Frederic William Maitland

“ The Scottish gospeller could only repeat the biblical and other arguments that had been used a century ago by that Lancastrian sage, Chief Justice Fortescue. No woman had sat upon the English throne, save Mary, and she (it might be said) was a statutory Queen. Many people thought that next in right to Elizabeth stood Henry Hastings, who was no Tudor but a Yorkist; and already in 1565 Philip of Spain was thinking of his own descent from Edward III. Thus Elizabeth's statutory title stood between England and wars of the roses which would also be wars of religion. ”

“ When in 1560 an unusually full, free and important Parliament was held for the reformation of religion, an elementary question concerning the right of the minor barons to sit and vote was still debateable, and for many years afterwards those who desire to see the true contribution of Scotland to the history of representative institutions will look, not to the blighted and stunted conclave of the three Estates with its titular Bishops and Abbots commendatory, but to the fresh and vigorous Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. ”

“ But had Elizabeth been Catholic, the French and Scottish claim to her throne would have merely been an enemy's insult: an insult to England, a challenge to Spain. As it was, Henry might lay a strong case before the Pope and the Catholic world: Elizabeth was bastard and heretic to boot, and at this moment Paul IV was questioning Ferdinand's election to the Empire because some of his Electors were Lutherans. That heretics are not to rule was no new principle ”

“ It was for her to appeal to the "neutral in religion" and those "faint professors" of whom her Bishops saw too many. It is not perhaps very likely that surplices and square caps won to her side many of those who cared much for the old creed. Not the simplest and most ignorant papist, says Whitgift to the Puritans, could mistake the Communion for the Mass: the Mass has been banished from England as from Scotland: we are full as well Reformed as are the Scots. But Elizabeth feared frequent changes, was glad to appear as a merely moderate Reformer, and meant to keep the clergy well in hand. ”

“ Faith may be changed; works are much what they were, especially the works of the magnates. The blood-feud is no less a blood-feud because one family calls itself Catholic and another calls itself Protestant. The "band" is no less a "band" because it is styled a "Covenant" and makes free with holy names. A King shall be kidnapped, and a King shall be murdered, as of old:—it is the custom of the country. What is new is that farsighted men all Europe over, not only at London and at Paris, but at Rome and at Geneva, should take interest in these barbarous deeds, this customary turmoil. ”

“ It was notorious that some of the Bishops favoured only the simplest rites; five deans and a dozen archdeacons petitioned against the modest surplice. But for its Supreme Governor, the English Church would in all likelihood have carried its own purgation far beyond the degree that had been fixed by the secular legislature. To the Queen, however, it was of the first importance that there should be no more changes before the face of the Tridentine enemy, and also that her occasional professions of Augustan principles should have some visible support. ”

“ In the next year the London clergy were recalcitrant. The Spanish ambassador improved the occasion. In reply, Elizabeth told him that the disobedient ministers were "not natives of the country, but Scotsmen, whom she had ordered to be punished." Literal truth she was not telling, and yet there was truth of a sort in her words. From this time onwards, the historian of the English Church must be often thinking of Scotland, and the historian of the Scottish Church must keep England ever in view. Two kingdoms are drifting together, first towards a "personal" and then towards a "real" Union ”

“ The negotiations between Spain, England and France had been brought to a pause by Mary's death, but were to be resumed after a brief interval, during which Elizabeth was to make up her mind. Some outwardly amicable letters passed between her and Henry II. She tried to play the part of the pure-bred Englishwoman, who should not suffer for the sins of the Spanish Mary. But the French were not to be coaxed out of Calais, and she knew that they were seeking a papal Bull against her. ”

“ The Earl of Bedford and Lord Clinton appeared as proxies for many absent peers, and, of all the lords, Bedford (Francis Russell) was the most decisively committed to radical reform. The Howards were for the Queen, their cousin; the young Duke of Norfolk, England's one duke, was at this time ardently Protestant, and in the next year was shocked at the sight of undestroyed altars.
Money was cheerfully voted. The Queen was asked to choose a husband, and professed her wish to die a maid. ”

“ It was plain that the next year would be stormy; and at this crisis the face of England was once more changed.
A few weeks later Henry Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, was talking with the Duke of Châtelherault. God, said the Englishman, has sent you a true and Christian religion. We are on the point of receiving the same boon. Why should you and we be enemies- we who are hardly out of our servitude to Spain; you who are being brought into servitude by France? The liberties m Scotland are in jeopardy and the rights of the Hamiltons. ”

