of all sorts, were wilful offenders and deserved what they got. But even if we grant Cardinal Pole and Bishop Hopton to have been faultless theologians, surely there was something in the views of their victims which could have been brought into shape with the help of human grammar and Divine patience, guided by the one Source of Wisdom.

We have just received an Encyclical, and are pleased that it is of an emollient character, but nothing can be realized by regarding English affairs from an Italian point of view. A frank acknowledgment of the error and sin of persecution would do good all round, and Rome is not the only offender to stand in a white sheet. For her to bear a penitential faggot would be a noble example, and might be the first step towards a general and Catholic reconciliation. Many such steps would have to be taken, for the journey is a long one. As yet Aldham Common is visited by numbers who gaze with deep feeling on Rowland Taylor's stone, while in the Hundred in which Noyes suffered the adherents of Rome might be counted on a man's fingers.

H

CHAPTER XIV.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

AD Suffolk been polled shortly after [Elizabeth's accession for or against the Reformation, there is reason to believe that there would have been a majority in the negative. So at least thought the author of the 'Distresses of the Commonwealth,' whom Froude is inclined to identify with one Armigil Wade, an official of the reign of Henry VIII. The influence of the clergy was still great, and many of the older men had been nominated by abbeys and priories before the Dissolution. More were in some way connected with lords of manors, and by these two classes the Edwardian changes had been sulkily accepted, and the Marian reaction hailed with joy. Sulyerdes, Bedingfelds, Kenes, Rokewodes, and the like, refused to recognise the new order of things, and fared as best they might. In many cases their tenants and dependents felt with them at first, but became more easily reconciled to the inevitable. Much depended on local circumstances. This, however, is pretty clear from the registers: that after a little while children were brought to the font, couples united in matrimony, and corpses buried in undiminished numbers, all being done according to the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer.

For a year and three-quarters East Anglia was without a bishop. Benefices fell vacant, and so remained. In these vacancies much disorder prevailed. Throughout

Suffolk there had been no confirmations and no episcopal visitation. Greedy landowners began to lay their hands on what had been left of Church furniture by official rapacity. The almsgiving of the monasteries had disappeared, in some respects a loss not to be deplored, but to the aged and helpless a great privation. The poor are the first to suffer and the last to gain by change, whether in Church or in State.

Queen Mary died on November 17, 1558. Cardinal Pole only survived her two days, and before the month was out Bishop Hopton had also left this world. He is spoken of as probably born at Mirfield, Yorkshire,1 but certainly bore the same arms as those of the Suffolk Hoptons. The Dominicans claim him as of their fraternity. When Mary was at Kenninghall in 1549, he was her chaplain, and had proved compliant about the prohibition of the missal. We have seen, however, his severity when in office, and his end was probably accelerated by anticipation of reprisals. In 1560 John Parkhurst, of Merton College, Oxford, a native of Guildford, succeeded to the chair of Felix the Burgundian, Stigand, the saintly Walter de Suffield, and the pugnacious Henry Spencer. As a proof of the chaos in which he found his diocese, Strype says that in the archdeaconry of Suffolk there were in 1561 a hundred and thirty parishes more or less destitute of a resident clergyman. Parkhurst had passed through a severe apprenticeship. During the late reign he was in exile, chiefly at Zurich, where he lived in close intercourse with the Swiss reformers of the day. On his return he became Rector of Bishop's Cleve, in Gloucestershire, where he seems to have been a little king. Nolo episcopari was with him a genuine sentiment.

As the Puritan troubles in Suffolk begin in his time, and must perforce occupy our attention, it becomes necessary for me to preface my notice of them with an avowal of my incapacity to deal with the appalling complication which confronts me and demands some expression of feeling.

1 Cooper, 'Athenæ Cantabrigienses,' i. 186.

There ought to be some mean between the barren registration of things said and done and the highly-coloured narrative put together for a purpose which it probably fulfils.

The first requisite is to put aside partisanship, to look as far as possible at Anglican matters from a Puritan point of view, and at Puritan matters from an Anglican point of view. Without at least attempting this, it were better to pass over the period in mute despair.

Three long, active, busy centuries have rolled away since the beginning of these troubles, and the battle of opinion rages as hotly as ever. A softened feeling, indeed, prevails to produce toleration and to keep alive the mouldering embers of comprehension, yet the terrible legacy of the awful Church struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is ours in the nineteenth, and will be our children's in the twentieth. And people read what they wish to read, what they 'like,' what they can painlessly assimilate, and thus see what they wish to see and ignore the rest. No wonder that there is no reciprocal approach when hardly any recognise even that limits exist to confine the highest ideals of government, of ceremonial, of rules for the ordering of daily life, within the range of things possible and practicable in this changeful and uncertain world. Truly, neither of the chief contending parties would have allowed such heretical laxity. Episcopacy and presbytery were each of Divine origin, jure divino.

And in a sense each was right. Oversight is Divine, and counsel is Divine. Continuity, too, has a strong claim on human respect. The intertwining of the three would not have been quickly broken. But in Switzerland there had been severe tension, terminating in a snap, and yet faith had not become extinct. This Parkhurst had witnessed, and his affectionate remembrances of his Zurich friends doubtless generated that dealing with Suffolk disciples of Calvin which brought on him the censure of higher authorities.

'Queen Elizabeth,' says Strype, was at Ipswich, July 17th, 1561. Here her Majesty took a great dislike to the imprudent behaviour of many of the ministers and readers, there being many weak ones amongst them, and little or no order observed in the public service, and few or none wearing the surplice. And the Bishop of Norwich was thought remiss, and that he winked at schismatics. But more particularly was she offended with the clergy's marriage; and that in cathedrals and colleges there were so many wives and widows and children seen, which she said was contrary to the intent of the founders, and so much tending to the interruption of the studies of those who were placed there. Therefore she issued an order to all dignitaries, dated August 9th, at Ipswich, to forbid all women to the lodgings of cathedrals or colleges, and that upon pain of losing their ecclesiastical promotions.'

I may be pardoned for pointing out what will have occurred to many who have studied East Anglian peculiarities, that neither oversight nor counsel had shown much of their salutary presence in Suffolk. A huge, unwieldy diocese, not quite rivalling the impossibilities of Lincoln and Lichfield, but extending from Happisburgh to Camps in Cambridgeshire, had caused confirmations to be performed at roadside stoppages, whenever 'busshope doe come about country.' That personal contact and dutiful regard which is the very life and soul of episcopal government was not strengthened, as at Lincoln and Lichfield, by the wholesome institution of local prebendal stalls, whereby somewhat of local want could make itself more readily known to the ecclesiastical authorities in the cathedral city; and thus counsel had not come to the help of the Bishop. Had it not been for action beyond rule, the very name of the Saviour might have become unknown. The Suffolk gentry, many of them, were awake to this, as we find from the case of a preacher named Lawrence, about whom this dutiful letter was written to Archbishop Parker, October 27, 1567: