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leading men and several women were sent to Bride-
well for a year.
In vain did the best statesmen favor moderation; the queen herself was impatient of sectarianism, as the nursery of rebellion.
Once, when
Edwin Sandys, then bishop of
London, was named as
a secret favorer of Puritanism, he resented the imputation of lenity as a false accusation and malignant calumny of ‘some incarnate, never-sleeping devil.’
It is true that the learned
Grindal, who, during the reign of Mary, had lived in exile, and in 1576 was
advanced to the see of
Canterbury, was of a mild and gentle nature; and at the head of the
English clergy, gave an example of reluctance to persecute.
But having incurred the enmity of Elizabeth by his refusal to suppress the liberty of prophesying, he was suspended, and when old and blind and broken-hearted, was ordered to resign.
Nothing but his death in 1583, saved him from being superseded by
Whitgift.
The Puritans, as a body, had avoided a separation from the church.
They had desired a reform, and not a schism.
When, by espousing a party, a man puts a halter round his neck, and is thrust out from the career of public honor, the rash, the least cautious, and therefore, the least persevering, may sometimes be the first to avow their opinions.
So it was in the party of the Puritans.
There began to grow up among them a class of men who carried opposition to the church of England to the extreme, and refused to hold communion with a church of which they condemned the ceremonies and the government.
Henry VIII had enfranchised the
English crown; Elizabeth had enfranchised the Anglican church: the Puritans claimed equality for the plebeian clergy; the Independents asserted the liberty of each individual mind to discover
