State authority. The matter is uncertain, owing to the disappearance of Convocation records, but it is certain (1) that the book was drawn up by a committee of bishops and learned men, and (2) that it had at least the tacit sanction of Convocation.

The book was made legal by the First Act of Uniformity, in which we see something like a return to the old methods of pre-Conquest days, since it is provided in section 4 that archbishops and bishops may at their pleasure join and associate themselves to Justices of Oyer and Determiner for the hearing of cases of depraving of the Prayer Book. But yet in section 12 the jurisdiction of the bishops as to spiritual causes is preserved.

Perhaps the best evidence of the really Catholic character of the book is the fact that such men as Gardiner and Tunstall were willing to accept and use it.

The Reformed Ordinal followed the First Prayer Book, and again by parliamentary authority, although, like the Prayer Book, it was drawn up by a commission of bishops and learned men, and tacitly sanctioned by Convocation.

The ecclesiastical work of this reign was brought to an end by the publication of the Second Prayer

I

Book, the Forty-two Articles (afterwards thirtynine), and the Second Act of Uniformity.

King Edward's death in 1553 brought to an end the short period of Erastian influence, and revealed to the nation the evils of confounding Church and State, for terrible evils had come upon both during this short period of confusion. Noble foundations, due to the piety of Englishmen who lived in better days, had gone to satisfy the greed of a host of time-servers who hovered about the feeble youth who was called Supreme Head of the Church. The council and their friends had appropriated estates worth five million pounds, and there had been wanton destruction of all that was beautiful in church buildings and in worship, whilst there had been amongst the clergy not a reformation, but a very serious deterioration. Simony and immorality were more rife than in the dark days of the Wars of the Roses, and the clergy were notoriously ignorant; Hooper found one hundred and sixty-eight priests who could not say the ten commandments, and Latimer said that ‘never was there so much adultery and so much divorcing.'

Poverty and misery and vagrancy were rife amongst the poor laity, leading to such movements as the insurrection of Ket the Tanner. It is a sad reflection that reformation of doctrine should have

been accompanied by deformation of national righteousness, because the reformers, or those who took advantage of the desire for reform, were actuated by an unworthy spirit, and pushed the Reformation for unworthy motives.

Church government by an irresponsible Supreme Head had resulted in a galling tyranny by a council of selfish and ambitious upstarts, ending in universal misery; there was to be one more trial for the old Mother Church, a temporary return to Papal supremacy and a baptism of blood, ere the Church found her true position.

With the death of Edward the period of council rule ends, and the strong reaction against the unconstitutional methods of the council resulted in a return to the Roman obedience, and from this distance of time we cannot but see that there was a providential design in this, for if the Edwardian régime had continued, it is likely that the Church would have become a purely Erastian establishment like those in Germany and Holland.

CHAPTER IX

TEMPORARY SUBJECTION TO THE PAPACY

THE interlude of reaction in the days of Mary prepared the country for the later settlement of Elizabeth's reign.

There is not much to note in Mary's reign, because all that was done was in the way of undoing the work of the previous twenty years. The Second Act of the first year of Mary's reign repealed the two Acts of Uniformity, reestablished the celibacy of the clergy, repealed Acts dealing with destruction of images and service-books, and restored restored divine service as it had been in the last year of the reign of Henry VIII.

The next Act of the same session established penalties for disturbing the celebration of Mass, and for breaking of altars and crucifixes, saving the jurisdiction of the law ecclesiastical, and guarding against the infliction of two punishments for

one offence, viz. punishments in both ecclesiastical and civil courts.

Mary soon showed that she was a Tudor, and meant to control both Parliament and Church, and it is interesting to see how compliant Parliament and Convocation soon became. The title of Supreme Head was not dropped at once; indeed it is a striking fact that Mary was the first sovereign of England who was distinctly Roman Catholic, and the last to bear the title of Supreme Head.

It had been the policy of her father to demonstrate to Catholic Europe that Catholicism did not necessarily include Papalism, but Mary had decided that she could not be Catholic without being Papal, and so whilst Henry had used the Royal Supremacy as a means of defying and rejecting Papal jurisdiction, Mary used the same power to fasten the Papal yoke upon the Church more firmly than ever, and having thus used her supremacy she cast it away.

She might have used her power to restore the Catholic character of the Church without taking away its liberty, and she might have used her influence to bring about an honourable understanding with the Papacy, which would have prevented the schism which has brought evil to both parts of the Catholic Church during the past