Northamptonshire. The local churches were treated as self-governing
units, but were controlled by a series of authoritative Classes and
Synods. Having done this, Cartwright called for the establishment of
Presbyterianism as the national church and for the vigorous
suppression of Episcopacy, Separatism, and all variations from his
standard. As he thus struck at the national church, at the Queen's
supremacy, and, seemingly to many Englishmen, at the very roots of
civil government and security, there was a sudden halt in the reform
movement. The impetus which would have probably brought about all the
changes that the great body of Puritans desired was arrested. Richard
Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" swept the ground from under Thomas
Cartwright's "Admonition to Parliament." Hooker's broad and
philosophic reasoning showed that no one system of church-government
was immutable; that all were temporary; and that not upon any man's
interpretation of Scripture, or upon that of any group of men alone,
could the divine ordering of the world, of the church or of the state,
be based. Such order depended upon moral relations, upon social and
political institutions, and changed with times and nations.

The death of Mary Queen of Scots crushed the Catholic party, and the
defeat of the Armada left Elizabeth free to turn her attention to the
phases of the Protestant movement in her own realm. While Browne was
preaching in Norwich, the Queen raised Whitgift to the See of
Canterbury. He was the bitter opponent of all nonconformity, and
immediately the persecution both of Separatists and of Puritans became
severe. Elizabeth, sure at last of her throne and of her position as
head of the Protestant cause in Europe, gave her minister a free
hand. She demanded rigid conformity, but wisely forbore to revive many
of the customs which the Puritans had succeeded in rendering
obsolete. Notwithstanding such modifications, the English liturgy had