'Igu)e tht/e Books
j for the foi^iiittg of a, CoWtge in this Coloay"

Gift of

ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

BY THE
Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., P.P.
A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL
COMMENTARY ON
ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL
(IN " THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY").
Third Edition, i?ifost Svo, price 12s.
" We feel heartily that the book will bring credit to English
scKolarship, and that in its carefulness, its sobriety of tone, its
thoughtfulness, its reverence, it will contribute to a stronger
faith in the essential trustworthiness of the Gospel record." —
"A notable production, and will prove invaluable to the
clergyman. " — A THEN./EUM,
"This seems to be the edition of St. Luke we have waited
for SO long. It will take its place without disparagement beside
Dr. Driver's 'Deuteronomy,' and Dr. Sanday's 'Romans.'
These works have made the name of the ' Critical Commentary '
a household word, not in our country onl^'-, even on the
Continent also. Where they have gone Dr. Plummer will
follow, and we dare predict as favourable a reception." —
Expository Times.
Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street.

ENGLISH
CHURCH HISTORY
From the Death of Archbishop Parker
to the Death of King Charles I.
FOUR LECTURES
BY THE
Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., D.D.
FORMERLY FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
AND MASTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM

Magnum nunc secula nostra
Venturi discrimen habent. Lucan; Phan, iv. 191.

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1904

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FOR
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m^

V 1 ":'

PREFACE.

Two things need to be stated respecting these four
lectures: (1) they were not written with a view to
publication ; (2) they were not written with the
expectation of supplying anything that was very
original. (1) The lectures were written to excite the
interest, or refresh the memories, of those who
asked for them and came to listen to them ; in the
hope that some might thereby be induced to begin,
or return to, independent study of the momentous
period in which the lectures attempt to point out
some leading features. They were not produced
with the anticipation of making a permanent
addition to the abundant literature on the subject :
and when the project of publishing them was first
urged upon the lecturer by some of those who
heard him, he put aside the proposal on the ground
that the lectures were probably of too ephemeral
a character to merit preservation after they had
served their immediate purpose. But when the
request for publication became frequent, and when
he was assured by those whose judgment weighed

vi PREFACE
much with him, that the lectures, if printed, would
be of real use, both to those who heard them and
to many more who had not done so, he was shaken
in this opinion. And when the clergy who attended
the Summer School of Theology at Durham in July
1904 made a formal request for the publication of
these four studies in English Church History, he
was induced to go so far as to consult his old
friends, Messrs. T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh, as to
what might be done with prudence. Their reply
was so encouraging that he began to prepare the
lectures for publication. In doing so he has
thought it best to leave them almost unaltered.
Their form shows that they were meant for vivd
voce delivery and were not composed as historical
disquisitions. Hence the frequent use of italics,
indicating what was underlined for emphasis in
reading aloud. An attempt to abolish this form
would rob them of their primitive character, without
increasing their value ; they would cease to be
lectures, but would not become anything better.
The real difference between the lectures as published
and as delivered, is that a certain number of para
graphs, which had to be abbreviated or omitted in
delivery, in order to keep within the limits of an
hour, are now given in full, and that the notes have
been increased.
(2) The writer does not suppose that he has
much that is original to offer. It is true that, in
preparing this volume, original and contemporaneous
sources have to a considerable extent been used ;

PREFACE vii
and it is possible that some of the points urged
have not been urged before, or at least not in the
same manner. But, in the main, these lectures are
based upon, and in some particulars are directly
derived from, modern works which are accessible to
every one. A list of these is given below, and the
writer's debt to some of them is large. He believes
that it is largest in the case of two historians whom
he had the happiness of knowing, — Bishop Creighton
and Leopold von Eanke. He took part with the
former and four others in translating the History
of England of the latter into English. Mr. W. H.
Hutton's book was also very useful for the reign of
Charles i. What should have been an earlier volume
in the same series (Mr. W. H. Frere on Elizabeth
and James i.) has been delayed in publication, and
the lecturer had no opportunity of consulting it.
In treating of a period about which Englishmen
feel so strongly as the great religious and political
struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
it is perhaps impossible to be wholly impartial.
But it is possible to try to be fair ; and the attempt
has been made in these lectures. We should have
much less disputing, and our controversies would be
much more fruitful, if each side would resolutely
endeavour to see the matter in dispute from the
point of view of the other side, before giving
utterance to severe criticisms and sweeping con
demnations. And there is another peril with regard to this
period from which it is difficult wholly to escape.

viii PREFACE
It may easily be thought by some readers that the
amount of secular history that is touched upon in
lectures which profess to deal with English Church
History is rather large. But, throughout this whole
period, ecclesiastical and political causes and effects
are inextricably intertwined, and it is impossible
to make either the religious or the secular side
of the history intelligible, without saying a great
deal about the other. Nevertheless, it is only too
possible that in this case the right proportion
between the two has not always been maintained.
The difficulty of knowing precisely what to omit,
when so much had of necessity to be omitted, has
throughout been very considerable.
The trouble of preparing this little volume for
pubhcation will be amply repaid, if it induces a few
more people to become acquainted with some of the
books which were used in producing it ; and per
haps with some of the far larger number, which
ought to have been employed, but which, owing to
the writer's want of knowledge or of opportunity,
were left unused. Some idea of the size of the
latter class may be obtained by a glance at the
cruelly copious Bibliography in the first two
volumes of the Camhridge Modern History.
The following are the principal modern works
that have been used : —
Anon., The Life and Correspondence of Lord Bacon.
Aeber, E., An English Garner, vol. viii.
Burnet, G., History of his own Time, vol. i.
Bderows, Montagu, Commentaries on the History of Encjkmd.

PREFACE ix
Cambridge Modern History, vols. i. and ii.
Carlyle, T., Oliver Cromioell's Letters and Speeches.
Cazenove, j. G., Some Aspects of the Eeformation.
Church, R. W., Bacon.
Spenser.
Church Quarterly Eeview.
Collins, W. E., The Northern Eebellion. Queen Elizabeth's
Defence.
Crei&hton, M., The Age of Elizabeth (Epoolis of Mod. Hist.).
Queen Elizabeth.
Historical Lectures and Addresses.
Dictionary of National Biography.
Dollinger, I., Kleinere Schriften.
Historical and Literary Addresses.
Dollinger und Reusch, Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in
der romisch-Jcatholischen Kirche.
Encyclopedia Britannica.
Feaeenside, C. S., History of England from 1485 to 1603.
Freeman, E. A., Growth of the English Constitution.
Froude, J. A., History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to
the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, vols. ix. to xii.
Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of
James I.
The Puritan Eevolution (Epochs of Mod.
Hist.).
Gardiner and Bullinger, Introduction to the Study of Etiglish
History.
Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church
History.
Green, J. E., History of the English People.
Griesinger, T., The Jesuits.
Hallam, H., Constitutional History of England, vols. i. and ii.
Introduction to the Literature of Europe.
Hausser, L., Tlie Period of the Eeformation.
Hook, W. F., Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury.
Hutton, W. H., The EngUsh Church from the Accession of
Charles I. to the Death of Queen Anne.

X PREFACE
Lingard, J., History of England, vols. vi. to -sdii.
Macaulay, T., History of England, vol. i.
Essays.
Macowee, F., Constitutional History of the Church of England.
Maesden, j. B., History of the Early Puritans.
Morley, J., Oliver Cromwell.
Mosheim, J. L., Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, vol. iii.
MozLEY, J.B., Essays on Strafford, Laud, and Cromv:ell.
Oxenham, H. N., Studies in Ecclesiastical History and Bio
graphy.
Pattison, Mark, Isaac Casaubon.
Peeey, G. G., History of the Eeformation in England (Epochs
of Church History).
Ranke, L., History of England, vols. i. and ii.
Reusch, F. H., Beitrdge zur Geschichte des Jesuitenordens.
Seebohm, F., The Era of the Protestant Revolution (Epochs of
Mod. Hist.).
Shaw, W. A., History of the English Church during the Civil
Wars.
Smith, Goldwin, Three English Stcdesmen.
Taswell-Langmead, T. P., English Constitutional History.
White, F. 0., Lives ofthe Elizabethan Bishops.
The lectures were originally asked for by the
Exeter Diocesan Church Eeading Society, and have
been delivered at several centres in Devonshire
during the spring and autumn of 1904, as well as
at Durham in the summer. The second, third, and
fourth were also delivered, at the request of the
Central Society of Sacred Study, at Bristol.
ALFRED PLUMMER.
BiDEFORD, November 1904.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Preface  v
I. Oountee-Refoemation and Ultea-Refoema-
tion  1
II. The Wise Fool in Church and State . . 41
III. Development of Despotism in Chuech and
State  8.3
IV. Downfall of Episcopacy and Monarchy . 123
Appendix  165
Chronological Table  171
Index  175

I.
I575-I603.
COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
ULTRA-REFORMATION.

"Men must beware, that in the procuring or muniting of
religious unity, they do not dissolve and deface the laws of charity
and of human society. There be two swords among Christians,
the spiritual and temporal ; and both have their due office and
place in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up
the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it ; that
is to propagate religion by wars or by sanguinary persecutions to
force consciences ; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy,
or intermixture of practice against the state ... It was great
blasphemy when the devil said, / loiU ascend and he like the
Highest; but it is greater blasphemy to personate God, and bring
Him in saying, / will descend and he like the prince of darkness :
and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend to
the cruel and execrable actions of murdering princes, butchery of
people, and subversion of states and governments?"
Bacon, Essays ; Of Unity in Religion.

I.
1575-1603.
COUNTER-EEFOEMATION AND ULTEA-
EEFOEMATION.
The English Eeformation must have come, whatever
sovereigns had ruled in England and whatever their
personal deskes might have been. Must have come,
because —
1. For a very long time the nation had felt that
Roman claims were incompatible with English in
terests and Enghsh rights.
2. Much of Eoman doctrine was found to be
detrimental to character and out of harmony with
Scripture and primitive teaching.
3. The low standard of life which prevailed in the
monasteries had long been a scandal. That so much
wealth should be so abused shocked both reason
and conscience.
4. The Revival of Letters in some ways told
against religion generally : it told with disintegrat
ing force against all rehgious teaching and practice
which had its strength in ignorance rather than in
enlightenment. Other reasons might be suggested,

4 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
arising out of social and economical conditions ; but
these four are sufficient to justify the belief that
in 1509 the English Reformation was inevitable.
When Archbishop Parker died in 1575,^ the
main points in the Eeformation of the Enghsh
Church had been secured.
1. The authority of thc Sec of Rome over the
Church of England had been finally cast off.
2. The clergy were allowed to marry.
3. Auricular confession ceased to be compulsory.
4. A simple Frayer Rook in the English language
had taken the place of the complicated Latin
service-books. 5. By means of the Prayer Book, the Articles,
and the Homilies, considerable changes had been
made in doctrine. All that was contrary to Scrip
ture had been discarded, together with a great deal
which was certainly not essential, was open to ques
tion, and had in some cases produced grave abuse ;
but all that was Scriptural and much that was
primitive had been retained.
The experience of the coming years was to show
whether this necessary (and on the whole) moderate
Reformation could he maintained in the face of the
persistent assaults of Romanism and Puritanism ;
and, supposing that it were maintained, whether the
details which still required settlement would be
settled in the direction of Catholicism or of Calvinism.
^ Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, and Bullinger, the Zurich
reformer, died in the same year, 1575 ; Pilkington of Durham,
Srd January 1576. Jewel of Salisbury had died in 1571.

ULTRA-REFORMATION 5
It was not to be expected that either the Pope,
with his intractable ally, Philip of Spain, or the
Puritans, with their supporters on the Continent,
would allow Elizabeth and the English Church to
determine these questions for themselves. Rome
had by no means abandoned all hope of winning
back the English nation to her allegiance ; and the
Puritans, both inside and outside the Church of
England, were agreed that a clean sweep must be
made of nearly everything that had been retained,
before a satisfactory Eeformation could be reached.
It is the contest hetween these two forces, whicii we
may call Counter -Reformation and Ultra-Reforma
tion, and the way in which Elizabeth defeated the
attacks of both of them, that we now have to
consider; and we must endeavour to concentrate
our attention upon them, while we pass by much
tliat is attractive and important. But it is impossible
to understand either movement, without taking ac
count of one who is the most romantic and fas
cinating personage in the reign of Ehzabeth, Mary
Stuart, Queen of Scots.
The Counter-Reformation may he looked at from
two different points of view. — On the one hand, it
was an attempt to satisfy the conscience of Christen
dom by reforming some of the crying abuses which
had led to the Protestant revolt : such reforms
might at any rate prevent the revolt from going
further. On the other hand, it was an attempt to win
back again to the Papacy those princes and peoples

6 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
which had thrown off the jurisdiction of Eome.
The one was, iu the main, a conciliatory effort, and
to describe its successes and failures would be to
write the history of the Council of Trent. The
other was wholly an aggressive effort ; and it is with
this aggressive side of the Counter - Eeformation
that we have to do.
The Counter-Eeformation, in its persistent and
ferocious assault upon Christian liberty in general,
and upon Protestantism in particular, had tivo great
instrwments — the Inquisition, which had been in
existence since the thirteenth century, and the
Company of the Jesuits, which was instituted in a
very humble way in 1540, but became very flour
ishing about the time of the excommunication of
Elizabeth by Pius v. in 1570. To these two should
perhaps be added a third, the Index of Prohibited
Boohs. These are the three " bad angels " which the
Church of Eome sent out to fight its battle against
Christian freedom in thought and speech and action.
We may ignore the Inquisition and the Index,
which have had little influence in England ; but we
must take account of the Jesuits.
The Company of the Jesuits has been described as
" a naked sword, whose hilt is at Eome, and whose
point is everywhere." The sword is rightly called
" naked." It is never sheathed, and has never
ceased to fight. It has won some notable victories.
But a strange fatality attends its triumphs. They
ai'c Cadmean victories, equivalent to defeats. The
Jesuits have won immense influence in various

ULTRA-REFORMATION 7
governments all over the world. And their success
has led to political catastrophes, which have recoiled
upon the schemers, whose policy prepared the way
for them. This has been the case in Spain, now
reduced to a fifth-rate power, after having been
almost supreme in Europe ; in England, where
Roman Cathohcs are specially excluded from suc
cession to the throne ; and in the States of the
Church, which have been lost to the Papacy, probably
for ever. In education and in society the result
has been the same. In France, in the middle of
the seventeenth century, the Jesuits were the chief
trainers of the educated classes, and were also the
confessors of the king. And, long before the century
was over, France was in the hands of Deistical and
Atheistical revolutionists, from whose infiuence she
has never recovered. If one were asked to single
out the main cause of the appalling irrehgion which
now desolates French society, one could hardly come
nearer to the truth than by naming Jesuit infiuence
on the court of Louis xiv. In missionary work we
see the same result : abundance of converts, but no
Christian Church established. Where are the once
fiourishing Jesuit missions in Japan, in China, in
Paraguay ? And the wrecks of Jesuit missions,
where they do survive, as in India, have not helped
the other Christian missions which have followed
them. But the most signal instance of this strange
characteristic, of winning successes which are sure
forerunners of disaster, is found in the estimate of

8 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
themselves which they have everywhere produced.
They have been able to guide kings and statesmen,
to instruct the young, to build and fill churches, to
make recruits ; but they have not been able to win
confidence and affection. They have invariably
provoked mistrust and dislike, pretty nearly in pro
portion to their success. Unknown societies are
often distrusted and disliked, because people are
ignorant of their character and aims. As these
become known, suspicion and opposition die out.
But, in the case of this strange Society, it is where
people have had most experience of its character,
aims, and methods, that the distrust and the dislike
are most profound ; and this is quite as true of
Roman Catholic countries as of Protestant states.
The Jesuits have often inspired wonder and ad
miration ; but they have seldom won trust or
love. The Jesuits aimed at getting control of Europe by
supplying it with schools, with preachers, with con
fessors, with diplomatists, with men of public influ
ence. Their agents worked with zeal and cleverness,
and with very large measure of success. But, in
the long run, hterature and art, government and
politics, religion and morality, have all been depraved
by their activity. By preferring effect to reality
they have misled the taste, and by preferring subtle
ties to plain principles they have confused the con
sciences, of all those whom they have influenced.
Jesuit style in architecture and literature means
showiness and insipidity, just as Jesuit casuistry in

ULTRA-REFORMATION 9
morals and diplomacy means systematic perversion
of the first principles of right and honour.^
The Society of the Jesuits was founded to defeat
Protestantism. — While Protestantism sacrificed every
thing to the individual conscience, the Jesuits treated
the individual conscience with contempt. Every
Jesuit surrendered himself " like a corpse " to his
superior. Instead of his own will, or judgment, or
conscience, he accepted, without question, the com
mands of another. He was to combat the extra
vagance of individual religion by the extravagance
of self-effacement. And yet, absolutely opposed as
the Jesuits were to the Puritans both in general
principles and in details of doctrine and worship,
there was this fundamental resemblance between
the two. Both were prepared to sacrifice the rights
and interests of society to their own view of religious
truth. By neither of them were the tastes, customs,
relationships, or affections of other men thought
worthy of any consideration, when they stood iu
the way of their own special aims. Each was ready
to ride roughshod over the minds and hearts of men
to the goal which had been chosen. In this respect
Ignatius Loyola was neither more nor less relentless
than John Calvin or John Knox.
' " What is wholly incompatible with the nature of the Jesuit
system is an element of independence. . . . Independence of char
acter, of mind, of research, are objects hateful to the Society, and
in lieu of these it has evolved a system of pseudo-culture, studded
with the counterfeits of science— playthings adapted to natures that
are being carefully nursed to grow up with stunted strength"
(Cartwright, The Jesuits : tlieir Constitution and Teaching, p. 226).

10 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
We must look back a little in order to see the
precise point at which this stream of influence begins
to make itself felt in England under Elizabeth.^
In 1569 there had been a rising in the North of
England, in which the Percies, Cliffords, and Nevilles
took up arms against the Queen. This was a re
ligious movement within the Idngdom. It aimed at
restoring the old religion. It did not aim at deposing
Elizabeth, but only at getting her to recognize the
Eoman Catholic Mary of Scots as her successor.
It was easily put down, after a momentary revival
of the Mass in Dm-ham Cathedral ; but how many
people secretly sympathized with it ? No one knew
then, or knows now.^ In the masterly address
which Elizabeth forthwith issued to her subjects,
she answered by anticipation the Bull Regnans in
excelsis, in which Pius v. excommunicated Elizabeth
and released her subjects from their allegiance to her ;
the Bull says, " We likewise forbid her barons and
peoples henceforth to obey this woman's commands
and laws, under pain of excommunication." Con
sequently English Eomanists had forthwith to choose
between the Queen and the Pope. It was now im
possible to be loyal to both. It is not necessary

' The influence is plainly alluded to in Spenser's Faery
(i. ii.), when Archimago (Hypocrisy or Jesuit wiles) with Duessa
(the Church of Rome or Mary of Scots) gets the better of the Eed
Cross knight for a time.
^ Contemporary ballads seem to show that in the South there
was not much sympathy. In modern poetry the sufferings of
those who took part in this hapless rebellion are commemorated in
Wordsworth's White Doe of Hylstona.

ULTRA -REFORMATION 11
for Enghshmen to insist upon the folly of this step :
that has been done for us already by a later Pope.
Urban viu. said, " We know that we may declare
Protestants excommunicate, as Pius v. declared
Queen Elizabeth, and before him Clement vil. the
king of England, Henry vm. But with what suc
cess ? The whole world can tell ; we yet bewail it
in tears of blood."
Then came Cecil's discovery of the Ridolfi Plot,
which ended in the Duke of Norfolk being sent
to the scaffold, 2nd June 1572. While the
Northern rebellion was an attempt by means of
internal forces to bring about a return to Roman
ism, the Ridolfi Plot was an attempt to employ the
external forces of Rome (in Spain and the Netherlands)
to restore Romanism in England. Both failed.
Less than three months later, Englishmen were
stricken with horror and indignation at the Massacre
of St. Bartholometv. Elizabeth could not afford to
break the alliance recently made with France ; but
she gratified national feeling by a dramatic rebuke
to the representative of the guilty government.
The French ambassador had asked for an interview.
She received him at Woodstock, with her Council
around her, all in deep mourning. The ambassador
entered in dead silence, and his excuses met with
no response. Elizabeth said that she could not
send an embassy to a country in which life was
not safe. Burghley added that the massacre was
the most horrible crime that had been committed
since the Crucifixion.

12 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
That devout but sanguinary bigot, Fitts v., had
died the previous May; and perhaps he knew
nothing of the preparations for the massacre.^ But
his successor, Gregory XIII., went in procession to
the Church of St. Louis in Rome to return thanks
to God for it ; and he sent a nuncio to France to
congratulate the King.
In 1583, Wm. Cecil wrote from Paris to his
grandfather, Lord Burghley, " On St. Bartholomew's
Day we had here solemn Processions and other
tokens of triumph and joy, in remembrance of the
slaughter committed this time eleven years past.
But I doubt they will not so triumph at the Day
of Judgment."Gregory xill. has immortalized himself by the
reform of the Calendar : for this, all Europe owes
him thank's. It owes him less gratitude for his
ceaseless efforts to suppress Protestantism and his
enthusiastic supiport of the Jesuits, for whom, with
wrong-headed munificence, he founded no less than
two-and-twenty colleges. The English College at
Douai was founded in 1568 by Dr. Wm. Allen,
formerly Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford. A
' Dean Church says of Pius v. : " Devout and self-denying as a
saint, fierce and inflexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and
uncompromising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruthless
and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on re-establish
ing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but by the sword and by
the stake, the unity of Christendom and of its belief. He broke
through the temporizing caution of his predecessors by the Bull ot
Deposition against Elizabeth in 1570. And though dead, his
spirit was paramount in the slaughter of St. Bartholomew in
1512" (Spenser, p. 10).

ULTRA-REFORMATION 1 3
little later, another college was founded at Rome
by Gregory, " to sow the seeds of the Eomish religion
in Eugland. Whereupon they were called Semin
aries," as Camden says. From 1576 onwards,
seminary priests, trained on the Continent, began
to pour into Englaud, and in 1579 Allen went
to Eome to consult Gregory as to the best means
of winning back England to the Holy See. In
June 1580 the Jesuit leaders, Far sons and Campian,
landed at Pover.^ Loyola, who had been dead for
twenty-five years, had admitted one Englishman
to the Society, and perhaps twenty more had been
admitted since his death ; but hitherto nearly all
of them had worked abroad. Parsons and Campian
were men of mark, each representing a different
element in Eoman methods of activity. Parsons,
who landed first, was a consummate schemer,
Campian a simple - minded devotee. Campian's
winning manners and persuasive eloquence proved
•^ A writer in the Edinburgh Beview of April 1891 has stated
that, previous to 1580, " no Jesuit had ever been seen in England."
This is not quite correct. Loyola had sent Pasquier Brouet and
another to England in 1541. But they knew no English and were
therefore helpless, and they soon left. Jasper Heywood, ex-Fellow
of All Souls', returned to England after becoming a Jesuit, but he
seems to have accomplished very little. Like Heywood, Parsons
(Balliol) and Campian (St. John's) were Oxford graduates, and
Parsons had been Fellow and Chaplain. When Elizabeth visited
Oxford in 1566, Campian took part in the disputations in Natural
Philosophy, Wednesday 4th September, and his speech is still
preserved. Although not the first Jesuits to visit England,
Parsons and Campian were the first to produce much effect, and
it was largely owing to them that Eomanism in England did not
quietly die out. See Mosheim, iii. 48, 49.

