foes, that you shoulde keepe for them to carry awaye, and hyde from your Quene to enryche the robber.

"And you Husbande men which haue Gods plenty, abundaunce of his blessinges. Sticke not to helpe your natural countrey so muche as you can. God is beneficiall vnto you, be not vnthankfull to his chefe minister. For like as the springes and brookes renne into the sea, so must all mens trauail tourne to the defence of his countrey."-Sig. O. iv.

So earnest is Aylmer's loyalty and patriotism, that he becomes absolutely pathetic in, what may be called, a sort of charity sermon for the new monarch; and, long as the extracts already given are, a part of his peroration must be added.

"Do you not heare how lamentably your natural mother your countrye of England, calleth vpon you for obediences saying, 'Oh, remember remember my dear children in what case you stande; your enemies be round about you, like vnsaciable rauenours to pluck me from you, to cast you out of my lap where I haue this.110. yeres lyke a faithful mother nourished you, a tyme sufficient for me I trow to know you, and you me. I haue bene and am glad of you, I delight and reioyce in you, aboue all other peoples. In declaration wherof I haue always spued out and cast from me Danes, Frenche, Norwegians, and Scottes. I could brooke none of them for the tender loue that I bare vnto you, of whome I haue my name. I neuer denyed to minister to you my singular commodities, which God hath lent me for you, as corne and cattell, lande and pasture, wull and cloth, lead and tynne, fleshe and fishe, gold and siluer, and all my other treasures: I haue poured them out among you, and enriched you aboue all your neighbours about you: which make them to enuie you, and couet me. Besides this God hathe brought forthe in me, the greatest and excellentest treasure that he hath, for your comfort and al the worldes. He would that out of my wombe should come that seruaunt of his your brother Ihon VVyclefe, who begate Husse, who begat Luther, who begat TRUTH. VVhat greter honor could you or I haue, then that it pleased Christ as it were in a second birth to be borne again of me among you? And will you now suffer me, or rather by your disobedience purchase me, to be a mother withoute my children, and to be made the nurse of a sorte of infideles, Idolaters, and Turkes? Can I abide to be without you, or can you be content to be without me? Oh God graunt that I neuer se the day that the basterdly brode of ambytious frenche men, eate and enioy the frutes whiche I prepare for you, my deare chyldren. Lette me rather satisfie my thirste with their effeminate bloud, then they should pluck from you my motherly breastes. Sticke to your mother, as she sticketh to you. Let me keepe in quiet and feede, as I have done, your wyues, your children, and your kinsfolkes : Obey your mistres and mine which God hath made lady ouer vs, bothe by nature and lawe. You can not be my children, if you be not her subiectes: I wyll none of you, if you will none of hir. If you loue me you can not hate hir, as my hope is you doo not : if

you obey her, honour hir, and loue hir, be you assured that I wyll not fayle you at your neede, with any of my good frutes that you can requyre: I wyll fiill your bosomes and your mouthes, your wyues, and your children, with plentie." &c.-Sig. R.

That this appeal, eloquent and affecting as it was meant to be, did not lead the people to cast their living into the treasury or the privy purse, we know from history; but surely it must have "moved the stout heart of England's Queen." Strype, indeed, introduces Aylmer in the first page as one of the excellent bishops made choice of by Queen Elizabeth to assist in the government of the church of England." But if so, it is obvious that she concealed her feelings, and delayed her choice for a long time. It seems that for four years all but eleven days-what an age to a keen suitorshe sat upon her throne, and slept in her bed, unmindful of her eulogist; or, to say the least, before he received any reward for his panegyric. Then he was made Archdeacon of Lincoln; and, as Strype says, "being Archdeacon, he was present at the famous synod, anno 1562, where the doctrine and discipline of the church, and the reformation of it 'from the abuses of popery, were carefully treated of and 'settled." It seems probable, that Aylmer received the preferment with a view to his being of service on that occasion; for the synod or convocation actually met in January, and he only became archdeacon on the 6th November previous. This is the more likely, because almost all that we know of him during those first four years of Elizabeth's reign is that, "he was but newly come home when he was appointed to hold a disputation in Westminster."-p. 11. What he did on that occasion does not appear, but in the convocation of 1562, "when the bandying happened in the lower house Aylmer was absent; whether," says Mr. Strype, "by chance, or on purpose, I know not."p. 13. It does not much matter; but it looks as if his conduct had dissatisfied those whom he wished to please; and Strype was obliged to put in his margin "Sticks at Lincoln;" and, what was worse, to explain in the text, that he "stuck a long while" there. How he got away, after sticking some fifteen years, it is not our present business to inquire. He is produced here as the champion of the puritan party, and the author of what was, as far as I know, the only public apology of those who had written or coun

tenanced the most ferocious libels on the late queen and her government. The book and the man seem to have been treated with as much contempt and neglect as was convenient in the circumstances of the state. It was clear that the government could not do without the exiles, and it was sufficiently understood that they were not going to insist on any punctilios which might disqualify them for the service of her majesty, whom they were prepared to receive and acknowledge, not only as the lawful Queen of England, but as the Head of the Church and the Vicar of God.

