against the established religion and the ceremonies insisted on, because by their enactment burdens had been laid upon men's consciences which were more than they could bear. These men set up a court of appeal which they vaguely maintained was to be found in the Bible, and when it was answered that the Bible had been appealed to already, and the interpretation of the Bible had been expressed once for all in the formularies of the church of England, they rejected that interpretation as contradicting certain conclusions at which they had themselves arrived. The puritans thereupon were handed over to the bishops and ecclesiastical courts, and Elizabeth, as far as might be, left the disputants to settle their differences as best they could. The result was that from the catholics the bitter cry arose and continued against the queen and her council, the pursuivants, the judges, and the magistrates. From the puritans came louder and louder clamour against the bishops and the high commission court, and those ecclesiastical functionaries who from time to time worried and imprisoned offenders, silenced ministers, scattered conventicles, threw some zealots into prison, and, in some few instances — they were very few — sent obstinate and violent offenders to the scaffold. Personally, however, Elizabeth, though she hated the puritans and sectaries, took care to throw upon the church courts the odium of dealing with them. There were the formularies established by law, there was the old machinery of the church courts to put into force on occasion, there were the Thirty-nine Articles agreed on in convocation, and confirmed by act of parliament. Further than these the queen would not go. To her mind the question was settled; it should never be opened again. When the religious meetings termed 'prophesyings,' which many of the bishops in their several dioceses had encouraged with good results (Strype, Annales, II. i. 133, 472), began to assume the form of mere noisy and mischievous debates, in which the formularies were as often assailed as defended, Elizabeth put a stop to them with a high hand, notwithstanding Archbishop Grindal's expostulation (Strype, Grindal, p. 558).
And here it is necessary to remark upon the greneral attitude of Elizabeth towards the bishops of the church during her reign. The ecclesiastical organisation in England as it existed when Queen Mary died was very anomalous. Before the rupture with the papacy the church in theory was co-ordinate with the state. As the king was the head of the one, so the pope was the head of the other. By the reconciliation with Rome, which had been brought about in Queen Mary's time, this condition of affairs had been restored; but when Elizabeth succeeded she treated the reconciliation as if it had never taken effect. Thereupon she found herself face to face with the question, 'Who is now the head of the church in England?' It was a question that could not remain unanswered, and it was not long before she found herself compelled to accept the answer which her father had invented, and compelled to adopt the title which he had claimed of supreme head of the church in England. But she never cordially approved of the style. She never willingly interfered in matters ecclesiastical, and she inclined to leave the bishops with a free hand. When Grindal in 1577 refused to put down the prophesyings, he was suspended; but the suspension proved to be extremely inconvenient, and, after having been practically relaxed, it was at last taken off. The arch-bishop, however, became blind, and thereupon the queen requested him to resign the archbishopric. This he was willing enough to do, but some formal difficulties came in the way, and before the final arrangements could be effected Grindal died. A close parallel to this treatment of the archbishop is afforded in the case of Bishop Cox of Ely. He, too, incurred the queen's displeasure by his obstinate resistance to Sir Christopher Hatton and Roger, lord North, who had set themselves to rob the see of Ely of two of its episcopal houses. But Cox [see Cox, Richard] managed to hold his own after a fashion, though the courtiers made his life a burden to him. He, too, earnestly and repeatedly expressed his willingness to resign his see, but again difficulties came in the way, and he retained his bishopric till his death.
The letter so frequently quoted, professing to be from Queen Elizabeth to Bishop Cox, beginning with the words 'Proud prelate!' is a stupid and impudent forgery, which first saw the light in the 'Annual Register' of 1761. Yet, absurd as the fabrication is, few forgeries have succeeded so well in exercising a malignant influence upon the estimation in which the queen's character has been held by historians.
But if the authority and jurisdiction of the bishops was respected, it was far otherwise with their estates. There Elizabeth's love of money came in to help in shaping her course of action. When a bishopric was vacant the revenues of the see were paid into the royal exchequer till the next consecration, and all the patronage meanwhile was transferred to the queen. When Bishop Cox died
