ssion died quietly away. At the close of
her reign the only parts of England where the old faith retained
anything of its former vigour were the north and the extreme west, at
that time the poorest and least populated parts of the kingdom. One main
cause of the change lay in the gradual dying out or removal of the
Catholic priesthood and the growth of a new Protestant clergy who
supplied their place. The older parish priests, though they had almost
to a man acquiesced in the changes of ritual and doctrine which the
various phases of the Reformation imposed upon them, remained in heart
utterly hostile to its spirit. As Mary had undone the changes of Edward,
they hoped for a Catholic successor to undo the changes of Elizabeth;
and in the meantime they were content to wear the surplice instead of
the chasuble, and to use the Communion office instead of the Mass-book.
But if they were forced to read the Homilies from the pulpit the spirit
of their teaching remained unchanged; and it was easy for them to cast
contempt on the new services, till they seemed to old-fashioned
worshippers a mere "Christmas game." But the lapse of years did its work
in emptying parsonage after parsonage. In 1579 the Queen felt strong
enough to enforce for the first time a general compliance with the Act
of Uniformity; and the jealous supervision of Parker and the bishops
ensured an inner as well as an outer conformity to the established faith
in the clergy who took the place of the dying priesthood. The new
parsons were for the most part not merely Protestant in belief and
teaching, but ultra-Protestant. The old restrictions on the use of the
pulpit were silently removed as the need for them passed away, and the
zeal of the young ministers showed itself in an assiduous preaching
which moulded in their own fashion the religious ideas of the new
generation. But their character had even a greater influence than their
preaching. Under Henry the priests had in large part been ignorant and
sensual men; and the character of the clergy appointed by the greedy
Protestants under Edward or at the opening of Elizabeth's reign was even
worse than that of their Catholic rivals. But the energy of the
successive Primates, seconded as it was by the general increase of zeal
and morality at the time, did its work; and by the close of the Queen's
reign the moral temper as well as the social character of the clergy
had greatly changed. Scholars like Hooker could now be