“ Two small Catholic Powers traditionally at war with each other, the one a satellite of the Habsburg luminary, the other a satellite of France, seemed to be fusing themselves in one Power that might be very great: great perhaps for good, but more probably for evil. "Earnest embracing of religion," wrote a Scottish to an English statesman, "will join us straitly together." The religion that William Maitland meant when he sent these words to Sir William Cecil was not the religion of Pius IV and the General Council. ”

“ No more decisive defeat could have been inflicted on the Scottish host and the Britannic idea. Other events called Somerset home. The Scots could always be crushed in the field, but Scotland could not be annexed. Then came help from the good friend France, in the shape of French, German, and Italian troops; the English employed Germans and Spaniards. A Parliament decided to accept a French proposal (July, 1548) : the Queen of Scots should marry, not the English King, but young Francis the Dauphin, and meantime should be placed out of harm's way. ”

“ Early in October " the Congregation" began once more to take an armed shape. Châtelherault, that unstable "second person," had been brought over by his impetuous son. The French troops in Scotland had been reinforced; the struggle was between Scot and Frenchman. So, to the horror of Bishops-elect (whose consecration had not yet been managed) , the table in Elizabeth's chapel began to look like an altar with cross and candles. "She will not favour the Scots in their religion," said Gilles de Noailles the French ambassador. "She is afraid," said the Cardinal of Lorraine. ”

“ Maitland, who was a cool schemer, made apology to Cecil for Knox's vehemence: "as things are fallen out, it will serve to good purpose." And yet it is fairly certain that Knox dissuaded English Puritans from secession. In his eyes the Coxian Church of England might be an erring sister, but still was a twin sister, of the Knoxian Church of Scotland.
Elizabeth's resistance to the Puritan demands was politic. The more Protestant a man was, the more secure would be his loyalty if Rome were aggressive. ”

“ This is the ideal which springs to light in the last months of 1558:—deliverance from the toils of foreign potentates; amity between two sister nations; union in a pure religion. The Duke himself was a waverer; his duchy lay in France; he is the Antoine de Bourbon of Scottish history; but his son the Earl of Arran had lately installed a Protestant preacher at Châtelherault and was in correspondence with Calvin. Percy reported this interview to an English lady who had once been offered to the Duke as a bride for Arran and had just become Queen Elizabeth. ”

“ Only sixteen instead of twenty-six Bishops were entitled to attend the critical Parliament, and only eleven with the Abbot of Westminster were present. Their constancy in the day of trial makes them respectable; but not one of them was a leader of men. The ablest of them had been Henry's ministers and therefore could be taunted as renegades. A story which came from a good quarter bade us see Elizabeth announcing to the Pope her accession to the throne, and not rejecting Catholicism until Paul IV declared that England was a papal fief and she an usurping bastard. ”

“ The Scottish statesman who was not a Bishop was a man of a new kind when Lethington began his correspondence with Cecil; for, even if we employ a medieval standard, we can hardly attribute statecraft or policy to the Albanys and Anguses and Arrans.
In this poor and sparsely peopled country the Church was wealthy; the clergy were numerous, laic, and lazy. The names of "dumb dogs " and "idle bellies" which the new preachers fixed upon them had not been unearned. Nowhere else was there a seed-plot better prepared for revolutionary ideas of a religious sort. ”

“ Christopher Goodman desired that "the bloody Bishops" should be slain; but he had been kept out of England as a dangerous fanatic. Dr John Story, in open Parliament, had gloried in his own cruelty, and had regretted that in Mary's day the axe had not been laid to the root of the tree. At a time when letters from the Netherlands, France or Spain were always telling of burnt Protestants, nobody was burnt in England and very few people lay in prison for conscience sake. The deprived Bishops seem to have been left at large until Parpaglia's mission ”

“ Erastus answered him by declaring that excommunication has no warrant in the Word of God; and further that, when the Prince is a Christian, there is no need for a corrective jurisdiction which is not that of the State, but that of the Church. This sowed dissension between Zurich and Geneva: between Bullinger, the friend of the English Bishops, and Beza, the oracle of the Puritans. Controversy in England began to nibble at the Royal Supremacy; and in Scotland the relation between the State (which until 1567 had a papistical head) and the Knoxian Church, was of necessity highly indeterminate. ”