabeth was a period more kindred to our own than any which had gone before it. It produced prose writers whose minds still hold communion with and influence those of to-day. Its philosophy had assumed a more practical stamp, and was full of the elements of change and progress. Its poetry, which we have now to consider, reached the very highest pitch of human genius.

The earliest poet who has left any name of note is Stephen Hawes, whose principal work was "The Pastime of Pleasure," which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. Hawes was a native of Suffolk, had travelled much, and by his proficiency in French and French literature acquired the favour of Henry VII. Another poem, "The Temple of Glass," has been ascribed to Hawes, but is most probably Lydgate's, who, Hawes tells us, composed such a poem.

Next to Hawes comes Alexander Barclay, the author of numerous works in prose and poetry, as "The Castell of Labour," wherein is "Rychesse, Vertue, and Honour," an allegorical poem, translated from the French; "The Shyp of Foles of the Worlde," translated from Sebastian Brandt's German poem, "Das Narren Schiff;" "Egloges; or, the Miseries of Courts and Courtiers;" a treatise against Skelton the poet; a translation of Livy's "Wars of Jugurtha;" "Life of St. George," &c. &c. The work, however, which has handed down his name to posterity is the "Ship of Fools," which, by interspersing it with original touches on the follies of his countrymen, he made in some degree his own. But the chief merit of the poem in our time is the evidence of the polish which the English language had acquired, and to which Barclay probably contributed, for he had travelled through Germany, Holland, France, and Italy, studying diligently the best authors of those countries. He was successively a prebendary of the college of Ottery St. Mary, a Benedictine monk, Vicar of Great Barlow, in Essex, of Wokey, in Somersetshire, and Rector of All Hallows, London, terminating his life at Croydon. A stanza or two will suffice to show the state of the language at the close of the reign of Henry VII. A man in orders is speaking:--

"Eche is not lettred that nowe is made a lorde,
Nor eche a clerke that hath a benefice:
They are not all lawyers that plees do recorde,
All that are promoted are not fully wise.
On such chaunce nowe fortune throwes her dice
That, though one knowe but the Yrishe game,
Yet would he have a gentleman's name.

* * * * *

I am like other clerkes which so frowardly them gyde,
That after they are once come unto promotion,
They give them to pleasure, their study set aside,
Their avarice covering with fained devotion.
Yet daily they preache, and have great derision
Against the rude lay men, and all for covetise,
Though their own conscience be blinded with that vice."

The reign of Henry VIII. was distinguished chiefly by satirists: and it says much for the courage of poets that they were almost the only men in that terrible period who dared open their mouths on the crying sins of Government. Skelton, Heywood, and Roy were men who amused themselves with the follies and vices of their contemporaries. When the sun of poetry rose in a more glowing form in Surrey, the ferocious king, so ready with the headsman's axe, quenched it in blood. John Skelton (_b._ 1460, _d._ 1529) was a clergyman, educated at Oxford. Erasmus declared him to be "Britannicarum Literarum Lumen et Decus"--"the light and ornament of Britain." He became Rector of Diss, in Norfolk; but, like Sterne at a later day, Skelton was overflowing with humour and satire rather than sermons, and so fell under the resentment of Nykke, Bishop of Norwich. He lashed with all the wonderful power of his merry muse the licentious ignorance of the monks and friars; and, soaring at higher game, attacked the swollen greatness of Cardinal Wolsey in a strain of the most daring invective. The incensed cardinal endeavoured to lay hold on him, and he would not have escaped scatheless out of his hands, had not the venerable John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, opened the sanctuary to him; and there Skelton lived secure for the remainder of his days, neither stinting his stinging lashes at the cardinal, nor suppressing his overflowing humour, which welled forth in a torrent of the most wild, sparkling, random, and rodomontade character. His amazing command of language, his never-failing and extraordinary rhymes, remind us of one man only, and that of last century--Hood. The airiness and irregularity of his lyrical measures equally suggest a comparison with that most untranslatable Swedish poet, Bellmann.

His friend Thomas Churchyard, in a eulogium on him, enumerates a number of poets of that and preceding times, some of them now little known:--

"Peirs Plowman was full plaine,
And Chaucer's spreet was great;
Earl Surrey had a goodly veine,
Lord Vaux the marke did beat.
And Phaer did hit the pricke
In things he did translate,
And Edwards had a special gift;
And divers men of late
Have helped our English tongue,
That first was base and brute.
Oh! shall I leave out Skelton's name?--
The blossom of my fruit!"

The "Pithy, Pleasant, and Profitable Works of Maister Skelton, Poet Laureate to Henry VIII.," contain "The Crowne of Laurell," by way of introduction; "The Bouge of the Courte," in which this unique poet laureate attacks the vices of the Court without mercy; "The Duke of Albany," a poem equally severe on the Scots; "Ware the Hawk," a castigation of the clergy; "The Tunning of Eleanor Rumming," a wild rattling string of rhymes on an old ale-wife and her costume; and "Why come ye not to Court?" an unsparing satire on Wolsey. There is no part of the cardinal's history or character that he lets escape. His mean origin, his puffed-up pride, his sensuality, his lordly insolence, his covetousness and cruelties, run on in a strain of loose yet vivid jingle that was calculated to catch the ear of the people. The gentlest word that Skelton has for him is that--

"He regardeth lords
No more than potsherds;
He is in such elation
Of his exaltation
Of our sovereign lord
That God to record,
He ruleth all at will,
Without reason or skill,
Howbeit they be primordial
Of his wretched original
And his base progeny,
And his greasy genealogy.
He came of the sink royal
That was cast out of a butcher's stall.
But however he was born,
Men would have the less scorn
If he could consider
His birth and room together."

He tells us that the king,