1637

were found two letters addressed to him, from Osbaldiston, the master of Westminster School, in which Laud was called "the little urchin," and "the little meddling hocus-pocus." It did not appear that Williams had ever divulged these letters, but it was held that the concealment of a libellous letter was a high misdemeanour; he was, therefore, fined £8,000; and he lay in the Tower until released by the Long Parliament. Osbaldiston was condemned to the usual punishments, but he had the good fortune to escape. Lilburne, afterwards the great leader of the Levellers, for dispersing pamphlets against the bishops, was whipped, set in the pillory, and treated with the customary cruelty.

and Burton

Prynne, a lawyer of uncommon erudition, and a zealous Puritan, published a large book, called Histriomastix, full of invectives against the theatre, Prynne, and sustained by a profusion of learning. In the course of the work he Bastwick, alluded to the appearance of courtesans on the Roman stage, and, by a satirical reference in his index, placed all female actors in the class. Six weeks after the publication, the Queen performed in a mask at the court, on which Laud's chaplain, Peter Heylin, whom the archbishop had ordered to read the book, pointed out this passage, and poor Prynne, already obnoxious, was brought before Star Chamber. He was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, to be branded in the forehead, to lose both his ears, to pay £5,000, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. In the gaol he wrote a fresh libel against the prelates-" News from Ipswich," and found two able coadjutors in two fellow prisoners, Dr. Bastwick, a physician, and Burton, the minister of Friday-street Church. When brought before the court, the conduct of these three being that of men who despaired of mercy, was declared contumacious; and, on the 30th of June, 1637, they stood in three pillories, in Old Palace Yard, and then had their ears cut off and their cheeks branded. A great crowd watched these horrible proceedings, "silent," mainly, and looking pale.* Prynne had had his ears sewn on again after the former abscission, so that he lost them now a second time. In addressing the people, he defied all Lambeth (meaning the archbishop and hierarchy) with Rome at the back of it, to argue with him, William Prynne, alone, that these practices were according to law; "and if I fail to prove it," said he, "let them hang my body at the door of that prison there," the Gate-House prison. On which the people gave an ominous shout. The conduct of the crowd, at these barbarous exhibitions, alarmed the archbishop, but only prompted him to employ additional severity. He obtained an order for their imprisonment in separate prisons, at Lancaster, Carnarvon, and Launceston. But their departure from London, and their reception on the road, were marked by signal expressions of popular regard; their friends resorted to them even in those distant places, and they were, therefore, transported to other and less accessible dungeons. Prynne was sent to Mont Orgeuil, in Jersey; Bastwick to the Isles of Scilly; Burton to Cornet Castle, Guernsey. It was the very first act of the Long Parliament to restore these victims of tyranny to their families.

15. Laud's church policy. It was one of the great objects of the bishops and high church clergy to release the church from the bondage of the royal supremacy, and no sooner was Laud appointed to succeed Archbishop Abbot in the primacy (1633), than he set himself vehemently to work to establish the Church to church's claims.* It was essential, in the first place, that be indepenperfect uniformity of doctrine, discipline, and worship state. should be established within the church itself. The means that Laud adopted, though perfectly in keeping with his character and * Carlyle's Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I.,75. † Ibid. See Hume, VI., 306-312.

of the

Persecu

Noncon

CHAP. IX.

