publish the Bible when it pleased the king that his subjects should read it, and to recall that book when the king found that its circulation was becoming dangerous to his pretensions. Parker's office was to carry into execution the law which made it criminal not to con- form to the Prayer-book, and high-treason itself to re- fuse to take the oath of spiritual supremacy. Parker assumed this task, and endeavored to carry it out to the letter. He had never seen Protestantism imder any other form than that which it wore in Edward's reign. He had no thought of reconstructing a Church upon some alleged reference to Scripture merely. Im- bued with a deep veneration for antiquity, he simply desired the elimination from the English religious sys- tem of what recent inquiry had detected as undeniable blemishes. Puritans and Lutherans must stand aside, the establishment must be preserved at all hazards, and everything that savored of a mutinous individualism, incompatible with a hierarchical organization, must be rigorously repressed. This verj' attitude forced him into intolerant and inquisitorial courses, the result of which was most damaging to the interests of English Protestantism. The Church was divided into factions, a reign of terror and persecution was inaugurated that constituted the germs of the revolution which at one time threatened to destroy the very life of the English nation.
Archbishop Parker has been, however, too severely criticised, or at least misunderstood, by the Puritans and English dissenters generally, for it must be considered that he was driven, rather by the attitude of the queen than by his own choice, into severe measures; and yet it should be borne in mind, too, by his apologists that as he grew older he became harsher, the conservative spirit increasing with his years. To forbid "proph- esyings" or meetings for rehgious discourse was some- thing very like persecution, though probably something very like treason to the Church was talked in these pious conventicles. The archbishop, we must remem- ber, was not alone responsible for the severe treatment of the innovators, as those were called who dared to dis- sent from the Act of Uniformity. In 1565 the queen ordered the primate and other English bishops to see that uniformity was maintained in the Church of her realm. For several years the measures adopted were of so mild a nature that the dissenters maintained a passive relation ; but in 1572, made bold by the encour- agement of the earl of Leicester, the Puritans put for- ward a sarcastic Admonition to Parliament, \n which, among denunciations of the Pra^-er-book and the hie- rarchy, they proceeded to recommend the institstition of a new Church, whose ''holy discipline" should copj^ the Presbyterian models then exhibited in Scotland and Geneva. Thus a favorable termination of the contest was made almost impossible. This was an open defi- ance of the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy and of the temporal constitution of England so closely interwoven therewith. The hour seemed to have brought a most important epoch, and the archbishop, though violent and determined, was yet wise enough to comprehend the situation. Severity was most imlikcly to check the Disciplinarians, and hence primate Parker determined upon a literary examination of the Puritan platform. .John Whitgift first prepared an answer; later, when Cartwright returned from abroad, he also answered the admonition. Both these great champions of the estab- lishment proved most valuable aids to the archbishop, but they failed to convince their adversaries. A few concessions at the beginning of the queen's reign would have satisfied such men as Fox, Coverdale, and Hum- phrey ; but now nothing less would have been satisfac- tory than an unconditional surrender of ecclesiastical patronage, ecclesiastical revenues (including those of the monasteries), and inquisitorial powers. Just as the contest waged hottest, archbishop Parker was suddenly stricken with death, May 17, 1575.
Fuller (who must have his pun, however bad) says of him : " He was a Parker indeed, careful to keep the
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fences." But if wc cautiously consider the times and the circiinislaiucs, we must pronounce him to have been a good man, generally judicious, and of considerable abil- ity. Wlien he was lirst drawn from his seclusion and studies, he seemed very sincerely and persistently to sav, y\'()/o Kpuicopari, but at last he subordinated his judgment to the peremptory will of Elizabeth. Parker rejoiced that he was the first bishop who was consecra- ted willuuit any of what he calls "the old idle ceremonies of the Aaronical garments, gloves, rings, sandals, slip- pers, mitre, and pall." Neither must his vast literary labors be forgotten. It is to Parker we owe the Big/iops' Bible, undertaken at his request, carried on under his in- spection, and ])ublished at his expense in 15G8. He had also th.e principal share in drawing up the Book of Common Pratjer, for which his skill in ancient liturgies peculiarly titted him, and which strikingly bears the impress of his broad, moderate, and unsectarian intellect. It was under his presidency, too, that the Thirty-nine Articles were finally reviewed and subscribed by the clergy (1562). Among other literary performances, we may mention that Parker published an old Saxon Hom- ily on the Sacrament, by ^Elfric of St. Alban's, to prove that transubstantiation was not the doctrine of the an- cient English Church. "Parker's good fortune in put- ting thus to shame and eventual silence the idle boasts of Kome has earned him a place beside another metro- politan, the illustrious Ilabanus Maurus" (q. v.). Parker also edited the histories of jMatthew of Westminster and Matthew Paris (q. v.), and superintended the publica- tion of a most valuable work, l)e Antiquitate Britannicxe Ecclesice.\)Voha.\Ay printed at Lambeth in 1572, where the archbishop, we are told, had an establishment of printers, engravers, and illuminators. He also founded the " Society of Antiquaries," and was its first president ; endowed the University of Cambridge, and particularly his own college, with many fellowships and scholarships, and with a magnificent collection of MSS. relating to the civil and ecclesiastical condition of England, and be- longing to nine different centuries (from the 8th to the IGth). Of this collection. Fuller said that it "was the sun of English antiquity before it was eclipsed by that of Sir Robert Cotton." There is a minute and excel- lent catalogue of these MS. collections in the Public Library at Cambridge which has never been printed.