Note 280 — Chapter IV

Jewel, one of these visitors, writes afterwards to Martyr: "Invenimus ubique animos multitudinis satis propensos ad religionem; ibi etiam, ubi omnia putabantur fore difficillima.... Si quid erat obstinatæ malitiæ, id totum erat in presbyteris, illis præsertim, qui aliquando stetissent à nostrâ sententiâ." Burnet, iii. Append. 289. The common people in London and elsewhere, Strype says, took an active part in demolishing images; the pleasure of destruction, I suppose, mingling with their abhorrence of idolatry. And during the conferences held in Westminster Abbey, Jan. 1559, between the catholic and protestant divines, the populace who had been admitted as spectators, testified such disapprobation of the former, that they made it a pretext for breaking off the argument. There was indeed such a tendency to anticipate the government in reformation, as necessitated a proclamation, Dec. 28, 1558, silencing preachers on both sides.

Mr. Butler says, from several circumstances it is evident that a great majority of the nation then inclined to the Roman catholic religion. Mem. of Eng. Catholics, i. 146. But his proofs of this are extremely weak. The attachment he supposes to have existed in the laity towards their pastors may well be doubted; it could not be founded on the natural grounds of esteem; and if Rishton, the continuator of Sanders de Schismate, whom he quotes, says that one-third of the nation was protestant, we may surely double the calculation of so determined a papist. As to the influence which Mr. B. alleges the court to have employed in elections for Elizabeth's first parliament, the argument would equally prove that the majority was protestant under Mary, since she had recourse to the same means. The whole tenor of historical documents in Elizabeth's reign proves that the catholics soon became a minority, and still more among the common people than the gentry. The north of England, where their strength lay, was in every respect the least important part of the kingdom. Even according to Dr. Lingard, who thinks fit to claim half the nation as catholic in the middle of this reign, the number of recusants certified to the council under 23 Eliz. c. 1, amounted only to fifty thousand; and, if we can trust the authority of other lists, they were much fewer before the accession of James. This writer, I may observe in passing, has, through haste and thoughtlessness, misstated a passage he cites from Murden's State Papers, p. 605, and confounded the persons suspected for religion in the city of London, about the time of the Armada, with the whole number of men fit for arms; thus making the former amount to seventeen thousand and eighty-three.

Mr. Butler has taken up so paradoxical a notion on this subject, that he literally maintains the catholics to have been at least one half of the people at the epoch of the gunpowder plot. Vol. i. p. 295. We should be glad to know at what time he supposes the grand apostasy to have been consummated. Cardinal Bentivoglio gives a very different account; reckoning the real catholics, such as did not make profession of heresy, at only a thirtieth part of the whole; though he supposes that four-fifths might become such, from secret inclination or general indifference, if it were once established. Opere di Bentivoglio, p. 83, edit. Paris, 1645. But I presume neither Mr. Butler nor Dr. Lingard would own these adiaphorists.

The latter writer, on the other hand, reckons the Hugonots of France, soon after 1560, at only one-hundredth part of the nation, quoting for this Castelnau, a useful memoir writer, but no authority on a matter of calculation. The stern spirit of Coligni, atrox animus Catonis, rising above all misfortune, and unconquerable, except by the darkest treachery, is sufficiently admirable without reducing his party to so miserable a fraction. The Calvinists at this time are reckoned by some at one-fourth, but more frequently at one-tenth, of the French nation. Even in the beginning of the next century, when proscription and massacre, lukewarmness and self-interest, had thinned their ranks, they are estimated by Bentivoglio (ubi supra) at one-fifteenth.