in fact, full of religious disputes and controversies. In the course of it[1] occurred the famous quarrel about vestments, consequent on the promotion of Hooper to a bishopric, in which Cranmer's foreign protégés, Bucer and Peter Martyr, appear to have shown a degree of moderation and good sense which contrast favourably with the hair-splitting fanaticism of Hooper himself and many other divines.
In this year also occurred the authoritative establishment by the King[2] of John a Lasco's congregation of Germans (Netherlanders?) and others in London, the first legalisation of any body of Nonconformists in England. Of these curious and utterly anomalous bodies we shall have occasion to hear more in the reign of Elizabeth. Following upon this, in the autumn, appeared Bishop Ridley's[3] injunctions for the removal of altars in his diocese, prohibiting also certain motions and ceremonies used in the time of the Holy Communion as 'counterfeiting the popish mass,' which appear to have been further enforced by the Privy Council.
The transactions of the year 1551 showed plainly how little improvement was to result from the substitution of Warwick for Somerset as the leader of the gang of adventurers who misgoverned in the name of the King. Gardiner, Heath, and Day were deprived of their sees, on the ground of their unwillingness to carry out the reforms of the council, and to fill the place of the first,
- ↑ Strype, II. i. 350.
- ↑ See the King's letters patent in Burnet, vol. v. p. 305, where an especial command is addressed to all sorts of authorities, archbishops and bishops, among others, that this congregation is to be permitted to use and enjoy its own rites and ceremonies and ecclesiastical discipline, 'non obstante quod non couveniant cum ritibus et ceremoniis in regno nostro usitatis.'
- ↑ Burnet, vol. v. p. 309, and Strype, Mem. II. i. 355.
