ABSTRACT
Admittedly, it was difficult to feel enthusiastic about a clergy which included too many ignorant men of doubtful morals. The Elizabethan clergy were a mixed lot. They inherited from preReformation times a burden of poor parishes served by men manifestly unfit in learning and behaviour, not to mention piety, to act as spiritual guides to their congregations; the situation was aggravated by secular raids on Church property, especially the inroads on bishops' lands made by Northumberland and Elizabeth; and their best men, most eager on bettering things, fell foul of the queen because they thought improvement possible only by following continental example. At the top the Church was not ill-served. Elizabeth's bishops, though neither so splendid nor so influential as her father's, included able scholars and administrators in men like Parker and Cox, Aylmer and Sandys. They also included men like Grindal-good but ineffective-and weak fools like Richard Cheyney who allo\ved Gloucester diocese to go to rack and ruin
for twenty years. By and large, however, the Elizabethan episcopate displayed those qualities of mind which have become typical of the bench: sound learning, moderate zeal, honest conscientiousness, and a certain necessary pliability towards the secular authority. Whitgift, a hard vigorous man of few scruples when he saw his way clear, brought a different air with him: he swept along on the prophetic storms of conflict and persecution rather than on the gentle winds of indifference and accommodation which more correctly interpreted the queen's own attitude to the vexed question of uniformity in religion.
