ve to the Primate in his work of order. The vacant
sees were filled with men from among the exiles, for the most part
learned and able, though far more Protestant than the bulk of their
flocks; the plunder of the Church by the nobles was checked; and at the
close of 1559 England seemed to settle quietly down in a religious
peace.

[Sidenote: England Protestant.]

But cautious as had been Elizabeth's movements and skilfully as she had
hidden the real drift of her measures from the bulk of the people, the
religion of England was changed. The old service was gone. The old
bishops were gone. The royal supremacy was again restored. All connexion
with Rome was again broken. The repudiation of the Papacy and the
restoration of the Prayer-Book in the teeth of the unanimous opposition
of the priesthood had established the great principle of the
Reformation, that the form of a nation's faith should be determined not
by the clergy but by the nation itself. Different therefore as was the
temper of the government, the religious attitude of England was once
more what it had been under the Protectorate. At the most critical
moment of the strife between the new religion and the old England had
ranged itself on the side of Protestantism. It was only the later
history of Elizabeth's reign which was to reveal of what mighty import
this Protestantism of England was to prove. Had England remained
Catholic the freedom of the Dutch Republic would have been impossible.
No Henry the Fourth would have reigned in France to save French
Protestantism by the Edict of Nantes. No struggle over far-off seas
would have broken the power of Spain and baffled the hopes which the
House of Austria cherished of winning a mastery over the western world.
Nor could Calvinism have found a home across the northern border. The
first result of the religious change in England was to give a new
impulse to the religious revolution in Scotland.

[Sidenote: Scotch Calvinism.]

In the midst of anxieties at home Elizabeth had been keenly watching the
fortunes of the north. We have seen how the policy of Mary of Guise had
given life and force to the Scottish Reformation. Not only had the
Regent given shelter to the exiled Protestants and looked on at the
diffusion of the new doctrines, but her "fair words" had raised hopes
that the government itself would join the ranks of the reformers. Mary
of Guise had regarded the religious movement in a purely political
light. It