principles, were such as could have no other tendency than the nourishment of disaffection. All power was concentrated in the hands of the bishops; the authority of the High Commission Court was increased, and its penalties were made more severe. The prosecutions for nonconformity were revived in their utmost strictness; and all livings in the hands of nonconformists were taken from them. As the people crowded to hear their sermons, they were forbidden to preach; if they travelled from town to town, persecution followed them; they became chaplains tions of the and tutors in private families, but even here their formists. tormentors reached them, and punished their patrons. Thus proscribed everywhere, they escaped to France, Holland, and Germany, glad if they managed to escape without mutilation. Working men, emigrants from those countries, had received charters, granting to them the free exercise of their religion, when they first settled in England; these charters were now withdrawn, and from the diocese of Norwich alone there returned to their mother country 3,000 mechanics. The timid who remained at home, though willing to concede much, were not left unmolested. They must concede all. If they objected to a form, or ceremony, or doctrine, the answer was, that it was so important that they must not depart from it; or it was so unimportant as not to be worth opposition. Those who still objected were brought before the High Commission Court, or the bishops' courts, where they were insulted, and called by every opprobrious epithet.+ The most obnoxious, if not the most indefensible, of these prosecutions, were for refusing to read the Book of Sports, the proclamation so called, lately issued. While the archbishop was thus driving away so many faithful and conscientious men, for not conforming to the liturgy of the church in every minute particular, he was Land's himself "injudiciously, not to say wickedly," intronovations. ducing into the faith and worship of the church innovations, by which "to raise up new victims whom he might oppress." These innovations he made without consulting anybody, except the King, and sometimes he made them by his own sole authority.§ The communion table was railed off, and called an altar; the officiating priest wore embroidered robes; the use of images and pictures was advocated and encouraged, and the doctrine of the real presence and prayers for the dead were inculcated. At the same time the doctrine of the divine right of bishops was made a practical reality. The bishops held their

popish in

* Guizot's Hist. of the Eng. Rev., 50-51. † See the case of Mr. Workman, of Gloucester, Neale's Puritans, II., 340. Hallam, I., 474. § See the account of the consecration of St. Catherine's Church, in Hume, VI., 287-289.

1633-37

ecclesiastical courts no longer in the name of the King, or by virtue of his authority, but in their own name; their own seal and no other was affixed to their acts; and the superintendence of the universities was declared, of right to belong to the primate. While the bishops were thus gradually throwing off temporal restraint, they were encroaching upon civil affairs, and never, even in the old Roman Catholic times, had so many ecclesiastics held seats in the King's council, or occupied the high offices of state. The lawyers rose against these encroachments, but Charles felt too much confidence in Laud to give heed to their remonstrances, so much so indeed, that in 1636 he gave the white staff of lord high treasurer to Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, at the request of the primate. This appointment gave so much satisfaction to Laud that, in the transport of his joy, he wrote in his diary (March 16th, 1686), "Now let the church subsist and sustain her own power herself; all is accomplished for her; I can do no more."

16. Favour shown to Roman Catholics. These severe proceedings of the court and hierarchy became more odious on account of their suspected leaning, or at least notorious indulgence, towards popery. The policy of Charles was to connive at the domestic exercise of the Catholic religion, and to allow recusants to pay compositions for the privilege; he also connived at the great resort of Catholics to the Queen's chapel in Somerset House, where the Romish service was celebrated with so much ostentation as to give great scandal to the people. No one can question the justice of this toleration of Roman Catholics; but, unfortunately for Charles, the bitter persecutions of the Puritans prevents us from ascribing to him any credit for acting upon wise and liberal principles in this matter. In 1634, he had been persuaded by the Queen, and probably by Laud (who tells us in his diary on the 4th, 17th, and 21st of August, 1633, that he had been offered a cardinal's hat), to receive privately, as an accredited agent from Pope Urban VIII., an Italian secular priest named Mission of Panzani, whose ostensible instructions were, to effect a reconciliation of some violent differences which had long subsisted between the regular and secular clergy of his communion. Charles's object, however, was to withdraw the Pope's opposition to the oath of allegiance, which had long placed the Catholic laity in a very invidious condition. But the Pope would make no concession which in any degree tended to impair his temporal authority in England. Panzani, however, was openly received by the Queen, and by Secretary Windebank and Lord Cottington,

Panzani.

