Romanists used fire and sword; the Episcopalians fines, prisons, pillories, nose-slittings,
ear-croppings, and cheek-burnings; the Presbyterians tried depositions and disabilities; the
Independents in New England exiled Roger Williams, the Baptist (1636), and hanged four Quakers
(two men and two women, 1659, 1660 and 1661) in Boston, and nineteen witches in Salem (1692).
But all these measures of repression proved as many failures and made persecution more hateful
and at last impossible.
- The first act of the English Reformation, under Henry VIII., was simply the substitution
of a domestic for a foreign popery and tyranny; and it was a change for the worse. No one was safe
who dared to dissent from the creed of the despotic monarch who proclaimed himself "the supreme
head of the Church of England." At his death (1547), the six bloody articles were still in force; but
they contained some of the chief dogmas of Romanism which he held in spite of his revolt against
the pope. - Under the brief reign of Edward VI. (1547–1553), the Reformation made decided progress,
but Anabaptists were not tolerated; two of them, who held some curious views on the incarnation,
were burnt as obstinate heretics, Joan Bocher, commonly called Joan of Kent, May 2, 1550, and
George Van Pare, a Dutchman April 6, 1551. The. young king refused at first to sign the
death-warrant of the woman, correctly thinking that the sentence was "a piece of cruelty too like
that which they had condemned in papists;" at last he yielded to Cranmer’s authority, who argued
with him from the law of Moses against blasphemy, but he put his hand to the warrant with tears
in his eyes and charged the archbishop with the responsibility for the act if it should be wrong. - The reign of the bloody Queen Mary (1553–1558) was a fearful retaliation, but sealed
the doom of popery by the blood of Protestant martyrs, including the Reformers, Cranmer, Latimer,
and Ridley, who were burnt in the market place at Oxford. - Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), by virtue of her office, as "Defender of the Faith, and
supreme governor of the Church" in her dominions, permanently established the Reformed religion,
but to the exclusion of all dissent. Her penal code may have been a political necessity, as a protection
against domestic treason and foreign invasion, but it aimed systematically at the annihilation of
both Popery and Puritanism. It acted most severely upon Roman Catholic priests, who could only
save their lives by concealment or exile. Conformity to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of
Common Prayer was rigidly enforced; attendance upon the Episcopal service was commanded,
while the mass and every other kind of public worship were forbidden under severe penalties. The
rack in the tower was freely employed against noblemen suspected of disloyalty to the queen-pope.
The statute de haereticis comburendis from the reign of Henry IV. (1401) remained in force, and
two Anabaptists were burnt alive under Elizabeth, and two Arians under her successor. The statute
was not formally abolished till 1677. Ireland was treated ecclesiastically as well as politically as a
conquered province, and England is still suffering from that cruel polity, which nursed a hereditary
hatred of the Catholic people against their Protestant rulers, and made the removal of the Irish
grievances the most difficult problem of English statesmanship.
Popery disappeared for a while from British soil, and the Spanish Armada was utterly
defeated. But Puritanism, which fought in the front rank against the big pope at Rome, could not
be defeated by the little popes at home. It broke out at last in open revolt against the tyranny of the
Stuarts, and the cruelties of the Star Chamber and High-Commission Court, which were not far
behind the Spanish Inquisition, and punished freedom of speech and of the press as a crime against
society.