found in the
ranks of the priesthood, and the grosser scandals which disgraced the
clergy as a body for the most part disappeared. It was impossible for a
Puritan libeller to bring against the ministers of Elizabeth's reign the
charges of drunkenness and immorality which Protestant libellers had
been able to bring against the priesthood of Henry's.

[Sidenote: Patriotism and Protestantism.]

But the influence of the new clergy was backed by a general revolution
in English thought. The grammar schools were diffusing a new knowledge
and mental energy through the middle classes and among the country
gentry. The tone of the Universities, no unfair test of the tone of the
nation at large, changed wholly as the Queen's reign went on. At its
opening Oxford was "a nest of Papists" and sent its best scholars to
feed the Catholic seminaries. At its close the University was a hot-bed
of Puritanism, where the fiercest tenets of Calvin reigned supreme. The
movement was no doubt hastened by the political circumstances of the
time. Under the rule of Elizabeth loyalty became more and more a passion
among Englishmen; and the Bull of Deposition placed Rome in the
forefront of Elizabeth's foes. The conspiracies which festered around
Mary were laid to the Pope's charge; he was known to be pressing on
France and on Spain the invasion and conquest of the heretic kingdom;
he was soon to bless the Armada. Every day made it harder for a Catholic
to reconcile Catholicism with loyalty to his Queen or devotion to his
country; and the mass of men, who are moved by sentiment rather than by
reason, swung slowly round to the side which, whatever its religious
significance might be, was the side of patriotism, of liberty against
tyranny, of England against Spain. A new impulse was given to this
silent drift of religious opinion by the atrocities which marked the
Catholic triumph on the other side of the Channel. The horror of Alva's
butcheries or of the massacre in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day revived
the memories of the bloodshed under Mary. The tale of Protestant
sufferings was told with a wonderful pathos and picturesqueness by John
Foxe, an exile during the persecution; and his "Book of Martyrs," which
was set up by royal order in the churches for public reading, passed
from the churches to the shelves of every English household. The trading
classes of the towns had been the first to embrace the doctrines of the
Reformation, but their Protestant