paramount importance, and that she had been on the throne but little
over a month when she issued her proclamation inhibiting all preaching
and teaching for the time being. This command was followed by her
Injunctions of the next year, forbidding any to preach unless licenced
by herself, her two archbishops, the diocesan, or her visitors.[157]
As is well known also, no command was more universally enforced. It is
constantly mentioned in the metropolitan or diocesan injunctions or
articles of the period,[158] and the proceedings before the ordinaries
bear witness to its enforcement.[159]

Parish opinion was further sought to be moulded by the reading in
church of various tracts, homilies, monitions, forms of special
prayers, etc., etc., which the wardens were ordered to procure from
time to time, and which are very often met with in their accounts.
These official mediums of information or edification conveyed to the
good people of the parishes some knowledge of the events and politics
of the realm and of the world beyond it. Thus they heard of the
overthrow of the rebels in the North of England (1569), the ravages of
the great earthquake of 1579; the progress of the plague; or, again,
of the struggle of the French Protestants led by Henry of Navarre, the
defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, and so forth.[160]

As food for the more advanced minds of the congregations, ordinaries
saw to it that volumes dealing with the interpretation of the
Scriptures, the polity of Church and State, and the defence of that
polity were provided for every parish church. Such works were Erasmus'
Paraphrases, Bullinger's Decades, Bishop Jewel's works, and other
writings of an apologetic nature. To a certain extent news was also
spread, and grievances were aired, in unofficial broadsides or
ballads. These treated of such subjects as the untimely end of