slight indisposition of the Queen, Convocation appears to have had the advantage by a day. The gyrations of this latter assembly during the years from 1549 to 1559 are something quite marvellous, and the different policy pursued towards it by Mary and Elizabeth, in the early part of their respective reigns, gave more ample scope for their performance than would have been the case had the latter sovereign acted with the vigorous decision which, in matters ecclesiastical, characterised the former. As we have already seen, in Edward's reign Convocation was becoming steadily more and more Protestant, and almost its last acts were the approval of the Forty-two Articles and Ponet's catechism. Mary showed her true colours, from the very beginning of her reign, by dismissing Edward's bishops, and reinstating Gardiner and Bonner; and Convocation, with a minority of only six, pronounced the latter of the above documents to be 'pestiferous and full of heresies,' and continued to endorse the whole of Mary's reactionary proceedings, until it was itself superseded in a great measure by Pole's Legatine Synod. Again there was a change: Mary died, and Elizabeth succeeded. But Elizabeth proceeded with a caution unknown to Mary, and though, no doubt, every one believed that the Reformed faith would be restored, little or nothing was actually done in the first weeks of her reign which indicated to what extent she would go. Again Convocation met, but this time its conduct was exactly the reverse of what it had been before. It did very little, but that little consisted in a presentation of Articles by the Lower House to the bishops, which comprehended all the chief points in dispute between the Roman and the Protestant Churches, decided in favour of the former, with a request that they should be presented to Parliament. Presented accordingly they seem to have
