Church whose head was a foreign ecclesiastic, and which numbered among its supporters two of the great monarchs of Western Europe. It was therefore not unlikely that those monarchs, if they entered into a quarrel with Elizabeth, might rally to their side at least a part of her Catholic subjects. For some time Elizabeth was able to keep the foreign danger at bay by dexterously playing off France and Spain against each other. For she knew well that neither of those rival monarchies would be content to see the forces of England added to those of the other. But before long the danger approached her in another form. Mary Queen of Scots was not merely the queen of a neighbouring kingdom, she was the claimant of the English throne, on the ground that Elizabeth was disqualified by the stain of illegitimate birth. Elizabeth would fain have avoided the inevitable struggle. Then came the catastrophe in Scotland. Mary Stuart was driven from her own kingdom by her subjects. As a refugee, she sought protection and support in England for the reconquest of the throne which she had lost. Elizabeth had a hard problem before her. To set Mary free was to give her the chance of reconquering a strong position in Scotland, and with that she would gain a scarcely less strong position in England. Herright to the English throne, which she had never relinquished, would be made good with all the forces of Scotland, probably backed with a French or Spanish army, and by the willing support of all the malcontents of England, headed by three-fourths of the nobility of the land. In retaining Mary in prison Elizabeth judged that she was doing the best for herself and the great cause which she represented. It may indeed be doubted whether she was wise in this. Mary as a prisoner was more powerful than Mary at large would have been. She became, voluntarily or involuntarily, the centre СНАР. VI. СНАР. § 16. The Jesuit Propaganda. of intrigues against the crown. The defence of the Together with the political propaganda, a new religious propaganda alarmed the queen. The Society of Jesuits had been formed with the express intention of combating Protestantism. Every Jesuit on entering the order relinquished all power over himself. The will of his superior became his only law, in accordance with which he was bound to act, to speak, to think. In opposition to the self-contained religion of the Protestant appeared a form of religion which treated the individual conscience with contempt The extravagance of discipline appeared as the opponent of the extravagance of individual religion. To the Jesuit, Protestantism appeared to be equivalent to Antinomianism, and he convinced himself and strove to convince others that those who had rejected the obedience of the Church of Rome were fanatics ready to plunge into any vice under the cover of the profession of assent to a correct form of words. As often happens with bitter partisans, he mistook the caricature of the belief which he disliked for its vital strength. At least he had the courage of his opinions. It was impossible that Elizabeth should regard the movement as one of a merely religious character. The whole present and future organisation of England was at stake. The success of the Catholic reaction implied the substitution of Mary receiving orders from the pope for Elizabeth ruling in accordance with the good will of her subjects, and fostering all forms of thought which did not threaten the stability of her throne. For the future it implied the substitution of mental slavery for mental freedom, of the spirit which urges men to be content with the acceptance of their beliefs from an external authority for the spirit which urges them to base their principles upon inquiry. For some years indeed the Jesuits who arrived in England to dare and endure were but few in number, and most of those few were seized and executed by the government. But the energy of the few who escaped gave force to many who were not members of the Society. First Parsons, and then Gerard, were men of extraordinary ability in the organisation and management of men. CHAP. VI. secution of the It was inevitable that two systems so radically oppo- § 17. Persed to one another as the supremacy of the crown and the supremacy of the pope, should come into violent Catholics. collision with one another. Each side tried to make the best of its own cause. The government, when it seized the Catholic missionaries, and imprisoned, tortured, or executed them, announced that it treated them in this manner, not because they preached a false religion, but because they made men rebels to the queen. The Catholic missionaries, on the other hand, announced that they were persecuted not for treason, but for religion. Undoubtedly there was truth on both sides. Whether the missionaries wished it or not, the success of their efforts could not but end in the overthrow of the political as well as of the ecclesiastical authority of Elizabeth. Whether Elizabeth wished it or not, she could not enforce this authority without assailing by violence the conscientious convictions of thousands of her subjects. In the eyes of posterity, Elizabeth's justification is to be found in considerations, the import of which she СНАР. VI. scarcely understood. Against her was the old doctrine that the acceptance of certain definite opinions promulgated by authority was so all-important to mankind, that for the sake of retaining them, men were bound to put to death their fellow-men, a doctrine which by exalting submissive assent at the expense of moral and intellectual vigour, tended in the long run to surround itself with a poisonous atmosphere of falsehood and corruption. On her side was the doctrine of which only glimpses had yet been gained, that men are better only for the truths which they appropriate to themselves by effort, and for the earnestness of their moral striving. In proscribing the papal religion, she was not proscribing a form of thought and belief which. claimed mere equality with others. She was warring against a tyranny which claimed the right of crushing all independence of judgment under its heel. Undoubtedly there was much which was harsh, much too that was worse than harsh, in the mode in which she prepared her triumph. The treatment of the Catholics, like the treatment of all prisoners, was barbarous, and as special objects of suspicion, the Catholics were subjected to hardships from which others were free. Nor is it possible to doubt that chicanery and fraud entered largely into the plots by which Elizabeth's ministers contrived to give an air of legality to the proceedings by which they dogged Mary Stuart to death. But we are not bound, because we are dissatisfied with the manner in which she acted, to be dissatisfied with the action itself. Elizabeth, in upholding the authority of the crown, was upholding the authority of the State, and in upholding the authority of the State, she was, unlike William Rufus and Henry I., upholding a truer and nobler authority than that which the Roman missionaries had to offer. To a limited extent, what was true of Elizabeth's opposition to Rome was true of her opposition to Calvinistic Puritanism. The Puritans, indeed, unlike the Catholics, appealed, not to external authority, but to the interpretation of a book by the private judgment of each individual man. But such had been the influence of Calvin's mind, that they agreed in all essential particulars, and they sought to impose their creed by force upon those who rejected it. They declared it to be the duty of the civil power to prohibit ceremonies dear to large masses of men, and they were earnestly desirous to organise the church irrespective of the authority of the crown. It was therefore not without reason that statesmen feared that the tyranny of an ecclesiastical democracy would be as great as the tyranny of an ecclesiastical monarchy. On the other hand, it was impossible for Elizabeth to be blind to the fact that the spirit of Puritanism was essential to the success of her struggle against Rome. The desire to throw off the papal yoke which was in others a matter of reason or feeling, was, in the Puritan, the object of consuming passion. To contend with Rome. without his help was to grasp a lance of which the point had been thrown away. As the most zealous Protestants found their way amongst the ranks of the clergy, the greater part of the Protestant clergy were more or less Puritan at heart, and Elizabeth, if she were to have clerical allies at all, was obliged to make concessions to the Puritans. Her object, therefore, was to use them in such a way that they might not be dangerous to her own crown, or so offensive to those of her subjects who did not share their opinions as to throw them into confirmed opposition. $ 19. The Eliza The Church, as it was moulded at the commencement of the reign, was admirably calculated to serve bethan this end. If some part of its formularies betrays an Church. effort to express discordant thoughts, it owes its strength |
