devil.
Delays in the completion of this Code prevented its legal establishment
during Edward's reign; but the use of the new Liturgy and attendance at
the new service were enforced by imprisonment, and subscription to the
Articles of Faith was demanded by royal authority from all clergymen,
churchwardens, and schoolmasters.

[Sidenote: The Religious Disorder.]

The distaste for changes so hurried and so rigorously enforced was
increased by the daring speculations of the more extreme Protestants.
The real value of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century to
mankind lay, not in its substitution of one creed for another, but in
the new spirit of enquiry, the new freedom of thought and of discussion,
which was awakened during the process of change. But however familiar
such a truth may be to us, it was absolutely hidden from the England of
the time. Men heard with horror that the foundations of faith and
morality were questioned, polygamy advocated, oaths denounced as
unlawful, community of goods raised into a sacred obligation, the very
Godhead of the Founder of Christianity denied. The repeal of the Statute
of Heresy left indeed the powers of the Common Law intact, and Cranmer
availed himself of these to send heretics of the last class without
mercy to the stake. But within the Church itself the Primate's desire
for uniformity was roughly resisted by the more ardent members of his
own party. Hooper, who had been named Bishop of Gloucester, refused to
wear the episcopal habits, and denounced them as the livery of the
"harlot of Babylon," a name for the Papacy which was supposed to have
been discovered in the Apocalypse. Ecclesiastical order came almost to
an end. Priests flung aside the surplice as superstitious. Patrons of
livings presented their huntsmen or gamekeepers to the benefices in
their gift, and kept the stipend. All teaching of divinity ceased at the
Universities: the students indeed had fallen off in numbers, the
libraries were in part scattered or burned, the intellectual impulse of
the New Learning died away. One noble measure indeed, the foundation of
eighteen Grammar Schools, was destined to throw a lustre over the name
of Edward, but it had no time to bear fruit in his reign.

[Sidenote: Ireland and the Reformation]

While the reckless energy of the reformers brought England to the verge
of chaos, it brought Ireland to the brink of rebellion. The fall of
Cromwell had been followed by a long r