THE ELIZABETHAN RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT.* IT is impossible within the limits

of an ordinary review to examine this book as it needs to be examined. The object • The Elizabethan Reli&us Settlement: a Study of Contemporary Documents. By H. N. Bizt, O.S.B. London': U. Bell and Sow. 1,15s. net.] which the writer seems to have had most at htart in his study of the period is to show that the historiats have under- estimated the number of Marian clergy, both in benefices and at the Universities, who were displaced in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. It is obvious that the criticism of such a numerical study can only be undertaken with a good deal of

space at command, and it will no doubt receive the attention it deserves from experts, especially Dr. Gee, whose book on the Elizabethan clergy is the chief object of attack.

We are more interested to call attention to the general manner in which Mr. Birt has conducted his inquiry, a manner which we had hoped was obsolete. Mr. Birt writes history as Johnson wrote his Parliamentary debates, with a determination that the Protestant dogs shall not have the best of it. Unlike Lord Acton, whose name figures a good deal in the preface, Mr. Bid is a con- troversialist first, and an historian only in the second place. His methods all through are those of the special pleader.

Occasionally, too, he indulges in petty personal attacks; as when, having, as be thinks, detected Bishop Creighton in some inaccuracy in figures, he refers to him as "the late Dr. Mandell Creighton, whose epitaph praises him inasmuch as he tried to write history." To Mr. W. H. Hutton, too, he is unjustifiably rude. One sentence from his

attack on that historian is worth quoting as an example of a method of controversy in which Mr. Birt excels, the confusion of the issue Mr. W. H. Hutton in his History of St. John's College endeavours to divest Dr. Belsire of the honour of deprivation for conscience' sake, and whittles away the College Register phrase propter religionem' by resort to the safe methods of suggestion, relieving himself of the responsibility of adducing proof, by stating that his deprivation was due to 'the fact that he cheated, or was said to have cheated, the Founder of .Z20.' No shred of proof is forthcoming beyond Sir Thomas White's reasons for the dismissal of the President of his College ; but fortunately there follows Dr. Belsire's denial of the justice of those reasons."

Even a careful reader might glide over this last sentence without realising that it allows all that Mr. Hutton claims,— namely, that the Founder of the College, who was a Roman Catholic, himself states in the College Register that he dis- missed Dr. Belsire because be cheated him of £20! The point is not whether Dr. Belsire did or did not embezzle the money, but whether he was dismissed for embeszlement by Sir Thomas White, as he himself alleges, or by the Elizabethan Commissioners for Popery, as Mr. Dirt asserts.

The phrase " propter religionem," due to some kindly Fellow, cannot be pleaded against the express statement of the Founder.

As a specimen of Mr. Bin's historical method, on a larger scale, we may take his account of the Conference held in 1559 at Westminster between chosen representatives of the Marian and Protestant clergy. The documents usually quoted for

this Conference are the official "Declaration of the Pro. ceeding" given in Foxe, with his account, clearly by an eye- witness, of the second day's debate. From these we learn that the discussion was to be on three propositions, that it was to proceed by written papers, and be in English. When the Conference opened, the Marian Bishops were not prepared with a paper, and asked to be allowed to speak instead. Leave was given, their representative, Dr. Cole, made an oration, in answer to which the Protestants read their paper, and then the Bishops claimed right of reply. This was promised them after the other propositions had been discussed. But at the next meeting they claimed to proceed at once with their reply to the first proposition ; and the Moderator, who was the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, after in vain trying to bring them to obey his ruling, had to break up the Conference. It is possible to assign various motives for the Bishops' behaviour ; the most probable is that they disliked arguing on the basis of the "word of God" alone ; but what is certain from the documents is that they deliberately wrecked the Conference. It becomes, therefore, Mr. Birt's duty, as advocate for the Roman party, to show that the other side was entirely to blame for this ; and that the Lord Keeper treated the Bishops with great unfairness by refusing to depart from the order of the day. To that end he suppresses the fact that the Archbishop of York himself, who was on the Roman side in the con- troversy, and was present among the Privy Council, told the protesting Bishops that they had no case. "Ye are to blame to stand in this issue; for there was a plain decreed order taken for you to entreat of the second question." Farther, Mr. Birt charges the Reformers with "underhand and deceptive tactics" in the preliminary arrangements for the Conference by not letting the Bishops know that the discussion was to be

by written papers. According to the report of the debate in Foxe, which has upon it the stamp of genuineness, Bacon says: "To my knowledge you were of both sides, I am sure, warned at one time." The mistake, if it was a mistake, however it arose, had no fatal consequences, as the Bishops were allowed to proceed by speech, and afterwards to put in their writing; but Mr. Birt cannot lose an opportunity of raising prejudice

against the other side. "Suspicion is aroused against the good faith of the Reformers in the light of the subsequent proceed- ings." "It is difficult not to see in it the outcome of deliberate trick and subtlety." -Unless an orator is at a disadvantage in

being allowed to speak rather than read, it is very hard to see what purpose was served by all this Protestant subtlety. Anyhow, it cannot be blamed for the failure of the Conference.

