the Curia fancied until much later that she might be enticed to leave it.

When, in June 1563, the Fathers at Trent were considering the suggestion sent from Louvain for the excommunication of Elizabeth, the Curia was led by the Emperor Ferdinand I to shelve the proposal. Ferdinand, like Philip II of Spain in 1570, thought the step sudden and unexpected.' The limits of the papal power, though not (as in England) that power itself, were under general discussion abroad. Had the Pope the right of deposing sovereigns? If Elizabeth were to be deposed, it would be necessary, as Ferdinand pointed out, to depose all princes who had usurped ecclesiastical power. The merely partial reception of the Tridentine decrees, the reservation (even in accepting them) of royal privileges, which was made by Spain, Naples, and France, and the variations in the Empire, were significant. It was the same difficulty which the secular priests found (1603) in their Declaration of Loyalty to Elizabeth; they too limited the Pope's power to spiritual matters. The question of Papal Supremacy had been raised; and here Elizabeth made her great venture.

As Mr Gairdner (i, 329, 330) well puts it, the result of Mary's reign had been

'that the Pope's doctrine was now to be enforced by royal supremacy, instead of doctrine of a different character.... So what might have ultimately come of the relations between England and the Vatican, if Mary had lived much longer, is a matter of speculation. All her zeal for the restoration of papal authority had only led her to assert it by royal supremacy after allying herself with a power disliked, not altogether unjustly, by the Roman Pontiff himself; and the Roman Pontiff. . . felt apparently that papal authority restored by royal authority in such a fashion need hardly have been restored at all.'

Tentative solutions of one kind or another had led men to think; and now the lines of controversy were plain.

An illustration of the state of feeling in religious matters can be found in the story of an alleged offer by the Pope to allow the English Prayer-book if the Queen would recognise his supremacy. The story (which is well treated of in a note by Mr Denny in his excellent little book on Anglican Orders) is sometimes accepted in spite

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of its improbability, and sometimes rejected because of the insufficient evidence for it. The mention of it by Lord Coke at Norwich in August 1606, allowing for the easy error of Pius V for Pius IV, is supported by later mentions of it, by Bishop Andrewes, who said it seemed as if, after all, the supremacy is the assuaging of wrath,' and by others. These are much later than the incident could have been; but two letters in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign) bear on it. Walsingham, writing to Burleigh under date June 21, 1571, describes a conversation he had held with Catharine de Medici as to the use of the English liturgy by the Duke of Anjou in case he married Elizabeth; speaking at her request as a private gentleman rather than as an ambassador, he had insisted upon the use of the Prayer-book. He had given to M. de Foix, whom, along with Montmorency, the King was sending to England to discuss the agreement, a copy of the Prayer-book, which the Pope would have by council confirmed as Catholic if the Queen would have acknowledged the same as received from him.' For this papal offer a marginal note in Walsingham's own handwriting adds an explanation-'an offer made by the Cardinal of Lorraine as Sir N. Throgmorton showed me.' There may be here a reference to incidents mentioned in an earlier letter from Throgmorton to Cecil (December 28, 1561), where he says that the formulary of the Church of England is better allowed by the Papists and less repugnant to them than that of Geneva or any form used in Germany. The Church of England Order would have more suffrages when under discussion than any other. Throgmorton himself in another letter urges the reading of Edward VI's Homilies, rather than the ramblings of perverse-spirited men who challenge to themselves singular gifts of God and extraordinary revelations'; for such reading he held to be an 'imitation of ancient Fathers, and the usage of ancient Churches.'

In these letters the conservative character of the English Church, and the large margin of unsettled opinion as to forms of prayer, are clearly displayed. The former is a feature to which more attention might be given; and it is precisely here where the Elizabethan and Edwardine tendencies part. It may be allowed that in liturgical matters Cranmer and a few others were both learned and

conservative. But upon episcopacy Cranmer's views were looser than were Parker's, and much more so than Whitgift's. The correspondence between Whitgift and Beza, indeed, arising out of Matthew Sutcliff's writings, is instructive, not only for Whitgift's views but for the concessions towards episcopacy which Beza (writing this time to an archbishop, not to Knox) was ready to make. How deliberately this conservative position was taken up is shown by Elizabeth's 'Declaration of the Queen's proceedings since her reign'-an answer to the northern Earls' rebellion of 1569. She claimed that her supremacy was no more than her predecessors', although it was more clearly recognised; there was no intention to define the faith or change ceremonies from those before received by the Catholic and Apostolic Church. It was this conservative position of the English Church, much misunderstood and misrepresented, as the Queen complained, that attracted Saravia and still more Casaubon. It was asserted in the first place against the Papacy, and thus might be easily regarded as a mere negation; it was asserted secondly and positively against the Puritans, and thus it was not only taken up but maintained throughout the reign. Its two-sided development is the ecclesiastical history of the reign.

