_Unwillingness to comply with the established ceremonies._--The repugnance felt by a large part of the protestant clergy to the ceremonies with which Elizabeth would not consent to dispense, showed itself in irregular transgressions of the uniformity prescribed by statute. Some continued to wear the habits, others laid them aside; the communicants received the sacrament sitting, or standing, or kneeling, according to the minister's taste; some baptized in the font, others in a basin; some with the sign of the cross, others without it. The people in London and other towns, siding chiefly with the malcontents, insulted such of the clergy as observed the prescribed order.[281] Many of the bishops readily connived at deviations from ceremonies which they disapproved. Some, who felt little objection to their use, were against imposing them as necessary.[282] And this opinion, which led to very momentous inferences, began so much to prevail, that we soon find the objections to conformity more grounded on the unlawfulness of compulsory regulations in the church prescribed by the civil power, than on any special impropriety in the usages themselves. But this principle, which perhaps the scrupulous party did not yet very fully avow, was altogether incompatible with the supremacy vested in the queen, of which fairest flower of her prerogative she was abundantly tenacious. One thing was evident, that the puritan malcontents were growing every day more numerous, more determined, and more likely to win over the generality of those who sincerely favoured the protestant cause. There were but two lines to be taken; either to relax and modify the regulations which gave offence, or to enforce a more punctual observation of them. It seems to me far more probable that the former course would have prevented a great deal of that mischief which the second manifestly aggravated. For in this early stage the advocates of a simpler ritual had by no means assumed the shape of an embodied faction, whom concessions, it must be owned, are not apt to satisfy, but numbered the most learned and distinguished portion of the hierarchy. Parker stood nearly alone on the other side, but alone more than an equipoise in the balance, through his high station, his judgment in matters of policy, and his knowledge of the queen's disposition. He had possibly reason to apprehend that Elizabeth, irritated by the prevalent humour for alteration, might burst entirely away from the protestant side, or stretch her supremacy to reduce the church into a slavish subjection to her caprice.[283] This might induce a man of his sagacity, who took a far wider view of civil affairs than his brethren, to exert himself according to her peremptory command for universal conformity. But it is not easy to reconcile the whole of his conduct to this supposition; and in the copious memorials of Strype, we find the archbishop rather exciting the queen to rigorous