Commissioners, or Parliament, touching religion and Divine service, and aid the archbishop and bishops therein also. Not a word of Convocation or the Church as distinct from the State.[1]
What was thought of the matter by the authorities of the Roman Church is sufficiently proved—by the refusal of all but one of the Marian bishops to crown Elizabeth, by the unanimous adhesion of Convocation to the arrangements of Mary by the equally unanimous opposition of the bishops in the Upper House to the Acts of Restoration and Uniformity (1 Eliz. c. 1 and 2), by the excommunication of Pope Pius V., and by the innumerable plots against the Queen's life sanctioned, as we have seen, by popes, cardinals, and princes.
It is certain also that Elizabeth's adhesion to Protestantism was taken as a matter of course before her accession, by both friends and foes, and further, as her earliest biographer Camden points out, that it would have been impossible for her to acknowledge the Roman Church without declaring Mary Stuart's title to the throne better than her own, inasmuch as two popes had declared her illegitimate.
The fact is that in the early times of the Reformation there was no thought of, and no room for, a via media, and it is this very fact which constitutes the difficulty in showing clearly that it did not exist. There is absolutely nothing to suggest its existence, and much that is incompatible with it; but the actual proof of a negative is, of course, an impossible task.
The first suggestion of a Divine right of bishops was made, as we have seen, some fifty years after the separation from Rome, and early in the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. How it was then received may be seen from a letter of Sir Francis Knollys to Burleigh, in the State Papers, vol. ccxxxiii. 62, in which he suggests that Whitgift (whom he uniformly accuses of it) had incurred the penalty of a præmunire (!) by claiming it. Henry ^ III. 's via media broke down as soon as his hand ceased to support it, and had even before that given indications that it would have to advance further in the direction of Protestantism if it was to hold its own.
I have said enough in the text to show that it is difficult to exaggerate the Erastianism of the whole of this period; but I may give one more instance of it[2] which is almost comic when we observe the quarter from whence it comes. It is amusing to find the very Dr. Bancroft whose claim of Divine right for
