LECTURE LIII.

Of the history of England from the accession of Mary in the year 1553 to that of James I. in the year 1603.

AMONG the peculiarities which have distinguished and characterised the arrangements of the government of England, it is not the least remarkable, nor in its politioal consequences

the least important, that the great revolution of religion in the sixteenth century had in this country two different origins, and formed in it two separate bodies of Protestants, the one of which was adopted and cherished by the government, and the other, though rejected and proscribed, was however secretly possessed of a powerful influence on the public measures. In Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, a few states of the first of these countries excepted, Lutheranism was established, and Calvinism made little or no progress; in France, Swisserland, the Dutch Provinces, and Scotland, Calvinism became considerable, and Lutheranism was almost unknown: but it was reserved for England to receive into its bosom the two distinct sets of reformers, and to permit them both to attain an importance intimately affecting its most essential interests. The last lecture, comprehending the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI, reviewed the introduction and establishment of that corrected form of the Lutheran reformation, which was adopted by the state; a form which, amending the doctrine of the eucharist agreeably to the more scriptural conception of the Genevan church, preserved the sound principles of the Lutheran in relation to the main doctrine of justification, together with the decorum of its ceremonial, The subordination of its hierarchy, and its sub

mission to the temporal power. The present lecture, including the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, will, while it describes the energetic government of the latter princess, exhibit also the circumstances of the commencement and gradual formation of that Calvinistical party, which in a succeeding period became the principal agent in the most important agitations.

Nothing is at the first view so surprising in the history of the English government, as the facility with which the religion of the nation was shifted from the protestant belief of Edward to the popery of Mary, and then again to the protestantism of Elizabeth. The great influence of the government, from which these changes originated, is indeed sufficient to explain them; but it appears unaccountable that a nation, which had recently under Edward completed the arrangement of its reformed religion, should so easily have acquiesced in the accession of Mary, from whom it was natural to apprehend the utmost anxiety to reestablish the religion of Rome. Why, it might be asked, did not the Protestants for their own security endeavour to set her aside from the succession, and to place on the throne Elizabeth, who was pledged by her very birth to support the Reformation? The answer to this very natural enquiry is furnished by the melancholy incident of the brief usurpation of the lady Jane Grey.

The succession to the throne had been embarrassed by the two divorces, which by dissolving the first and second marriage of Henry VIII, had vitiated the titles of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth; and the difficulty had been encreased by the interfering provisions of two acts of parliament, and by those of the last will of Henry, which omitted all mention of the title of the issue of his sister the queen of Scotland. Edward, in his anxiety to protect the protestant establishment from the religion of Mary, ventured amidst this confusion, to annul the will of his father, and to name for his successor the lady Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of a sister of Henry, who had been educated a Protestant. This lady was however, just before the death of Edward, married to a son of the duke of Northumberland, offensive to the nobles for his pride, and to the people for his cruelty. The general hatred of this peer drove even the Protestants to seek protection in the succession of Mary, deceived by a promise which she had given to the people of Suffolk that no change should be made in the religion of the state. In the blindness of the counsels of men the reluctant and interesting usurper, who expiated her fault on the block, was thus the unconscious instrument of the advancement of a popish queen; and the unsuccessful effort had

*Rapin, vol. 2. p. 27 etc.

also its usual effect of adding strength to the government, by which it was suppressed.

Of the fifty years which I propose to review in this lecture, little more than five belonged to Mary, the remainder constituting the brilliant and important reign of Elizabeth. As it was the fortune of the English Reformation to be begun by the government, and to be received from it by the people, a circumstance from which it is acknowledged to have received its peculiar moderation, it may easily be conceived that a short interval of persecution might have (a) a salutary influence in rousing in the minds of individuals a more lively interest in favour of the new tenets, which they had been encouraged or induced to embrace, and thus rendering that a personal, which might else have been little more than a political religion. Accustomed as the people had been to receive from Henry, or from the ministers of Edward, an intimation of the precise extent to which the changes in their religious opinions and practices might safely be carried, they could not easily have felt the sincerity of religious conviction, if they had not for a time been exposed to a persecution, which taught them to cherish those changes, as their own, instead of acquiescing in them merely as the measures of the government.

Every thing contributed to render Mary a qualified agent for thus endearing to the Pro