regarded as essential to the peace and stability of every
well constituted state.

To Cecil her chief secretary of state and to Nicholas Bacon her keeper
of the seals, assisted by a select number of divines, the management of
this great affair was chiefly intrusted by the queen: and much might be
said of the sagacity displayed by her in this appointment, and of the
wisdom and moderation exercised by them in the discharge of their
office; much also might be, much has been said, of the excellencies of
the form of worship by them established;--but little, alas! of moral or
of religious merit can be awarded by the verdict of impartial history to
the motives or conduct of the heroine of protestantism in a transaction
so momentous and so memorable.

Three acts of the parliament of 1559 gave the sanction of law to the new
ecclesiastical establishment; they were those of Supremacy, of
Uniformity, and a third empowering the queen to appoint bishops. By the
first, the authority of the pope was solemnly renounced, and the whole
government of the church vested in the queen, her heirs and successors;
and an important clause further enabled her and them to delegate their
authority to commissioners of their own appointment, who amongst other
extraordinary powers were to be invested with the cognisance of all
errors and heresies whatsoever. On this foundation was erected the
famous High Commission Court, which grew into one of the principal
grievances of this and the two following reigns, and of which, from the
moment of its formation, the proceedings assumed a character of
arbitrary violence utterly incompatible with the security and happiness
of the subject, and hostile to the whole tenor of the ancient charters.

The act of Uniformity ordained an exact compliance in all points with
the established form of worship and a punctual attendance on its
offices; it also rendered highly penal the exercise, public or private,
of any other; and of this law it was not long before several unfortunate
catholics were doomed to experience the utmost rigor.

Many parish priests who had been open and violent papists in the last
reign, permitted themselves to take the oath of supremacy and retain
their cures under the new order of things, a kind of compliance with the
times which the court of Rome is said sometimes to have permitted,
sometimes even to have privately enjoined,--on the principle of Peter
Martyr, that it was better that its secret ad