It would be equally tedious and needless to multiply instances of similar expressions. The correspondence of the greater number of the Elizabethan bishops is full of them; and they seem to establish plainly these propositions—viz., (1) That these men were throughout intensely—nay, many of them bitterly—Protestant: e.g., Jewell, who, writing to Peter Martyr (without a date, but apparently in 1559) from London,[1] says: 'Our Papists oppose us most spitefully, and none more obstinately than those who have abandoned us. This it is to have once tasted of the Mass! He who drinks of it is mad. Depart from it all ye who value a sound mind: he who drinks of it is mad.' (2) That they themselves looked upon Elizabeth's reform as a restoration of Edward's—e.g., Cox, writing to Weidner, in May 1559,[2] says: 'The sincere religion of Christ is therefore established among us in all parts of the kingdom, just in the same manner as it was formerly promulgated under our Edward of most blessed memory.' (3) That they looked upon themselves as of the same faith as the Swiss Churches, and as absolutely contrary to the Roman, I have already sufficiently shown. (4) That the claim of Divine right for bishops was a novelty introduced mainly as a weapon against the Puritans, and was not well received even then, the last note has sufficiently established; as also (5) That the whole Papal power was claimed for the Crown.
In her answer to the petition of the Puritans in Parliament for the adoption of the new model, in 1586, Elizabeth expressly claims for herself, as part of her prerogative, that the full power, authority, jurisdiction, and supremacy in Church causes, which heretofore the Popes usurped and took to themselves, should be united and annexed to the imperial crown of this realm. (Strype, 'Whitgift,' vol. i. p. 494, where the authority quoted is the Lambeth MSS.)
I am not concerned to argue for or against these propositions in themselves: all I assert is that they were the prevailing views of the divines and the statesmen of Elizabeth's reign, and, in a great degree at least, of the Queen herself.
Of evidence on the other side I find little or none. One curious document there is among the State Papers which I have taken some pains to investigate. It is in volume vii. No. 4G, and is entered under date of November 1559, and called 'List of Bishops who returned into England on Queen Elizabeth's Acces-
