ing will, which prevailed because her people trusted her and saw in her reign the new splendour of the emancipated nation. The latter as Whitgift afterwards-pursued his thankless task of administration with wisdom and patience, and bore as well as he could the rude outbreaks of the great Tudor Queen.

On February 25, 1569, Pope Pius V launched his Bull (Regnans in Excelsis) against Elizabeth, declaring her a heretic and a favourer of heretics, and absolving her people from their oaths of allegiance. All citizens who continued to show obedience were placed under anathema.1 Elizabeth answered this ban in Latin verse, scoffing at the apostolic authority, and saying that the barque of Peter should never enter a port of hers. This final

breach caused by Rome itself proved to be "worse than a crime, because it was a blunder." Its unwisdom was recognised by Urban VIII, who when besought to excommunicate the Kings of France and Sweden, said: "We may declare them excommunicate, as Pius V declared Queen Elizabeth of England, and before him Clement VII the King of England, Henry VIII . . But with what success? The whole world can tell: we yet bewail it with tears of blood. Wisdom does not teach us to imitate Pius V or Clement VII, but Paul V, who, being many times urged . . . to excommunicate James (I), King of England, never would consent unto it." 2

At home the opponents of both Elizabeth and Parker were the Nonconformists, to use the term in its true sense as describing clergy and laity who remained in the Church and refused to conform to its laws and

1 The opening words of the Bull show the claim to authority in which it was promulgated.

"Regnans in excelsis, cui data est omnis in cœlo et in terra potestas, unam sanctam Catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, extra quam nulla est salus, uni soli ni terris videlicet apostolorum principi Petro, Petrique successori Romano Pontifici in potestatis plenitudine tradidit gubernandam. Hunc unum super omnes gentes et omnia Regna Principem constituit qui evellat destruat disperdat plantet et edificet, &c.”

2 Public Record Office, Foreign, Italy, 1641-1645.

usages. Hence the uncertainty of what was done in this reign as the norm or rule for all future time.

Meantime Richard Bancroft was rising into prominence and power. Born and brought up in Lancashire in an atmosphere of strong radicalism, he knew well the tenets and literature of the Puritans, and in later years he became the most astute opponent of their schemes for establishing in the Church the Genevan discipline and doctrines. His lifelong adversary on the Roman side was Robert Parsons, who was educated at Oxford, and after starting life as a student and teacher of Calvinistic theology, became the greatest English Jesuit of his time. Bancroft constantly exposed his plots, and played off the archpriests Blackwell and Birkhead against him. Parsons became a source of peril to the Roman policy, and when he died in 1610 the Pope was reported to have said, "We shall all be more quiet now that Parsons is dead."

The two great antagonists were not long separated in their death, for Bancroft died in the same year, and yet the struggle continued after the two great leaders were gone. After thirteen more years of effort William Bishop was in 1623 consecrated titular Roman Catholic Bishop of Chalcedon to exercise episcopal functions in England, though it took another fifty years before Roman Catholic bishops were firmly established in England with the right to minister to their own people. The story of the Stuarts and the final settlement in 1662 will be sketched in the lecture upon William Laud. And as a supplement to the whole I will endeavour to set out in a brief summary the doctrinal changes of the Reformation period which have left the Church of England, and as it has ever since been, Catholic in its adherence to the faith of the Scriptures and the early Church, and Protestant in its unfailing opposition to the errors which had gathered around its own life in the centuries before the Reformation.1

1 "The Church of England as a Church is as old as Christianity. Her Protestantism is indeed comparatively recent, and this for a good reason, because the Romish errors and corruptions against

which she protests are recent, but the fact is that as the Universal Church for the maintenance of her Catholicity was protesting at the first from General Councils; as she protested at Nicæa against the heresy of Arius and at Constantinople against Macedonius; as she protested at Ephesus against Nestorius and at Chalcedon against Eutyches, so the Church of England became Protestant at the Reformation in order that she might be more truly and purely Catholic; and as far as papal errors are concerned, if Rome will become truly Catholic, then, but not till then, the Church of England will cease to be Protestant."-Theophilus Anglicanus, by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, first published 1865.

I WANT a single name around whose personality I can discuss some of the leading ideas in religious matters in England on the eve of the Reformation, and for this

1 Wolsey always spelt his name Wulcy. In the Register of Magdalen College, Oxford, it is variously written at Wolsey, Wulcy, Wolsy, Wolcy, Wulsey and Woulsey. It has no connection with Wolseley," which is the place-name of a hamlet in the parish of Colwich in Staffordshire. Wolsey is the modern form of the personal name Wolsi or Wulsi. The Hundred Rolls (1273) give the name William Wulsi, co. Cambridge, and the first Abbot of Westminster bore the name of Wulsy. It is not an uncommon name in early English days, and is supposed to be Teutonic in origin and to have some connection with Wulf or Ulf. 2 The day and hour of death are certain. S. Andrew's Day, November 1530 at 8 a.m.; the date of birth has not been definitely settled and possibly cannot be. Some put it two or three years later than 1471. Wolsey was ordained to the priesthood on March 10, 1498, and twenty-seven years old is quite unusually late for ordination. On the other hand, Cavendish states that on Maundy Thursday (1530) Wolsey, on his way north to take possession of the Archbishopric of York, made his Maundy in the Lady Chapel of Peterborough Cathedral, washing, wiping and kissing the feet of fifty-nine poor men, a number supposed to correspond with the years of his age. A mistake might easily be made either in estimating the number presented or in the Cardinal's years. All that is certain is the numbers were intended to correspond.

He took his degree of B.A. at Oxford at the age of fifteen. If born in 1471 this would be in 1486, but the records of Magdalen College, Oxford, are said not to mention his name until 1497, when he appears as a Master of Arts and fourteenth on the list of Fellows. This entry is confirmed by the record of his ordination to the priesthood in 1498, when his Fellowship gave him his title to Orders.

purpose I have chosen Thomas Wolsey. I am not concerned to maintain that he was either hero or a saint, but I am convinced that he was a great ecclesiastical statesman, who has suffered centuries of wrong at the hands of historians. Our great English dramatist exhibited him as an example of the folly of ambition, and the suddenness of his fall from high estate is the one prominent fact popularly known about him.

His first biographer was George Cavendish, his gentleman usher, a member of the family afterwards ennobled which has been so prominent in English history. He tells his story simply and pathetically, neither extenuating nor setting aught down in malice, and at the end of his narrative he, too, reflects sadly upon the vanity of human ambition :

"Here is the end of all pride and arrogancy of such men exalted by fortune to honours and high dignities; for I assure you, in his time of authority and glory, he was the haughtiest man in all his proceedings that then lived, having more respect to the worldly honour of his person than he had to his spiritual profession; wherein should be all meekness, humility and charity; the process whereof I leave to them that be learned and seen in divine laws." 1

Another biographer a hundred and seventy years afterwards, Richard Fiddes, in 1724 wrote: "There have been few persons if any to whom mankind has been obliged for any considerable benefactions that have met with such ungrateful usage in return for them, as Cardinal Wolsey." 2

Until quite recent years the Roman Catholic writers. abused him more severely than any others. To them he was the prime instigator of Henry VIII in the matter of the divorce, and they blamed him by inference for

1 See Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, written between 1554 and 1558.

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2 Fiddes's reward for his attempt to vindicate the great Cardinal's memory was to be told that he was 'throwing dirt upon the happy reformation of religion among us."