In a hierarchy like the Anglican, whose function was to preach passive obedience to the representative of an opulent, but somewhat sluggish oligarchy, there could be no permanent place for idealists. With a Spanish invasion threatening them, an unwarlike ruling class might tolerate sailors like Drake, or priests like Latimer; but, in the long run, their interest lay in purging England of so dangerous an element. The aristocracy sought men who could be bought; but such were of a different type from Latimer, who, when they brought to him the fire, as he stood chained to the stake, “spake in this manner: ‘Be of good comfort, master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’” And so, “after he had stroked his face with his hands, and as it were bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died.” Ecclesiastics like Latimer were apt to be of the mind of Knox, who held “that sick as may and do brydill the inordinatt appetyteis of Princes, cannot be accusit of resistance to the aucthoratie, quhilk is Godis gud ordinance.” And as the interests of landed capital were bound up with the maintenance of the royal prerogative, such men had to be eliminated. After the death of Mary, the danger apprehended by the landed gentry was a Spanish invasion, coupled with a Catholic insurrection, and therefore the policy of statesmen like Cecil was to foster hostility to Rome. Until after the Armada, Anglicans were permitted to go all lengths towards Geneva; even as late as 1595 the “Lambeth Articles” breathed pure Calvinism. But with the opening of a new century, a change set in; as the power of Spain dwindled, rents rose, and the farmers grew restive at the precise moment when men of the heroic temperament could be discarded. Raleigh was sent to the Tower in 1603. According to Thorold Rogers, “good arable land [which] let at less than a shilling an acre in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, was let at 5s. to 6s. at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth,” while rent for pasture doubled.[311] Rising rents, and prices tending to become stationary, caused suffering among the rural population, and with suffering came discontent. This discontent in the country was fomented by restlessness in the towns, for commerce had been strongly stimulated during the reign of Elizabeth by the Spanish wars, and the mercantile element began to rebel against legislation passed in the interest of the favoured class. Suddenly the dissatisfaction found vent; for more than forty years the queen’s ministers had met with no serious opposition in Parliament; in 1601, without warning, their system of monopolies was struck down, and from that day to the revolution of 1688, the House of Commons proved to be unmanageable by the Crown. Even as early as the accession of James, the competition between the aristocracy and their victims had begun to glow with the heat which presages civil war.