14 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
very attractive : he was listened to by multitudes ;
and the police always arrived too late. Several of
the nobility were won over, and there was general
alarm. Hitherto Romanists had frequently attended the
reformed services, hoping in time to get something
more to their mind ; and it was this lax conformity
of his co-religionists which had moved Allen to
found the college at Douai. The seminarists did
their best to stop this, and to discourage all in
timacy with Protestants. The government was
surprised to find how rapidly " recusants " — that is,
persons who refused to attend public worship —
were increasing. Folemical literature of a virulent
hind was issued from secret printing-presses : in it,
Elizabeth was denounced as illegitimate and a
usurper; "with 16,000 men she could be over
thrown, for two-thirds of the nation were still
Eoman at heart." Here is a specimen taken from
the Appeal of the Jesuit Sanders to the Catholic
Lords and Gentlemen of Ireland, 20 th February
1580:— " What mean you, I say, to be at so great
charges, to take so great pains, and to put your
selves in so horrible danger of body and soul for
a wicked Woman, neither begotten in true wedlock
nor esteeming her Christendom, and therefore de
prived by the Vicar of Christ, her and your lawful
judge ? . . . See you not that she is such a shame
ful reproach to the royal Crown, that whoso is
indeed a friend to the Crown should so much the

ULTRA-REFORMATION 15
more hasten to dispossess her of the same ? " It
may be mentioned in passing that the Jesuit attack
on Ireland failed utterly, and that the attach on
Scotland failed also; we must confine our attention
to what took place in England.
The Jesuits and other Roman incendiaries did Jiot
stop at preaching rebellion. Writings were dis
seminated calling on the faithful to imitate the
example of Judith against this female Holofernes.^
The assassination of the Queen was so persistently
suggested, that at last John Somerville, a young
enthusiast from Warwickshire, went to London in
October 1583 to kill Elizabeth. He l^etrayed
himself, and was sent to the Tower. Next month
Francis Throgmorton was executed for scheming to
bring over the Duke of Guise with an army, put
Elizabeth to death, and set Mary Stuart on the
throne. Ehzabeth's foes were implacable, and their re
sources seemed to be inexhaustible. True that all
their attempts had failed ; that the nation was
becoming gradually more united, and the Queen
1 That the attempts to murder Elizabeth had high ecclesiastical
sanction has been shown by Eeusch {Beitrdge zur Oescli. des
Jesuitenordens, pp. 254-263) from The Letters and Memorials of
William Cardinal Allen (1582-1594), edited bythe Fathers ofthe
London Oratory ; with an historical introduction by Th. Fr. Knox,
Priest of the same Congregation. London, 1882. See also Dol
linger und Eeusch, Die Selbshiographie des Cardinals Bellarmin,
pp. 306, 307. In the Beitrdge is abundant evidence as to Jesuit
teaching respecting the kdling of tyrants and heretics. A very
true Report of the apprehension and taking of that arch-Papist
Campion (1581) is reprinted in Arber's English Garner, viii.

16 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
becoming more firmly fixed in its affections, and
therefore on the throne. Nevertheless, the un
flagging persistency of her foes was depressing
to her Council, if not to herself ; and the year
1584 opened in much gloom. July 10th, William
the Silent, whose life had already been attempted
six times, loas ctssassinated, and the United Provinces,
in their revolt against the Eoman Catholic tyranny
of Spain, were left without a leader. If the Prince
of Parma succeeded in putting down the revolt,
his army of Spanish veterans would be free to
invade England. And if William of Orange, after
six escapes, had at last fallen a victim to the
assassin, what chance had Elizabeth of ultimate
escape ? Her behaviour at this crisis was really
noble. Perhaps she felt no fear : she certainly
behaved with absolute fearlessness. She was as
easy of access as ever, and absolutely refused to
retire from publicity. She said that she was not
going to be a prisoner in her own kingdom. She
would live among her people and trust them to
guard her person. And her courage saved her at
least once. We know of one assassin, Parry, who
confessed that his heart failed him when he came
into her presence and saw her intrepid behaviour.
But statesmen were obhged to treat the matter
differently ; and we must now look at the measures
which were taken to defeat and put down these
attempts at rebellion, foreign invasion and assassina
tion, all of them undertaken in the name of religion
and in the interests of the Eoman See.

ULTRA-REFORMATION 17
In the spring of 1581, Elizabeth's Fourth Parlia
ment re-enacted many of the provisions against recon
ciliation with Rome made in 1563, by which it was
made high treason to make converts, or aid or con
ceal those who did so. (1) A fine of 100 marks
and a year's imprisonment for hearing Mass, and a
fine of 200 marks and a year's imprisonment for
saying Mass. (2) A fine of £20 a month for adults
who were absent from Church services. (3) A
year's imprisonment for teaching without a Ucence
from the Ordinary, and a fine of £10 for employing
unhcensed teachers.
It is saddening to contrast such legislation as this
with the policy shetched out by Elizabeth in her grand
address to the nation after the Northern rebellion
of 1569. Then she had said, " We have no meaning
to allow that our subjects be molested either by
examination or inquisition in any matter of faith,
so long as they profess the Christian faith, not
gainsaying the authority of Holy Scripture and of
the articles of our faith contained in the Creeds,
Apostolic and Catholic ; or in any matter of cere
monies, so long as they shall, in their outward
conversation, show themselves quiet and conform
able, and not manifestly repugnant to laws of our
realm, estabhshed for frequentation of Divine service
in the ordinary Churches." But the Pope was to
blame for mixing up his spiritual claims with tem
poral claims ancl trying to secure submission by
conspiracy and violence. His invasion of England
by secret agents inciting to rebellion and murder

18 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
led inevitably to stern measures of repression. It
was impossible to treat such a movement as purely
religious, and allow it to claim toleration on the plea
of liberty of conscience. The Pope had made it
impossible for a Protestant government to grant liberty
of preaching to Roman Catholics} He did not con
tent himself with claiming that Eomanists should
have equal rights with Protestants : he demanded
that all who refused his religion and rule should be
handed over to destruction. The future of England
was at stake ; for the success of the Roman propa
ganda meant the rule of Mary Stuart under the
selfish control of the Pope, instead of the rule of
Elizabeth, resting on the goodwill of her subjects
and directed towards the well-being of the nation.
It was the whole difference between mental and
political servitude and mental aud political freedom.
The Roman missionaries were imprisoned and
executed, not because they taught a creed believed
to be false, but because they made men traitors to
the State? It is easier to condemn the persecuting
legislation than to suggest an alternative that would
have been effectual.
And it is not fair to treat the persecution of
1 See the speech of Sir Walter Mildmay, January 1581 (Hansard,
P.E.,i. pp. 813 ff.), and Paton's comments (British History and
Papal Claims, i. pp. 102 ff.).
" As Walsingham wrote to a correspondent in France; "Cases
of conscience, when they exceed their bounds and grow to be matter
of faction, lose their nature ; and sovereign princes ought distinctly
to punish their practices and contempt, though coloured with the
pretence of conscience and religion."

ULTRA-REFORMATION 19
Romanists under Elizabeth as equal to the 'persecu
tion of Protestants wilder Philip and Mary. Mary's
bloody work was the work of four years, and Eliza
beth reigned for forty -five. Of the 183 Roman
Catholics who suffered under EUzabeth, perhaps
every one could have saved his life by explicitly
denying the right of the Pope to depose the Queen :
tJiey were not required to abjure their religion.
Nothing short of an abjuration of Protestantism
and submission to Eome would have saved any
of the three hundred and odd martyrs who were
burned under Mary. But persecution, however
grievously provoked, is ugly work ; and in some
of the prosecutions under Elizabeth justice was
violated and needless cruelty was inflicted. The
history of the sixteenth century teems with cruelty ccnd
injustice ; and the English Eeformation is one of
those movements of which it is rightly said, that
we must not " forget the goodness of the cause in
the badness of the agents, nor the badness of the
agents in the goodness of tlie cause."
A second measure for the putting down Eomish
recusancy was the establishment in December 1583
of the High Commission Court, with powers which
resembled those of the Inquisition. The Act of
Supremacy of 1559 had empowered the Queen to
exercise her ecclesiastical jurisdiction by Commis
sioners ; and several Commissions had been from
time to time appointed. Now, however, a permanent
Commission was created ; and under the Stuarts it
became an instrument of great oppression. It con-

20 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
sisted of twelve Bishops and thirty-two others : three,
of whom one must be a Bishop, formed a quorum.
It should be noted that the ecclesiastical despotism
of Elizabeth was a legal despotism, for it was based
on powers conferred by Parliament. The despotism
of her civil governinent was illegal, and was known
to be so. But people submitted to it, because the
perils of the nation and of the Eeformed Church
made the Commons unwilling to insist upon their
rights against a sagacious and patriotic Queen.
Protests were sometimes made ; and, as the perils
diminished, the protests became stronger ; until at
last Elizabeth and her ministers had to give way.
A third measure of defence against Eoman in
trigue and violence is more pleasing. A Voluntary
Bond of Association was formed, for the prvtection of
the Queen's person and the punishment of all who
plotted against her. This Bond was everywhere
signed with enthusiasm, and whoever signed was
pledged to these objects. In November 1584,
Elizabeth's Fifth Parliament gave statutory sanction
to the Bond; and it was provided that any attempt
to deprive Elizabeth of the crown in favour of
another should deprive that other of all right to
the succession. Another Act ordered all Jesuits
and seminary priests to leave England within forty
days ; and disobedience was to be treated as treason.
The nation was roused, and was terribly in earnest.
It was determined to make -the transfer of the
kingdom to a Eomanist Queen and government
impossible.

ULTRA-REFORMATION 21
But, as long as Mary of Scots lived, there was
danger. She was, to all who had espoused the
cause of EUzabeth and of Protestantism, a living
menace. Her aim was to get EUzabeth to recognize
her as her successor. As Elizabeth would recosuize
no one as her successor, Mary considered that she
had the right to try to secure the crown at onee.
Her wish to restore Eomanism was subsidiary to her
desire for the crown. She would have tolerated
both reUgions, if toleration would have made her
Queen of England. But her only chance of that
was to win Eoman Catholic support in England,
backed up by the Guises in France and by Philip
in Spain. So she posed as a devoted servant of the
Papacy and as the foe of Protestantism.
Elizabeth and Mary of Scots are two of the straiigest
women that ever reigned. Both were very clever,
very highly educated, and very ambitious. Both
were thoroughly unprincipled, ready to tell any lie,
or to ruin anybody, in order to gain their ends.
Both were women, and both were Queens : but in
Elizabeth it was the Queen who triumphed over
the woman, while in Mary it was the woman who
triumphed over the Queen. Mary's marriage with
the Dauphin was wholly a matter of policy. Her
marriage with Darnley was partly a matter of policy,
partly also of passion ; and so far as it was a matter
of policy, it was a mistake. Her marriage with
Bothtoell was wholly a matter of passion ; and it was
a fatal mistake : but she cared more for the man
than for the crown. It was a blunder on which

22 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
Elizabeth looked with sardonic satisfaction, feeling
that she herself was incapable of such folly. There
was just one man among her many suitors whom
Elizabeth would have cared to marry, Dudley, Earl
of Leicester.^ But to have married a subject would
have lowered the prestige of her crown in Europe ;
and she cared more for the crown than for the man.
She even proposed that Mary should marry Leicester,
in order that by wedding a Protestant Mary might
be discredited in the eyes of Catholics. She was
willing that the man whom she loved should marry
her rival, in order that her rival might be pohtically
ruined. That was a sacrifice of which Mary was
incapable. But there was this great difference as
to their aims. Elizabeth flirted, and lied, and swore,
and maltreated her agents, generally to win some
advantage for the nation ; Mary committed her
misdeeds mainly to gratify her own selfish ambition.
For Scotland she scarcely cared at all. She wanted
husbands, as Elizabeth wanted admirers, for political
ends : but Mary was capable of being in love with
her husbands, whereas Elizabeth chiefly cared that
her admirers should be in love with her. Woe
betide them if, being unable to marry the Queen,
they ventured to marry anyone else ! She gave
out early in her reign that, so far as her own in
clination went, she desired to remain unmarried.
She was perhaps sincere in this ; but assuredly she
did not wish it to be believed. It is perhaps worth
while adding that Elizabeth has left us one or two
^ See Spenser's Faery Queene (i. ix. 13-17).

ULTRA-REFORMATION 23
beautiful orations, and Mary has left us one beautiful
prayer (see Appendix).
Puttinyg Mary of Scots in prison was probably a
mistake. It made a martyr of her, and added the
glamour of romance to a cause which was recog
nized as the cause of the Church of Eome. Thrill
ing reports of imaginary sufferings spread over
Europe ; and a chivalrous enthusiasm for a perse
cuted woman augmented devotion to the Eoman
See, where such devotion existed, and was a substi
tute for it, where it did not. Men might or might
not care for the Pope, but the name of the im
prisoned Mary Stuart was always something to
conjure with. It is remarkable that all the serious
attacks on Elizabeth's throne and life, from the
Northern rebellion downwards, were subsequent to
her making a prisoner of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Probably no one knew then to what extent Mary
really was dangerous ; but it was certain that
nothiiig but her death woidd render success impos
sible ; Ne pereat Israel, pereat Absalom, as Sir
Chris. Hatton said to the House of Commons ; and
Elizabeth's devoted minister, Walsingham, set him
self to compass her removal. She was to be allowed
to compromise herself so hopelessly, that she would
be convicted of treason and brought to the block.
No one since Wolsey had such intimate knowledge
of continental intrigues as Walsingham. He had
spies in every court in Europe, and knew all that
was going on. It was said of him that " he heard
in London what was whispered in the ear at Eome,"

24 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
and that " to him men's faces spake as much as
their tongues, and their countenances were indexes
to their hearts." In her close confinement at
Tutbury, Mary was induced to beUeve that she
could outwit her keepers and correspond with con
spirators outside. All the letters came to Walsing
ham, and revealed a plot " to remove the beast that
troubles the world," i.e. to kill Elizabeth. John
Ballard, a Jesuit, and Ant. Babington, were the
chief plotters. Elizabeth risked assassination for
some weeks in order that the plot might ripen.
Then the net closed, and Mary was convicted of
treason, 25th October 1586. Elizabeth was most
unwilling to act. She shrank alike from putting
Mary to death, and from refusing to put her
to death.i At last she was induced to sign
the death-warrant ; and then she begged that it
might not be used. Could not Mary be got rid of
in some other way ? The Council sent the warrant
to Fotheringay, whither Mary had been removed,
and she was beheaded Sth February 1587. Elizabeth
pretended to be overwhelmed with grief and indig
nation. By fining and imprisoning the Secretary,
Davison, who had charge of the warrant, she tried
^ " I hope, '¦ she said to Parliament, "you do not look for any
present resolution from me : for my manner is, in matters of less
moment than this, to deliberate long upon that which is but once
to be resolved. . . . Whatever the best of subjects may expect
from the best princes, that expect from me to be performed to the
full." See her letter to James, protesting her innocence of his
mother's death (Ellis, Original Letters, iii. p. 22). She spent
£321, 14s. 6d. on Mary's funeral.

ULTRA-REFORMATION 25
to persuade the world that she was not responsible
for Mary's death. In this she has quite failed.
There is one more attack upon Elizabeth and her
religion to be mentioned. Mary Stuart had sent
word to Philip of Spain that she transferred to him
her claim to the crown of England ; and Philip's
daughter already had some claim, as being descended
from John of Gaunt. The Invincible Armada sailed
the year after Mary's death. It was a supreme effort
on the part of Eoman Catholicism to overthrow the
sovereign who was regarded as the head of Pro
testantism, and the nation which was regarded as
its chief support. " Come let us kill her, and the
inheritance shall be ours."
Elizabeth was again at her best in repelling the
attack.! Her words at Tilbury Fort kindle en
thusiasm still. The end for which she had quibbled
and been guilty of every kind of inconsistency and
meanness, in order to gain time for her subjects to
find their bearings, had been accomplished. When
the increasing strength of England provoked the
great assault from Spain, it was a united nation
^ Bacon, in his Praise of the Queen, says of her : " When her
realm was to have been invaded by an army, the setting forth
whereof was the terror and wonder of Europe, it was not seen
that her cheer, her fashion, her ordinary manner, was anything
altered ; not a cloud of that storm did appear in that countenance
wherein peace doth ever shine ; but with excellent assurance and
advised security she inspired her council, animated her nobility,
redoubled the courage of her people ; still having this noble appre
hension, not only that she would communicate her fortune with
them, but that it was she that would protect them, and not they
her."

26 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
that leapt up to repel it. Eomanists fought side by
side with Anglicans and Independents to beat down
the arrogance of a Eomanist Monarch, when he
attempted to execute the Pope's sentence of deposi
tion on their Queen. The Armctda wets the shock
ivhich crystallized the fluid elements in England into
solidity ; and in the consciousness of the strength of
union Elizabeth's subjects forgot how often she had
exasperated them by her caprices and her evasions
of all decided action. Their amazing success against
the Spaniard they attributed to her ; and on the
medal which commemorated the defeat of the
Armada they put the inscription, dux femina facti,
" It was a woman that led us to victory." Eliza
beth's own medal had a humbler inscription : Deus
flctvit et dissipati sunt, — doubtless an echo of the
text chosen by the preacher (John Piers, Bishop of
Sarum, afterwards Archbishop of York), when she
went in state to St. Paul's to give thanks : " Thou
didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them :
they sank as lead in the mighty waters."

We must pass on to the other great movement
whioh troubled the Church of England in the days
of Elizabeth, and for many generations after her
time. This may be called the Ultra-Reformation,
the persistent attempt of the Puritans, who were
almost invariably Calvinist in doctrine, to capture
the Church of England and reform it past all recog
nition. Every link which connected it, not merely

ULTRA-REFORMATION 27
with the mediteval Church, but with the primitive
Chm-ch, was to be broken and thrown away, except
ing those few features which could be found plainly
expressed in Scripture.
There are two views of Puritanism, one favour
able and the other unfavourable, which are at best
only part of the truth ; and, unless the other side
is supplied, very erroneous opinion must be the
result. The Puritans are somctimes regarded as thc cham
pions of liberty. It is said by their friends that
they were a standing protest against the despotism
in Church and State, and that in the Church they
contended for more freedom than was allowed by
the Prayer Book. From the same point of view
one might say that a rebel is a champion of liberty,
because he refuses to be bound by the laws of his
country. Yet it is true to say that in the State the
Puritans were opposed to arbitrary power, and
therefore their influence tended towards politiccd
freedom. But in the Chm-ch they had no more
idea of freedom than the most bigoted Eomanist.
As Bacon says of them : " These are the true
successors of Diotrephes, and not my lord bishops."
Eeligious toleration was still unknown, and assuredly
it was not the Puritans who discovered it. They
were not a party asking for toleration either inside
or outside the Church. They demanded that thc
whole Chwch should he tahen to pieces and recon
structed in accordance with their own narrow pre
judices ; and they were not prepared to allow to

28 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
others any deviation from this Puritan reconstruc
tion. It was an absolute tyranny which they meant
to set up, and did set up when they founded their
own Church and commonwealth in America : ^ and
tyranny is none the less tyranny because it is
exercised by a multitude rather than by one man.
No ; the Puritans have indirectly helped political
liberty ; but they have been the strenuous opponents
of religious freedom.
Again, the enemies of Puritanism think of it
chiefly as a destructive force. This view also is
only part of the truth, and therefore may be mis
leading. Puritanism has been destructive. It
oveithrew altars, pulled down statues, and broke
decorated windows ; it condemned the theatre and
frowned at amusements ; it destroyed the monarchy
and ignored the aristocracy ; it rejected the liturgy
and aboUshed episcopacy. But Puritanism had also
CO strongly constructive side. Its aim was to found
a State, a religious State. There was to be a com
monwealth of saints, in which Christians could grow
^ "The intolerance with which the puritans had been treated at
home might at least have taught them a lesson of forbearance to
each other. But it had no such effect. It would almost seem as
if, true disciples in the school of the high commission and star
chamber, their ambition was to excel their former tyrants in the
art of persecution. They imitated, with a pertinacious accuracy,
the bad example of their worst oppressors ; and, with far less to
excuse them, repeated in America the self-same crimes from which
they and tbeir fathers had suffered so much iu England " (Mars
den, The History of the Early Puritans, p. 305). This testimony
is the stronger, as coming frora a fair-minded writer, whose sym
pathies are on the Puritan side. See p. 415 ff.

