somewhat intemperate partisan of
the puritans, who published on this occasion a work against the
archbishop. To enter into controversy was now no part of the plan of
Whitgift; he held it as a maxim, that it was safer and better for an
established church to silence than to confute; and a book of Calvinistic
discipline having issued from the Cambridge press, he procured a
Star-chamber decree for lessening and limiting the number of presses;
for restraining any man from exercising the trade of a printer without a
special license; and for subjecting all works to the censorship, of the
archbishop or the bishop of London. At the same time he vehemently
declared that he would rather lie in prison all his life, or die, than
grant any indulgence to puritans; and he expressed his wonder, as well
as indignation, that men high in place should countenance the factious
portion of the clergy, low and obscure individuals and not even
considerable by their numbers, against him the second person of the
state. The earl of Leicester was not however to be intimidated from
extending to these conscientious sufferers a protection which was in
many instances effectual: Walsingham occasionally interceded in behalf
of Calvinistic preachers of eminence; and sir Francis Knolles, whose
influence with the queen was considerable, never failed to encounter the
measures of the primate with warm, courageous, and persevering
opposition. Even Burleigh, whom Whitgift had regarded as a friend and
patron and hoped to number among his partisans, could not forbear
expressing to him on various occasions his serious disapprobation of the
rigors now resorted to; nor was he to be silenced by the plea of the
archbishop, that he acted entirely by the command of her majesty. On the
contrary, as instances multiplied daily before his eyes of the tyranny
and persecution exercised, through the extraordinary powers of the
ecclesiastical commission, on ministers of unblemished piety and often
of exemplary usefulness, his remonstrances assumed a bolder tone and
more indignant character: as in the following instance. "But when the
said lord treasurer understood, that two of these ministers, living in
Cambridgeshire, whom for the good report of their modesty and
peaceableness he had a little before recommended unto the archbishop's
favor, were by the archbishop in commission sent to a register in
London, to be strictly examined upon those four and twenty articles
before mention