read over that book. Which passage shows as well how the citizens stood affected to religion (notwithstanding the persecution that had raged among them for some years before) as what hopes the kingdom might entertain of the queen's favour towards it."* This pageant met with a different fate from that in Queen Mary's time, when Gardiner made the painter daub out from his picture the Bible in Henry's hand.

Queen Elizabeth, just before 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 notion, or by the instigation of a wiser man, presented her with a petition, and before a number of courtiers besought her with a loud voice, “That there were four or five prisoners unjustly detained in prison." It was inquired who they were, when he replied, "Those were the four evangelists and the apostle St. Paul, who had been long shut up, in an unknown tongue, as it were in prison; so as that they could not converse with the common people." The queen answered very gravely, 'That it was first best to inquire of them whether they would be set at liberty or no." Her majesty, probably, had little doubt as to the answer which would be obtained from an examination of these extraordinary captives; but by this clever evasion she sought to get rid of difficulties which might attend her avowing thus early the Protestant principle of the free circulation of the Bible. There were Papists in the council of the queen, men who were influential in the former reign; and, with her wonted prudence and policy, she endeavoured

*Nicholls' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 35.

+ Felicities of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 476.

to avoid exciting any opposition on their part. But it may be added that Elizabeth's zeal for the diffusion of the Scriptures was not so great as to render it necessary for her to put any powerful restraint upon her feelings when she uttered her cool reply to the Protestant courtier.

At all events, the Word of God was not bound after Elizabeth's accession. There was certainly no revival or enforcement whatever of the old prohibitory laws against English translations from that time; and in 1559 injunctions, substantially the same as those by Edward VI., were issued by the new queen's authority, directing that every parish church should be provided with a copy of the whole Bible of the largest volume, and of the paraphrases of Erasmus in English; and that all parsons under the degree of A.M. should buy for their own use the New Testament, in Latin and English, with paraphrases.*

The Bible" of the largest volume," or the Great Bible, was the book specified in the injunctions; but very soon after the publication of the Genevan Bible, we find her majesty granting a patent to John Bodley for seven years to print the same, which was virtually giving her sanction to this new version, which soon became a great favourite with the English people. The Great Bible was placed on the church desk; but the Genevan translation was the book preferred by the private reader in the family and the closet. Yet Bodley's patent seems to have been of little avail, for no edition of the Genevan Testament or Bible was published in England till the year 1575. This, perhaps, was owing to Archbishop Parker. He and Grindal, bishop of London, in a letter to Secretary Cecil, in 1565, spoke favourably of the version by the exiles, and recommended that the patent

* Cardwell's Documentary Annals, vol. i. pp. 214, 218.

to Bodley might be extended for twelve years longer; but they told the secretary that "they would take such order with the party in writing, under his hand, that no impression should pass but by their direction, consent, and

advice."* It is probable that Bodley would not consent to the exercise of a control of this sort, and that the archbishop objected to some things in the annotations, which Bodley was not willing to alter or suppress. The archbishop's interference, however, seems to have stood Strype's Life of Parker, p. 207.