The reign of this fierce bigot was happily short, and Elizabeth succeeded her. The Protestant religion was re-established, and during her long reign it gained an ascendancy which it has never since lost. Yet Elizabeth possessed the despotic temper of her father. She had a fondness for some of the gaudy rites of Popery.[11] She peremptorily insisted on the use of the clerical vestments, and on a strict conformity to all the other ceremonies of the church. The final separation of the Non-Conformists from the Church of England was thus hastened. Those who had fled from England during the reign of Mary, returned, on the accession of Elizabeth, bringing with them an attachment to the purer rites of the Reformed Churches in Holland, Switzerland and France. Most of these exiles, and of the other Non-Conformists, were, nevertheless, willing to subscribe to the doctrines of the Church of England, and to use the liturgy, if they might be permitted to omit the vestments, the sign of the cross in baptism, and some other ceremonies. They disliked the pretensions of the Bishops, and many of them preferred the Presbyterian or Independent form of Church government. There were, too, some minor points in the liturgy, to which they objected. But had they been treated with Christian kindness, and allowed, in the spirit of mutual forbearance and charity, to neglect those forms, which they considered as sinful or inexpedient, they would, for the most part, have remained in the Episcopal Church, and England would have been spared the manifold crimes and miseries, which issued in a civil war, and drenched her soil with the blood of her King, and of thousands of her bravest sons.