e. As the strife with Rome grew hotter the
government was forced to fill Parliament and the magistracy with men
whose zealous Protestantism secured their fidelity in the case of a
Catholic rising. But a zealous Protestant was almost inevitably a
Calvinist; and to place the administration of the country in Calvinist
hands was to give an impulse to Puritanism. How utterly Elizabeth failed
was seen at the beginning of her successor's reign. The bulk of the
country gentlemen, the bulk of the wealthier traders, had by that time
become Puritans. In the first Parliament of James the House of Commons
refused for the first time to transact business on a Sunday. His second
Parliament chose to receive the communion at St. Margaret's Church
instead of Westminster Abbey "for fear of copes and wafer-cakes."

[Sidenote: Puritanism in the Church.]

The same difficulty met Elizabeth in her efforts to check the growth of
Puritanism in the Church itself. At the very outset of her reign the
need of replacing the Marian bishops by staunch Protestants forced her
to fill the English sees with men whose creed was in almost every case
Calvinistic. The bulk of the lower clergy indeed were left without
change; but as the older parsons died out their places were mostly
filled by Puritan successors. The Universities furnished the new clergy,
and at the close of Elizabeth's reign the tone of the Universities was
hotly Puritan. Even the outer uniformity on which the Queen set her
heart took a Puritan form. The use of the Prayer-book indeed was
enforced; but the aspect of English churches and of English worship
tended more and more to the model of Geneva. The need of more light to
follow the service in the new Prayer-books served as a pretext for the
removal of stained glass from the church windows. The communion table
stood almost everywhere in the midst of the church. If the surplice was
generally worn during the service, the preacher often mounted the pulpit
in a Geneva gown. We see the progress of this change in the very chapel
of the Primates themselves. The chapel of Lambeth House was one of the
most conspicuous among the ecclesiastical buildings of the time; it was
a place "whither many of the nobility, judges, clergy, and persons of
all sorts, as well strangers as natives, resorted." But all pomp of
worship gradually passed away from it. Under Cranmer the stained glass
was dashed from its windows. In Elizabeth's time the communion table was
m