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1570 she would go far in conciliation; she would not definitely break with the Pope, still less with those of me dr her subjects who sympathised with him. Conciliation, she thought, would bring them to acquiesce in the new service forms and the absence of Papalism, and to go to church regularly, and say their prayers for the Queen, as did that honest and generous merchant, Sir Thomas White, to whose bold action when he was Lord Mayor Queen Mary may well have felt that she owed her crown. There were many like him. But there were also the Puritan recusants and the Romish recusants, and, unlike Queen and ministers, neither of these gave Parker their confidence. The marvel is that he steered his way so skilfully between them. Letters, Injunctions, Advertisements, reflect the troubles. Only in the Register do we see something like a calm undisturbed progress. It might almost be said that the real results of the reign can be traced best in the Register. Even when the Queen was excommunicated and deposed, and she and her ministers became convinced that Romanism meant treason, and when officials of the Church as well as State were forced into the combat, the routine of Church life went on, and the settlement, begun when the Archbishop was consecrated, survived.

It was patience which won the day. Parker would go some way in denouncing Popery and mediavalism, but he adhered without doubt or hesitation to what he believed to be ancient, primitive, Catholic. A special dress for the officiating minister must be retained; what it was, cope or surplice, did not so much matter. Chalices might be transformed into communion cups, but (that it should be seen that no lack of reverence would be allowed) wafer bread should be required. In doctrine he refused elaborate definition. Like Laud he would not allow that any opinion, the denial of the foundation alone excepted,' could shut the meanest out of heaven. His close friend Guest explained that a new definition did not 'exclude the presence of Christ's Body from the Sacrament but only the grossness and sensibleness of the receiving thereof'; and the doctrine should be explained by the sermons of the Early English Church, before the Norman days; 'it is naturally corruptible Bread and Wine, and is by the might of God's Word truly Christ's Body and

His blood.' Parker might have written Charles Wesley's hymns which declared the 'Real Presence here.' Elizabeth's wise Archbishop understood the meaning of reaction, but he looked beyond it to an established peace. It was very long in coming; partisans could not believe (any more than they do now) that it would ever But Parker in his sagacious calmness set an example which his wisest successors have consistently followed.

come.

Parker died on May 17, 1575. What was his character? Could he have been better described by anticipation, on the day when Elizabeth and Cecil sought him out and overcame his genuine and deep-seated reluctance to accept the weighty charge they had determined to give him, than in the words Shakespeare makes Wolsey say of the appointment of More as Chancellor :

"That's somewhat sudden;

But he's a learned man. May he continue
Long in his highness' favour, and do justice

For truth's sake and his conscience; that his bones,
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em.'

Parker well deserved such a prayer, and he achieved such a blessing. One of the deeply learned primates— they have not been very numerous-he was just and a truth lover, a man of sensitive conscience and generosity. Perhaps he was not a great man, but he did greater work than often great men do. Was Parker a statesman or a politician? Not the latter certainly in the sense in which not a few of the ecclesiastics of his century were politicians. It is true that in England there was no such persistent tradition of political action as there was in France and Italy. English prelates did not lead parties or dictate secular policies, at least after the Reformation. Wolsey, we have often been told, was the last of our ecclesiastical statesmen: he was also a politician, one who dealt with current problems in an opportunist spirit as well as in a manner statesmanlike and broad. Cranmer made scarce any attempt to be a statesman, but he hardly escaped the temptations and failures of a politician. No taint of political craft tarnishes the purity of Parker's aims. He attached

