rlands who came flocking into English
towns to set up their thrifty shops and hold prayer-meetings in their
humble chapels. To guard the kingdom against the intrigues of Philip and
the Guises and the Queen of Scots, it was necessary to choose the most
zealous Protestants for the most responsible positions, and such men
were more than likely to be Calvinists and Puritans. Elizabeth's great
ministers, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon, were inclined
toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most
fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of
Spain and thus opening the way for Englishmen to colonize North America.
If we would realize the dangers that would have beset the Mayflower and
her successors but for the preparatory work of these immortal sailors,
we must remember the dreadful fate of Ribault and his Huguenot followers
in Florida, twenty-three years before that most happy and glorious
event, the destruction of the Spanish Armada. But not even the devoted
men and women who held their prayer-meetings in the Mayflower's cabin
were more constant in prayer or more assiduous in reading the Bible than
the dauntless rovers, Drake and Hawkins, Gilbert and Cavendish. In the
church itself, too, the Puritan spirit grew until in 1575-83 it seized
upon Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, who incurred the queen's
disfavour by refusing to meddle with the troublesome reformers or to
suppress their prophesyings. By the end of the century the majority
of country gentlemen and of wealthy merchants in the towns had become
Puritans, and the new views had made great headway in both universities,
while at Cambridge they had become dominant. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's
policy, and its effects] [Sidenote: Puritan Sea-rovers]

This allusion to the universities may serve to introduce the very
interesting topic of the geographical distribution of Puritanism in
England. No one can study the history of the two universities without
being impressed with the greater conservatism of Oxford, and the greater
hospitality of Cambridge toward new ideas. Possibly the explanation
may have some connection with the situation of Cambridge upon the East
Anglian border. The eastern counties of England have often been remarked
as rife in heresy and independency. For many generations the coast
region between the Thames and the Humber was a veritable _litus
haereticum._ Longland, bishop of Lincoln in 1520, reported Lollard