All this is, indeed, made clearer to us by Aylmer's book, but it would probably have come about quite as soon, with less scandal to others, and less discredit to himself, if he had not interfered in the business.

ESSAY XI.

THE RIBALDS. No. I.

THE preceding Essay carried us forward into the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In order to return properly to the period and the subject with which we were engaged, we must now go back for a few moments to the reign of her father, for then began those seeds to spring which ripened into such a harvest of sin and misery in the days of Queen Mary.

We were considering the mode which the puritan party adopted in meeting the change of religion which then took place; and it has been shown that much plainness of speech was used by them in opposing the false doctrine and superstitious practice of the Church of Rome. They contended that the Pope was Antichrist-that his faith was false, his practice idolatrous, his mass devilish, and everything about him, or in any sort of communion with him, utterly abominable in the sight of that God whom he blasphemed by pretended worship.

The "recantation" of Goodman, given by Strype, he supposes to have been made either "before the queen's privy council, or her bishops of the ecclesiastical commission." (Ann. I. i. 184.) I do not know that it was made public until he printed it from the Petyt MSS.

If they were right, the matter was surely very sad, as well as serious. One would think that the sight of such an abomination of desolation as they professed to see, must have filled all who had anything like the love of God in their hearts, or even the fear of God before their eyes, with grief and consternation-that if such men came to know that Chemosh and Ashtaroth had been set up in the Lord's House, they would have entered its courts in sackcloth and the spirit of heaviness, to displace them; and have passed them from hand to hand, without a word or a look exchanged, till the abominable things were clean out of the holy place, cast to the moles and the bats, or buried in outer darkness for ever.

But the matter was far otherwise. If there were men who acted under such feelings in grave, and quiet, and grateful pity-if there were others who mistook passion for zeal, and sincerely believed themselves authorised, nay, called upon, to do and say all that prophets or apostles had ever said or done, and even to assume the purifying scourge which One greater than the Temple made for Himself—if there were men who, with whatever mixture of human infirmity, wrote and spoke and acted as servants of God, pleading his cause and maintaining his truth before his face -if there were, as we may believe, some of all these classes, there were, at the same time, other partisans of the Reformation, very noisy and very numerous, of quite a different spirit, whom, to say the least, they did not keep at a proper distance, or repudiate with sufficiently marked detestation. I mean those who used a jeering, scoffing humour, to turn the ministers and the services of religion into ridicule—men who employed themselves in raising a laugh against popery, at whatever expense, and in providing for the eyes and ears of even the rude multitude who could not read, gross and profane pictures, jests, songs, interludes-all, in short, that could nurse the self-conceit of folly, and agitate ignorance into rebellion against its spiritual pastors and teachers.

Of course no historian of the Reformation could entirely pass over this very obvious and startling feature; but it seems to have been noticed and inquired into less than it should have been; and without pretending, on an occasion like this, to remedy the defect, I think it may be of some service to the cause of truth to point it out, and to offer some

ance.

facts and observations which may tend to show its importBut to do this ever so imperfectly and superficially, we must, as I have said, turn back to the time of Henry the Eighth.

It would be an affront to the reader to suppose him less than quite familiar with everything in Robertson's Charles V.; and, therefore, I assume his recollecting that, in the month of May, 1527, the city of Rome was assaulted and taken by the imperial army under the command of the Duke of Bourbon. The pope was a prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo, his troops were dispersed, and "it is impos'sible to describe or even to imagine the misery and horror ' of that scene which followed. Whatever a city taken by 'storm can dread from military rage unrestrained by disci'pline; whatever excesses the ferocity of the Germans, the 'avarice of the Spaniards, or the licentiousness of the 'Italians could commit, these the wretched inhabitants were obliged to suffer. Churches, palaces, and the houses 'of private persons were plundered without distinction. 'No age, or character, or sex was exempt from injury. 'Cardinals, nobles, priests, matrons, virgins, were all the prey of soldiers, and at the mercy of men deaf to the voice 'of humanity. Nor did these outrages cease, as is usual in 'towns carried by assault, when the first fury of the storm was over; the imperialists kept possession of Rome several 'months; and during all that time, the insolence and 'brutality of the soldiers scarce abated."1

If the historian had been writing with a view to the religious and ecclesiastical aspect and bearing of the matter, he might perhaps have added, that among the victors there were some at least who had in them an element distinct from "the ferocity of the Germans, the avarice of the Spaniards, or the licentiousness of the Italians," which manifested itself, not merely in the desecration of sacred places, but in ridicule of the ministers and services of religion; in mock processions, and a mock election of Luther for pope.

I refer, however, to this historical event principally in order to observe that there is said to have been among the followers of the Duke of Bourbon (whether he was among

1 Robertson's Charles V., vol. ii. p. 286.