horror of the cruelty of the one party, and admiration of the courageous endurance of the other, produced a fixed hatred of the Roman Church and of Roman churchmen in the bulk of the English nation which was at least as immovable as it may have been unreasoning, which was kept alive for many years afterwards by the conspiracies against Elizabeth and the famous Gunpowder Plot, which lasted for three centuries, and of which traces still remain.
Another result of the persecution was that many of the Protestant divines who had flourished under Edward were driven into exile, and sought refuge, not among the Lutherans of North Germany, but among the Zwinglian and Calvinist communities of Switzerland and the Upper Rhine. This is a fact which has a double significance, and is of much importance. It shows, in the first place, the strong tendency towards the Zwinglian form of Protestantism which had developed itself in the English Church during Edward's reign, for the exiles would naturally direct their steps towards those amongst their co-religionists with whom they most strongly sympathised; and it accounts, as has been often pointed out, for the further development of the same or similar tendencies which took place in Elizabeth's reign.[1] The strength of this tendency in the Swiss towns to which the exiles went, naturally affected their minds, and, reinforced as it was by the cordiality and kindness with which they were mostly received, and the sentiments of gratitude and affection thus awakened in them, soon made a conquest of them altogether, and this form of Christianity became in their eyes the only
- ↑ See this point argued out by Mr. Pocock in the English Review and in his lecture. Grindal, in the early days of Elizabeth's reign, writes of 'Lutherans and semi-Papists' as if synonymous. See above, p. 116.
