Persecution of the Extreme Protestants

Archbishop Grindal, who had succeeded Matthew Parker in 1575, had been very lenient toward the reformers ; but Whitgift, who came into office in 1583, was ready to carry out the queen's wishes and to suppress all synods and classes as well as congregational meetings. He applied the Act of Uniformity with such severity as to call out a protest from Lord Burghley. Whitgift worked through the Court of High Commission, a body of men provided for in the Act of Supremacy for the purpose of judging and punishing heresy.' He also used his authority as archbishop of Canterbury to deprive many Presbyterians of their benefices. In 1585-1587, when parliament and the privy council seemed inclined to favor Puritanism, Elizabeth rebuked those bodies, coining out positively against all "new-fangledness." Thus beaten, the Puritans resorted to new methods, and in 1588 began to issue pamphlets of a most scurrilous character, attacking the bishops, and signed Martin Marprelate. The violence of the attack showed that the Puritans were losing ground, and that villification was taking the place of honest discussion.

This violent controversy, occurring in the very year of the Armada, injured the Puritan cause and led to a reaction against all Non-conformists and Separatists. They were charged with disloyalty, in that they threatened England with disunion at a very critical juncture, and certain measures were taken against them, which culminated in the act of parliament of 1593. This act was directed against seditious sectaries and disloyal persons," and inaugurated a new persecution, chiefly of the Separatists. Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry, prominent leaders of this religious body, were put to death, April 6, 1595. Others were driven into exile, and all were silenced. This persecution continued for many years, and among those who suffered was a congregation of Separatists in northern England, who, hunted and persecuted on every side," fled from England in 1608, going first to Holland, and finally to America.'

Last Years of Queen Elizabeth s Reign

Elizabeth's last years were stormy. The war with Spain dragged on; a new insurrection in Ireland under Tyrone, nephew of Shane O'Neil, kept that land in a state of unbroken disturbance; while the persecution of the Roman Catholics, the Puritans, and the Separatists provoked bitterness of feeling at home. Elizabeth herself was growing old and petulant. Her favorite, Essex, who had taken Leicester's place in her affections, was a source of continual anxiety to her; and his disobedience, misconduct, and finally his treason, for which he was executed in 1601, caused her great grief. With parliament she came into conflict over the question of monopolies. When her diminishing income made it impossible for her to make gifts, she had been accustomed to grant to favored persons absolute control over the sale of such commodities as salt, corn, oil, etc., and in 1601 parliament protested against this practice. Her submission on this occasion was almost the last great act of her life.

Elizabeth was outliving her time. Burghley, the last of her old advisers, had died in 1598, and the younger men, such as Essex, Robert Cecil, Ralegh, the Bacons, and others, were out of touch with her and quarrelling for position and influence. The new generation of the nation, who knew more of her persecutions than of her cautious diplomacy and wise moderation, greeted her appearance with less enthusiasm than of old and called her miserly. Gradually she drew near her end, and on March 20, 1603, she died, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-third of her reign.

Greatness of the Elizabethan Era

As we emerge from the long and involved period of Elizabeth's reign, we realize that we are face to face with a new and more modern era of English history. England had become a power of first rank, and her people had increased in numbers and become prosperous. For forty years Englishmen had been building ships and sailing on the sea, although they had made but a slight beginning in the direction of colonization. Commerce was growing, as was also the navy, and the few colonial expeditions, notably those of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Ralegh, foreshadowed the great colonial activities of the seventeenth century. Agriculture received a new impulse when in 1598 parliament passed an act forbidding enclosures for pasture purposes. Sheep rearing consequently declined in importance, tillage was encouraged, with better farming methods the soil became more productive, and new staples like hops and potatoes were introduced. As wealth increased, so did luxury and display, and corruption and poverty became common. The poor and the vagabonds were dealt with once more in the famous poor laws of 1597 and 1601, which extended the law of 1563 and brought into more systematic form all the earlier measures, throwing the care of the poor on the parishes and the execution of the laws on the justices of the peace. In all these respects we see not only important advances in industry and the social life of the kingdom, but we see that matters like coinage, industry, wages, apprenticeship, hours of labor, charity, and poverty, were now regulated and controlled by the state.

More noteworthy even than the changes in material conditions were the advances in intellectual and literary life. There is no better witness to the reality of the new national feeling in England than the expression which it found in poetry, prose, and the drama during the last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign. For this there had been a long preparation. In the towns the level of education had been steadily rising for two centuries, and free grammar schools, founded by the trading classes, had spread widely a knowledge of reading and writing, and made it common among the people. But no one could have anticipated the richness of the English Renaissance when it finally came. Beginning in poetry with Spenser's Fairy Queen, in drama with Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, in prose with Ascham's The Schoolmaster, Lyly's Euphues, and Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, it reached its highest form in the plays of Shakespeare. There is no opportunity here to discuss the genius of these men or the growth of a national drama. The Elizabethan literature, like the deeds of Elizabethan seamen, stands as an expression of national confidence and enthusiasm, of national independence and self-reliance. A period of courage and hope in the life of a nation cannot but be rich in great creative works of literary genius.

The same confidence in the future is seen in the interest taken by Englishmen in their own history. Matthew Parker was almost the first to edit historical texts relating to early English history; Holinshed and Stow were among the first to write chronicles in English; while Elizabeth herself was the first sovereign to begin a collection, in systematic form, of national documents, a work which resulted a century later in the publication of Rymer's Foedera, and is represented to-day by the great Calendar of State Papers, an index to the splendid collections of official materials which England possesses for the writing of her own history.