herself was a zealous Protestant, protecting the
cause whenever it was persecuted, encouraging Huguenots, and not
disdaining the Presbyterians of Scotland. She was not as generous to the
Protestants of Holland and Trance as we could have wished, for she was
obliged to husband her resources, and hence she often seemed
parsimonious; but she was the acknowledged head of the reform movement
in Europe. Her hostility to Rome and Roman influence was inexorable. She
may not have carried reforms as far as the Puritans desired, and who
can wonder at that? Their spirit was aggressive, revolutionary, bitter,
and, pushed to its logical sequences, was hostility to the throne
itself, as proved by their whole subsequent history until Cromwell was
dead. And this hostility Burleigh perceived as well as the Queen, which,
doubtless led to severities that our age cannot pretend to justify.

The Queen did dislike and persecute the Puritans, not, I think, so much
because they made war on the surplice, liturgy, and divine right of
bishops, as because they were at heart opposed to all absolute authority
both in State and Church, and when goaded by persecution would hurl even
kings from their thrones. It is to be regretted that Elizabeth was so
severe on those who differed from her; she had no right to insist on
uniformity with her conscience in those matters which are above any
human authority. The Reformation in its severest logical consequences,
in its grandest deductions, affirms the right of private judgment as the
mighty pillar of its support. All parties, Presbyterian as well as
Episcopalian, sought uniformity; they only differed as to its standard.
With the Queen and ministers and prelates it was the laws of the land;
with the Puritans, the decrees of provincial and national synods. Hence,
if Elizabeth insisted that her subjects should conform to her notions
and the ordinances of Parliament and convocations, she showed a spirit
which was universal. She was superior even in toleration to all
contemporaneous sovereigns, Catholic or Protestant, man or woman.
Contrast her persecutions of Catholics and Puritans with the persecution
by Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX. and Philip II. and Ferdinand
II.; or even with that under the Regent Murray of Scotland, when
churches and abbeys were ruthlessly destroyed. Contrast her Archbishop
of Canterbury with the religious dictator of Scotland. She kindled no
_auto-da-fe,_ like the Spaniards; she inci