The accession of Edward VI. favoured the establishment of protestantism in England. He died. With Mary papacy was restored, and all the more virulently in consequence of the hold which protestantism had taken in the nation. John Rogers and Bishop Hooper, both Puritans, and many other pious and enlightened men, suffered martyrdom. Burleigh asserts that nearly 400 persons perished by imprisonment and at the stake. The earnest, steadfast, uncompromising spirit of puritanism showed itself early. Whilst Cranmer and others sought by recantations and prayers to escape the pangs of martyrdom, the Puritan made no concession, asked no favour, but died rejoicing to be accounted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. Multitudes of the married clergy and others fled, during this terrible storm of persecution, to the continent of Europe, as many others had already done in the previous reigns; and carrying abroad with them their spirit of inquiry and controversy, they differed in some points, and became split into the two sects of Lutherans and Calvinists. At Frankfort the two parties had a public quarrel; and when the death of Mary allowed the protestant exiles—most of whom during her reign had taken up their abode among the Calvinists of Geneva—to return to their native land, they brought home the bitterness of their contention. With Elizabeth, the Reformation, which had commenced in the reign of Edward VI., was in some measure re-established. Many exiled Puritans returned full of hope, and with yet more inveterate abhorrence of papacy and papistical vestures and ceremonial, to discover, however, that the great queen, the champion of protestantism, was herself only half reformed, and that every bias of her character and inclination was in favour of royal prerogative and established authority. A true daughter of Henry VIII., Elizabeth regarded herself as head of the church, and ruled it with a despotic will. In January, 1563, a convocation of the clergy drew up the Thirty-nine Articles; which, however, were not confirmed by act of parliament till nine years later. But the measure for the continuance of the ceremonies, and of the square cap and the surplice, of which the queen was a resolute supporter, was carried by one vote. The bishops urged the clergy to subscribe the liturgy and the ceremonies as well as the articles; Coverdale, Fox, Gilpin, and others refused, and this was the commencement of Nonconformity.