Queen Elizabeth
QUEEN ELIZABETH
The death of Queen Mary seemed to dispel a black, gloomy cloud that for five years had hung like a pall over England. The crowning of Elizabeth was welcomed with joy by the Protestants, and their sufferings during the previous bloody reign were for a moment forgotten in the hope that better days had come.
But Elizabeth, Protestant and friend of the Reformation, loved power as much as her father, Henry VIII, and intended to be no less an absolute ruler of both church and state than he had been. Laws were speedily passed establishing Elizabeth as the supreme head of the church as well as the nation. She was empowered to create a high commission, or court, to try people accused of not taking part in the services of the established Church of England. The power of this court extended over the whole kingdom; the clergy as well as the people were subject to its rule. Any three members of this court could take measures to discover, by summoning witnesses or any other means, anyone who spoke against the queen’s supremacy or refused to observe the forms of worship of the established church. They had the power to inquire into any heretical opinions that might be held, to look for seditious books or writings, to try all cases of willful absence from services, and to punish the offenders by fines.
As can be seen, religious liberty, as we know it today, was almost as far as ever from being realized. More than a century would pass before persecution entirely ceased and the passage of a Toleration Act finally established complete freedom of worship in England. But at least Elizabeth was not cruel; aversion to bloodshed was as marked a feature of her character as the reverse had been in that of Mary. The dreadful fires continued for a while longer in Spain and the counties within her grasp, but with the ending of the reign of Queen Mary, the history of the English martyrdom was brought to a close.