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himself to no minister's favour; he walked among them as an equal, untouched by their intrigues. As a statesmaman, however, he may indeed claim to be considered among the makers of English history. The Elizabethan settlement of religion was a work of consummate statesmanship. Dr S. R. Gardiner said that it was a vindication of Laud's principles that on the lines he laid down the Church of England endures to the present day. This is at least as true of Parker. It is possible that not a little of what has been attributed to Elizabeth and Cecil may really be due to the wise and sober statesmanship of their Archbishop. Certainly he seems, as we look at him to-day, to be the very personification of the Via Media. And when Bishop Creighton said that the ultimate principle of the English Reformation was its appeal to sound Learning, he could hardly have found a more convincing exponent of that view than in the scholar and antiquary who succeeded Pole in the seat of Augustine. The business of his long life-he died in his seventy-first year-was a work of conciliation. He had to bear witness to the continuous things of faith and life during a period both reformative and iconoclastic. Like all good rulers he knew that the very beginning of wisdom is the desire of discipline: yet he knew too that there is a greater force to make men, and states, wise unto their salvation. 'Execution of laws and order,' he said to Cecil, must be the first and last part in good governance, although I yet admit moderations for times, places, multitudes.' Tandem hic quiescit,' says the ¿stone in the chapel of his palace at Lambeth: he worked for peace and he achieved it in faith and hope. To the rebuilding of a great institution after disorder and revolution many graces are necessary, but the greatest of these is charity. And that was the abiding grace of Matthew Parker.

W. H. HUTTON.

Art. 12.-THE REAL NAVAL INCUBUS.

IN the British nation as a whole there still abides the deep-rooted knowledge that our heritage rests on sea power, but to-day there is a very natural desire on the part of the individual taxpayer for relief from his financial burdens. These two influences combine to produce a popular demand for 'efficiency with economy' in the conduct of our naval affairs.

At the outset we are faced with the fact that the post-war fleet has begun to decay. Other nations have been building steadily within the limitations of the Washington Agreement, while our relative standard of strength has been falling year by year. For six years after the Armistice we did not lay down a single cruiser. So serious was the position becoming that even the anti-militarist Labour Government sanctioned the construction of five 10,000-ton warships.

With the return of a Conservative Government pledged to economy and the installation of their last joined recruit, Mr Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the claims of the Admiralty to continue a programme of replacing ships already nearly worn out and too small for their work, clashed violently with t the policy of retrenchment, and something like a naval crisis was brewing. However, good sense prevailed. The 'new broom' at the Treasury found that the urgent claims of the Service which he had done so much to build up in years gone by, could not be lightly discarded. He became less adamantine. The Naval Lords showed that they were fully alive to the necessity for reducing national expenditure.

So the Cabinet sanctioned a five-years' programme of new construction, which the Admiralty considered satisfactory. The Board, on their part, undertook to effect reductions in other directions which would offset the cost of accelerating this programme.

Since then drastic economies have been devised, with the result that the First Lord, in his Estimates for 1926, has been able to show a saving of 2,400,1007. on those for the previous year, while the provision for new construction has actually been increased by nearly two

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nillions. The following are the principal items amongst ;hese economies:

(a) The four 'Iron Dukes' are being withdrawn from he Mediterranean battle fleet and, with reduced complements, will be used for training boys in Home dewaters.

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(b) The Second Light Cruiser Squadron has been reduced from five ships to four.

(c) A number of depôt ships and tenders to Harbour Training Establishments have been paid off.

(d) One of the Atlantic destroyer flotillas has been reduced to reserve.

(e) Three light cruisers, five depôt ships, and eighteen destroyers have been placed on the disposal list; four battleships and fifteen more destroyers will join them in the course of the ensuing year.

(ƒ) Five large submarines have been scrapped.

(g) Complements of ships have been closely scrutinised and changes tending to economy made where possible. (h) A policy of slowing down accumulation of reserves of stores and fuel has been adopted.

(i) Rosyth and Pembroke Dockyards and the Coastal Motor Boat Base at Haslar have been closed.

It can be stated categorically that practically every one of these economies has emanated from the naval side of the Admiralty, very largely as the result of the energetic labours of the Naval Staff for the past nine months. Furthermore, it can be asserted that neither the Colwyn Committee nor the civil departments of the Admiralty have played any part in initiating the majority of them. All these reductions in the sea-going fleet and in naval establishments, it should be noted, are additional to the sweeping economies on the Navy during the years immediately after the war and the wholesale scrapping of ships as the result of the Washington Agreement.

The comparative strength of the Navy in 1914 and in 1926 is also instructive. In the former year the personnel numbered 151,000; provision is made in this year's Estimates for 102,675. The effective strength of the various classes of fighting ships were and are as follows: