the government has been recently exploded. Careful
testing shows that there was hardly any government interference. Of
the 390 members, 168 had sat in earlier Parliaments of Mary, and that
was just the normal proportion of old members. It must be remembered
that the parliamentary franchise approached the democratic only in the
towns, the strongholds of Protestantism, and that in the small boroughs
and in some of the counties the election was determined by just that
middle class most progressive and at this time most Protestant.

Another test of the temper of the country is the number of clergy
refusing the oath of supremacy. Out of a total number of about nine
thousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, and
most of these were Mary's appointees.

The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of the
time. The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by the
Parker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts,
hymns and letters of this period. During the first thirty years of
Elizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther's
works, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations from
Melanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin.
{327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, the
English Reformation at this time resumed the national character
temporarily lost during Mary's reign. John Jewel's _Apologia Ecclesiae
Anglicanae_ [Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the first
methodical statement of the position of the church of England against
the church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy."

Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the rising
young men, were Protestants. The English sea-captains, wolves of the
sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the
sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the
cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord
Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale,
still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the
interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the
time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to Lutheran
Germany as "a place where Christ's doctrine, the fear of God,
punishment of sin, and discipline of honesty were held in special
regard." Edmund Spenser's great allegor