CHAP. IX.

open Roman Catholics. These two ministers, together with Montague, Bishop of Chichester, even went so far as to negotiate with him for the purpose of reconciling the English church to that of Rome, and they alleged that both the archbishops, as well as the great majority of the bishops, and many of the clergy, were prepared to acknowledge a spritual supremacy in the Pope.* Whilst these and other negotiations with Romish agents were going on, the church was approximating more and more towards popery in her tenets, and still more in her sentiments and exterior worship. The Duke of Devonshire's daughter having turned Catholic, Laud asked her what reasons had induced her to do this. "I hate to be in a crowd," she replied, "and as I perceive your grace and many others are hastening towards Rome, I want to get there comfortably by myself before you." Besides the innovations before noticed, Laud introduced several others, and he publicly declared that in the disposal of benefices, he should, where the merits were equal, prefer single before married priests. Hall, Bishop of Exeter, was censured for having called the Pope Antichrist; Andrews, of Winchester, openly taught that the fathers of the fifth and sixth centuries were all but infallible; and the English ambassador in France was ordered not to attend the Huguenot church at Charenton, because the Huguenots, having abolished episcopacy, were not a Christian community.‡ The precipitancy with which the Reformation had been condemned. conducted was lamented, and the first reformers were held up to odium; the alienation of the monasteries was branded with the name of sacrilege, and Spelman, an antiquary of eminent learning, was led by bigotry, or subserviency, to compose a wretched tract, called "The History of Sacrilege," with a view to confirm the vulgar superstition, that the possession of those estates entailed a curse on the usurper's posterity. § But the exceeding boldness of the Catholics, and their success in conversions, at last roused the primate to some apprehensions, and he preferred a formal complaint to the King in council against the resort of papists to the Queen's chapel, and the insolence of some active zealots about the court. The Queen never forgave him for this. He also republished, with additions, the account of his celebrated conference with Fisher, the Jesuit, which had occurred many years before, at the desire, and in the presence of, the Countess of Buckingham, the duke's mother. There seems, indeed, to be no doubt of the fact, that Laud retained an unabated hostility to popery, in the midst of all his innovations,

The Re

formation

Laud not a papist.

* Lingard, IX., 315; Hallam, I., 487. † Hume, VI., 287. ‡ Hallam, I., 483. § Ibid, 484.

1638

his object being to gain over the Catholics to his own half-way Protestantism, by concessions to their religion. Evelyn says that the Jesuits of Rome spoke of him as their bitterest enemy.

17. State of the country, and general tone of public opinion at this period. In spite of these acts of oppression and persecution, on the part of the government, the people had grown remarkably prosperous and affluent. Rents were higher, and more land was cultivated; the manufacturing towns and the seaports were more populous and flourishing; the metropolis rapidly increased in size, in spite of all the proclamations against new buildings; and the country houses of the superior gentry were everywhere built on a more magnificent scale. All this was owing to the spirit and industry of the people; the just admiņistration of the laws between man and man, by which the subject was secured from all oppression save that of the crown; the opening of fresh channels of trade in the eastern and western worlds; and, above all, to the long tranquillity of the kingdom. The court had, by its monopolies and arbitrary proclamations, and by the persecutions which drove industrious manufacturers out of the kingdom, done as much injury as it could to the freedom of trade; and the discontents which existed were caused by its misconduct, together with that of the church.* When Laud became archbishop, Clarendon tells us that "the general temper and humour of the kingdom was little inclined to the papist, and less to the Puritan ; neither was there any considerable number of persons of good condition who wished for an alteration of government, or change of discipline and doctrine in the church. The change which became so visible in a few years was caused, he says, by Laud's passionate and imprudent conduct, and the increasing wickedness of Charles's bad government. This discontent was universal. The higher classes manifested it in a distaste for the court, and a freedom of mind hitherto unknown. Those who remained in London, and about the throne, Political held meetings, where, with men of letters, they discussed meetings. public affairs, moral science, and religious problems. Young men, fresh from their travels or the universities, students from the Temple, lawyers, philosophers, and all men of serious and active minds, whose rank and fortune gave them opportunity, here assembled. Such meetings as these had been common ever since the days of Elizabeth. But in her days they were convened under the patronage of the court, and fetes, plays, masques, and literary conversation, were the only pastimes. In the days of * Hallam, I., 500.