Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/314

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CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE TUDORS

scribing the Articles, and that the action which followed the failure of the Savoy Conference established a more Catholic tone than the formularies of the Church had countenanced for more than a century.

The fact that Elizabeth's divines were nearly all formed in the school of Zurich or Geneva, and that they (Grindal, for instance, as we have seen) looked upon Lutherans as 'semi-papists,' tends strongly to confirm these views.




Note V. P. 145 (from Burnet's collection, vol. v. p. 381).
Sent by the Queen's Majesty's commandment, in the month of March, Anno Domini 1553 (1554).

By the Queen.

A copy of a letter, with articles sent from the Queen's Majesty unto the Bishop of London; and by him and his officers, at her grace's commandment, to be put in speedy execution with effect in the whole diocese, as well in places exempt as non-exempt whatsoever, according to the tenor and form of the same:—

'Right reverend father in God, right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas heretofore, in the time of the late reign of our most dearest brother, King Edward the Sixth (whose soul God pardon), divers notable crimes, excesses and faults, with sundry kinds of heresies, simony, advoutry, and other enormities, have been committed within this our realm, and other our dominions; the same continuing yet hitherto in like disorder, since the beginning of our reign, without any correction or reformation at all; and the people, both of the laity and also of the clergy, and chiefly of the clergy, have been given to much insolency and ungodly rule, greatly to the displeasure of Almighty God, and very much to our regret and evil contentation, and to no little slander of other Christian realms, and in manner, to the subversion and clean defacing of this our realm. And remembering our duty to Almighty God, to be, to foresee, as much as in us may be, that all virtue and godly living should be embraced, flourish and increase. And therewith also, that all vice and ungodly behaviour should be utterly banished and put away; or at the least ways, so nigh as might be, so bridled and kept under, that godliness and honesty might have the over-hand: understanding, by very credible report, and public fame, to our no small heaviness and comfort (sic), that within your diocese, as well in not exempted as exempted places, the like disorder and evil