with a new sect, the
principles of which, tending directly to the abrogation of all authority
of the civil magistrate in spiritual concerns, called forth about this
time her indignation manifested by the utmost severity of penal
infliction.

It was in the year 1580 that Robert Brown, having completed his studies
in divinity at Cambridge, began to preach at Norwich against the
discipline and ceremonies of the church of England, and to promulgate a
scheme which he affirmed to be more conformable to the apostolical
model. According to his system, each congregation of believers was to be
regarded as a separate church, possessing in itself full jurisdiction
over its own concerns; the _liberty of prophesying_ was to be indulged
to all the brethren equally, and pastors were to be elected and
dismissed at the pleasure of the majority, in whom he held that all
power ought of right to reside. On account of these opinions Brown was
called before certain ecclesiastical commissioners, who imprisoned him
for contumacy; but the interference of his relation lord Burleigh
procured his release, after which he repaired to Holland, where he
founded several churches and published a book in defence of his system,
in which he strongly inculcated upon his disciples the duty of
separating themselves from what he stated antichristian churches. For
the sole offence of distributing this work, two men were hanged in
Suffolk in 1583; to which extremity of punishment they were subjected as
having impugned the queen's supremacy, which was declared felony by a
late statute now for the first time put in force against protestants.
Brown himself, after his return from Holland, was repeatedly imprisoned,
and, but for the protection of his powerful kinsman might probably have
shared the fate of his two disciples. At length, the terror of a
sentence of excommunication drove him to recant, and joining the
established church he soon obtained preferment. But the Brownist sect
suffered little by the desertion of its founder, whose private
character was far from exemplary: in spite of penal laws, of
persecution, and even of ridicule and contempt, it survived, increased,
and eventually became the model on which the churches not only of the
sect of Independents but also of the two other denominations of English
protestant dissenters remain at the present day constituted.

The death of archbishop Grindal in 1583 afforded the queen the long
desired opportunity of