were only remotely connected with the acceptance of its fundamental body of divinely revealed dogma. It succeeded in adapting to this dogma almost the whole body of scientific and social investigation. Chemistry, anatomy, botany, astronomy, as well as law and government, all felt the restraining force of ecclesiastical conceptions and dogmas. Its supernatural elements were emphasized at the expense of human progress. Claiming to be the most social force, it became anti-social in so far as it made its ideal one of otherworldliness. Obviously the students of intolerance have a rich and important field in religion.

The Christian religion has afforded material for studies of pagan intolerance of Christians, and Christian intolerance of pagans. We have volumes upon Catholic intolerance of Protestants and upon Protestant intolerance of Catholics and of other Protestants. The study of religious intolerance, both Catholic and Protestant, in the field of non-religious activities is still rich in unexplored possibilities, so rich that it is perhaps useless to attempt to call the attention of the historians of intolerance to the fact that there is also a field worth investigating in the groups of non-religious intolerance. A very interesting book, or series of books, even, more useful than much that has been written about religious intolerance, might be compiled by some one who turned his attention to the intolerances of medicine, of law, or of etiquette. They might even repay the historian by displaying a humorous ridiculousness that the solemn connotations of theology make impossible in that field.

It is unfortunate that the study of intolerance has been so largely confined to a record of punishments and penalties, and has concerned itself so little with the development of positive tolerance. The interesting and important thing about intolerance is its decrease. It has usually been taken for granted that decrease of intolerance has meant increase of tolerance; but this is not always true and tends to make tolerance synonymous with indifference. Tolerance becomes

at best easy amiability. Indifference and amiability are negative and afford no basis for the self-congratulatory attitude we like to associate with tolerance. Tolerance as a force provocative of progress is positive. It implies a definite attitude of mind, an open-minded observation of divergent opinions, a conscious refraining from the attitude of condemnation, and a willingness to adopt ideas if they prove, or seem likely to prove good. Intolerance of heretical ideas prevents progress. Tolerance welcomes the new, looks to the future, has a supreme confidence in the upward evolution of society.

It is the purpose of this essay to examine one very small field of religious intolerance, that in England during the reign of Elizabeth. Much has been done already. Catholics and Anglicans alike have devoted volumes to the suffering and disabilities of the Catholics. The subordination of religious to political considerations which marks the step in the direction of religious tolerance that came with the revolt of the nations from the suzerainty of the Papacy and the formation of national churches, has been repeatedly emphasized. The importance of the period for the developments in the reign of the Stuarts has been pointed out. But unfortunately attention has been confined too exclusively to the government and the Anglican Establishment. Of almost equal importance are the rise of the dissenting Protestant groups in England, particularly the Presbyterian, and their attitudes and theories of relationship with the Catholics, the Established Church, and the government. Elizabeth's reign was essentially a period of the formation of parties and opinions. During her reign Puritan and Independent came to group consciousness, grew into awareness of themselves as distinct from Anglicanism and from each other; the Anglican Church rose, collected its forces, and transformed itself from a tool of secular government into a militant ecclesiastical organization. The ground for the later struggle

was prepared; and if in the seventeenth century we find distinctly different theories at the basis of intolerance, we must seek the origin of the later attitude in Elizabeth's day. Her reign is a time of beginnings, a period of preliminary development, and partakes of the interest and uncertainties of all origins of complex social phenomena.

The purpose of this essay is to estimate and to call attention not only to the intolerance of the government and the Established Church, but also to the rising Protestant groups of dissent, and to indicate the way they conditioned and influenced the attitude of both the government and the Church and intrenched themselves for the future conflict.

CHAPTER II

POLITICS AND RELIGION

UNLOVED and disheartened, Mary Tudor died on the 17th of November, 1558. Her sincere struggle to establish the old faith in England once more, her pathetic love for Philip of Spain, the loss of Calais, the knowledge that without children to succeed her the work done could not endure, all these things had made her life a sad one. Our imaginations have clothed her reign with gloom and blood, while that of her successor has become correspondingly splendid, intriguing, fanciful, swashbuckler, profane, - a living age. We approach the study of Elizabeth's reign with the expectation of finding at last a period when life was all dramatic, but, as always, we find that the facts are less romantic than our imaginative pictures.

Life to the Elizabethan Englishman was not all a joyous adventure. Famine and pestilence ushered in the reign. An empty treasury confronted the new queen. The commercial and the industrial life of the kingdom declined. War with France and Scotland made taxation heavy. The army and navy were riddled by graft, and crumbling fortresses indicated a lack of national military pride. The officials of Mary's rule still maintained their power in Church and State, objects of hatred to the people, andthe greatest danger to the Queen's peaceable accessioncenters around which might gather foreign opposition to the daughter of Anne Boleyn.

ELIZABETH'S ALLEGED ILLEGITIMACY

In the eyes of her Catholic subjects Elizabeth rested under the shadow of an uncertain title. The charge of illegitimacy had stamped its black smudge upon the brow of

the baby girl, followed her through young womanhood in her uncertain and dangerous position during the reign of Mary, and when death had removed Mary, strode specterlike across the joy of the nation. Upon Elizabeth's entry into the City she was greeted with great demonstrations of joy by the populace, but the councillors whom she had called around her1 realized that within the kingdom, Catholic love for Mother Church and power, Catholic consistency, might unite a large party which, resting upon papal condemnation of the marriage of her father and mother, would reject her claims to the throne. Domestic dangers to her position might also threaten from that anti-Catholic party whose members had grown bitter under the persecutions of Mary. The domestic dangers became menacing and real by reason of their complication with the projects and ambitions of foreign powers.

From the fact of Elizabeth's illegitimacy in the eyes of the Catholic world sprang two great foreign dangers, the one to endure throughout the reign, the other to end only with an act which has brought upon Elizabeth's name an undeserved reproach; the Papal See was hostile and Mary of Scotland set up a claim to England's throne.

Neither Elizabeth nor her advisers, probably, expected that a break with the Papacy could be avoided. The Pope's attitude must necessarily be determined in some measure by the pronouncements of his predecessor upon the marriage of which Elizabeth was the fruit. It could hardly be ex

1 Cecil, Parry, Cave, Sadler, Rogers, Sackville, and Haddon were summoned to her at Hatfield. The old council was reorganized. Sir Thomas Parry became Comptroller of the Household; Sir Edward Rogers, Vice-Chamberlain; William Cecil, Principal Secretary in the place of Dr. Boxall, Archdeacon of Ely; Sir Nicholas Bacon displaced the Archbishop of York as Keeper of the Great Seal; while the Earls of Bedford, Derby, and Northampton, Cave, Sadler, and Sackville took the places of Mary's councillors. Pembroke, Arundel, Howard, Shrewsbury, Winchester, Clinton, Petre, and Mason continued.

2 S. R. Maitland, Essays on Subjects connected with the Reformation in England, with an introduction by A. W. Hutton (London and New York, 1899), Essays VI, no. ii; VII, no. iii; VIII; IX; x, quotes from Knox, Goodman, Whittingham, Kethe, Becon, Bradford, Ponet.