Much noise has been made because some court chaplains, during the succeeding reigns, were permitted to preach such doctrines; but there is a great difference between these sermons, and discourses published by authority, avowed by the prince and council, and promulgated to the whole nation.[***] * Strype's Life of Whitgift, book iv.chap.11.Neal, vol.
i.p.

564.
** Strype's Annals, vol.iv.p.

177.
*** Gifford, a clergyman, was suspended in the year 1584, for preaching up a limited obedience to the civil magistrate, Neal, vol.i.p.

435.
So thoroughly were these principles imbibed by the people, during the reigns of Elizabeth and her predecessors, that opposition to them was regarded as the most flagrant sedition; and was not even rewarded by that public praise and approbation, which can alone support men under such dangers and difficulties as attend the resistance of tyrannical authority.[*] It was only during the next generation that the noble principles of liberty took root, and spreading themselves under the shelter of Puritanical absurdities, became fashionable among the people.
It is worth remarking, that the advantage usually ascribed to absolute monarchy, a greater regularity of police, and a more strict execution of the laws, did not attend the former English government, though in many respects it fell under that denomination.

A demonstration of this truth is contained in a judicious paper which is preserved by Strype,[**] and which was written by an eminent justice of peace of Somersetshire, in the year 1596, near the end of the queen's reign; when the authority of that princess may be supposed to be fully corroborated by time, and her maxims of government improved by long practice.
* It is remarkable, that in all the historical plays of Shakspeare, where the manners and characters, and even the transactions of the several reigns, are so exactly copied, there is scarcely any mention of civil liberty, which some pretended historians have imagined to be the object of all the ancient quarrels, insurrections, and civil wars.