ABSTRACT
The lesser clergy gave little trouble. They had expressed their attachment to Rome, transubstantiation, and so forth under Bonner's guidance in convocation's protest early in 1559; a year later, as the bishops' visitors went about administering the oath, few only refused. The exact figures are in dispute: the most likely estimate reckons that some 24°-300 beneficed clergy out of a total of about 8,000 were deprived in the years 1560-6. The government acted without rigour; evasion of the rules was for the moment winked at and the mass permitted to survive in remoter districts. This mercy was, of course, politic but none the less attractive for that; the type of writer who sneers at Elizabeth's moderation because it was calculated and praises Mary's intolerance because it rested on principle either cannot have much experience of persecution or feels sure that he would have been on the right side of the fiery divide. The settlement gradually took root in England. Men could not be sure but that another tum of the wheel might come any day; in the meantime, this moderate and moderately imposed system could be borne by nearly all. The threat to the re-established protestant Church came rather from abroad. The great triumph of Elizabeth's policy in her first few years was the elimination of the Scottish danger.
