le, that, the marriage of Henry VIII. with
Catherine of Arragon having been declared lawful and valid, the child of
Anne Boleyn must be regarded as illegitimate and incapable of the
succession. The compliance of Ogelthorp could indeed be censured by the
other bishops on no other ground than their disallowance of the title of
the sovereign; in the office itself, as he performed it, there was
nothing to which the most rigid catholic could object, for the ancient
ritual is said to have been followed without the slightest modification.
This circumstance has been adduced among others, to show that it was
rather by the political necessities of her situation, than by her
private judgement and conscience in religious matters, that Elizabeth
was impelled finally to abjure the Roman catholic system, and to declare
herself the general protectress of the protestant cause.

Probably, had she found herself free to follow entirely the dictates of
her own inclinations, she would have established in the church of which
she found herself the head, a kind of middle scheme like that devised by
her father, for whose authority she was impressed with the highest
veneration. To the end of her days she could never be reconciled to
married bishops; indeed with respect to the clergy generally, a
sagacious writer of her own time observes, that "_caeteris paribus_, and
sometimes _imparibus_ too, she preferred the single man before the
married[40]."

[Note 40: Harrington's "Brief View."]

She would allow no one "to speak irreverently of the sacrament of the
altar;" that is, to enter into discussions respecting the real presence;
she enjoined the like respectful silence concerning the intercession of
saints; and we learn that one Patch, who had been Wolsey's fool, and had
contrived, like some others, to keep in favor through all the changes of
four successive reigns, was employed by sir Francis Knolles to break
down a crucifix which she still retained in her private chapel to the
scandal of all good protestants.

A remarkable incident soon served to intimate the coolness and caution
with which it was her intention to proceed in re-establishing the
maxims of the reformers. Lord Bacon thus relates the anecdote: "Queen
Elizabeth on the morrow of her coronation (it being the custom to
release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince) went to the chapel;
and in the great chamber one of her courtiers, who was well known to
her, either out of his own m