their own words to Lord Burleigh, "seemed to impose upon us a confession of guilt in the things we are charged with, and to say otherwise than is truth.. Now therefore we come unto your lordship to stand our good lord that we may have bail without further drawing us upon such conditions until such time as it shall please their Honors to call for us." Of course the Archbishop's conditions were refused.2 1 66 These protracted and but slightly mitigated proceedings against men of long-tried integrity, against men of world-wide reputation as scholars and as Christian ministers, against men too who could call God to witness that their consciences did not accuse them of having violated any law of the land, produced great public indignation; another fact indicating that the Archbishop and his associates were behind their age. Magistrates petitioned against the iniquity of punishing without trial, and of condemning without a hearing; and the Privy Council were angry.' "Tongues and pens were roused against the jurisdiction of the High Commission Court, "..... exclaiming everywhere: That men were unworthily oppressed in the ecclesiastical courts, contrary to the laws of the land: That the queen could not by law grant any such authority, neither could others exercise it though it were granted and that those courts could not urge the party accused with the oath 4 2 Strype's Whitgift, Appendix, p. 153. 3 Ibid., 154. * Marsden, 176. ex officio, forasmuch as no man was bound to accuse himself.” These doctrines were controverted, to be sure, by the professors of the canon law, the minions of priestly rule; but they show none the less the movement of a true, strong, and constitutional current destined to undermine that rule.1 King James of Scotland, also, who had before offered Mr. Cartwright a professorship in the University of St. Andrews,2 pleaded with Queen Elizabeth, in a letter dated July 12th, 1591, that she would "stay any harder usage of Mr. Cartwright and certain other ministers of the Gospel within her realm, 66 3 And and that it might please her to let them be relieved of their present strait." Sir Francis Knollys wrote to the Lord Treasurer in January, 1591-2: "I do marvel how her Majesty can be persuaded that she is in as much danger of such as are called Puritans, as she is of Papists. yet her Majesty cannot be ignorant that the Puritans are not able to change the government of the clergy, but only by petition at her Majesty's hands. And yet her Majesty cannot do it; but she must call a Parliament for it, and no Act can pass thereof unless her Majesty shall give her royal assent thereto. And as touching their seditious going about the same, if the bishops, or my Lord Chancellor, or any for them, could have proved de facto, that Cartwright and his fellow-prisoners had gone about any such matter seditiously, then Cartwright and his followers had been hanged before this time. But her Majesty must keep a form of 1 Camden, 454, 455. 2 Brook, II. 147. * Fuller, Book IX. p. 203. Heylin's Presb., Book IX. Sec. 19. justice, as well against Puritans as any other subjects, so that they may be tried in time convenient, whether they be suspected for sedition or treason, or whatever name you shall give unto it, being Puritanism or otherwise." 1 In February, some of the doctors of the University of Cambridge also wrote to the Lord Treasurer in behalf of "divers of the true friends and lovers of the Gospel, who, though carrying themselves in dutiful and peaceable sort, had tasted in some measure of more hard severity than many known Papists. Our intent," said they, "is not to commend unto your lordship's care any causes or persons in particular, or to move anything in general, otherwise than may stand with the present state established and the peace of our Jerusalem; but only that it may please your lordship to add to your godly. zeal and wise care the furthering, relieving, and comforting the true and peaceable professors of the Gospel, as your wisdom best knoweth how."2 Lord Burleigh himself was excited about these matters, and was "bold to tell her Majesty that he thought the bishops took a very ill and unadvised Notwithstanding these many remonstrances, we do not find that any further relief was given either to Mr. Cartwright and "his fellows for the same cause," or to the despised Brownists, who were then like sufferers, and whose cases were also included. The queen, imagining herself " in as much danger of the Puritans as she was of the Papists," 1 1 Wright, II. 417. 2 3 Marsden. 175. Strype's Whitgift, Appendix, Book IV. No. VII. and conceiving that "in this business her authority was shot at through the bishops' sides, . . . . . main tained the ecclesiastical jurisdiction inviolate against all opposers. Mr. Cartwright and his brethren remained, without a gleam of hope, in their respective prisons. 1 Camden, 455. Heylin's Presb., Book IX. Sec. 318. CHAPTER XII. PURITANS IN THE SECULAR COURTS. ROBERT CAWDREY ARRAIGNED, DEPRIVED, AND DEPOSED. LORD BURLEIGH 1590-1592. THE strife of religious parties was thickening. Stern, jealous, Procustean ecclesiasticism, with its anathemas, its jailers, its secret tortures, and its hangmen, stood arrayed against high-minded but loyal Puritanism, which had no earthly might but remonstrance and endurance. Yet this despised might like the water which trickles beneath a sandy foundation, and which no daubing with untempered mortar can check was undermining the towering structure whose very pressure had forced |