Accession of Elizabeth

Mary's last days were full of misery. Deserted by her husband, deprived of the advice of her best ally, Cardinal Pole, who had been removed by the pope for heresy, hated by her people, aware that her policy had failed, and that Elizabeth, who was to succeed her, would pursue a course different from her own, she nevertheless faced death with true Tudor courage. On November 17, 1558, the end came. Parliament, sitting at the time, immediately proclaimed Elizabeth queen, and the people of London, with demonstrations of joy, welcomed her to the throne. But the real test of the situation lay not in the expressions of loyalty that greeted her accession, for Englishmen in their hatred of Northumberland had welcomed Mary with equal enthusiasm, but in the support which the people would give to her policy. Should Elizabeth make herself the head of a party; only, as Mary had done, and fail to recognize the needs of the nation as a whole, she would become as unpopular as her sister had been.

The Difficulties of Elizabeth s Position abroad

Elizabeth came to the throne at a critical time, not only in the history of England, but of Europe also. The Reformation had thrown all the states of central and western Europe into great religious and political disorder. The great mediaeval church, hitherto the sole religious authority in western Europe, was threatened with dismemberment. Luther had started the revolt in Germany. Zwingle had stirred up the people living in the valley cantons of Switzerland.

ELIZABETH.

From a photograph after a painting by F. Zucharo.

Calvin had written the Institutes of Christianity, and had set up a model Christian government at Geneva, and in so doing had given to the Protestants a creed and an organization. The teachings of Calvin were to be of greater influence than those of either Luther or Zwingle. They were to penetrate western Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Scotland, England, and America, and were to inspire resistance to the authority of kings as well as of the pope.

To meet the growing heresy, the Roman church was compelled to rid itself of those evils and abuses which had in part led to the Protestant revolution. Such a reform had been begun a century before, but had moved very slowly. In 1545 a council had been summoned, which, after many postponements, finally completed its work in the Tyrolese city of Trent, in 1563. The Council of Trent gave new strength to the Roman church. In 1540 Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and created a body of zealous and devoted men who were to work for the recovery of the lands that had gone over to the Protestants. From 1560 to 1648 the Roman church made a determined effort to establish once more its authority and control in Europe.

The pope, the Guises in France, and Philip II of Spain were the leaders of this mighty struggle. They labored for forty years to cheek the increase of the Protestants and to obtain political control of kingdoms that had fallen into Protestant hands. For forty years Elizabeth, who at the very outset of her reign disclosed her Protestant sympathies, was under assault, at one time or another, from. Rome, France, Spain, Scotland, and Ireland. The pope excommunicated and deposed her; the Jesuits sent disguised priests into the land ; Englishmen more loyal to the old faith than to their country formed conspiracies against her ; Catholic rulers, working from the Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany, plotted to gain a foothold in England and to bring the land under the authority of the pope. Thus England, as the leading Protestant kingdom, became the storm centre in the great religious struggle, and the success of the movement elsewhere depended in no small part on the policy that England adopted.