The large margin of unsettled opinion is also worth noting. The English Romanists, in their exorbitant but pathetic request to be allowed attendance at their parish churches, pointed out what the Spanish Ambassador de Quadra, himself a bishop, admitted-the scriptural and unexceptionable character of the Prayer-book; the conservative element in its workmanship was as evident then as now. It was an age of liturgic experiments. The pliancy of the Papacy in matters of vernacular worship and communion in one kind had been repeatedly shown, although it was soon to be replaced by an iron persistency. There was really nothing surprising then, and there need be nothing surprising now, in the thought of a papal confirmation of the Prayer-book. The papal supremacy might really be, as Andrewes said, 'the assuaging of wrath.' A reconciliation on such terms might have been possible, although, as a matter of fact, neither Pope nor Queen was disposed for it. The permanence of such a reconciliation is more doubtful.

The explanation of the whole story is probably to be found in the mention of the Cardinal of Lorraine. He was deeply convinced of the power of diplomacy, as centred in himself. He had made a great impression by his oration at the Colloquy of Poissy (Sept. 1561); his advocacy of concessions-such as that of the chalice to the laity-had shown his wish for unity; at the Council of Trent he distinguished himself by his dexterity in drafting compromises to bring together opponents. He was thus the very man to bridge over a gulf of separation; but, as in the matter of the acceptance of the decrees of Trent by France, he sometimes promised more than he could perform. Doubtless he made the suggestion or the promise; his authority to do so is entirely another matter.

But for Elizabeth the Papal Supremacy was the one thing inadmissible. Her relation to the Papacy was then of the first importance. It is sometimes treated of as mainly diplomatic, as a policy formed by events, and therefore open to change from time to time, or if events had been other than they were; it is sometimes treated as if it arose mainly from the domestic and ecclesiastical conditions of England. But the general drift of the works here considered is to suggest that Elizabeth's position was based more upon general principles than upon temporary expediency. The break-up of the medieval system, centred in the claims of the Pope to govern sovereigns and, if need be, to depose them, had begun. Disregard of those claims was common if not universal. France disregarded them in practice; the Pragmatic Sanction, the Gallican claims, the speeches of the French representatives at Trent, especially upon the 'reformation of Princes,' with their proposed limitation of the temporal power, had shown the divergence of the views held in France and Rome. Even the energetic diplomacy of the Cardinal of Lorraine could do little more than gloss over the difference; and France never accepted the views of the papal sovereignty which underlay the Tridentine decrees. The Empire had shown its opinions, so far as such an incoherent body could have a common opinion, not only by Maximilian's fantastic scheme for making himself Pope, but by the Libel of Reformation' prepared (September 1561) for presentation to the Council of Trent. Under that scheme Italy would Vol. 216.-No. 430.

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have ceased to be the centre of ecclesiastical gravity; the Princes were to direct the reform that was to be made, as well as dispose generally of ecclesiastical funds. These differences of principles were never properly arranged; the astonishing thing is that the Papacy, admitting no question as to its power, tiding over one difficulty after another, has reached modern times with its theoretical scheme as to Church and State not only not re-considered, but to all appearance fundamentally the same. Neither Joseph II nor Febronius could change its medieval theory, although the former and his fellowprinces were able to impose limitations in practice.

With Dr Meyer we hold that the conflict between the Papacy and the England of Elizabeth is part of the conflict between the medieval papal Church and the modern State. In varying ways the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward and Mary had disentangled the principles from the perplexing whirl of events. By Elizabeth's accession the principles could be clearly seen; and it is to us the merit, to supporters of the Papacy the reproach, of her administration to have acted upon the theory of national independence as opposed to Papal Supremacy. Hence her disregard of papal approaches, and hence, too, her preference for the political over the religious aspects of all Church questions. It was her main care to assert the independence of national religious life, and, by so doing, to secure in the end not only national but individual liberty. It was not wholly her fault if, in aiming at the larger end, she sacrificed the smaller. Her rejection of the Papacy gained freedom for national growth.

But, when the papal foundation for ecclesiastical unity was rejected, the episcopal foundation was left. Then, partly by instinet and partly by reason, the episcopate was made, in that historic spirit which is secured by continuity of form, the motive force of the English Church in a way which the papal power and the defects of Church life had made impossible for the later Middle Ages. There were many difficulties of adjustmentinternal difficulties-between the power of the State and the power of the episcopate. If the Fathers at Trent found the subject of episcopacy a difficult one to discuss and an impossible one to settle under the governing