should be done away with, the all-prevailing corruption should be rooted out, and, to accomplish these ends, men of high character and of unblemished life should be selected to control the new establishment. No such counsels met the approval of the queen. She wished subservient tools; and if her bishops were men whose private or official conduct could not bear examination, they would be the more readily controlled, and the more easily turned over to Rome. A few illustrations will show their character.

Parker, her favorite Archbishop of Canterbury, left an enormous fortune, which he had accumulated during eighteen years of office by the most wholesale corruption. Among other things, he established a fixed tariff for the sale of benefices in his gift, regulated according to their value and the age of the applicant. The sales were not confined to adults, for even boys under fourteen were allowed to become purchasers, provided they would pay an increased price.* At about the time of Parker's death, in 1576, Hatton, the new favorite of the queen, cast longing eyes upon some property belonging to the Bishop of Ely. That prelate refused to give it up, even after receiving the famous letter in which Elizabeth, with an oath, threatened to unfrock him. He was brought to terms, however, by a summons before the Privy Council, and a notification from Lord North of what would be proved against him. He was to be charged, so the queen directed, with the grossest malversation in office, plundering the Church lands, selling the lead and brick from its houses, dealing dishonestly in leases, and exacting illegal charges from the ministers in his diocese. This threat was sufficient; the bishop suc

*Froude, xi. 100.

cumbed, and we hear no more of his prosecution or removal.*

Nor were these cases at all exceptional. As we study the records of the time, one of their most striking features is the wide-spread corruption among the bishops of the Established Church. Liable to removal or suspension at the pleasure of the crown, they took care to provide for themselves and their families by selling the church timber, making long leases of the ecclesiastical lands, and in every possible manner despoiling their sees of the little property left to them by the early Reformers.†

* Froude, xi. 22.

pre

The following are a few illustrations taken from Strype's "Annals," the writings of a High-churchman, which bear out the general statements of Hallam, Froude, and others, to some of which I have referred in a former chapter. In 1585, Bishop Scambler was transferred from Peterborough to Norwich. He found that his decessor had not only disposed of the judicial offices of the see by a patent, but had just before his departure made many unprecedented leases of the episcopal property. But Scambler's successor in Peterborough found that the same thing had been done in that diocese, the see having been impoverished by spoliations. The same year witnessed the death of the Bishop of Chichester. He died a bankrupt, having sold off the church timber until there was hardly sufficient left for firewood. These cases occurred in one year, and are mentioned in one page of Strype's "Annals," iii. 331. See also p. 467 for an account of the mode in which the Welsh bishoprics were "fleeced by the respective bishops;" also p. 463, as to the see of Durham. The bishop of the latter diocese not only despoiled the church property, but was controlled by a brother, his chancellor, " a bad man addicted to covetousness and uncleanness. He was to be bribed by money to pass over crimes presented and complained of." Aylmer, Bishop of London, cut down and sold his timber until prevented by an injunction. "When he grew old, and reflected that a large sum of money would be due from his family for dilapida

HOW THE BISHOPS OBTAINED THEIR OFFICES

455

In 1585, when six bishoprics were vacant, a correspondence passed between Lord Burghley and Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, which shows the general character of the men whom Elizabeth selected for ecclesiastical preferment. Says the Lord Treasurer: “There are to be new bishops placed in the six vacant chairs. I wish-but I cannot hope it-that the Church may take that good thereby that it hath need of. Your Grace must pardon me; for I see such worldliness in many that were otherwise affected before they came to cathedral churches, that I fear the places alter the men." To which Whitgift replied: "It is not the chair that maketh the alteration, if any there be, but the unlawful means of coming by it.... I doubt not but as good men, even at this day, possess some of these chairs as ever did in any age; although I will not justify all, nor yet many of them."* Bishops who had bought their seats, as is here plainly intimated, could hardly be expected to refrain from repaying themselves by plundering their sees. Had Elizabeth been actuated by a desire to bring the Established Church into contempt, so that its downfall would be mourned by no one, she certainly could have chosen no better mode of accomplishing her purpose than that of selecting such men to represent its principles.†

tions of the palace at Fulham, etc., he actually proposed to sell his bishopric to Bancroft (Strype's 'Aylmer,' p. 169). The latter, however, waited for his death, and had over £4000 awarded to him; but the crafty old man having laid out his money in land, this sum was never paid.”—Hallam, i. 206. At this time land in England could not be taken for debt.

* Strype's" Whitgift," pp. 171, 172. No one who knows anything of Whitgift's character would ever suspect him of libelling the Church. + During the session of Parliament, in 1581, when the nation was

But, after all, the bishops were simply following the lessons taught them by the queen. She was the great despoiler of the Church. All through her reign, we find her not only demanding from the bishops the surrender of portions of the property of their sees for the benefit of some needy favorite-and she thus robbed even the universities themselves *-but she issued numerous commissions, under which keen and unscrupulous adventurers sought out flaws in ecclesiastical titles, recovering the property for the crown and receiving as their compensation a portion of the spoils. + Besides this, although the regular revenues of the sees were very small, averaging only about a thousand pounds per annum, they were so diminished by the exactions of the queen and her courtiers, that in many cases the incumbents, without dishonesty, would have found it impossible to live. One illustration of the extent of these exactions will suffice to show their character. In 1583, the Bishop of Winchester, who held one of the richest sees in the kingdom, was complained of for spending so little money as to bring his office into disrepute. In answer to the charge he sent Lord Burghley a statement showing his income and expenditures. His net income was about £2800. Of this he paid to the queen, in first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, and benevolences, about £1900; to Leicester, £100; in annuities granted by his predecessors, "wherein Sir Francis Walsingham's fee is contained," £218; leaving for himself, after paying

alarmed by the Catholic revival which the Jesuits had awakened, one member gave voice to the public opinion in saying: "Were there any honesty in these prelates, in whom honesty should most be found, we should not be in our present trouble."-Froude, xi. 360. *Strype, iii. 54. + Idem, passim.

salaries and alms to the poor, just one seventh of the net income.* This system was almost as profitable to the queen as the one under which she kept a diocese vacant for years, receiving all the income.†

But there was something more than corruption in the Church. The mass of the clergy were so illiterate that, even had they been pure of life, they could have done little to elevate the people or win respect for the new establishment. This evil, too, was felt in its full force by the statesmen who tried in vain to influence the queen. They realized the fact that Protestantism

*Strype, iii. Appendix, p. 58.

As

She thus kept the diocese of Ely vacant for eighteen years after the death of Cox. Hall, p. 117. Strype, in this connection, gives a curious letter written to the queen by Sir John Puckering, the Lord Keeper-that is, the acting Chancellor-which shows how bishoprics and their property were disposed of. Sir John desired a lease of some land belonging to the vacant bishopric of Ely, and proposed, about 1595, that the office should be filled in order to carry out his wishes. The lease, he said, would benefit him, without expense to her majesty, since the property did not belong to the crown. to filling the see, although she would thereby lose the income, this would be made up from first-fruits, tenths, and subsidies; which, if an old man were selected for the place, would soon be payable again. In addition, by changing around some of the other old bishops, she could make a profit of several thousand pounds. Strype, iv. 247. Under a statute passed in the first year of her reign, to which reference has been made before (see p. 433), every bishop and every clergyman paid the queen at once, or in two or three annual payments, a sum equal to a year's income on his first appointment to a charge. These payments, called firstfruits, became due again on every change of diocese or parish, and to them was added a tenth of the annual income thereafter. The system had, therefore, a money value to the crown, which was perhaps no small recommendation in the eyes of a frugal monarch like Elizabeth.