really did so, or how, in the main, her own contemporaries, friends and foes alike, constantly thought and spoke of religion as being restored to that form which it had in the time of Edward VI.[1] The supremacy was restored, and the Prayer-book—with but slight alteration—also; and both by authority of the State alone, not only without but against the strongly-declared wishes of the bishops and clergy.
The first of these measures, it should be observed, dropped nothing of Henry's claim except the title of supreme head, and, in fact, re-established to the full the national papacy of which I have spoken, and the claim to which, as we have seen, was put forward in the plainest terms by Dr. Bancroft towards the end of the reign, in the very same sermon in which he made a mild suggestion of some sort of Divine right in the bishops for the first time since the separation from Rome.
Another important feature in this reign also is the complete subjection of Convocation to the Queen and the Parliament. In the instance just referred to, it must be observed that the Convocation of 1559 was as much a Convocation as that of four years later, yet the Reformation was re-established in spite of its efforts to the contrary. From that time forth throughout the reign Convocation accepted its position, and confined itself strictly within the limits assigned to it. In 1563, indeed, a formal attempt was made by Bishop Sandys to obtain the concession of the whole of the early Puritan demands, which was defeated only, after counting proxies, by the narrow majority of one. When we consider the strong inducements to those in favour of such a measure to abstain from voting for it, arising
- ↑ E.g., Grindal to Hubert in Zurich Letters, series 2, p. 19.