In all Roman Catholic books dealing with this period one looks with a certain amusement to see what is said about Archbishop Parker's consecration. In Mr. Birt's account, the fable that he was consecrated at the Nag's Head ' Tavern is decently interred ; though it would be too much to expect Mr. Birt to allow that it had been killed by the Anglican con- troversialists. The "grave doubt," however, which has been alleged to attach to the consecration of Barlow, who helped to consecrate Parker, can still be paraded, because the record of his consecration, as of that of some other Bishops of the day, does not seem to exist. However, we are informed that the question need not be discussed, as "the objections of Catholics to the :validity of Parker's consecration rest, not on Barlow's qualifications, but on the validity or invalidity of the Form used ; and that point has been set at rest for ever for

Catholics by the decision of Leo XIIL contained in the Bull Apostolicae Clime." "Forever" is a long time. No one denies

that it is within the power of any Church to refuse com- munion with other Churches ; but if it wishes to justify its

conduct to the rest of Christendom, it must give reasons which will bear investigation. As Mr. But must remember only too well, hardly was the ink dry on Leo's instrument, which declared the English Ordinal invalid, on the ground that it omitted the words "Receive power to offer the sacrifice," -when there was discovered at Mount Athos the Ordinal of Bishop Serapion, the colleague of Athanasins and

friend of Antony, which no more than ours recognises the Leonine standard. The question of Barlow, therefore, may become for Roman controversialists once more of importance, and he would be a bold man who asserted that the Nag's Head' itself would not presently be exhumed.

The general purpose of this large volume, then, is to put the best face possible on the Roman side, and the worst face possible on the Protestant side, of the Elizabethan controversy. In Mr. Bit's portrait-gallery the Roman Bishops are all venerable figures, while the Reformers appear as quarrelsome pettifoggers greedy for the spoils of better men. Certainly there is a dignity about defeat to which success cannot pretend; and even though Elizabeth had no intention of burning Heath and Bonner and Bayne, as Mary had burned Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley, Mr. Birt is perhaps entitled to speak of their readiness to suffer any extremity, even if need be, death "; but it is not good taste on his part to call those who did suffer "martyrs," in inverted commas.

What we find most puzzling to understand, except that, of course, the author knows his own business best, is how he can expect to convince Englishmen that the triumph of the Reformation in England was really more of an accident than anything else. In regard, for example, to the Elizabethan Prayer-book, he says :—

"Had peers voted according to conscience, had so many sees not then been vacant, had all the bishops been free (whereas some were ill, some were in prison), there can be no doubt that the change of religion' would have been averted, for a time at least, and the new Prayer Book would have been rejected. As it was, however, the Elizabethan settlement of religion is based upon the infallibility of the odd three."

Mr. Birt seems to be adapting Selden's scoff at General Councils. "They talk (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is president of their General Councils ; when the truth is, the odd man is still the Holy Ghost." In the Church

of England, however, which holds that Councils have erred,

the binding nature of conciliar decrees is found, not in the majority by which decrees were passed, but in the subsequent consent of the faithful. And so it was in regard to the Elizabethan settlement of religion. It mattered nothing by what majority the Reformed Prayer-book passed the House of Peers ; what mattered was that the nation, as a whole, acquiesced. It would be pathetic, if it were not so obviously part of his case, to find Mr. Birt contending that the more thoughtful part of the nation, "the men who had the brains and education, and those with a stake in the country, like the local magnates," were on the side of the old religion, and that they were jockeyed into Protestantism by Cecil and Bacon and Walsingham, another "infallible three." "But for these three," he says, "the Elizabethan settlement of religion would have been-impossible. To them, more than to any other three men, the final separation from Rome may be ascribed." It was not so ; the three men most responsible for the separation were Crammer, Ridley, and Latimer. When Lord Paget thought Mary had succeeded in reconciling England to Rome, Cecil replied to him, as Mr. Birt records : "My lord, you are therein so far deceived that I fear rather an inundation of the contrary part, so universal a boiling and babbling I see of stomachs, that cannot digest the crudity of that time."