EFFECTS OF THE MOVEMENT ON THE ENGLISH PURITANS 31

alarmed. Her ministers urged an open support of the Protestants, and the king himself expressed a desire for an English alliance, if only justice were done him in the matter of his English estates. But Elizabeth, though profuse with promises, set out anew in her course of duplicity and fraud. It seems almost inexplicable that after her treachery to Morton any one should have believed her word, but human credulity has no limits. Her new allies went the way of all the men who trusted her. The king, being released by his captors, turned upon them, when he found that Elizabeth would not do him justice, and that she had no intention of supporting the men who had raised a rebellion at her instigation. The Earl of Gowrie, in 1584, followed Morton to the block, and his associates Angus and Mar fled the kingdom, stripped of all their property.*

For a time James found himself more powerful at home than ever before. He opened negotiations directly with the pope and the Duke of Guise, asking them to interest the Catholic powers in his behalf against Elizabeth, who was plotting his destruction. But the Catholics had seen enough of Scotland. The people evidently were not on their side, and unless the king could be converted he would be a useless tool. The movement, however, had a great effect on England by revealing the dangers which would continue to threaten Elizabeth from every quarter, until she could bring herself to a decided stand in favor of the Protestants. Upon the Puritans in particular its effect was very marked. They had watched the struggle with the keenest interest. James, when he drove out the Protestant nobles, also drove out many of the leading min

* Froude, xi. p. 678, etc.

+ Idem, xi. 668.

isters. They took refuge in England, to disseminate there the doctrines of a Presbyterian Church standing above the State, and in time their teachings developed into action.*

Returning now to England, it is an easy matter to trace the effects of its growing Puritanism upon the fortunes of the nation at the most critical period of its

* I am not writing the history of the Scottish Kirk, and only refer to it as bearing on the development of English and American Puritanism. But in leaving the subject it is satisfactory to note that the triumph of James was very short-lived. The Earl of Arran, who, after the flight of Lennox, became the chief royal adviser, was a man of vile life and of little ability. He made himself so obnoxious that, in 1585, Angus, Mar, and the other Protestant nobles who had fled the country returned home to meet a people in revolution. They took possession of the king, recovered their estates, and Arran passed out of sight to die in a street brawl. Then the Kirk again came into power to teach James that hatred of Presbyterianism which had so marked an effect upon the history of Great Britain.

When James, at a later day, had all England behind him he was able to reinstate the bishops, but their duties were almost nominal. His son, Charles, went further and attempted to force a liturgy upon Scotland with all the ceremonial which made it so offensive to the Puritans of England. This action resulted in the war which, subsequently taken up by the English, ended in the Commonwealth, and the establishment of Scotch Presbyterianism in England. It is a significant fact that the Scotch raised the standard of rebellion solely on account of a religious persecution. The English also had religious grievances, but these alone would not have caused the revolution. The national heroes of the day in England are not the men who stood up for their religious rights, but men, like Hampden, who defended the purses of the nation. When Charles I. was taken prisoner, the English demanded guarantees for their civil rights; the refusal cost the monarch his head. Charles II. joined the Kirk, conceded to the Scotch all that they asked for in religious matters, and they took part with him in the second Civil War. This may have been unwise, but it was not inconsistent.

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33

history, which was several years before the appearance of the Spanish Armada.

It must be borne in mind, as stated in a former chapter, that when Elizabeth ascended the throne very few of her subjects were earnest Catholics. The great majority of the people, although Catholic by tradition, cared nothing for religion, and, accustomed to an earthly head of the Church, were willing to acquiesce in the religious supremacy of the crown as readily and as fully as they had acquiesced in that of the pope. It was into this peaceful family that the Puritans entered as an element of discord. Their great crime was the questioning of the queen's supremacy. They sought an appeal in religious matters from her decisions to a heavenly tribunal, and she recognized no right of appeal beyond herself. For this reason she so bitterly opposed their teachings, and exerted every effort for their suppres

sion.

But in her short-sightedness Elizabeth failed to take in the whole of the situation. Puritanism, as it was then developed, might question her supremacy in relig ious matters, but it never questioned her civil power. Catholicism, as it then existed, when fully taken to the heart, would question both. This it was that led her counsellors, from an early day, to foster the Puritans, as the main defence against the rising tide, which, sweeping over Continental Europe, might soon be expected to cross the Channel. England was very late in feeling the awakening, intellectual and moral, which gave birth to Protestantism and rejuvenated the Catholic Church. Yet the awakening was sure to come. There was something in the air, something telling of impending change, which in time would stir the most torpid from his slumber. The awakening began in Eng

land with the Puritan discontent. This Elizabeth saw and fully appreciated. But she never seemed to dream that the influences of the age, which developed the Puritans, might arouse her Catholic subjects, and imperil not alone her religious supremacy, but her throne itself.

Such, however, was the danger that threatened England when the Jesuits began their memorable invasion of 1580. To them the task of converting the island seemed an easy one, and they would have met with few obstacles had the wishes of Elizabeth been fully carried out. At the court there was a total absence of relig ion. The prelates of the Church were mostly mere timeservers, if nothing worse, and the men beneath them were in large part almost illiterate, many of them leading lives which disgraced Christianity. It is not strange that under these circumstances, looking only at the surface, the missionaries of Rome should have entertained high hopes. They were themselves pure of life and earnest in their convictions, and if the field had not been occupied they would have swept into the papal ranks most of the men of the kingdom who were earnestly inclined to religion. These, to be sure, formed but a small fraction of the nation; but when the conditions are favorable, when real grievances exist, a comparatively few earnest men suffice to bring about a revolution. They overawe the lukewarm, unless opposed by greater earnestness than their own, and under their teachings the weak-minded develop into the most violent of fanatics. Such was the course of events in the next century, when a minority of Puritans seized upon the government and overthrew the Constitution.

But the field was occupied before the arrival of the Jesuits. Despite all the efforts of Elizabeth, the Puritans had preached and taught, and their labors had not

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been wasted. They were as earnest and as pure of life as the Jesuits, and by their words and example had won over thousands of the earnest souls who were tired of hypocrisy and cant.* These preachers, with the multitude of refugees from the Netherlands, and the ministers of the Scottish Kirk, had affected one element of society. Another element was aroused to indignation against the papacy by the private war that the English corsairs were waging against Spain, and by the open conflict in the Netherlands. All of these influenceswhich alone prevented the restoration of England to the papacy-would have been wanting if Elizabeth could have suppressed the Puritans, and could have patched up a peace between Philip and his rebellious subjects by inducing them to give up the religious question.

But their results did not appear upon the surface, especially in upper circles, and naturally enough the Jesuits were deceived. There were still old families in the kingdom among whom Catholicism was a tradition, and its advocacy a point of honor. With these families the Jesuits were at once brought into close relation. In addition, there was still another class in the community, small perhaps, but one not to be overlooked. Most men, even those earnest in belief, take their religion from their surroundings, adopting without question the faith

* Francis Bacon was not given to volunteering suggestions on distasteful subjects, but, in 1584, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth, in which, while disclaiming any concurrence in the opinions of the Puritans, he called attention to the good work which they were doing in diminishing the number of the Papists, by "their careful catechising and diligent preaching."-Abbott's "Bacon," p. 19. Burghley noted, very significantly, in 1586, that the Jesuits flocked into and made their converts in the counties where the least preaching had been done. Strype, iii. 429.