ULTRA-REFORMATION 29
up in one prescribed and uniform system, free from
all doubts as to what was Gospel truth, and pro
tected against the assaults of all unnecessary tempta
tions. There is an earnestness and reality in this,
with which the least puritanical among us can
sympathize. It is easy to call them hypocrites ;
but that does not explain their wide and lasting
influence. Hypocrisy cannot sway multitudes as
they swayed them ; nor suffer for a cause as they
suffered. But it is chiefly the intolerance and the
destructiveness of Puritanism that we have now to
consider. In Elizabeth's reign there were many English
Churchmen who still had an affection for various
things in the unreformed religion ; and it was a
happiness to them to find so many of the old
thoughts, and even of the old words, in the new
Prayer Book. Again, there were many who, with
out going all the way with continental reformers,
were in favour of thorough reformation ; and they
were pleased at the breaking down of the rules of
compulsory celibacy for the clergy and compulsory
confession for the laity, and they liked the doctrinal
tone of the Articles and the spirit of personal
religion which pervaded the whole book. Were
these two large classes of moderate Churchmen to be
hurried into Calvinistic Puritanism ? To this
question Elizabeth gave an emphatic negcdive, and
in this her infiuence for good was incalculable. It
was sometimes despotically exercised, but it was of
the utmost service to the Church and nation. In

30 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
the general uncertainty and incoherence, she was
the one centre of unity, and she secured tune for
the disconnected atoms to find out their true
affinities and combine. Her aim was to reduce the
extremes at both ends as much as possible, that the
nation might realize its true religious character.
From the outside, the Eoman attack, urged on by
the Pope, Spain, the Guises, and the Jesuits, was
the more conspicuous and alarming. But, on the
inside, the Puritan assault, favoured by teachers at
the Universities, and by not a few among the Bishops
and clergy, was the more perilous and the more
lasting. The issue to be decided was not, whether
leniency might not for a time be shown to those
clergy who disobeyed rubrics and left out passages
which they disliked in the Prayer Book ; nor,
whether the Prayer Book itself might not here and
there be made more Protestant in tone ; but, whether
the historic Churcli of England was to cease to exist,
and the religious life of the nation was henceforth
to be compressed into the iron system, which Calvin,
with an imposing show of logic and of discipline,
but with disastrous practical results, had estabUshed
at Geneva. Of that system some of those who
groaned under it said, that it " was little hetter than
Popish tyranny disguised and tendered unto them
under a new form." And of Cartwright, the
Cambridge professor who took the lead in advocat
ing this system in England, and who was one of
Hooker's great opponents, it has been said, " He
was unquestionably learned and devout, but his

ULTRA-REFORMATION 31
bigotry was that of a mediseval inquisitor . . .
For the Church modelled after the fashion of
Geneva he claimed an authority which surpassed
the wildest dreams of the Vatican . . . With the
despotism of a Hildebrand he combined the cruelty
of a Torquemada." These are the words of J. R.
Green, a writer who certainly has no prejudices
against Nonconformists, nor any undue bias in
favour of ' the Church. Hallam condemns Cart
wright and other Puritan leaders in similar terms.
It is in the Marprelate Tracts that Puritan virulence
is seen at its worst ; and it is in the Lambeth
Articles (1595) that its Calvinistic theology is
formally stated. Elizabeth scouted the latter, and
the Archbishop, who had helped to draw them up,
had to suppress them. Nor would James i., at the
Hampton Court Conference, allow them to be
revived. Here is a specimen of the lawlessness of the
Puritan clergy. Archbishop Whitgift found that
the minister at Eastwell left out the Exhortation,
the Absolution, Venite, Te Deum, three Collects,
and Litany. In the Communion service he omitted
the prayer for the consecration of the elements and
everything between the Confession and the adminis
tration. In administering he substituted words of
his own selection for those in the Prayer Book. At
marriages he used a service devised by himself.
And of course he never wore a surplice, " the defiled
robe of anti - Christ," as Dean Whittingham of
Durham called it. This may have been an extreme

32 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
case ; but it was probably quite a common one.
The disuse of the surplice and the omission of parts
of the service were very frequent. In 1567 the
Spanish ambassador said, " In every parish church
a different service is held, according to the bent of
the minister." A little later J. Howlett remarks
that the directions in the Prayer Book are " com
monly broken by every minister at his pleasure."
The steadily increasing disquietude at the per
sistent attempts of Eoman Catholic princes and
Roman Catholic conspirators to overthrow their
Queen, and the ceaseless flow of returning exiles
and of controversial pamphlets and letters from
Geneva, Zurich, and Frankfort, had given a growing
impetus to the spread of Puritanism among the
clergy and laity, and especially (as Hooker quaintly
remarks) among those " whose judgments are com
monly weakest by reason of their sex," and who
were " diligent in drawing their husbands, children,
servants, friends and allies the same way." " But,"
says he, " be they women or be they men, if once
they have tasted of that cup, let any man of
contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them,
they close up their ears, his reasons they weigh
not ; all is answered with rehearsal of the words of'
John, ' We are of God : he that knoweth God,
heareth its'" (Preface, iii 13).
Yet it was not the dread of Eome, nor the
wonderful success of their system at Geneva, nor
the enthusiastic proselytizing by women, which gave
the Puritans their chief opportunity of success in

ULTRA-REFORMATION 33
England, but the deplorable neglect of duty, and
sometimes even of the simplest elements of honesty
and morality, on the part of the ministers of the
English Church. There is not much in EngUsh
history that is more depressing reading than the
lives of the large majority of Elizabethan Bishops :
but perhaps the reports of the parishes, and of the
clergy who were supposed to minister to them, is
more dismal reading still. Cecil, when he accom
panied the Queen in one of her progresses, exclaimed,
" Here be many slender ministers and much naked
ness of religion." Men who had been Protestants
under Edward, Eomanists under Mary, and Protest
ants again under Elizabeth, were not the best
leaders for a bewildered laity. Violent and rapid
changes had made them either partisans, or hypo
crites, or cowards, or cynics. Two things had greatly
reduced the number of clergy. Elizabeth and
Leicester and some of the Bishops had so plundered
the revenues that several parishes had to be lumped
together in order to make a pittance for a single
minister. Secondly, in such uncertain times thought
ful young men shrank from taking Orders. Those
who did so were often men of neither education
nor character. The able men who still took Orders
were mostly Calvinists, enthusiasts from Oxford or
Cambridge, who did not care about poverty, so long
as they had a free hand : and even those Bishops,
who were not Calvinists themselves, were sometimes
unwilling to hamper men who were evidently in
earnest about religion. There seem to have been
3

34 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
over 500 clergy who were definitely enrolled as
Puritans, and the number of those who were Puritan
in their activity was probaiily much larger.
Elizabeth set herself sternly against the whole move
ment. She was determined that the grandeur of
the Church of England should not be whittled away
by narrow-minded fanatics. She had read (she
once told Parliament) perhaps more books than any
one who was not a professor ; and she was specially
well read in the Fathers. She would have the
English Church show to all the world that it was
possible to accept all the light of the New Learning,
without throwing away the best elements in primi
tive Christianity. Sometimes she struck at the
" newfangledness," as she called the Puritan in
novations, with one of those shrewd sayings, which
were the dehght of her people. When she visited
Oxford in 1566, Dr. Humphrey, a bigoted Calvinist,
was Eegius Professor of Divinity. Like most
Puritans, he refused to wear the square cap and the
surpUce. " Master Doctor," she said to him, " that
loose gown becomes you mighty well; I wonder
your notions should be so narrow." Sometimes she
opposed it by absolutely forbidding Parliament,
which steadily became more and more Puritan, to
legislate I'especting the Church. Sometimes she op
posed it by insisting that Bishops should see that the
Frayer Book was obeyed. And she did this almost
alone. It was against the advice of her ministers
that she took the unpopular line of opposing the
House of Commons at a time when she had no

ULTRA-REFORMATION 35
friends on the Continent, and was in danger of
assassination at home. Against ministers, ParUa
ment, and assassins she relied upon one thing, — the
goodwill of the nation; and she was willing to risk
even that, rather than see the Church of England
reduced to an aggregation of discordant conventicles.
To quote her own words : " No Prince can be surer
tied or faster bound than I am with the Unk of
your goodwill : yet one matter toucheth me so
near as I may not overskip, — religion, — the ground
on which all other matters ought to take root, and
being corrupted may mar the whole tree." Tliis
was in 1584. In February 1587 a member named
Cope proposed a new Prayer Book ; but in defer
ence to the Queen's injunctions the proposal came
to nothing. To the Parliament of 1593 she sent a
warning not to interfere with the Church. " Mr.
Speaker, if you perceive any idle heads, which will
meddle with reforming the Church and transforming
the commonwealth, and do exhibit any Bills to
that purpose, Her Majesty's pleasure is that you do
not receive them, until they be considered by those
who it is fitter should consider of such things "
(Hansard, P.H., i. p. 862).
When Archbishop Grindal was slack in putting
down the " prophesyings," which fomented religious
controversy and favoured Calvinism,^ she suspended
' On the other hand, the Queen's policy of stopping these dis
cussions led on to the decay of preaching which for several genera
tions marked the English Church. Under the thin disguise of the
name "Algrind," Grindal's character is sketched by Spenser in the
Shepherd's Calendar as that of a model pastor.

36 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
him. When Burghley remonstrated with Arch
bishop Whitgift for requiring the clergy, not only to
subscribe to the Eoyal Supremacy, the lawfulness of
the Prayer Book, and the Thirty -nine Articles, but
also to answer articles of inquiry respecting their
mode of conducting public worship, EUzabeth stood
by the Primate, and would allow none of her Council
to molest him. No doubt, the Puritans gave
valuable support to her government in the struggle
with Eome ; but she was not going to allow them
to disfigure the Church. As to points of detail,
she believed that, like so many difficulties in her
reign, if time was allowed, they would settle them
selves. It is not easy to believe that Elizabeth
herself was a religious woman. But she knew the
importance of religion both for individuals and for
nations ; and she was convinced that a mean ritual,
and cramped discipline and creed, would never pro
duce a great and free people.
Thus the Queen's determination, backed by her
inexhaustible popularity, saved the Church from
disaster. She had a higher view of episcopacy
than the Bishops had themselves, and she forced
them to maintain uniformity.
On the other hand, she was a most shameless
plunderer of Church property, compelling Bishops to
alienate theh- estates to herself and her favourites,
and sometimes making them promise to do this as
a condition of appointing them. She kept Ely
vacant for eighteen years, and gave so much of the
revenues to the King of Portugal, that he was

ULTRA-REFORMATION 37
jokingly called " Bishop of Ely." But the often
quoted letter to Heton, who ultimately becaine
Bishop of Ely, — " Proud Prelate, ... I will un
frock you," — is a forgery of the eighteenth centuiy.
Hallam {Hist, of Eng., i. p. 224) makes the letter
to be addressed to Cox, Heton's predecessor at Ely.
During the reign of Elizabeth the theology of
the Church of England attained form and fulness.
Jewel defended our Church's position against the
Romanists, while Whitgift, Bancroft, and Hooker
answered the objections of the Puritans. It is
grievous, in treating of this period, to Devonshire
people, to give to Richard Hooker, — born at
Heavitree and educated at Exeter School, — only a
passing mention. But it would require several
lectures to do justice to Hooker. In some ways he
is the greatest theologian that the English Church
has ever produced. But he was a great deal more
than an extraordinarily learned, accurate, and philo
sophic theologian. He showed that it was possible
to accept all the light of the New Learning without
losing what was best in Christian antiquity ; and
that fidelity to religion did not involve hostility to
the many-sidedness of the world. In an age of
bitter and virulent controversy, he showed how a
book that is wholly controversial could be written,
not only without bitterness, but with a chivalrous
determination never to give needless pain. He
writes with the charity of a Christian and the
courtesy of a perfect gentleman. And beyond all
this, he was master of a matchless style. Till he

38 COUNTER-REFORMATION AND
wrote, no one knew what great things could be done
with English prose : and to this day, for stateliness,
richness, and force, the language of Hooker remains
unexcelled. Merely as literature, the Ecclesiastical
Polity stands in the first rank.
We must hasten to a close.
In 1592 there appeared on the Continent a
pamphlet, written in English and Latin, Responsio
cui Edictum Reginae Angliae, criticizing with reckless
vehemence the repressive measures against Eoman
Catholics which were taken by the English Govern
ment after the Armada. It was attributed to the
crafty controversialist, Parsons. It was too clever
to be ignored, and Bacon was commissioned to write
a reply. Such a reply could not be impartial.
" Besides that it was written to order, no man in
England could then write impartially in that
quarrel ; but it is not more one-sided and uncandid
than the pamphlet which it answers, and Bacon is
able to recriminate with effect, and to show gross
credulity and looseness of assertion on the part of
the Eoman Catholic advocate. But religion had too
much to do with the politics of both sides for either
to be able to come into the dispute with clean
hands : the Eoman Catholics meant much more than
toleration, and the sanguinary punishments of the
English law against priests and Jesuits were edged
by something even keener than the fear of treason "
(Dean Church on Bacon's Observations on a Libel).
From 1593 to 1603 there was not very much
religious strife. In 1594 there was another plot to

ULTRA-REFORMATION 39
assassinate the Queen. The trial of Rodrigo Lopez,
a Portuguese Jew, for this attempt to compass a
Christian's death, very possibly suggested Shylock
to Shakespeare.!
In October 1601, Elizabeth called her Last Par
liament, which made a strong protest against the
increase of monopolies. Elizabeth promised immediate
reform. The Commons sent a deputation to thank
her and assure her of their unabated loyalty and
devotion ; and she replied in a speech of the most
queenly and touching affection. She loved absolute
power ; but, when the time for yielding came, she
knew how to yield gracefully. It is no paradox to
say that her very abuses of power were popular, for
she never dragooned her subjects into submission. In
her long reign of forty-five years only thirteen sessions
of Parliament were held ; yet the people did not
clamour for more. She shocks us by her many mean
and unworthy acts ; and she irritated them by her
ceaseless evasions of the problems which came before
her. But all the time she was enabUng the free spirit
of the people to grow. Foreign ambassadors often
remarked on the national love of liberty. And when
she passed away, early on 24tli March 1603,^ she left
a nation which neither needed, nor could long tolerate,
the despotic government of either queen or king.
^ Mr. Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, places The
Merchant of Venice in the period 1596-1600.
- The account of the death of Elizabeth in Dodd's Church His
tory is said to have been written by Lady Southwell, who was
present. The picture of it by Paul Delaroche (1827), now in the
Louvre, will be remembered by those who have seen it.

II.
1603-1625.
THE WISE FOOL IN CHURCH
AND STATE.

' ' L'ambition dans I'oisivete, la bassesse dans I'orgueil, le d&ir de
s'enricher sans travail, I'aversion pour la Verite ; la flaterie, la
trahison, la perfidie, I'abandon de tous ses engagemens, le mepris
des devoirs du Citoyen, la crainte de la vertu du Prince, I'esp&ance
de ses foiblesses, et plus que tout cela, le ridicule perpi^tuel jettiS
sur la Vertu, sont, je crois, le caractere de laplupartdes Courtisans
inarqu(5 dans tous les lieux et dans tous les tems."
Montesquieu, De I'Esprit des Loix, i. iv. 5.

42

II.
1603-1625.
THE WISE FOOL IN CHURCH AND STATE.
At the end of the sixteenth chapter of Kenilworth,
Sir W. Scott says that " Elizabeth united the caprice
of her sex with that sense and sound policy in which
neither man nor woman ever excelled her." We
shall miss one of the great lessons of Elizabeth's
long reign, if we fail to see that her caprice was
almost as valuable to the nation cts her sense and
sound policy. Of the fact of the caprice there can
be no doubt ; instances abound. Walsingham wrote
to Wotton, 4th September 1585, respecting the
Queen's irresolution : " This fault, through long con
tinued custom, is grown to such a habit, as now is
not to be remedied." And Bacon says, " Her coun
sellors were sore troubled to know her will ; so
covertly did she pass her judgment, as to seem to
leave all to their management." Years before,
Burghley had written to Walsingham (1572), "All
that we laboured for and had with full consent
brought to fashion . . . was by Her Majesty neither
assented to, nor rejected, but deferred." Possibly
43

44 THE WISE FOOL IN
some of the caprice, most undignified as it often was
in its manifestations, was assumed, as a device to
gain time ; that precious time in which perplexities
might vanish, or find their own solution. But the
caprice, whether acted or real, was of the greatest
educational value to her subjects : it forced them to
think for themselves, till they were ready to go on
without leading strings.
Under Henry vii. the people had been too busy
settling their own affairs, after the convulsion of
the Wars of the Eoses, to trouble themselves about
problems in Church or State. Under Henry vm.,
Edward, and Mary, such problems had been settled
over their heads by the Sovereign or the Council.
But under Elizabeth despotism was exercised, not
so much in settling problems, as in refusing to have
them settled. Questions as to whether she was to
marry this suitor or that ; whether England was to
be friends with Spain or with France ; whether
the Eeformation was to be partly undone by the
Eomanists, or carried a great deal farther by the
Puritans, were all kept as long as possible unde-
cided.i Thus the nation gained iime for recdizing its
own unity and for mahing up its mind on great
questions. Parliament became more conscious of its
^ When she visited Oxford in 1566, versifiers and speakers greeted
her with thanks for the blessings of peace, and prayed for the con
tinuance of these benefits : and when she bade farewell to the
University after her second visit in 1592, she justly claimed to have
made peace her supreme care : Ah initio Regni mei summa, et
2Jraccipua mea soliciludo, cura, et vigilia fuit, ut tam ah externis
inimicis, quam internis tumuUihus servaretur.

CHURCH AND STATE 45
strength ; and we have seen how, in the matter of
additional monopolies, Elizabeth showed her sagacity
and good feeling in yielding. She would not press
the royal prerogative in a question about which
her people felt strongly, and expressed their wishes
in a constitutional way.
It was to subjects thus educated to think for
themselves, to a people that had formed fairly defi
nite opinions upon a number of important questions,
to a nation that had found out its own oneness and
its own strength in being one, that James vi. of
Scotland succeeded as James i. of England. How
would he carry on the great Queen's work ? In
what manner would he bear himself towards the
great and growing nation that had been learning
how to walk alone ?
Both he and his new subjects were from the first
freed from one difficulty which had been predicted
as likely to foUow the death of Elizabeth. There
was no disputed succession. No less than fourteen
possible claimants to the Crown had been counted.
The real question lay between the Stuarts, descended
from Margaret, daughter of Henry vii., and the
Suffolks, descended from her sister Mary ; and that
question had been settled before Elizabeth died.
James was proclaimed by Cecil at once ; Sir Robert
Carey started for Edinburgh, and we still have his
own account of the famous ride, of the proclamation
at Berwick, and of his reception, " be-blooded by
great falls and bruises," by the new King. We
have also the account of the King's royal progress

46 THE WISE FOOL IN
to London. Before starting he addressed the Scots
in the great Church in Edinburgh after the sermon.
He corrected the preacher for saying that Scotland
would lament his departure : he was not going to
leave them. London was scarcely further off than
Inverness, and he would often come back to them.
He would make each of the two kingdoms useful to
the other. He had expected to need their swords ;
but now he asked only for their hearts. The writer
of the account of the progress thus comments on
the entry into Berwick, 6th April 1603.
" Happy day ! when peaceably so many warlike
English gentlemen went to bring in an English and
Scottish King, both included in one person, into that
town that many a hundred years hath been a town
of the enemy ; or at the least held, in all leagues,
either for one nation or the other. But the King
of Peace have glory, that so peaceably hath ordained
a King, descended from the royal blood of either
nation, to make that town, by .his possessing it, a
harbour for English and Scots, without thought of
wrong or grudging envy ! "
The joyous exclamation was just. That which,
at long intervals of time, Eoman invaders and
Plantagenet and Tudor kings had in vain sought
to accomplish by force of arms or intrigue, James
now saw before him, almost without an effort, — the
union of the whole island under the ride of one man.
To emphasize this fact, he at once added Scottish
members to the Privy Council, and he gave a hearty
welcome to hoth the rival parties on the English

CHURCH AND STATE 47
side of the border. Robert Cecil, the late Queen's
Secretary, and the young Earl of Essex, were both
kindly received. In the Council the Scots had the
advantage of being able to see the King when they
pleased ; and he soon began to give offence by the
preference which he showed them. But Cecil and
his friends had the real control of affairs, through
their intimate knowledge of the details.
To England the union of the two Crowns was
immense gain. Raleigh compared it to the union
of the houses of York and Lancaster after the Wars
of the Roses. Again and again England had failed
in its enterprises in Europe, because Scotland had
sided with the enemy. Scotland had naturally, but
perhaps needlessly, dreaded amalgamation with its
more powerful neighbour. Now the dreaded union
had come about, without force or fraud, by the mere
course of events. Lt was a magnificent opportunity
for a large-minded sovereign, or indeed for a series
of such rulers. Would the Stuarts be able to use
it wisely ?
" The unfortunate Stuarts." That is the epithet
which for generations has been bestowed upon
them, and no one can say that it is not true. But
it is not the whole truth. The four that reigned
in England during the seventeenth century were
unfortunate, in that their reigns fell in difficult
times ; and difiiculty is apt to lead to failure. But
the failures of the four Stuarts were due much more
to their own folly than to the troubled period in
which their lot was cast ; and the folly in all four

48 THE WISE FOOL IN
cases was exhibited in much the same way. They
coidd not discern the signs of the times : and they
eould not look thc nation in thc face. With Reho-
boamlike shortsightedness they insisted upon retain
ing and augmenting every particle of power which
had ever been possessed by the Crown, regardless
of the enormous changes which had taken place
since such powers had been exercised.^ The new
doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, put forward
by the clergy side by side with the Divine Right of
Bishops, was adopted by the Stuarts as a self-evident
principle, just at the time when EngUshmen had
become very sensitive about the traditional rights
of Parliament. The policy of favouring Eoman
Catholics, begun in the first instance in a spirit of
humanity, but continued or dropped afterwards,
just as happened to be convenient, was embraced
in opposition to the prevalent sentiment of the
nation. Similarly, the dislike of Presbyterianism,
which James had acquired in Scotland, owing to
the dictatorial tone of the Presbyterian clergy,
caused the Stuarts to show scant sympathy with
the large numbers of their subjects who were either
Presbyterian, or at least Puritan, at heart. But
perhaps even all this would not have exhausted the
characteristic patience of the English nation, if the
foreign policy of the Stuarts had been in accordance
' " The King was determined not to give up what the reformers
wero determined that he should not keep. . . . The undoing of
Charles was not merely his turn for intrigue and double-dealing ;
it was blindness to signs, mismeasurement of forces, dishevelled
confusion of means and ends " (Morley, Oliver Cromwell, p. 211.)

CHURCH AND STATE 49
with national traditions and deep-seated desires.
To see England, in its continental relations, " burn
ing what it had adored, and adoring what it had
burned," under James i. and Charles i., and to see
England dragged through European mud under
Charles ii. and James ii., was more than EngUsh
men could endure ; and it was this enormity, added
to the folly of their home policy, which cost
Charles i. and James ii. their crowns. Yes, the
Stuarts have been unfortunate ; but their worst
sufferings have been the natural fruit of their own
shifty and unsympathetic characters.
The reign of James i. falls conveniently into three
periods, of nine, six, and seven years respectively.
From 1603 to 1612 we have the administration
of Burghley's son, Eobert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury ;
and the turning year, 1612, is marked by the
deaths of Cecil and of Henry, Prince of Wales.
From 1612 to 1618 James tried to be his own
minister ; but his " kingcraft " resulted in his being
the dupe of the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar,
and a puppet in the hands of his own favourites.
The turning year, 1618, is marked by the execu
tion of Ealeigh and by the outbreak of the Thirty
Years' War. From 1618 to 1625 we have the
rapid degradation of monarchy under the infiuence
of Buckingham, and the unhappy marriage-projects
of Prince Charles. These were seven years of
rank folly, the prelude to the troubles of the next
reign. It is remarkable that a prince with the ante-
4

50 THE WISE FOOL IN
cedents of James i. should have met with a cordial
welcome in England. One might have expected
that the King of that Scotland whioh had so often
been a thorn in the side of England, and the son of
that Queen of Scots whose very existence had been
such a menace to England's Queen, would have been
looked upon coldly by Englishmen. Must not the
statesmen who had put his mother to death, dread
his vengeance ? Must not the Bishops look askance
at a Knag who had accepted Presbyterianism ?
Must not the Eoinan Catholics detest a sovereign
who had abandoned the religion of which his
mother had been a champion and almost a martyr ?
All these reasonable anticipations proved false.
English statesmen had long since made their peace
with James, whose succession they saw to be inevit
able. Ancl there is no evidence that James ever
did feel strongly about the execution of his mother.
His own comment on her sufferings was that she
had mixed the cup for herseU, and she must drink
it.^ And as to Englishmen generally, perhaps they
were all for the moment a little tired of EUzabeth's
long reign and uncertain temper ; and remained
tired of it, until James made them wish her back
again. Moreover, all of them gave James the
' " It was mainly owing to his inaction and indifference that her
hopes that Scotland would take up her cause were not fulfilled.
The succession to the English crown was nearer to his heart thau
his mother's execution" (Hausser, The Period of the Reformation,
p. 604). But his autograph letter to Elizabeth on his mother's
behalf expresses real feeling, and was perhaps the best thing that
he ever wrote (Ellis, Original Letters, iii. pp. 18-22).

CHURCH AND STATE 51
welcome of hope. He was to a large extent
unknown, and it was possible to hope for a great
deal. Anglicans, Puritans, and Roinan Catholics,
all expected that he was going to do a great deal
for them. " The Papists," wrote Bacon at the time,
" hope too much."
The enthusiasm for him did not last long, except
on the part of the Anglican Bishops. For a good
many people the sight of him was enough. He
was a most unkingly personage. His legs were too
weak for his body, which he made stiU more heavy
by having his clothing thickly padded to turn the
point of a possible dagger. His tongue was too
large, and when he drank the liquid reappeared at
the corners of his mouth. His eyes rolled in a most
unpleasing way, when he looked on strange people
or strange objects. He could not bear to look at
an unsheathed sword, and in respect of almost all
danger he was constitutionally timid. The one
manly pursuit of which he was fond was hunting ;
and for this he shamefully neglected his duties.
He was very unwilling to show himself to tho
multitudes that came to see him ; indeed, he tried
to forbid them from coming ; and in this he at once
made an unfavourable contrast to EUzabeth.
But he quickly did some popular acts, in cheeking
monopolies and the abuses of 'pv.rvcyance. In one
thing, however, he went to an absurd excess,
viz. in the distribution of honours. He created
a number of new peers, and raised or restored
existing noblemen. In three months he made

52 THE WISE FOOL IN
seven hundred knights ! Bacon was now, at his
own request, made a knight ; yet not, as he desired,
by himself, but in a batch of three hundred. A
wag fixed a notice to the door of St. Paul's, offering
to teach weak memories the art of recollecting the
titles of the new nobility.
We must pass by, with little more than mention,
the somewhat obscure plot which was very quickly
formed in favour of Arabella Stuart, or perhaps,
really, of the Infanta of Spain. One very tangible
result of it was that Raleigh was sent to the Tower
for supposed compUcity, and was kept there under
sentence of death for thirteen years. But during
his long confinement he did not forget the world :
on the contrary, he wrote its history, and published
it in 1614; and assuredly the world did not forget
him. But would that, instead of this ambitious
undertaking, he had given us the history of his own
times !
The Hampton Court Conference claims something
more than mere mention, although its importance
in the history of this reign may be easily exaggerated
or misunderstood. On his way to London James
had thrown away an opportunity of allaying
reUgious discontent. The Puritan clergy presented
what they called a Millenary Petition, implyino-
that it had been signed by 1000 supplicants : but
the epithet expressed a wish rather than a fact, for
the adherents were only 825. There seem to
have been no signatures. Yet a request from 825
ministers was worthy of attention. They wanted

CHURCH AND STATE 53
to be freed from cap and surplice, the cross in
baptism, baptism by women, the Apocrypha, the
ring in marriage, and so forth. James had been
sickened of Presbyterianism in Scotland, ancl objected
to being preached at by " elders '' who were younger
and less learned than himself. But he came from
Scotland with entire ignorance of English character
and of the situation in England. There was no fear
of the English Church becoming Presbyterian. Tbis
the House of Commons would not have allowed : it
wanted to maintain the National Church in the
episcopal form. But it would have welcomed con
cessions made to those who had conscientious
objections to certain matters of ritual. Baeon gave
his weighty advice in favour of making the use of
the surplice, the sign of the cross, and the ring
optioned, and of allowing some liberty as to omitting
parts of the service. And Bacon was no Puritan.
In his mother's house he had seen both the strength
and the weakness of Puritanism, and with a sure
hand he gives judgment against it. But the self-
opinionated King would not listen. He invited four
leading Puritans, of his own selection, to meet him
and certain Bishops in conference at Hampton
Court (January 1604). The leading Puritan was Dr.
Reynolds, President of C. C. C, Oxford ; a Devonshire
man (Pinhoe) and perhaps Hooker's tutor. James
could not have chosen a better representative of
reasonable Puritanism (see Fowler, History of Corpus
Christi College, chap. vi). He honestly wished to
know what they had to say; and when Bishop

54 THE WISE FOOL IN
Bancroft proposed that the Puritans should not be
permitted to speak, because there was an old canon
which ruled that schismatics may not be heard
when they speak against Bishops, James would not
listen to him. He saw the monstrous intolerance
of inviting people to a conference ancl then not
allowing them to speak. He called on the Puritan
Dr. Reynolds to say his say, and then told Bancroft
to answer him. James exhibited much learning,
but in a sadly irritating and wi'ong-headed way. At
last he asked Reynolds if he had anything else to
urge ; and when Eeynolds replied in the negative,
James exclaimed, " If this be all your party hath
to say, I -will make them conform themselves, or
else I will harry them out of the land, or else I
will do worse." (See James's own account of the
matter, Ellis, Original Letters, third series, p. 162).
He amazed the Bishops themselves by his zeal for
episcopacy : any limitation of episeopcd authority he
simply refused to discuss. This was with him not
purely a matter of policy, but also of orthodoxy.
James was an orthodox Anglican.
And here we may pause for a moment to consider
three things : the position of episcopacy at this
period, the King's Anglicanism, ancl the King's
learning. 1. At this time two causes, from two opposite
quarters, were at worh, tending to depireciate episco
pacy. On the one hand, Romanists were deUberately
lowering the episcopate, in order to exalt the
Papacy. Their three orders of the ministry were

CHURCH AND STATE 55
the Pope, Bishops or Priests, and Deacons. A
Bishop was treated as no more than a somewhat
glorified priest. On the other hand, the Reformers,
in their contest with Eome, wanted as many
supporters as possible. They would have lost a
great many of these, if they had insisted upon
episcopacy, and episcopal ordination, as essential.
Hence Puritan Bishops sometimes allowed ministers
who had only Presbyterian ordination to be insti
tuted into livings. As a rule, such things attracted
no attention : the laity either did not know, or did
not care. There is no ease in whieh such an appoint
ment was challenged as irregular ; and consequently
there is no case in which an ecclesiastical court
declared that absence of episcopal oi'dination was no
bar to preferment in the Church of England. All
that such cases prove is that there were plenty of
English Churchmen, including some Bishops, who
thought little of episcopacy. But among such we
must certainly not count King James.
2. This leads us on to the King's Anglicanism.
As a matter of policy, James was against the
democratic sentiment which lay at the bottom of
Presbyterianism. He beUeved that the cry of " No
Bishop " led naturally to the cry of "No King " ; and
that a system in which (as he said) Jack, Tom,
Dick, and Will could instruct the King in affairs of
state was fatal to monarchy. In the Basilikon
Doron, which he pubUshed while still in Scotland,
he says, " I protest before God (and, since I am here
as upon my Testament, it is no place for me to lie

56 THE WISE FOOL IN
in), that ye shall never find with any Highland or
Border Thieves greater ingratitude and more Ues
and vile perjuries, than with these fanatic spirits."
But study had led him to the Anglican standpoint,
some years before he came to England ; and in this
he was not unlike his protigi, the great continental
scholar, Isaac Casaubon. Born and educated at
Geneva, Casaubon's studies had made him pro
foundly dissatisfied with Calvinistic methods of
dealing with Eomanism. The Calvinistic ministers,
as a rule, knew nothing of antiquity ; and Casaubon
saw that in the controversy between Eome and
Geneva it was precisely antiquity that must decide
hetween tlie two. His study of primitive Christian
hterature convinced him that both sides were
wrong, and that the truth lay between them.
Books reached him from England which took the
same line. Sound learning applied to the Fathers
showed that there was no need to sacrifice one's
reason, either to the presumptuous dogmatism of
Eome, or to the ignorant dogmatism of the Calvinists.
This Anglo -Catholic piosition was very welcome to
Casaubon : and it is worth noting that it was
cdready in existence long before the ascendency of
Laud. It is sometimes attributed to Laud : but it
was the production of no individual. It was
mainly, but not quite exclusively, an English pro
duction ; because it was in England that the nation's
moderation held the balance so long, as regards
ritual and doctrine, between Eoman extravagance
and Calvinistic destructiveness. Who was to de-

CHURCH AND STATE 57
eide ? Papal authority had been rejected. The
Sovereign, the Parliament, the Bishops, were either
incompetent or prejudiced. Logic proved inadequate,
for both sides claimed to have pure reason in their
favour. The one thing that could give a decision
which might satisfy a fair mind, was learning ; and
it decided against hoth Bome and Geneva. This was
the conviction that Casaubon had reached ; and
when he came to England, at Archbishop Bancroft's
invitation in 1610, he found a school of theologians
who agreed with him. And it seems to be correct
to say that, among those who had reached this
position, like Casaubon, by independent study, was
Casaubon's royal patron, James i. And this leads
us to our third point.
3. It has been a common thing to laugh at the
learning of James i. No doubt he was a pedant,
and was fond of exhibiting the extent of his own
reading and of convicting other people of knowing
less than he did. But Lingard goes too far in
saying that, although the King's learning " won the
flattery of his courtiers," yet it " provoked the
contempt and derision of real scholars." The
esteem which Casaubon had for James, and the
liking which he showed for his conversation, is
strong evidence that the King's knowledge was by
no means contemptible. He read the voluminous
works of Bellarmin more than once, and he sent to
Cambridge for copies of the Fathers and Councils,
in order that he might study the references in the
original Greek and Latin. Lord Howard wrote of

58 THE WISE FOOL IN
him to Harington, " He doth wondrously covet
learned discourse." James loved to surround him
self with scholars and theologians who could discuss
the Fathers and Councils with him ; and never
before or since has the English Court listened to so
much learned conversation. And James was not a
mere dictionary or commonplace book : he under
stood what he had read.^ He probably overestimated
the amount of the knowledge of which he was so
proud. But his gravest mistake lay in another
direction. He mistook learning for loisdom, and
thought that knowledge of books qualified him for
ruling men. His tutor Buchanan had told him
that " a sovereign ought to be the most learned
clerk in his dominions," and James appears to have
believed that erudition would make him be an
excellent king. But it is possible to know many
books and many wise maxims, and yet be in conduct
and character a fool.
The one substantial good that came of the
Hampton Court Conference — and it is one not easy
to exaggerate — was the Authorised Version of the
Bible : but to expatiate upon that would be to
trespass upon the province of other lectures.
Another fact to be remembered in connexion with
'¦ Gardiner says, ' ' His mental powers were of no common order ;
his memory was good, and his learning, especially on theological
points, was by no means contemptible. He was intellectually
tolerant, anxious to be at peace with those whose opinions differed
from his own. He was above all things eager to be a reconciler,
. . . penetrated with a strong sense of the evil of fanaticism "
(History of England, 1603-42, i. pp. 48, 49).

CHURCH AND STATE 59
the Conference is that it marks the beginning of
that fcdal alliance hetween the Crown and the Episco
pate, based on a common claim to Divine Eight,
and directed against the common foes, Presby
terianism and Puritanism. The war began at once.
Ten of those who had supported the Millenary
Petition were sent to prison, on the monstrous plea
that such a petition was an incentive to rebellion ;
and hundreds of clergy, who refused to conform, were
expelled from their livings. Some Puritans left
England for Flolland ; and thence in 1620 the
120 " Pilgrim Fathers " sailed in the Mayfiower
for New England.
Under Elizabeth the fateful question, whieh, in
the last resort, is supreme, the Sovereign or the Parlia
inent, had been kept in the background by the tact
of the Queen. In his very first Parliament James
raised this dangerous point, and throughout the
remainder of his reign never allowed it to sleep.
As the strength and firmness of the Commons grew,
so also did his assertions of the royal prerogative.
He told the Commons that " they derived all matters
of privilege from him and by his grant," and there
fore their privileges must not be used against his
power. Neither his failure to get his claims recog
nized, nor the indignation which his unconstitutional
acts provoked, opened his eyes to the necessity of
yielding. The H2 Canons Ecclesiastical, which are still
nominally in force for the guidance of the EngUsh
clergy, had been compiled in 1603, and by their

60 THE WISE FOOL IN
anti-Puritan tendency had given offence to the
Commons. The Commons could get no satisfaction
from King or Lords, and they retaliated by sharpen
ing the laws against Eomanists. Against his wishes,
and against the hopes which he had himself en
couraged, James was driven to persecute his Eoman
Catholic subjects. This led to the Gunpowder Plot,
an event which left its mark on the history of the
next hundred years. It led to the imposition of the
Oath of Allegiance and of new Penal Laws. The
Oath of Allegiance split the English Eomanists into
two parties, and thereby weakened them. Some
took the Oath, and thereby got terms which, how
ever severe, were a £;reat deal better than those
given to Eomanists who refused the Oath. The
latter were liable to loss of goods and perpetual
imprisonment. We must remember that imprison
ment often meant a slow and horrible death in
gaol : and large numbers were imprisoned. When,
in 1616, to help on the Spanish marriage, James
released these Eomanists, the Puritans lamented
that four thousand idolaters had been let loose to
pollute the purified land.^
' "Criminal attempts, even when they fail, have at times the
most extensive political consequences. James I. had started with
the idea of linking his subjects of every persuasion to himself in
the bonds of a free and uniform obedience. Then intervened this
murderous attempt ; and the measures to which he had recourse
in order to secure his person and his country against the repetition
of criminal attacks like this last, rekindled the national and re
ligious animosities whicii he desired to lull, and fanned them into
a bright flame " (Ranke, History of England, i. p. 417).

CHURCH AND STATE 61
The first Parliament obtained the abolition of
the abuse of Royal Proclamations, which had usurped
the place of laws. The friction caused by other
points in dispute was somewhat allayed by the
adroitness of Cecil and by the popularity of Henry,
Prince of Wales, who was believed to favour Puri
tanism, and who openly condemned the foibles of
his father. But Pailiament, unable to come to
terms with the grasping King, was dissolved in
1611 ; and next year both Cecil and Prince Henry
died. About the latter there was a prophecy cur
rent, the influence of which was felt almost in our
day : " Henry thc Eighth pulled down ahheys and
cells ; Henry thc Ninth vnll pidl down bishops and
bells." When William ir. came to the throne, he
wished to take the title of Henry ix. ; but his
advisers told him of the old-wives' prediction, and
persuaded him to assume the name by which he is
known in history.
We now begin the second period, 1612—1618.
Wheu Cecil died, in 1612, James raised a young
Scotch favourite, Eobert Carr, to high positions, and
made him Eaii of Somerset. His influence was
utterly evil. Somerset married Lady Francis
Howard, the divorced wife of the Earl of Essex.
To the scandal of the nation, the divorce had been
obtained through the outrageous interference of the
King and the equally outrageous management of the
trial by Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, who was
thenceforth known as " Sir Nullity Bilson." The

62 THE WISE FOOL IN
marriage of the divorced wife with Somerset had
been opposed by Sir Thomas Overbury, who on a
frivolous charge was sent to the Tower, where he
was poisoned by the Somersets. The truth came
out two years later, and the Somersets were tried
and found guilty. James pardoned, but dismissed
them ; and George Villiers, afterwards Duke of
Buchingha.m, then took the place of royal favourite.
His influence over the King and his second son,
Charles, who was now heir to the Crown, was such
that he soon became the wealthiest and most power
ful peer in the kingdom. To raise money for his
and other extravagances, James sold peerages at
£10,000 a piece, and created baronets, each of
whom paid £1000 for his patent.
But all three, James, Charles, and Buckingham,
were more or less dupes in the hands of the Spanish
ambassador Gondomar, wlio had the principal minis
ters of the Crown in his pay. To the end of his
life Eobert Cecil received a salary from Spain ;
what Spain got for it we do not know. We are all
of us familiar with the saying that " the English
are a nation of shopkeepers." The saying perhaps
owes its currency chiefiy to the first Napoleon, who,
when he was irritated against the English, would
exclaim, " They are a nation of shopkeepers ; sono
mercanti, as Paoli used to say." Paoli perhaps
ought to know, for he ended his days in England
as the pensioner of the British Government. But
the saying is much older than Paoli's time. Gondo
mar, in writing home to Spain from the court of

CHURCH AND STATE 63
James i., reported that the English could be bought
and sold, just like so many shopkeepers.
James, who had expected to be in clover in
wealthy England, found that EUzabeth had left him
a heavy load of. debt. In spite of his oppressive
measm-es in raising money, he was always in difficul
ties, owing to his heedless extravagance. In 1614
he was obliged to call a second Parliament. In it
Bacon, as M.P. for Cambridge, tried to mediate ; but
mediation was impossible. In it Pym appeared for
the first time as M.P. for Caine ; Sir Thomas Went
worth as M.P. for Yorkshire ; and Sir John Eliot as
M.P. for St. Germains. A House thus composed
was not to be talked over. It would grant no
money without redress of grievances ; and James
would concede nothing. It was dissolved after a
few weeks of haggling. It was known as the
Addled Parliament, because not a single egg of
legislation was hatched. This led to the King's
raising money at home by the highly unpopular
device of henevolenccs ; and to his attempting to get
money from abroad, and from no other than the
hereditary foe of England, Spain. James had long
had a hankering for a Spanish alhance. He had
the fine idea of getting the chief Catholic power to
join with the chief Protestant power in compelling
the rest of Europe to live in peace. Beati pacijici,
" Blessed are the peacemakers," was one of the man}'
excellent sayings which he was so frequently utter
ing, without in the least knowing the right way of
carrying them into practice. In the case of the

64 THE WISE FOOL IN
Spanish project, he spoilt everything by his petty
bargaining ways, and by turning the proposal into a
device for fiUing his own pockets. He sent to Spain
an offer of marriage hetween his son Charles and thc
Infanta, chiefly for the sake of the large dowry
which would be paid with such a princess.^
This was the most unpopular act of his whole life,
and in the eyes of his subjects he never recovered
from it. From every point of view the proposal
was hateful to them. (1) It would be an alliance
with ct detested country : the Armada of 1588 was
still fresh in men's minds. (2) It would result
in a Romanist from a bigoted and intolerant nation
becoming Queen of England, who would use all her
influence to strengthen Papalism in the kingdom.
(3) It was an attempt to circumvent the constitution,
by obtaining money, which had been refused by
Parliament, from foreigners.
To no one was Spain more hateful than to Sir
Walter Raleigh, shut up in the Tower since 1603
on an unproved charge of high treason. In 1615
he was released, on a promise to James that he
would go and fetch gold from mines which were
said to exist in Sou.th America near the Orinoco.
The expedition inflicted some damage on the
Spaniards in those parts, but brought home no gold.
On the complaint of the Spanish ambassador, Ealeigh
' " I have seen the originals of about twenty letters which he
wrote to the prince [Charles] and that duke [Buckingham] while
they were in Spain, which show a meanness as well as a fondness
that render him very contemptible" (Burnet, History of His Own
Time, i. p. 32).

CHURCH AND STATE 65
was arrested. And, as James did not dare to try
a man in public for having inflicted a blow upon
Spaniards, Raleigh was in 1618 put to death on the
old sentence for high treason, pronounced years before.
This made the idea of a Spanish alliance stiU more
hateful to the nation. One of the most popular
men in England seemed to have been sent to the
scaff'old simply to please the detested Spaniards.
But James had not yet reached the lowest depth
of unpopularity with his subjects. This took place
in the seven years of special folly which hring the
reign to a close, 1618 to 1625. In 1618 the Thirty
Years' War broke out, in which James's daughter
Elizabeth and her husband, the Elector Palatine,
seemed to stand out on the Continent as the repre
sentatives of deserted Protestantism. The Elector
was defeated, and part of his dominions was seized by
Spain. Englishmen were very indignant that then-
King should stand by and see his desired allies, the
Spaniards, defeat and rob his daughter's husband.
James sent ambassadors to various courts in Europe
to endeavour to get other powers to interfere. But
all this diplomacy effected nothing, and the whole
of his foreign policy wets regarded by the ncdion with
the profoundest dislike and distrust.
Nor did his home government inspire less aversion
or suspicion. The influence of the favourite Buck
ingham had almost supplanted the authority of the
Crown, whether rightful or assumed. Men who
wished for ofifice or favour found that, in order to
5

66 THE WISE FOOL IN
succeed, they must cringe to a man who, when he
first came to court, had to borrow the money to pay
for a court suit. Moreover, to have Buckingham's
goodwill was to be above the laws. His friends
could not only obtain promotion over the heads of
the deserving, but could defy justice. The extra
vagance of thc royal cxpienditure was known to be
largely his doing. And whereas the gaiety of
Elizabeth's court had often been a distress to
Puritans, the shameless indecency of the court in
which Buckingham was the leading spirit, was
such as to shock anyone who valued sobriety or
modesty. In this respect the court of James I.
was far worse than even the licentious court of
Charles u.
But in the home government of James i., that
which specially moved the indignation of his sub
jects was his attempts to tamper with the course of
justice. Again and again he had got the judges to
give decisions, of very questionable equity, in favour
of the Crown. In 1616 he induced eleven of the
twelve judges to promise that, if, in any case that
was being tried before them, the King were to inti
mate that his interests were at stake, they umuld stay
the proceedings, until hc had consulted with them. The
Chief Justice Coke would promise nothing of the
kind, but merely that, whenever such a case should
come before him, he would do what was fitting for
a judge to do. For this he was censured by the
Council, and in November he was told that he had
ceased to be Chief Justice. Thc Royal prerogative

CHURCH AND STATE 67
was nmv freed from the danger of adverse decisions
in courts of livw. But it was also freed from cdl
the moral support which unfettered decisions of
courts of law could give it. The nation's respect
for legal judgments in favour of the Crown ceased,
as soon as it was known that EngUsh judges were
no longer independent ministers of justice, but
creatures of the Crown, who held ofiice simply
during the sovereign's pleasure. It is painful to
remember that Bacon helped to bring this about.
Consequently, when the third Parliament of
James i. met in 1621, it met in deep-rooted
distrust of his whole poUcy both abroad and at
home. This is a Parliament which deserves to he
remembered. 1. On the motion of the late Chief Justice Coke,
a committee to inquire into grievances was ap
pointed, and monopolies were at once attacked.
This led to the revival of the ancient right of
Parliamentary Impeachment, which had been dor
mant since the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk
in 1449. Under the Tudors, Bills of Attainder
and the Star Chamber were the common instru
ments. With the return of the spirit of liberty,
the more popular method of deaUng with great
offenders returned ; and in the seventeenth century
tliere were about forty cases of impeachment. Since
the Bill of Eights, impeachment has been less
and less required, and it is now just a century
since it was employed. The last case was against
Lord Melville in 1805 for alleged malversation in

68 THE WISE FOOL IN
office. In 16°21 the Commons impeached Sir Giles
Mompesson and Sir Francis Milehcll for fraud,
violence, and oppression in the monopolies which
they held. Impeachments were also launched
against Field, Bishop of Llandaff, and others.
But far more important than any of these was
the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor, Francis
Bacon, for taking presents from those whose cases
he tried. He was probably right in pleading that
he never allowed these presents to influence his
decisions. But Parliament was certainly right in
maintaining that Lord Chancellors, like Caesar's
wife, must be above suspicion. The constitutional
interest of Bacon's case is that it re-established the
right of impcctching a minister of the Croum. Like
Mompesson and Mitchell, he was sentenced to be
degraded, fined, and imprisoned. That Buckingham
was unable to save the Lord ChanceUor shows the
growing strength of the Commons. More than
twenty charges were made against Bacon, and
admitted by him as true, — charges, not of unjust
judgments, but of having taken gifts from suitors.
His judgment on his own condemnation is not far
wrong : " I was the justest judge that was in Eng
land these fifty years. But it was the justest
censure in Parliament that was these two hundred
years." As Coke remarked, ''a corrupt judge is
the grievance of grievances."
2. In its autumn session the Commons petitioned
the King to abandon the Spanish marriage, to wed
his son to a Protestant princess, and to send an army

CHURCH AND STATE 69
to the Palatinate. James peremptorily forbade them
to " meddle with mysteries of State." They claimed
their ancient privileges. James replied that they
had none, excepting those which the Crown allowed
them ; and that, if they wished to retain these privi
leges, they must respect his prerogative. On the
18th December they made a forcible Protestation
of their " Uberties, franchises, privileges, and juris
dictions." James sent for the Journals of the
Commons, and in the presence of his Council tore
out the Protestation with his own hand.''- On 8th
February he dissolved ParUament, and sent Coke,
Selden, Pym, and others to prison. It is noteworthy
that at this crisis some of the Lords sided with the
Commons, and of these the Earl of Oxford was
sent to the Tower. But, in all this, the insulting
language and action of the King irritated, without
impressing, his people. He claimed that, as it is
" atheism to dispute what God can do . . . so is it
presumption and high contempt in a subject to
dispute what a king can do." They claimed their
constitutional rights. There was no possibility of
compromise " between a king resolved to be absolute,
^ This volume of the Journals, with the remainder of the torn
pages, may be still seen in the House of Commons. The action of
James "laid bare the weakness of a king who imagined that he
could annihilate with a leaf out of the journal-book what could
not be erased from history, nor from the hearts of the people"
(Hausser, R/formaiion, p. 613). It was in the next year (1622)
tliat the University of Oxford in Convocation condemned all
resistance to a reigning sovereign for any reason whatever ; — a
strange contrast to the House of Commons !

70 THE WISE FOOL IN
and a people resolved to be free " (Macaulay on
HaUam).! Ln his home policy the most serious difference
between the King and his ParUament or people
was in respect to religion. They wanted rehef for
Puritan consciences ; and he, backed up by the
Primate and other bishops, insisted upon the
strictest conformity. They wanted careful repres
sion of Eomanists ; and he was anxious, when
convenient, to give Eomanists indulgences; for Sir
Dudley Carlton, who had been ambassador in Spain,
had told him that the priests there threatened to
have James kiUed, if he were not more tolerant to
Eomanists. Closely connected with this was the
stdl more serious difference between him and his
subjects respecting his foreign piolicy. They abomin
ated everything Spanish ; and he wanted an alliance
with this ultra - Eoman and anti Enghsh power.
They wanted him to go to war for the Protestant
Elector, who had married his daughter ; and he
insisted upon the blessings of peace and his own
skill in diplomacy. Before the end of 1622, the
Palatinate was lost to the Elector and in the hands
of his foes.
Then came the ill - adrised journey of Charles,
Prince of Wcdes, ctnd Buckinghctm to Spain, to try
to gain a wife for Charles and the restoration of
^ James said to Gondomar : "I wonder that my ancestors should
ever have permitted such an institution as the House of Commons
to have come into existence. I am a stranger, and found it here
when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot
get rid of. "

CHURCH AND STATE 71
the Palatinate to the Elector. James was pleased
at this scheme, not only as likely to be very profit
able, but as being rather romantic. He had gone
himself in early days to bring home his newly
married consort from the icy North ; and now
he sent his son to the sunny South to win a
well-dowered bride.^ The two adventurers travelled
as Tom and John Smith. They were feted in Spain,
but Philip IV. was anything but pleased to see them.
He asked, What would Charles do for Catholics in
England ? With true Stuart facility, Charles was
ready to hint at large concessions : but Philip asked
for deeds. Meanwhile the EngUsh were seriously
anxious about the Prince of Wales. He might be
drowned at sea ; or assassinated in Spain ; or made
to turn Eomanist ; ^ or be successful in winning the
Spanish Infanta. When, after eight months, he
returned safe and sound, still a Protestant, ancl
still disengaged, the people broke out iuto the
wildest rejoicings ; ^ and even Buckingham enjoyed
' The Hardivicke Papers contain a correspondence between James
and the two travellers. His first letter to them begins thus :
"My sweet boys and dear ventroiis knights, worthy to be put in
a new romanso." They write back to their "Dear dad and
gossip." See Eanke, History of the Popes, ii. p. 224, for other
reasons whieh may have infiuenced James in this undertaking.
See also the correspondence in Ellis, Original Letters, iii. pp. 121 ff.
'' James Howell, who was there, states in his Letters that al
though Charles had two chaplains with him, he never attended
the service of the Church of England while he was in Madrid.
' "Our belles rung all that day, and the Towne made bonefires
at night. Tuesday the belles continued ringing. Every College
had a speech and one dish more at supper, and bonefires and
squibbes in their courts." Cambridge, llth October 1623.

72 THE WISE FOOL IN
for a short time something like popularity. Charles
now wrote to Spain and demanded the restoration
of the Palatinate as a condition of his marriage
with the Infanta ; and Philip then put an end
to the negotiations. Charles was piqued, and
resolved to take vengeance on Spain.
When the fourth and last Pctrliament of James I.
met in 1624, it was quite ready to support action
against Spain and for the recovery of the Palatinate ;
and it voted about £300,000. It also confirmed
its right to caU ministers of the Crown to account
by impeaching Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, Lord
Treasurer of Englccrul, for bribery and other
offences. It also passed a deeletrettory Act against
monopolies and dispensations with penal laws.
Then came the summer recess; and 29th May
James dissolved, but not before Charles had pro
mised to Parliament that, if he married a Eomanist,
no favours should in consequence be granted to
Eomanists in England. In the autumn Charles
became engctged to Henrietta Mariet, sister of Louis
XIII. of France ; and he and James promised to
grant the very favours to Eoman CathoUcs which
Charles had promised to Parliament should not
be granted. Hence it was determined that James
should not summon another Parliament until the
marriage was over. The marriage of a Eoman
Catholic Princess to a Protestant of course required
a papal dispensation ; and the Pope joined with
the French court in turning the screw tighter
and tighter upon James and Charles respecting

CHURCH AND STATE 73
the favours to be granted to English Eoman
CathoUcs as a condition of the marriage.
But at last, after nine years of negotiations and
embassies to gain a princess for his son, and after
vexatious failures and rebuffs and humiliating con
cessions, James succeeded in obtaining a definite
settlement, including the papal dispensation. But
he did not live to witness the marriage. He had
long been faihng in health, and allowing Bucking
ham and Charles to do what they pleased with
even more than his customary indolence. He fell
seriously ill in March, obstinately refused to take
medicine, and died on the 27th. His deathbed
was the scene of a religious demonstration. In
the presence of a numerous assembly, he received
the Holy Communion after the Anglican use, that
all men might know that he died holding the
views which he had professed and contended for
in his writings during his lifetime. By solid con
viction, during the whole of his reign, he had been,
neither Eomanist nor Puritan, but an Anglican.

What advctntages did the Church of England
obtain from, or during the reign of, Jctmes I. .?
(1) James conferred an immense benefit upon
the Church by rendering all transfers of eeclesi-
asticctl estates to the Crown illegal. It was by
means of such transfers that Elizabeth had plun
dered the Church and reduced some sees and Uvings
almost to beggary : and her successor put a stop

74 THE WISE FOOL IN
to this flagrant abuse. For this he deserves the
gratitude of all who think that an EstabUshed and
Endowed Church is worth keeping.
(2) Gratitude is also due to him for the part
which he took in furthering the production of
the Authorised Version. But he never subscribed
a shilling towards the expenses of the under
taking. Dr. Eeynolds, the Puritan President of
C. C. C, Oxford, urged it. Bishop Bancroft
opposed it. James approved it, partly to con
ciliate the Puritans, partly because he detested the
Genevan Version and its alleged " seditious and
traitorous notes." He thought that abuse of the
Genevan Version would please Anglicans and allay
suspicion. When the King had once set them to
work, both sides cordially co-operated in the great
enterprise. (3) The Canons Ecclesiastical (compiled from
various articles, injunctions, and synodical acts),
which were passed by the Southern Convocation
in 1604, may be counted as another gain. They
were adopted by the Northern Convocation, and
authorized by the Crown ; but they have never re
ceived the sanction of Parliament. Consequently the
Court of King's Bench has declared them to be not
binding upon the laity, excepting so far as they
embody statute law. And of course they are not
binding on anyone where they have been cancelled
by statute law. But although many of their pro
visions refer to a state of things which no longer
exists, they are still of weight in deciding certain

CIIURCH AND STATE 75
ecclesiastical points, and they have for three
centuries helped to preserve the Church from
the eccentricities of individual ministers. It
is to be regretted that they are now so seldom
printed as an appendix to the Book of Common
Prayer. (4) More difficult to estimate is the advantage
which the Church of England got from the un
yielding line which James adopted with regard to
Puritan objections to some of the contents of the
Prayer Book. That, by the strictness with which
he and Archbishop Bancroft insisted upon subscrip
tion and conformity, the English Church lost some
able and earnest ministers, need not be doubted ;
and perhaps some indulgence to those who were
already in possession might have been politic,
however strict the regulations might be for those
who should be instituted after a fixed date. But it
is difficult to feel much sympathy for men who had
entered the ministry of the Church of England,
knowing that they could not conscientiously comply
with its requirements, and deliberately intending
to violate its rules while they struggled to get
them changed. To work for what you beUeve
to be reformation is one thing : to enter an
institution and eat its bread, while you disobey
its constitution and try to revolutionize it, is quite
another. (5) It is possible to speak much more confidently
with regard to the policy, inherited from Queen
Elizabeth, of making the laity, whether Puritan or

76 THE WISE FOOL IN
Eomanist in their convictions, attend the services of
the Established Church. The effect of that upon the
Church itself was wholly calamitous ; for thereby
its spiritual character was placed iu peril. External
adhesion to the Church, manifested by being present
at public worship, was made a test, not of religious
conviction, but of loyalty to the sovereign.^ The
compulsory attendance of adults at services to which
they had conscientious objections was abominable
to all who loved liberty. It was probably more
abominable to Puritans than to Eomanists ; and
many Puritans stayed away and held services of
their own. After the invasion of the Jesuits and
the seminary priests, Eomanists did the same. But
the loyalty of the Puritans to the government was
not seriously doubted, and they were not very often
prosecuted for breaking the law of attendance at
public worship ; whereas Eoman Catholics rarely
escaped punishment. But it must be remembered
that in that age religious toleration was unknoion.
No party either gave it or expected it. Toleration
of another creed was supposed to mean that the
creed was recognized as true. Toleration means
no more than that a creed has a right to exist.
But it cost two more centuries of strife to get this
realized. It is, however, little or no excuse for the intolerant
and despotic acts of Jctmes I., or of any of the Stuarts,
^ As Bishop Earle in his Miero-cosmographie remarks : " A Church-
Papist is one that parts his religion betwixt his conscience and his
purse, and comes to Church, not to serve God, but the Eing."

CHURCH AND STATE 77
to say that acts as intolerant and despotic were com
mitted by Elizabeth. What was excusable or even
politic in her case was inexcusable and worse than
impolitic in theirs : and that for two reasons.
First, she and they reigned over totally different
generations of Englishmen. Secondly, although the
acts in each case may have been similar, they were
done in a very different spirit. The Englishmen
whom Elizabeth ruled were in the condition of
schoolboys and undergraduates, to whom perfect
liberty would have been a curse rather than a
blessing. The Englishmen over whom the Stuarts
tried to domineer were fuU-grown men, who not
only knew the value of liberty, but knew that they
had a right to it, and felt that they could use it.
Again, the despotism of Elizabeth was exercised not
only for the good of the people, as she understood
it, but also with their consent and goodwill. She
had nothing else to rely upon ; no standing army,
no bureaucracy, no network of poUce. Her absolut
ism was based on her people's attachment to her
person and her Grown. The absolutism which the
Stuarts tried to exercise had at every point to be
enforced. It was carried on in defiance of the
wishes of the people publicly and constitutionally
expressed. (6) And this leads us on to one marked feature
in the Church under James i. and his successors,
which was altogether new, and altogether disastrous
to both Church and State, — the doctrine of the
Divine Right of Kings. This doctrine, upheld by

78 THE WISE FOOL IN
a number of Enghsh theologians and lawyers for
about a hundred years, as if it was a part of revealed
truth and a corner-stone of the Enghsh constitution,
is no mediteval superstition hving on into a more
enlightened age. The mediaeval clergy had thrown
then- influence the other way, by insisting on Umita
tions to the royal power. We can find the begin
nings of it in writers near the end of Ehzabeth's
long reign ; e.g. in Hooker. But, as a doctrine,
strenuously contended for with the pen, preached
from the pulpit, and urged as a principle in poU
tics, it comes in with James L, and it goes out with
James rr., or at any rate with his daughters. It is
now as dead as Queen Anne ; and it is marvellous
that such a doctrine, in such a country as England,
should have found a school of supporters, and
sometimes able supporters, for so long. It has no
foundation in Scripture ; nor in history, whether
Jewish or English; and it certainly finds none in
common sense. It was an enthusiasm, a passion, a
craze, which seemed to have an element of chivalry
in it, and thereby attracted some generous minds.
Of course royalty smiled on it, and it had all the
advantages of court favour. James had given it
support in his True Lctw of Free Monarchies, written
while he was in Scotland. Moreover, not a few
prelates gave it their blessing. These things per
haps suffice to explain its success. But, at any
rate, the age which has seen the dogma of Papal
Infallibility accepted and maintained by a large
fraction of the human race, need not marvel that

CHURCH AND STATE 79
the doctrine of the Divine Eight of Kings found a
considerable number of Englishmen to support it for
just about a century.
The doctrine of course means a great deal more
than that " the powers that be are ordained of
God," St. Paul could teach that respecting Nero ;
and it appUes to oligarchies and democracies as well
as to monarchies, whether elective or hereditary.
The doctrine means that hy Divine ordinance there
is an indefeasible hereditary right of succession to the
Crown. Whatever popular election or Acts of
Parliament may decide about the succession, there
is only one person to whom the Crown belongs,
viz. the heir-at-law ; and to him it belongs by
Divine decree. Whatever may exist de facto, there
is always a sovereign de jure, whose rights are in
alienable. This doctrine, so far as it was adopted
by the clergy, did the Church serious harm, bringing
it into needless collision with English tradition and
feeling. It allied itself with the slavish doctrine of
the duty of Passive Obedience to tyrants. It per
plexed tender consciences, and made political settle
ments, which cut across the doctrine, difficult and
precarious.

The character of James I., unlike those of EUza
beth and Mary of Scots, is not difficult to read.
With one exception (his revolting fondness for
coarse buffoonery), the qualities which were fatal to
him were foibles rather than vices ; and some of

80 THE WISE FOOL IN
the foibles would have been harmless, or amusing,
in a private individual. He might have shone as a
country gentleman with literary tastes ; but he was
pitiable as a prince. In some respects an able and
well-read man, he had such an overweening opinion
of his own kingcraft, that he committed greater
blunders than a more stupid man would have done.
His quick understanding and frequent good judgment
were more than neutrahzed by his vanity, his
credulity, and his deep-rooted prejudices. With his
mouth full of maxims of the highest political wisdom,
he sometimes acted in a way which seemed to be
evidence of political imbeciUty. His besetting fault
was a love of ease. Business was shirked and left
to others, who served their own ends by it. Hence
he easily became the victim of flatterers and
favourites ; and he had the misfortune to fall into
the hands of very worthless favourites, who traded
on his easy-going temper. Much of the evil which
he allowed he did not really like ; but it was less
trouble to allow it than to correct it ; and, as he
confessed to his first Parliament, he was always
too ready to yield to suitors. And this perhaps ex
plains the extraordinary vacillations of a man who
at times could be as obstinate as a mule. He said
and unsaid things, made promises and broke them,
began projects and abandoned them, simply to save
himself trouble. Something has already been said
about his learning. He was a considerable author,
and his writings still find admirers. He specially
affected divinity and demonology ; the result of the

CHURCH AND STATE 81
latter study being that almost every year of his
reign some unfortunate woman was put to death for
witchcraft. In the Fortunes of Nigel, Sir Walter Scott repre
sents James as saying to George Heriot : " 0
Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear
Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimula
tion, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of
incontinence." And it is no less " grand " to learn
from James himself that kings should test men's
talents and characters, and appoint their ministers
and servants, not according to their own inclinations,
but according to the merits of the men whom they
select. But saying and not doing is too common in
this world, for us to be amazed that the man who
could write that should make a Duke of Bucking
ham and an Earl of Somerset of a George Villiers
and a Eobert Carr. And here once more James
contrasts very unfavourably with his greed piredecessor.
EUzabeth had her favourites, and some of them were
not paragons of excellence ; but they look very
tolerable beside Somerset and Buckingham. And
though she showed them much favour, she never
allowed them for one moment to rule England or to
rule her. " I will have no master here," she said,
" and only one mistress." But the greatest contrast
of all lies in the judgment whieh the nation has passed,
and never reversed, respecting the last of the Tudors
and the first of the Stuarts. In spite of some grave
shortcomings, the memory of Elizabeth is still
revered and loved ; and, in spite of some estimable
6

82 WISE FOOL IN CHURCH AND STATE
qualities, the memory of James i. is disliked and
despised.^ ^Bishop Burnet says: "It is certain no king oould die less
lamented or less esteemed than he was. . . . His reign in England
was a continued course of mean practices. . . . The great figure the
crown of England had made in Queen Elizabeth's time, who had
rendered herself the arbiter of Christendom and was the wonder of
the age, was so much eclipsed, if not quite darkened, during this
reign, that King James was become the scorn of the age " (History
of His Own Time, i. p. 29).

m.
1625-1640.
DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM
IN CHURCH AND STATE.

" Great Charles, among the holy gifts of grace
Annexed to thy person and thy place,
'Tis not enough (thy piety is such)
To cure the called King' s-Evil with thy touch . . .
What ean the poet wish his King may do,
But that he cure the People's Evil too ? "
Ben Jonson (1630).

III.
1625-1640.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
CHUECH AND STATE.
Chaeles i. was twenty-five years of age when he
ascended the throne. He was not equal to his
father in either intelligence or learning : but in
moral qualities he was superior. And some of the
qualities which adorned his character were such as
would find special favour with the majority of his
subjects. All of them would rejoice that he repro
duced the economy of Elizabeth, rather than the
extravagance of James i.; and that in doing this he
knew how to be careful without showing meanness.
And most of his subjects, but especially those of
Puritan tendencies, would see with satisfaction that,
whereas James could find amusement in coarse
indecency and cared for few serious pursuits other
than learned conversation, Charles had a modesty
which bordered upon bashfulness and a predisposi
tion to gravity in advance of his years. He had
his father's love of hunting, but without his father's
timidity about almost every form of physical danger.

86 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
He could sit a restive horse, and looked well in
doing so ; ancl he was an adept in most knightly
accomplishments. These were just the characteristics
which niight have endeared him to the populace.
Yet there is no sign tlied, even duriug the first weeks
of his reign, Charles v:as received with anything like
cnthusietsm. There were three reasons for this : 1. Charles
was not the eldest son ; and people still remem
bered, and perhaps idealized, the popular young
prince who had died thirteen years before. 2. For
years Charles had been known as the devoted and
submissive friend of the detested Buckingham. 3.
The nation had long been in a serious mood ; and
it was too intent upon the task of recovering and
securing its liberties from the encroachments of the
royal prerogative to spend much feeling upon the
new representative of the prerogative. It did not
care to commit itself to expressions of loyalty or
affection, which might impede it in the work which
lay before it. Better that its heart should not go
out too warmly towards a prince with whom it
would at once have to contend for security of
property and person. England was tired of his
father's shiftiness, and the air of mystery which he
loved to throw round his intentions, in order that
he might change them as often as he pleased. It
wanted a king who would be frank and straight
forward ; who would abide by the constitidion ; and
who would throw himself unreservedly on to the side
of Protestantism in England and in Europe. It

CHURCH AND STATE 87
cannot be said that the opening scenes of the reign
were such as to show the nation that its desires
were likely to be fulfilled, aud that it might safely
give free course to feelings of devotion and confi
dence. As Bolingbroke said, Charles came to the
throne a party man, " and continued an invasion on
the people's rights, while he imagined himself only
concerned in the defence of his own."
There was no change in the principal actor upon
the political stage. Seldom in history has the
same person contrived so completely to monopolize
the favour of two kings in succession as did the first
Duke of Buckingham. With Charles he was even
more influential than with James, who sometimes
had not only to be won over to a particular course,
but also to be induced to stick to it, and who in his
old age had become rather impatient of control of
any kind. Charles was generally willing to accept
Buckingham's advice and to abide by it, with all
the confidence that would have been suitable, if his
courtier counsellor had combined the sagacity of
Burghley with the wisdom of Bacon.
But the principal actor now has a colleague, who
in the end took his place. For three years longer
Buckingham was to be first in the State. But at
his side we now find the man who is to become
by far the most commanding ecclesiastical figure in
this reign, William Laud, as yet only Bishop of St.
David's and Prebend of Westminster, but already of
great influence.
James had got to know Laud at Oxford, and in

88 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
1616 took him with him to Scotland, where with
characteristic offenslveness he told the Scottish
divines that "he had brought some English theo
logians to enlighten their minds." As soon as Laud
had become intimate with Buckingham, the two
became close allies. Laud was preaching at White
hall, 27 th March 1625, when the news came ofthe
King's death.i Charles at once appointed him to
preach at the opening of his first Parliament ; and
he had to act as Dean of Westminster at the
Coronation. It is perhaps from the Coronation of
Charles i. that we may date the specially close tie
between the two men ; for it may have been then
that Laud became Buckingham's confessor.^
That Buckingham had reUgious convictions, and
at intervals had religious moments, need not be
doubted. Some of the most vicious men have had
both. And there is nothing surprising in his seek
ing a confessor, or in his asking Laud to act as such.
He recognized in Laud a devout man, with the
instincts of a statesman, who would be able to
understand a statesman's temptations and failings.
1 "I ascended the pulpit, much troubled, and in a very melan
choly moment, the report then spreading that his Majesty King
James, of most sacred memory to me, was dead. Being inter
rupted by the dolours of the Duke of Buckingham, I broke off my
sermon in the middle " (Laud's Diary).
^ On 15th June 1622, Laud enters in his Diary : " I became C.
to my Lord of Buckingham." Prynne in his Breviate interpreted
this "C" as "Confessor." Laud wrote in the margin: " If I
became his Coufessor, it was no ways fit to write down those
passages in paper." "C." perhaps meant "Chaplain," and Laud
became Buckingham's Confessor at a later (or earlier) period.

CHURCH AND STATE 89
But the close friendship between Buckingham and
Laud is certainly something more thau surprising.
The incongruity between the two men is so great,
that their coming before the world as bosom friends
is grotesque. Would that Vandyck, who has left
us such winning portraits of Charles i., had given us
Buckingham and Laud arm in arm ! The brilliant
and butterfly favourite, with his gay silk clothing,
his white plume and his rapier, his chains and
his jewels,^ his graceful bearing and his courtier
manners ; and the grave University don, with his
stiff, short figure and black dress, and his head
surmounted by the square cap, which was suoh an
abomination to Puritans ; — truly they are a strange
pair ! And they are stranger still when one looks
below the surface. Laud, the learned theologian
who had discomfited the Jesuit Fisher, the rigid
Anglican, the determined ecclesiastic ; and Buck
ingham, the schemer in politics and the gallant in
society, ready for any intrigue either with statesmen
or women, the accomplished dancer and the ready
duellist ! But there is no need to suggest that
either of them was insincere in professing friend
ship for the other. They had one of the ties which
Aristotle tells us is a basis for friendship : they
could be very useful to one another. And, in the
first instance, this was Laud's reason for seeking
intimacy with Buckingham : he wanted his help.
' See the description in Lingard, vii. p. 155 note, from Hard
wicke Papera, i. 571, and see Ellis, Original Letters, iii. p. 189
note.

90 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
Then, when circumstances compelled them to see a
great deal of one another, each took a fancy to the
other. Unlike as they were in most things, they
were both veiy courageous men and very tenacious
of purpose. Both wished to infiuence the King, and
on the whole in the same way. And Clarendon
seems to be right in giving to Buckingham one
characteristic which anyone would find charming,
— especially in contrast to his royal friend and
nominal master, — his " want of dissimulation."
Nor need we doubt that Laud was inspired with a
genuine wish to restrain this spoilt child of fortune
from his evil ways. The prayers for Buckingham in
Laud's private devotions, which (strangely enough)
were made a charge against him, are evidence of
this. We have divided the reign of Charles into two
unequal periods, taking 1640, when the King was
driven once more to summon a Parliament, as the
turning year. It will be convenient to divide the
longer of these two periods again into two unequal
portions : four years of struggle with three successive
Parliaments, 1625—1629; and eleven years of des
potic government without Parliament, 1629—1640.
It has been mentioned as a failing of the four
Stuart kings that reigned in England, that they
coidd not look the nation in the face. The nation
faced them steadily enough, and there never was
any doubt as to either its desires or its determina
tion. But the Stuarts could not meet this resolute

CHURCH AND STATE 91
gaze ; their eyes shifted and fell ; and it is no
wonder that their cause fell also. Of none of ihem
is this more true tlian of Chccrlcs i. He hated the
very name of Parliament. There he could treat in
plain terms with his subjects. But to treat iu
plain terms with his subjects was the ^'ery thing
he wished to avoid. Y\nien driven to summon a
Parliament, he tried to prevent it from discussing
unwelcome topics. And when he could not do
that, he dissolved it.
Ln Charles i. we have a moral char acter of strange
and pathetic interest, — a devout and virtuous man,
convicted again and again of dishonesty. Not many
princes could show a cleaner private life than
Charles : yet in his public life his duphcity was
such that it was perilous to trust any assurance
that he gave. He preferred intrigue to openness,
even when openness was more politic ; and he
seldom scrupled to break a promise, as soon as it
became inconvenient to keep it. Yet he certainly
had a conscience, and in many things strove to
follow it. It is possible that, as regards his double-
dealing, his conscience, under some strange system
of casuistry, acquitted him. He may have thought
that he had no more right to part with what he
believed to be his prerogative, than he had to part
with his soul ; and that, consequently, no promise
that he made to the detriment of the royal pre
rogative could be binding. But if this was his
view, one marvels that he should have thought it
right, not only to make promises which could not be

92 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
kept, but to try to get large sums of money for
making them. His whole career as king was a
series of mistakes ; but his worst mistake — and it
was repeated in a variety of forms — was his in
curable duplicity.'^ In the sermon at the opening of
the first ParUament, Laud had said that, if the
State was to flourish and the Church to stand firm,
" the king must trust and endear his people ; the
people must honour and support their king ; both
king and people must serve and honour God." It
was excellently spoken. But the first-named con
dition was never fulfilled : the King did not " trust
and endear this people." ^
In his first four years Charles was always hoping
that a new Parliament would be more complaisant
than its predecessor ; and he sometimes resorted to
the shabby trick of making his leading opponents
sheriffs, in order to prevent them from being elected.
Coke, Philips, Seymour, and Wentworth (Strafford),
' In his Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation, Bacon says :
' ' Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy or wisdom ; for it
asketh a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell truth,
and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics that are
the great dissemblers." Was he thinking of James and Charles ?
^ Bossuet preached the Oraison Funebre on Henrietta Maria, the
widow of Charles i. , 16th November 1669. It contains a magnificent
panegyric of her and her husband. Of the latter he has the courage
to say that he was juste, modiri, magnanime, tris-instruit de ses
affaires et des moyens de regner. Jamais prince ne fut plus capable
dc rendre la royauti, non seulement vinirahle et sainte, mais encore
aimable et chere a ses peuples (CEuvres, tome viii. pp. 314 ff. ). His
text was Ps. ii. 10: "Now therefore be wise, 0 ye kings: bc
instructed, ye judges of the earth." He had preached before her
from the same text (vii. pp. 394 ff.).

CHURCH AND STATE 93
who thus far was on the popular side, were all
treated in this way. But each Parliament was just
as resolute as its predecessor. To a large extent
it consisted of the same men ; and the new-comers
were just as resolute as those whose places they
filled. It is worth noting that in the Parliaments under
James and Charles there was a large contingent of
lawyers. This was of importance in two ways. 1.
Although at the present time lawyers are, on the
average, not better educated than persons in other
professions, it was otherwise then. In the seven
teenth century, lawyers were commonly men of
superior training. 2. The presence of so many
lawyers in the House of Commons gave a legal tone
to the wliole discussion of the points of controversy
between the Parliament ancl the Crown. The lan
guage used is legal, and the questions are looked at
from the legal point of view. Soinewhat later,
country gentlemen come to the front : but at the
outset the most weighty element in the Commons
consisted of lawyers.
On the Continent heavy bets were made whether
the French marriage, so painfully arranged by James
before his death, would ever take place. The wagers
were soon lost and won. Charles allowed neither
his father's death, nor the pestilence that was
raging, nor the want of preparation in the royal
palaces, to delay it. Buckingham was sent to
France to bring home the bride. She was married
to Charles by proxy in Paris according to the

94 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
Eoman rite, and at Canterbury according to the
Anglican.^ War had not yet been declared against
Spain, and need not have been, although it was to
strengthen the King's hands against Spain that
alliance with France had been sought. But, in
their foolish pique against Philip iv., Charles and
Buckingham determined to go on with this hostile
policy, which they knew would be not unpopular.
Englishmen of that age were generally ready to
attack Spain.
But if Charles was to meet Spain in war, he
must first meet his subjects in Parliament, in order to
obtain the necessary supplies : and he came to this
unwelcome meeting burdened with the consciousness
of having broken a solemn promise respecting his
marriage, and of having failed calamitously to de
liver the Palatinate. He had promised Parliament
that, if he married a Eomanist, Eomanists in Eng
land should receive no indulgence ; and he had
married Henrietta Maria under a solemn promise
to grant indulgence to Eomanists in England.
That was the situation when Charles met his
first Parliament, 18th June 1625 ; and the situa
tion repeated itself again and again throughout the
reign. Charles was always coming hefore the nation
^ " She was the evil genius of her husband, and of the nation
over whom a perverse fate had appointed him to rule. Men
ruefully observed that a French queen never brought happiness
to England" (Morley, Oliver Cromwell, p. 29). "She was a
woman of no manner of judgment ; she was bad at contrivance,
and much worse in execution " (Burnet, History of His Own Time,
p. 21).

CHURCH AND STATE 95
with a lie in his right hand. He might have said
with the " scornful men " who ruled Jerusalem in
the time of Isaiah, " we have made lies our refuge,
and under falsehood have we hid ourselves " (xxviii.
15). Charles expected from the Commons a large and
unconditional grant. But the Commons, though
ready for war with Spain and ready to pay for the
war, were much more ready to secure the redress
of grievances at home.^ War with Spain was a
luxury : the removal of evils which destroyed their
liberties was a necessity. They said that they were
determined "freely and dutifuUy to do their utmost
endeavour to discover and reform the abuses and
grievances of the realm ancl state." In particular,
they required that in important matters the King
" should take the advice of a settled and constant
council." This, of course, was aimed at the single
and irregular counsellor, Buckingham ; and the
debate was sharpened by the news that, although
the Lord Keeper Williams had promised in the
King's name that the laws against Eoman Catholics
should be observed, yet an order for the release of
six priests had been issued. Williams had refused
to seal it ; but the order had been made out, at
the urgent request of Buckingham, in the presence
of the King. Parliament was determined to drive
Buckingham from his position. The King was
' On the influence of Bodin's Republic upon educated thought
in England, see Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe,
ii. p. 51. Alford quoted Bodin in the House.

96 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
equally determined to keep him, and at once dis
solved Parliament ; 12th August 1625.
The fondness of Charles for Buckingham is almost
as strange as that of Laud. The young King was
moral, calm, modest, and precise. His favourite
was dissolute, noisy, forward, and reckless. Except
a fondness for art, they had few tastes in common.
But they had been much thrown together, especially
in the luckless expedition to Madrid. Thence
forward they lived on the terms which had been
assumed as a disguise on the journey — the terms
of Tom and John Smith. In short, the intimacy
was one of frequent companionship rather than of
community of character.
The two tried to make themselves popular before
the next elections. They tried to arrange a great
Protestant alliance on the Continent, and they sent
a great expedition to Cadiz. But the Protestant
alliance was never made ; and the expedition to
Cadiz was a complete failure.
' ' There was a fleet that went to Spain ;
When it got there, it came back again. " ^
The second Parliament met 6th February 1626,
and it determined to impeach Buckingham. Charles
let them know that he would not allow any of his
servants to be questioned by them, and that Buck
ingham had done nothing without the King's special
direction. He reminded them that " parliaments
' But see the longer version of the pasquinade in D'Israeli's
Curiosities of Literature, iii. p. 445.

CHURCH AND STATE 97
were altogether in his power for their calling,
sitting, and dissolution ; therefore, as he found the
fruits of them good or evil, they were to continue
to be or not to be." In conclusion, he said, " I
wish you would hasten my supply, or else it will be
the worse for yourselves."
In spite of this ill-advised message, the Commons
stated what sums they were prepared to grant, but
with the proviso that their grievances were attended
to. They then proceeded to impeach Buckingham.
Charles (after hastily imprisoning members of both
Houses, whom he was compelled afterwards to re
lease) once more, in order to save Buckingham,
dissolved. The Peers begged him to refrain. " No,
not a minute," was his reply.
Charles was now left to carry on the war with
Spain without funds. And as if this was not
enough, he proceeded to attack France as well. A
great expedition to aid the Huguenots at Rochelle
against Louis xm. (1627) failed disastrously, Buck
ingham losing more than half his forces. And there
were other failures.
The cost of all this was enormous. It was sug
gested to Charles, that although, without a vote in
Parliament, he could not make his subjects give, yet
there was nothing to prevent him from making them
lend, — with how Uttle chance of repayment did not
matter. So Charles levied a forced loan; and each
taxpayer was assessed at the rate which he had had
to pay in the last subsidy. Those who refused to
pay were imprisoned ; and when some of the im-
7

98 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
prisoned appUed to King's Bench for a writ of
habeas corpus, the Chief Justice, Nicolas Hyde, de
cided for the Crown ; and the victims were left in
prison. Thus all the machinery of despotism was put
in play, including the billeting of soldiers on persons
who opposed the despotism and the executing of
martial law upon civilians.^
Unhappily for the Church of England, there were
not a few of the clergy who tuned their pulpits in
harmony with royal tyranny. Dr. Eobert Sibthorpe
preached at St. Sepulchre's, Northampton, 22nd
February 1627, on the text, " Wherefore ye must
needs be in subjection," etc. (Eom. xiii 5). The
clergy had just been asked for their opinion as to
the lawfulness of the loan, and Sibthorpe gave an
emphatic afiirmative. In his sermon he said, " If
princes command anything which subjects may not
perform, because it is against the laws of God or
of nature or impossible, yet subjects are bound to
undergo the punishment without either resistance or
railing ; and so to yield a passive obedience where tliey
cannot exhibit an active one." The phrase " passive
obedience " became historical. Sibthorpe sent his
sermon to the King, who wished it to be pubUshed.
' Clarendon gives to these tyrannical measures the euphemistic
name of "Supplemental acts of State." But he condemns them
unhesitatingly: "Unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous,
many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot ; the envy
and reproach of which came to the King, the profit to other men."
As a specimen of the demands made, see the letter of Bishop Juxon,
when High Treasurer, to Sir Richard Wynn (Ellis, Original Letters,
Third Series, iv. p. 213).

CHURCH AND STATE 99
But this required episcopal licence ; and Archbishop
Abbot, who regarded the sermon as an attack on
the constitution, refused to license it, although a
friend of the King went to him eighteen times to
urge this. Abbot received orders to leave London,
and was struck out of the High Commission. There
upon Montaigne, Bishop of London, gave his im
primatur to the sermon.^
A little later (July 1627) Dr. Eoger Manwaring
preached two sermons before the King, in which he
maintained that, if the amount was not excessive,
subjects were in conscience bound to pay the loan.
The sermons were printed, and provoked great irri
tation. In opinion, Laud was on the same side.^
He was not in favour of royal despotism ; but he was
altogether against offering resistance to a royal despot.
Meanwhile Charles was in direst need of money,
and most unwillingly consented to call a third Par
liament (17th March 1628-lOth March 1629).
He said that he abominated the very name. To it
came a number of gentry who had been in prison for
refused to pay the loan ; twenty-seven in all ; among
them. Sir Thomas Wentworth (Strafford). In this
Parliament Oliver Cromwell made his first appear-
' See the letter of Laud (then Bishop of Bath and Wells) to
Montaigne, conveying the King's wishes and hinting that the
objections to the sermon have been "fully answered" (Letter,
ccvi., April 1627). See also Laud's Diary, 24tli April and 4th
July 1627.
^ It was he who gave leave for the printing of the two sermons,
under the title of Religion and Allegiance ; for which the Commons
censured him (Diary, 12th June 1628).

100 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
ance. The King again greeted the House with arro
gant and menacing language, which in no way
turned it from its purpose. " We have come to
gether," said Wentworth, "firmly determined on
vindicating our ancient vital liberties, by reinforcing
our ancient laws." Charles offered his royal word
that he would imprison no one without just cause.
Pym rose and said, " We have His Majesty's corona
tion oath to maintain the laws of England : what
need we then to take his word ? " Sir Edward
Coke warned the House against accepting promises.
" Was it ever known that general words were a
sufficient satisfaction for general grievances ? The
King's answer is very gracious ; but what is the law
of the realm ? that is the question. . . . Let us put
up a Petition of Right. Not that I distrust the
King, but that I cannot take his trust save in a
parliamentary way." And the famous Petition of
Right was drawn up ; against forced loans, martial
law being applied to civilians, billeting of soldiers
on unwilling citizens, and imprisonment without
assignment of cause.^ Charles tried hard to keep
the right to imprison at his discretion. In case of
a conspiracy, the Crown must have unusual powers
of this kind. But Parliament was much more
afraid of the King's using extraordinary powers
against free citizens, than of the conspirators escap-
^ " No year within the memory of any one living had witnessed
such violations of public liberty as 1627" (Hallam). "It would
be difficult to name any violation of law that Charles had not com
mitted " (ibid.).

CFIURCH AND STATE 101
ing because the King had not power enough ; and it
would make no concession. Charles then tried to
elude the issue by declaring that " the King willeth
that right be done according to the laws and cus
toms of the land." But the Commons would have
nothing but the royal assent in the usual form ;¦ —
soit droit fait come est cUsirS. On the 7th of June
1628, the Petition of Right became the law of the
land ; and there were great public rejoicings.
In the history of the English Constitution the
Petition of Right is second only to Magna Carta.
And in both cases the obtaining of a solid conces
sion from the Crown was the beginning of a revolu
tion rather than the end of one. Each of these
victories was followed by a long struggle to main
tain what the victory had won. It is the struggle
that turned the Petition of Eight into the Bill of
Eights, which lies before us. And it is this struggle
which makes England so different from continental
States. Throughout Europe, national liberties had
given place to absolute monarchies. The Stuarts
supposed that the English constitution would prove
equally yielding.
Triumphant at securing the King's consent to the
Petition of Eight, the Commons granted five sub
sidies ; and were proceeding with Sir John Eliot's
Remonstrance, which was a formal attack on Buck
ingham, when the King, to prevent it from being
delivered, suddenly ^roro^/wefZ ParUament, 26th June
1628. Two months later (23rd kagusi), Bucking
ham was assassinated at Portsmouth hy Felton, a

102 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
religious and political fanatic, who gloried in the
murder and made no attempt to escape. But be
fore he died he admitted that his principles were
false : he had done evil that good might come.
Charles was inexpressibly pained ; but he bore
the blow with fortitude.^ Even he must have felt
something of relief in the midst of his sorrow. One
grave source of dispute between the Commons and the
Crown had heen removed.
But unhappily there were other grave matters
of contention, which still remained unsettled. When
Parliament met again for a second session in January
1639, two difficulties at once came to the front, —
tonnage and poundage and the religious question. If
the latter had been absent, the other would have
been solved without trouble.
For 200 yeccrs it had been customary for Parlia
ment, at the beginning of each reign, to grant the
sovereign tonnage and poundage (i.e. the right to
levy customs duties) /or life; and about a third of
the royal income came from this source. In its
desire to keep strict control over Charles i., Parlia
ment had granted this right /or one year only. But
when the j'ear had expired, he still continued to
levy these duties. He contended that the vote in
^ Clarendon relates that the King was "at the public prayers of
the Church, when Sir John Hippesley came into the room, with a
troubled countenance, and without any pause in respect of the
exercise they were performing, went directly to the King and
whispered in his ear what had fallen out. His Majesty continued
unmoved, and without the least change in his countenance, till
prayers were ended." See Edmund Waller's poem.

CHURCH AND STATE 103
Parliament was a matter of form. He admitted
that the money was a grant from the people ; but
it was his due, by custom and necessity. This was
shown by the fact that other kings had levied these
duties hefore the formal grant was made. He did
not wish to infringe the liberties of the people ; but
they ought not to wish their King to live from hand
to mouth. He had gone on levying the duties
without the grant for life, " assuring myself, accord
ing to your general profession, that you wanted
time and not goodwill to give it me." This con
ciliatory message made a good impression ; and if
the Commons had not had their minds prejudiced
by the religious question, the difficulty about ton
nage and poundage would have been easily arranged.
But in the Parliament of 1629 the religious question
was dominant.
With us it has become almost a truism that
the House of Commons is an assembly ill fitted for
the discussion of questions of theology. But in the
seventeenth century both the Hou.se and the nation
thought otherwise. Elizabeth had required all her
immense personal influence to keep Parliament from
meddling with ecclesiastical questions. But now
there was a weaker sovereign, and a much stronger
Parliament. And this stronger Parliament was
unmistakably Puritan and Calvinistic. It is vain
to ask whether only a tenth, or a third, or a bare
majority of the Commons, were convinced and
earnest Calvinists. There may have been many
who cared little either way. No doubt there

104 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
were some who were against Calvinism. But
the Calvinists had it all their own way; and
they knew that they had a large party in the
country behind them. The House of Commons then
was fighting its way to supremacy. It meant to
capture the monarchy ; and as a means to this
end it meant to capture the Church. For this
purpose there was no better instrument than
Calvinistic Puritanism, to which many of them were
on other grounds incUned. In short, the House of
Commons became a theological assembly with a
religious vocation, a mission. The twenty-five years
since the Hampton Court Conference had worked a
mighty change. Then the Puritans had asked for
toleration. Now they would grant toleration to no
one else. Calvinism was to be the unquestioned creed
of the nation. The House knew all about predestina
tion and free grace ; and no one who questioned its
doctrine was to be allowed to preach. The House
knew what ritual was edifying; and no minister
must be allowed to use any other.
It is easy for us, with the experience of the last
three centuries before us, to say that in this tlu
Commons made a foolish, a ruinous mistake. They
did : but it is fair to remember that the mistake
was not all on- one side. A strong revolt against the
dominant Calvinism, which by means of afternoon
lecturers and gentlemen's private chaplains had got
its way in hundreds of parishes, had already begun,
especially at the Universities. With great learning,
courage, and self-control, Laud had led such a move-

CHURCH AND STATE 105
ment at Oxford, where the tide had begun to turn,
when Sir Chris. Hatton was elected Chancellor in
preference to the Earl of Essex, after Leicester's
death in 1588 (see Brodrick, Memorials of Merton
College, chap. in.). Leicester, as Anthony Wood
says, was "a great favourer of the Calvinistical
party," and Essex would have been the same.
Hatton was Anglo-Cathohc, and when he died in
1591, the friends of Essex again failed, and Lord
Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, became
Chancellor. It was during his Chancellorship that
Laud came to the front. Those who were of Laud's
way of thinking naturally looked to the Crown for
support. They also asked for a great deal more
than the toleration which they were not at all pre
pared to give. They maintained that their doctrine
was the only lawful doctrine, and their ceremonies
the only lawful ceremonies, in the English Church ;
and they wished to force their ceremonial on the
whole nation. Charles proposed that both sides
should keep silence about the points in dispute, as
is shown in " His Majesty's Declaration," prefixed
to the Thirty-nine Articles, which is still retained
in our Prayer Books, although it has never been
sanctioned by Parliament. This was dealing equal
measure to both parties ; but it was impractic
able. The only way to stop controversy is to pro
duce the truth and prove that it is the truth ;
and even that is not always efficacious. But in
other respects Charles was on the side of Laud,
whom he now (1628) made Bishop of London.

106 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
Anti-Calvinists got royal favour. Parliament fined
and suspended Manwaring for his sermons. Charles
pardoned him and gave him a living, and later made
him Bishop of St. David's. He made Sibthorpe one
of his chaplains. He made Mountague, a strong
Arminian, Bishop of Chichester ; ^ and people of his
school were generally welcome at court.
Then came news that Rochelle, one of the strongest
bulwarks of Protestantism, had surrendered to the
King of France, because England had failed to save
it. A Jesuit institution was discovered in London,
and was not made to feel the full rigour of the law.
And Charles himself committed the egregious folly
of having the copies of the Petition of Right, which
had been prepared by the King's printers, with the
royal assent in due form (Droit soit fait, etc.),
suppressed. For these official copies he substituted
another edition, with the evasive answer which he
had wished to make, but which the Commons had
refused to accept. Of course, such a fraud could not
escape detection ; and thenceforward he was regarded
as a double-dealer. His subjects felt that they could
not trust his word, even in the highest matters of state.^
1 Laud, with the Bishops of Winchester, Ely, and Carlisle, was
engaged in the consecration of M. for Chichester on St. Bartholomew's
Day, when the news of the assassination of Buckingham the previous
day reached him (Diary).
^ Somewdiat later he wrote to the Queen about his concessions
respecting Ireland: "Itis true that it may be that I give them
leave to hope for more than I intended, but my words are only ' to
endeavour to give them satisfaction.' "
It was not without provocation that when he became virtually a

CIIURCH AND STATE 107
It was in a tumult of exasperation at all this
that ParUament met. Charles desired that tonnage
and poundage should be taken first, and the religious
questions afterwards. The Commons decided that
the " business of the King of this earth should give
place to the business of the King of Heaven."
There was much stormy debate, and at last the
Speaker, Sir John Finch, who had gone over to the
side of the King, wished to adjourn in obedience to
royal command. He left the chair ; but was caught
by two stalwart members, and forced hack into the
chair and held there. Then, at the proposal of Eliot,
prisoner in the Scottish camp at Newark in May 1646, one of
the Presbyterian ministers, in preaching before him, gave out
Psalm lii. : " Why dost thou, tyrant, boast abroad
thy wicked works to praise ?
Dost thou not know there is a God,
whose mercies last always ?
Why doth thy mind yet still devise
such wicked wiles to warp ?
Thy tongue, untnie in forging lies,
is like a razor sharp."
The King thereupon gave out Psalm Ivi. .
" Have mercy, Lord, on me, I pray,
for man would me devour ;
He fighteth with me day by day,
and troubleth me each hour.
My foes do daily enterprise
to swallow me outright:
To flght against me many rise,
0 thou most high of might."
Aud the congregation were generous enough to sing the Psalm
which Charles had called for.

108 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
it was declared that anyone who introduced Popery
or Arminianism in religion, and anyone who collected
or paid tonnage and poundage, without its having been
granted by Parliament, should be reputed betrayers
of the liberties of England, and enemies of the
same. This was indeed a curious combination of reUgious
and financial grievances ; but, as in the case of those
who made shrines for Diana of the Ephesians, the
course of events had established a real connexion
between the two.
The Speaker refused to put any such declaration
to the House, so it was done by Holies. The Black
Eod, whose business it was to declare the House
adjourned, had meanwhile been locked out. Just
as the door was being broken open, the House
adjourned till 10 th March, the day named by the
Speaker in the message from the King.
' In this irregular and violent manner, hitherto
unparalleled in the annals of the House, the
majority gave their assent to Eliot's proposal. It
was a strange way of vindicating the dignity of
Parliament, and of securing respect for cojistitutioncd
forms. On the 10 th of March, Charles came in person
to the Upper House, and without sending to the
Commons, " the vipers " amongst whom, he said,
" should meet with their reward," he for the third
time in four years dissolved Parliament.
This brings us to the end of the first division of
this momentous reign. Both sides were in the un'ong.

CHURCH AND STATE 109
It remained to be seen which would recover itself,
and which would go deeper.
1629—1640. For eleven years Parliament never
met again. Charles avowed his intention of not
summoning one. He had tried to govern with a
ParUament ; but Parliament itself had made this
impossible. Many of his ancestors had governed
for years without a Parliament : he would do the
same. But much water had flowed under the bridge
since then. Parliamentary government had rooted
itself in the affectio7is of the people ; and Parliaments
had found out their own powers. At that time
Parliament represented not merely the political but
the rehgious opinions of the majority of the nation :
and this tremendous fact Charles had failed to
grasp. He was so full of the idea of handing on
the royal prerogative to his successors without
abridgment, that he had little room for the equally
important idea of the national will. Laud, with a
grand aim before him as to the ideal of the English
Church, was making a similar mistake in his method
of realizing it ; and he and Charles supported one
another.^ Officials were to be everything, and the
' It was in 1630 that Laud became Chancellor of the University
of Oxford, an office whioh he filled till 1641, and discharged with
extraordinary zeal, munificence, and success. Here he was a great
reformer, and found time to regulate the most minute details of
University life. It was on the 19th September 1633 that Laud
was translated fi-om London to Canterbury. Twice duriug the
previous August (4th and 17th) "a serious offer " was made to him

110 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
wishes of the governed nothing. No nation, worthy
of the name, could tolerate such treatment very
long. But the bulk of the nation did not approve the
violence of the Commons ; and if Charles had had
the mind to do it, he might quickly have put him
self right with the majority of moderate and sober-
minded Englishmen. But he failed hopelessly,
through having no sympathy with his subjects.
Every question was looked at from the point of
view of the sovereign, not at all from that of the
governed. He put himself technically in the right
by getting courts of law to decide in his favour.
But these decisions had no moral weight, because
the judges were the creatures of the Crown. The
Courts of High Commission and of Star Chamber
were also filled with Crown nominees. Even if
their decisions had always been equitable (and they
were often iniquitous), they were inadequate. They
could only administer the law as it was. Whereas,
what was often wanted was a modification or repeal
of the law.
In short, Charles was determined, both in Church
and State, to govern his subjects as he thought best,
"to be a Cardinal." Each time he replied that he could not be,
"till Eome was other than it is " (Diary). Earlier in the year he
was with Charles in Scotland for his Coronation at Holyrood,
18th June ; " I never saw more expressions of joy than were after
it " (Diary). Leslie, Bishop of the Isles, told Charles at dinner
that some one had said that the Scots would be like the Jews, cry
ing ' ' Hosanna " to-day and ' ' Away with him " to-morrow. Charles
"imraediately tnrned thoughtful and ate no more."

CHURCH AND STATE 111
instead of helping them to govern themselves in
a better way than they could have done without
him. Charles's lack of sympathy with his subjects
appears both in his treatment of individuals and
in his attitude towards the masses. The individuals
who opposed what he believed to be his authority,
he fined and imprisoned, and even mutilated, without
mercy. The masses he disregarded by the exaction
of ship-money and by the enforcement of ecclesiastical
uniformity. The latter made far more impression
than the former. Not until constitutional morality
has sunk deep into the hearts of a people, does
the unjust treatment of individuals provoke active
resistance. But the persistent ignoring of the
feeUngs of large multitudes may do that very
quickly. In the difficulties which he inherited
Charles seldom knew what was worth fighting for, or
what it was possible to retain. He fought obstinately
for what was not worth keeping, and for what it
was impossible for him to keep. Sympathy with
the aspirations of many minds, which had been the
strength of Elizabeth's governinent, would have kept
Charles from this fatal error. But, in his day, this
life-giving and light-giving sympathy passcd from the
Government to the Opposition ; and the Opposition
grew stronger and more keen-sighted day by day.
Let us look at some of the elements of which it
was composed :
1. There were the Puritans ; some of them
moderate, and objecting only to certain ceremonies

112 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
which seemed to them to be Eomish ; others uncom
promising, and objecting to all the ceremonies of
the Church, as worthless forms which debased the
pure spirit of the Gospel.
2. Moderate Churchmen of the ordinary Protestant
type, who wished things to remain as they were, and
objected to the changes introduced by Laud, who
in 1633 became Archbishop of Canterbury. One
change, which excited great feeling, was the re
moval of the communion table from its common
position in the centre of the church, and placing it
at the east end, fenced off by rails. To multitudes
this seemed like an attack on the favourite Protest
ant doctrine, that the individual has direct inter
course with God, without the intervention of priests
or sacraments. It appeared to intimate that God
must be approached only in a prescribed form, and
through offlcial personages. Laud's changes were
mostly in the direction of " decency and order '' ;
but they were enforced with a ruthlessness whicii
drove many moderate Churchmen into Puritanism,
almost in spite of themselves.
3. The Lawyers. Many of these were still on
the side of the Crown, partly because they hoped
for promotion, partly also because they regarded
the royal power as, in the last resort, the basis of
authority. But there were many others, men of
high character and ability, who saw that, in difficult
questions, there must be some basis more secure
than the arbitrary will of one man. This they
found in Parliament, whose decisions would be

CHURCH x\ND STATE 113
guided by definite principles ; whereas the decisions
of a prince would be likely to be dictated by par
ticular emergencies. No doubt ParUaments might
become tyrannical ; but, as representing the wisdom
and will of the nation, they were less unsatisfactory
than an absolute king. Just as in religion the
Puritans looked to principles discoverable by reason,
rather than to the rules of an authoritative Church ;
so, in government, these lawyers looked to principles
discoverable by reason, rather than to the commands
of an authoritative monarch.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the
Opposition luas " got up " by a number of fanatics.
An opposition, such as overthrew Charles I., cannot
be " got up " at all. It was the growth of years ;
and it attracted to itself some of the noblest spirits
in the country, and some of the most conservative.
No doubt there were fanatics in it. A time of pro
longed popular excitement is sure to breed fanatics.
There were political fanatics, who thought that,
because kings make grievous mistakes, all royal
power must be swept away ; and religious fanatics,
who could allow no way to heaven other than the
one which they themselves approved. Men of this
kind swelled the ranks of the Opposition, and some
times drove it to extremes ; but they did not con
stitute it. It was the natural reaction from a
perhaps equally natural absolutism. The reforma
tion of Henry vm. had been a royal reformation :
it put the King in the place of the Pope. The
people were now to have their reformation, putting
8

114 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
the national conscience (sometimes strangely mis
guided) in the place of both Pope and King.
We need not spend much time upon the details
of the despotism carried out by Charles, with the
help of Laud and Wentworth, during the eleven
years of government without Parliaments. But it
must not be forgotten that, in this, it was Charles
who, not merely provoked, but began the revolution.
For the King to govern without a Parliament is as
revolutionary as for ParUament to govern without a
King. The dissolution of the Parliament of 1629 was
immediately followed by the arrest of nine members
who had led the opposition to the King. Most of
them were in time released : but Eliot, Holies, and
Valentine were heavily fined. EUot refused to pay,
and was kept in prison till he died — three and a
half years later. His family asked leave to remove
his body to Port Eliot. Charles wrote at the bottom
of the petition, " Let Sir John Eliot be buried in the
church of that parish where he died." The King's
animosity against this martyr in the cause of liberty
was not quenched by his death.
It was now that Wentworth went over to the side
of the King. Possibly the violence of the Commons
disgusted him. He was made a peer and President
of the Council of the North. Later he was sent as
Lord Deputy to Ireland. Other popular leaders, as
Digges, Noy, and Littleton, accepted promotion from
Charles, and thereby tied their hands.
We once more begin the dismal round of acts of

CHURCH AND STATE 115
oppression ; the fiagrant violations of the Petition of
Right, to which Charles had given the royal assent.
Besides these, monopolies were again granted ; the
forest laws were revived ; the obsolete fines for re
fusing to receive knighthood were again enforced.
Eoyal proclamations were once more declared to
have the force of laws. Fines and other iniquitous
punishments were inflicted by the Council, the High
Commission Court, and the Star Chamber, — three
instruments of misgovernment, which were worked
by almost the same body of officials. As if to
accentuate the sense of exasperation at ceaseless
demands for payments to which the King had no
right, immense sums were raised for the rebuilding
of St. Paul's, and great pressure was put upon
wealthy persons to induce them to give. In this
matter. Laud, who gave £100 a year himself, was
insatiable. But the mention of St. Paul's reminds us that
there were other features in this reign besides those
of regal and ecclesiastical despotism and vehement
popular remonstrance. It was to St. Paul's that
the preaching of John Donne ^ attracted multitudes,
and kept them there enthralled ; " carrying some,"
as Walton says, " to heaven in holy raptures, and
enticing others, by a sacred art ancl courtship, to
amend their lives ; here picturing a vice so as to
make it ugly to those who practised it, and a virtue
' See J. B. Lightfoot's sketch of him in Classic Preachers of the
English Church, Murray, 1377.

116 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
so as to make it beloved even by those that loved
it not." Donne was a poet as well as a preacher ;
and he was the friend of the mother of another
preacher-poet. It is difficult to realize that the
three years of George Herbert's quiet saintly life
at Bemerton were the years that followed on the
murder of Buckingham and saw the begianings
of the struggle to maintain the Petition of Eight.
And yet another clerical poet must be remembered,
Robert Herrick, who for eighteen years held the
living of Dean Prior in Devonslure, was turned out
by Cromwell in 1647, and restored by Charles ii.
And then there was "the ever -memorable John
Hales," one of the greatest scholars in Europe,
whom Laud with great difficulty persuaded to
accept a prebend of Windsor ; a man of large views
and unusual tolerance, who perhaps knew better
than Laud did the difference between essentials and
externals. And, as those who have read John
Inglesant will remember, there is the convent
home of the Ferrars at Little Gidding, — one of
the loveliest experiments in religious life since the
Eeformation. Side by side with these were the men who, by
their examples and their exhortations, were a bless
ing to all who saw and heard them then, and who,
by the hooks of devotion which they have left behind
them, have been a blessing to thousands since they
passed away ; Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor,
and John Cosin. It was to prevent the ladies of
the court from using the Eoman books which the

CFIURCH AND STATE 117
Queen gave them, that Cosin in 1627 published
his Collection of Private Devotions. It contains
prayers for the departed, and indicates the import
ance of sacraments, and therefore was at once
denounced by the Puritans.
Two others must be mentioned among the
numbers of good men who in those troubled
times were mainstays of the Anglican Church ;
Henry Hammond and William Chillingworth.
Henry Hammond has been called " the father of
English commentators." He introduced a new
method into the study of Holy Scripture ; what
has been called the historical method. Controver
sialists on all sides had claimed the sacred writers
as being decisive for them ; i.e. they settled before
hand what the meaning must be. Hammond set
the sacred writers in their own age, and tried to
ascertain what the meaning to that age was likely
to be.
And Chillingworth may be called " the father of
Anglican comprehensiveness'' He had been con
verted to Eomanism by Fisher, Laud's Jesuit anta
gonist ; but he afterwards returned to the English
Church, broadened, and not embittered, by his
changes. His Religion of Protestants (1637) is a
defence of religious freedom. In it he protests
against the " presumptuous imposing of the senses
of men upon the general words of God, and laying
them upon men's consciences, under the equal
penalty of death and damnation."
It was through such men as these that the

118 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
Church of England, even in that disturbed age, was
keeping in touch with all sorts and conditions of men.
There were saintly people among the Puritans also,
a few of whom are known to us. But although
saintliness in persons of different schools of thought
may be equally estimable, it is not equally infiuential.
The saintliness of Puritanism wins our admiration,
but it does not make us long to go and do likewise.
It worships the Jealous God of Sinai, and it works
under the eye of the Awful Judge.^ But it knows
little of the Fatherhood, and still less of the Mother
hood, of the God of Love. It is a religion for the
severe and the stern, perhaps also for the sad. But
there are large tracts of human Ufe which it does
not touch, because it has no sympathy with them.
The universe is fuU of beauty, which man was
meant to enjoy. Society is full of God's good gifts,
and they are not there simply to be abjured. There
must be a reUgion for those who live in the world,
and delight in its innocent and elevating joys.
Music and the drama, poetry and painting, literature
and social life, — all these things are part of the
education of mankind, and we need not, — nay, we
dare not, exclude them. And it is just here that
the Catholic Church, precisely because it is Catholic,
can do for human Ufe in its entirety what Puritanism
at its best has never been able to accomplish. And
it was a noble form of Catholicism that was being
' " All is, if I havo grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-master's eye."
Milton at 23.

CHURCH AND STATE 119
exhibited in the Anglican Church just before the
Calvinistic deluge of the Commonwealth swept over
it, and for a time obscured it.
But we must retm-n to the turmoil caused by a
sovereign smitten with political blindness and a
Parliament that had lost its balance on the subject
of religion. By 1638, Charles had lost the trust and the
affections of his subjects ; but he had not yet ex
hausted their loyalty. They applauded the Puritan
martyrs, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, who lost
their ears in 1637, and the lawyers who defended
Hampden in 1638. But sympathy with the pun
ished may be far removed from rebellion against the
punisher. Lt was otherwise when Charles called upon
them to become punisher s themselves.
Charles and Laud made the frantic blunder of
trying to force a new English Prayer Book on the
Scottish nation.^ In no country in Europe had the
Eeformation been more distinctly national than in
Scotland, and in no country had it been more un
compromising.^ The new Prayer Book was doubly
' In Milton's words, Charles ' ' obtruded upon the Scots a new
Liturgy, and with his sword went about to engrave a bloody rubric
on their backs " (Eikonoklastes, xii. 223). It is not easy to deter
mine the form of public worship in Scotland at this time.
Liturgical forms were used in the service conducted by the Reader
preparatory to the Parish Minister's service, but the Minister
woidd be tied to nothing but what was scriptural, as the Psalms
and the Lord's Prayer.
^ " They ran sae far to get frae Eome,
That they ran oot o' Christendom."

120 DEVELOPMENT OF DESPOTISM IN
hateful to them ; first because it was English, and
secondly because it was less Protestant than the
Anglican Book, which in itself would have been an
abomination.1 Both by riot and by formal decision
of the General Assembly the command of Charles
for the introduction of the Book was openly defied.
Charles had to choose between submission to the
national resistance and open war. Charles was never
a coward where fighting was concerned, and in 1639
he marched with an English force to the border, for
what has been called the First Bishops' War. Only
one man was killed in it, and he by accident. The
English declined to fight in such a cause, and Charles
had to make terms (the Pacification of Berwick,
18th June 1639) and return to London.
But he secretly determined that he would have
his way. He sent for Wentworth, who had been
doing wonders with his " Thorough " policy in
Ireland, and was now made Earl of Strafford. Un
like Charles, Strafford had never been afraid of
Parliaments. Like Henry vm. in England, Strafford
did his despotic work in Ireland, by means of a
Parliament whioh he knew how to control : " The
King," wrote Wentworth from Ireland in 1638, "is
as absolute here as any prince in the world can
be " : and he strongly advised Charles to summon an
English Parliament now.^ It was rumoured that the
' Charles and Laud wished to enforce the Anglican Book. It
was the Scottish Bishops wlio insisted on a different Book.
^ See Moiiey's just estimate of Strafford, Oliver Cromwell, pp.
32-36, 85-88.

CHURCH AND STATE 121
Scots were intriguing with France ; and it was
hoped that Englishmen, if only out of hatred to
France, and anger with the Scots for intriguing
with France, would rally round their sovereign once
more. Moreover, the imprisonment of the Protest
ant Elector Palatine had made the English Puritans
very Uritated against France. Under the hopeful
expectations which these circumstances excited, the
Council succeeded in persuading the King to break
the silence which had been imposed on the nation
for eleven years, and to allow it once more to make
its desires known in a Parliament. This decision
caused much rejoicing throughout the kingdom.
Moderate men hoped that all would now be well.
More strenuous malcontents looked forward to a
strong statement of grievances and a demand for
reformation. The issue of the momentous decision
belongs to our next period.

IV.
1640-1649.
DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
AND MONARCHY.

' They bawd for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when trutli would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry liberty ;
For wdio loves that must first be wise and good.
But from that mark how far they rove we see
For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood." Milton.

IV.
1640-1649.
THE DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY AND
MONARCHY.
We are at the moment when Charles, under the
infiuence of Strafford, has consented to summon a
Parliament. Charles, Strafford, and Laud were all
of opinion that force must be used in dealing with
the rebellious Scots, and that the new Parliament
must be asked to supply the money. Strafford
advised apiplying to the Lrish Parliament first. He
could secure a favourable answer there, and then
the English ParUament would probably foUow suit.
He returned at once to Ireland, and, although suifer
ing greatly from gout, in fourteen days he accom
phshed his object. On 23i-d March 1640, the Irish
Parliament granted four subsidies, and declared
that, if necessary, they would devote their property,
and even their persons, to the service of the
King. The eyes of every one in all three kingdoms were
fixed on the English Parliament, which met 13 th
April. Would it support Charles in his sovereignty

126 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
over Scotland ? or would it use the crisis to enforce
its own demands ? May, in his contemporary
history, remarks that the news of the meeting of
Parliament almost amazed the people, " so strange a
thing was the name of Parliament grown." After
eleven years' interval nearly all the members were
new, and although determined to work for the
rights of the nation, they were not fanatical mal
contents. They had an old and well - trained
member for a leader. In the Parliaments of James
and Charles, John Pym had been second only to Sir
John Eliot as a leader of the national party. He
had suffered imprisonment for his courage in de
nouncing abuses. He and Wentworth had been col
leagues in opposing the misgovernment of Bucking
ham. Now that Wentworth was in Buckingham's
place, the two firm friends had become firm opponents.
When Wentworth left the national party, Pym said
to him : " You are leaving us ; but I will never
leave you while you have a head on your shoulders."
The saying was soon to be fulfilled. Pym was no
extremist either in politics or religion : he was for
constitutional monarchy and for Protestant Episco
pacy. Nor was he a gloomy fanatic : his enemies
among the Puritans denounced him as a man of
pleasure. Indeed, in him and his former friend the
characteristics of the two parties seemed to have
changed sides. While Pym had much of the
geniality of a cavalier, Strafford had the severity,
and sometimes the gloom, of a Puritan.
When the Commons met, Pym was one of the

AND MONARCHY 127
first to rise. He had drawn up a long list of
grievances under three heads : innovations in religion,
invasions of private property, and breaches of the
privileges of Parliament. Charles wished that sub
sidies should be granted first and grievances con
sidered afterwards. But the Commons would give
nothing for nothing. The King must restore the
rights of the nation before they voted money to the
King. Charles offered to give up ship-money, if twelve
subsidies (£960,000) were granted. But the Com
mons refused to buy what was theirs by right. To
buy would imply that hitherto ship-money had been
legal. When their grievances had been considered,
they would consider the King's need of funds.
Charles at once dissolved, 5 th May, after the House
had sat three weeks. This was doubly foolish.
Moderate men, who would have sympathized with
him, if he had dissolved because Parliament refused
to give him money to defend England from invasion,
were irritated at his dissolving because the Com
mons would not change their order of business.
Secondly, the Scots believed that, as Parliament had
granted no money, Englishmen were on their side ;
and this encouraged them to invade. This is the
Second Bishops' War. It was like the first. The
English army would not fight, and the Scots soon
had Northumberland and Durham in their hands.
They refused to retire, unless they were paid their
expenses at the rate of £850 a day. The English
army would not attempt to drive them out. In
order to set free these two counties, Charles must

128 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
have a large sum of money. And in order to get
this he must summon another Parliament.
But before we look at what is perhaps the most
famous ParUament in English history, we must
consider the proceedings of another notable body, —
the Convocation (/ 1640. Of course it had been
sitting simultaneously with the " Short Parliament "
of three weeks' duration : and it had continued to
sit after Parliament was dissolved. It was doubtful
whether this was legal. They were advised that it
was legal,^ and possibly the advice was correct ; but
it was unwise to attempt to legislate on important
matters, when their right to do so was technically
disputable. They passed a new Book of Canons,
which are still sometimes quoted, and are of con
siderable historic interest, as showing (1) what was
the aim of Charles, Laud, and Strafford with regard
to the monarchy, and (2) what was the mind of the
rulers of the Church at that time with regard to
certain matters of doctrine and ritual.
(1) As to the first point, the aim seems to have
been to establish autocracy upon a spiritual basis.
The first canon calls monarchy the " most high and
sacred order of things," and says that it " is of
divine right, being the ordinance of God HimseU,
founded in the pure laws of human nature, and
clearly established by express texts both of the Old
^ The legal advisers of the Crown declared that " the Convoca
tion being called by the King's writ, under the Great Seal, doth
continue, until it be dissolved by writ, or commission under thc
Great Seal, notwithstanding the Parliament be dissolved."

AND MONARCHY 129
and New Testaments." To bear arms " offensive
or defensive, on any pretence whatever," against
kings is to " resist the powers ordained of God."
The second canon orders the observance of the
King's accession day. Then follow canons against
Papists, Socinians, Anabaptists, Brownists, Separ
atists, and those who go to church to sermons but
not to prayers.^
It was, however, the sixth canon which excited the
liveliest opposition. This contains the famous " et
eaetera oath," which it required all clergy, school
masters, divinity graduates, hcensed practitioners,
register actuaries, and proctors to take. The oath
runs thus : — " I, A. B., do swear that I approve
the doctrine and discipline, or government, estab
lished in the Church of England, as containing all
things necessary to salvation ; and that I will not
endeavour by myself or any other, directly or in
directly, to bring in any Popish doctrine contrary
to that which is so established ; nor will I ever
give my consent to alter the government of this
Church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and arch
deacons, &c., as it stands now established," and so
forth. (2) It is from the seventh canon, which is long
and carefully worded, that we learn the mind of
Laud and his colleagues on a number of points.
It says that uniformity of worship is desirable as
' " With troops expecting him at the door,
That would hear sermons and no more.''
John Cleveland, The Puritan.
9

130 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
well as unity of faith. The position of " the com
munion table sideway under the east wall of every
chancel or chapel is in its own nature indifferent."
When this Church was reformed " from that gross
superstition of Popery," all " Popish altars " were
destroyed, because " of the idolatry committed in
the Mass." But Elizabeth ordered that the holy
tables should stand where the altar stood ; and this
has been the custom in royal chapels, most cathe
drals, and some churches. It was fitting that this
custom should be made universal, " saving always
the general liberty left to the Bishop by law during
the time of administration of the holy communion."
Then follows the doctrinal statement : " And we
declare that this situation of the holy table doth
not imply that it is, or ought to be, esteemed a true
and proper altar, wherein Christ is again really
sacrificed : but it is and may be called an altar by
us in that sense in which the primitive Church
called it an altar, and in no other." This canon
also recommends, though it does not order, that
people should " do reverence " on entering and
leaving church, " not " (it says) " with any intention
to exhibit any religious worship to the communion
table, the east, or church, or anything therein con
tained, in so doing, or to perform the said gesture
in the celebration of the holy eucharist, upon any
opinion of a corporal presence of the body of Jesus
Christ on the holy table, or in mystical elements,
but only for the advancement of God's majesty, and
to give Him alone that honour and glory that is

AND MONARCHY 131
due unto Him, and no otherwise." And then are
added these useful words, which niight be remem
bered of other things besides the now obsolete
custom of making an act of reverence on entering
or leaving church : " and in the practice of this
rite, we desire that the rule of charity described by
the apostle may be observed, which is that they
which use this rite despise not them who use it not,
and that they who use it not condemn not those
that use it."
These canons show two things as regards prac
tice and doctrine in the Church of England under
Charles i. : (1) that, like the original English
Eeformers, the Caroline divines appeal to the pirimi-
tive Chitrch ; (2) that, like the same, they reject the
Romish doctrine that " Christ is again really sacri
ficed " in the eucharist, or that there is " a corporal
presence of the body of Jesus Christ on the holy
table." Whether, if the " et eaetera oath " had been
omitted, these canons would have met with accept
ance, is uncertain. Perhaps thirty years earher
they might have done so. As it was, the outcry
was such that Laud had to give way, and the King
ordered that the oath " should be forborne " till
Convocation met again ; which was not for twenty
years. It is one more piece of evidence of how
strangely in the dark both Laud and his colleagues
were as to the strength of the opposition, that they
expected to get these canons accepted, and also
hoped to win in the struggle with the rebellious

132 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
Scots. Quite independently of the temper of the
Scots, and of the English Parliament so hastily dis
solved, and of the masses, as shown by riots in
London, there was one fact of peculiar significance
which might have warned Laud, Strafford, and the
King. The majority of the clergy rejected the Book
of Canons. If the clergy of the Established Church
resented such doctrine about the divine right of
kings, and the immutability of deans, and arch
deacons, et eaetera, what was to be expected from
Dissenters ? Not a few English Churchmen, and
nearly all Dissenters, regarded the invading Scots
as upholders of English liberties, and they rejoiced
at then- occupation of the two Northern counties as
supplying a lever by means of which the royal
position could be forced. Thus, four months after
the dissolution, Charles had again to summon a
Parliament. It may be mentioned by anticipation
that Parliament declared the canons of 1640 null
and void.
Charles met his fifth Parliament, the famous
"Long Parliament" of history (3rd Nov. 1640),
which was destined to outlive not only Strafford
and Laud, but Charles himself, with no feeUngs of
exhilaration. The lives of his advisers, and (what
he seems to have cared for far more) the preroga
tives of his Crown, were at its mercy.^ Eym and
^ In the opening words of Eikon Basilike we read : "This last
Parliament I called, not more by others' advice and necessity of
my affairs than hy my own choice and inclination, who have always
thought the right way of Parliaments most safe for my crown, as
best pleasing to my people." Of this strange statement Milton

AND MONARCHY 133
Hampden had been indefatigable during the elec
tions, and an overwhelming majority had been
secured for the National party. The time for reform
had gone by : these men had met together for nothing
less than revolution. Clarendon tells us that, when
the King dissolved the Short Parliament, it was his
most bitter opponents who could not " conceal the
joy of their hearts, for they knew . . . that so
many unbiassed men would not be elected again."
And this is how Clarendon describes the new
House of Commons : " There was observed a marvel
lous elated countenance in most of the members
before they met together in the House : the same
men who six months before were observed to be of
very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle
remedies might be applied without opening the
wound too wide and exposing it to the air, and
rather to cure what was amiss than too strictly to
make inquisition into the causes and origin of the
inalady, talked now in another dialect both of
things and persons, and said that they must now be
of another temper than they were the last Parlia
ment ; that they had now an opportunity to make
their country happy by removing all grievances and
pulling up tlie causes of them hy the roots, if all men
would do their duties." ^
rightly says, that it "is to all knowing men so apparently not
true, that a more unlucky and inauspicious sentence . . hardly
could have come into his mind " (Eikonoklastes, i. 15).
^ "The Long Parliament was made up of the very flower of tho
English gentry and the educated laity." It was a "phalanx of
country gentlemen, of the best blood of England, belonging to a

134 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
One very remarkable sign of the times must be
noted : the Pm-itan emigration to New England
almost suddenly ceased. Men had been going across
the seas in search of freedom : now they believed
that they could get it at home.
In short, it was generally recognized that the
despotism of the King was already defeated : the
question that remained was, how far the victorious
party would go in placing restrictions on the
vanquished. When Parliament met, Hamilton warned the
King of the fate which awaited Strafford and Laud,
of whom he said that " one would be too great to
fear, and the other too bold to fly." Strafford had
two leading maxims of policy besides that of
" Thorough." One was, that if a minister is to
succeed, he must be entirely trusted hy the King.
The other was, that a trusted minister must be
prepared to lose his head. Strafford was not entirely
trusted by the King,^ and yet he lost his head.
Like most shifty men, Charles put entire trust in
no one. As Laud said, Strafford had the misfortune
class of strongly conservative instincts and remarkable for their
attachnient to the Crown. ... It is curious, too, how many of the
leaders came from that ancient seat of learning which was so soon
to become the centre of all who held for Church and King. Selden
was member for the University of Oxford, and Pym, Fiennes,
Marten, Vane, were all of them Oxford men " (Morley, Cromwell,
p. 75). Of the 490 who had sat in the Short Parliament, nearly
300 were elected again for tbe Long one.
^ See Browning, Strafford, Act I. Sc. ii. ; Act II. Sc. ii. The
concluding scene, in which Charles visits Strafford in the Tower, is
against all historical probability.

AND MONARCHY 135
to " serve a mild and gracious Prince, who knew not
how to he, or to he made, great" {History of the
Troubles and Trial of Archbishop Laud, chap. ix.).
He was given to dallying with inconsistent policies
and intriguing with opposite parties. He was
rigorous enough to make himself hated, without
being firm enough to make himself respected.
Pym took the lead in impeaching his former friend
for high treason. Strafford came to the House of
Lords on the morning of 1 1 th November, apparently
still the most powerful man in the kingdom. In
the afternoon he was in prison. Why did he come ?
He must have known his danger. Charles had said
that he could not do without him ; and he pledged
his royal word for his safety. Probably no trial,
except that of Warren Hastings, has ever excited sueh
intense interest} The impeachment failed, for no
one act of his could be shown to be high treason.
Then he was struck down by a Bill of Attainder,
which was passed by the Peers, under popular
intimidation, in a small House of forty-five, by the
small majority of seven. A Bill of Attainder, as
Goldwin Smith remarks, is an instrument which no
just man would now use against the worst criminal.
But in those times it was a recognized process in
jurisprudence, and would have been freely used by
' Eobert Baillie, in his Letters and Journals, says : "It was
daily the most glorious assembly the isle can afford ; yet the
gravity not such as I expected ; oft gi-eat clamour without about
the doors." Laud says that the Bill of Attainder "was denied
by two or three and fifty, able men as any in the House of
Commons."

136 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
either side. Even the gentle Falkland and the
moderate Hyde voted for it. The truth was, that
Strafford was too commanding a genius to be either
acquitted or pardoned. His despotic policy of
" Thorough," so successful in Ireland, where it was
not unsuitable, was a most formidable enemy to
the freedom of England, where it was intolerable.
But the Bill that was to be his death-warrant
needed the King's signature ; and Charles had
pledged his word that not a hair of his head should
perish. It scarcely makes his conduct the better
that Strafford generously sent word that he released
him from the pledge. On Saturday, Sth May, a
deputation of Peers advised him to give his assent.
Charles deferred his decision till Monday. Of the
five Bishops whom he consulted, Archbishop Usher,
who accompanied Strafford to the scaffold, and Juxon
of London, advised him not to shed the blood of a
man whom he believed to be innocent. Williams
and the other two told him that he must concur
with the two Houses of Parliament ; that he must
not ruin himself and his family; that to refuse
would not be to save Strafford, but to perish with
him. And the Bill was signed.^
Charles signed his own decdh-warrant when he
signed that of Strafford. His signature declared
that faithful execution of the King's commands was
^ It was signed on the Sunday night. On Sunday morning the
Earl of Bedford, who was " one of the main plotters of Strafford's
death " (Laud), died ot small-pox. But see Clarendon, Hist.
Rehell. i. p. 422.

AND MONARCHY 137
a capital offence ; and Strafford's death left Charles
without a single man of first-rate ability on his side.
Milton calls this execution " the most reasonable
and solemn piece of justice that had been done of
many years " ; but it was a political act of needless,
and therefore criminal, severity. It would have
been possible to render Strafford harmless by
perpetual imprisonment such as Ealeigh's. His
death has thrown a halo round him, and to some
he is still almost a martyr. But, as Essex said,
" stone-dead hath no fellow." The man who is in
his grave can never join another in a plot. When
you next read the 25 th Psalm, you may care to
remember that Strafford said it on the scaffold.^
The impeachment of Laud followed closely ou
that of Strafford. Had his conduct been less free
from reproach than it was, he would have had but
little chance before such a Parliament. Like not a
few Puritans before his own tribunals. Laud was
already condemned before he entered the court.
He was sent to the Tower, and was there when
Strafford was executed, 12th May 164L although
the two were not allowed to meet.
Other enemies of the popular cause were pro-
' Strafford had married the sister of Denzil Hollis or Holies, one
of the Five Members. Holies told Strafford that his life would be
spared, if he would use his influence with Charles to abolish
Episcopacy. Strafford replied that "he would not buy his life at
so dear a rate." Strafford, like his master, died rather than
sacrifice the Church of England. See Sir John Denham's poem on
Strafford's Triad and Death, and John Cleveland's Epitaph upon
the Earl of Strafford.

138 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
ceeded against. The five judges who had declared
ship-money to be legal, were impeached, and the
thirteen Bishops who had passed the canons of
1640. In one way or another the chief instru
ments of the King's despotism were prosecuted.
But much useful legislation was passed. Every
third year there must be a Parliament, whether the
sovereign liked to summon one or not. Tonnage
and poundage were regulated, and ship-money was
forbidden. The Star Chamber, the High Commission
Court, and Councils of the North, of Wales, and of
Lancaster and Cheshire, were abolished, together with
the Forest Courts. And to all this Charles gave his
assent. He even assented to an Act depriving him
of the power to dissolve the Long Parliament ivithout
its consent.'^ But he never knew when to be firm
and when to yield with grace. He conceded a
prerogative as valuable to the nation as it was to
the Crown, when he allowed the Parliament to sit
as long as it pleased. In the Eikon Basilike it is
rightly called " an act unparalleled by any of my
predecessors." Burnet remarks that, while the
King's other great concessions saved him from
immediate overthrow, this unwise concession led to
his ultimate ruin.
Parliament was now the sovereign of its sovereign
Charles, and continued to be so till a fragment of it
put him to death ; in doing which it became the
servant of its servant, the army, and continued to
^ Laud states that this fatal Bill was signed at the same time as
the fatal Bill against Strafford.

AND MONARCHY 139
be so, tiU the last fiicker of it was extinguished by
Oliver Cromwell.
We have now reached the crisis when the
reforming or popular party was split in two.
There were those who thought that the King's
power had been greatly reduced, and that, if he
were entirely dethroned, there was no one to put
in his place. They must therefore make the best
of him, and put some trust in him. There were
others who saw that he still possessed an amount
of power, which, in the hands of an unscrupulous
sovereign, might be very harmful to the nation.
He had the control of the militia, the only miUtary
force in the kingdom ; and by refusing his assent
to Bills he could stop all legislation. They must
therefore regard him with suspicion, and jealously
prevent him from getting the control of anything
of importance. Falkland, Hyde, St. John, and
Cnlpeper belonged to the one class ; Pym, Hamp
den, and the " Eoot-and-Branch " men to the other.
The latter beUeved that the last day of Parliament
would be the last day of Charles's good faith. They
must go on, until it was impossible for him to
undo their work. Unhappily, Charles had given.
them good reason for believing this. But they need
all this to justify them in giving the word for revolution.'^
' "In truth, the cause of the King's ruin lay as much in his
position as iu his character. . . . We may say of Charles i. what
was said of Louis xvi. Every day they were asking the King for
the impossible — to deny his ancestors, to respect the constitution
that stripped him, to love the revolution that destroyed him.
How could it be ? " (Morley, Oliver Cromwell, p. 210). As Charles

140 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
Eevolution is a remedy which true statesmanship
and true loyalty will avoid, until all other means
of curing intolerable evils have been tried. Eevolu
tions are full of elements which every good citizen
must hate, and every good Christian deplore.
Moreover, they leave a long train of evils behind
them. They may evoke energy, bravery, prompti
tude, and other heroic virtues. But these are
more than paid for by the social depression, and
the political bankruptcy, and the moral infidelity
which follow. Neither the English nor the French
Eevolution can lead any patriot to wish that his
country should go through the like struggle again.
On the whole, this division of the reforming
party on the political question corresponded with
the division on the religious question, tohich still
remained to be settled. Hardly anyone wished to
see the ceremonial, which Laud had tried to force
upon the nation, retained. Those who were in
clined to give the King a further trial wished in
the main for the state of things which had pre
vailed before Laud's innovations, i.e. modified
Episcopacy, with a certain amount of liberty in
thought and ritual. The more extreme party,
who had a small majority, wished to see Puritanism
established by law. The Prayer Book must be
subjected to a drastic revision ; and the Bishops
himself said, if their demcinds were granted, "we may have swords
and maces carried before us, and please ourselves with the sight of
a crown and sceptre ; but as to true and real power, we should
remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king."

AND MONARCHY 141
must be turned out of the House of Lords and
placed under very strong restrictions. But, just
as hardly any of the moderates desired to keep
Laud's new ritual, so hardly any of the Puritans
desired entirely to abolish Episcopacy. That desire
came later.
Here Charles once more had a great opportunity.^
Had he thrown in his lot with the moderates,
and acted on the defensive against revolutionary
measures, he would have won much sympathy.
But, hy an act of supreme folly, he once more
gave overwhelming advantage into the hands of
his bitterest opponents. He listened with some
patience to the Grand Eemonstrance, 1st December
1641;^ but he engaged in one intrigue after
another, and hy his attempt to arrest the Five Members
on the charge of high treason, 4th January 1642,
he made reconciliation impossible. Even moderate
men then saw of what intolerable things he would
be capable, if he were ever allowed to get the
upper hand. Indeed, when the King, with his
eighty armed followers, entered the lobby of the
House of Commons, the Civil War had virtuaUy
begun. A paper with the words, " To your tents,
0 Israel," was flung into his carriage as he drove
¦' He was enthusiastically received in London on his return from
Scotland, 25th November 1641. As Laud says, had he resolved to
"leave them their ancient and just privileges," there would have
been a turn iu his favour. Even the massacre of the Protestants
in Ireland, 23rd October 1641, would not have prevented this.
^ See the sketch of a reply to it made by Laud ( Works, vii.
p. 631 ff.).

142 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
back from a second futile attempt to capture the Five
Members. Clarendon calls the attempt " the most
visible introduction to all the misery that after
wards befell the King and kingdom."
Yet, in spite of this, Charles still retained the
support, and even the devotion, of not a few.
There was the conservatism that disliked change, and
the sentiment that revered the traditional glories of
the old monarchy.^ There was the fear, expressed
by Hyde, that a single Chamber was going to make
itself despotic. There was also the fear, expressed
by Falkland, Hales, and Chilhngworth, that all
freedom of thought ivoitld be stifled by the intolerant
dogmatism of the Puritan clergy. And there was
the terror, felt by many, at the amazing outburst
of sectarianism all over the country, and especially
in London : Socinians, Presbyterians, Brownists,
Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, Levellers. In
the debate about the impeachment of the thirteen
Bishops who had passed the canons of 1640,
Bishop Hall of Norwich said in his defence of
the clergy : " The Church of England is miserably
infested with Papists on the one side, and Schis
matics on the other. I do perceive a great deal of
zeal for the suppression of the former, and I do
heartily thank God for it ; but for the other, I do
not find many that are sensible of the danger of it.
Alas, my Lords, consider what it is that there
should be in London and the suburbs no fewer
^ ' ' Quis est enim, quem non moveat olarissimis monumentis
testata consignataque antiquitas?" (Cie. De Div., i. 40).

AND MONARCHY 143
than four-score congregations of several sectaries,
instructed by guides fit for them, cobblers, tailors,
felt-makers, and such-like trash " (Hansard, P. H.,
ii p. 989 ; Paton, Papal Claims, i. p. 173). In
the spring of 1642 (MUton tells us) the Eoyalists
had forgotten to complain of the Puritans in their
alarm at the Brownists.
But no one was ready with a solution of the
religious difficulty. How much freedom was to be
allowed to ministers and congregations inside the
Established Church ? ^ How much freedom was
to be allowed to those who had separated from
the Church?
There were, in the main, three answers ; but none
of them solved the difficulty.
1. There was the answer of the Puritans. There
can be no freedom : all must believe and worship
as we do. This is tyranny pure and simple.
2. There was the answer of the thinkers, such as
Falkland, Hales, and Chillingworth. Persecution
is unlawful. Eeason, rather than authority, must
decide in religious questions. Men must be left
free to accept what seems to them to be the truth ;
and worship must be simple, in order that as many
as possible may be able to join in it without
offence. This is vastly superior to the Puritan answer ;
but it wiU not work. These thinkers failed to see
^ ' ' Everybody was in favour of Church reform, but nobody had
any clcar ideas of the principle on which reform should proceed "
(Morley, Cromwell, p. 93).

144 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
that reason pure and simple has never settled any
great question of human conduct. Even among
thinking men, habit and feeUng often control the
intellect. And they also failed to see that to
make worship very simple will not make it uni
versally acceptable. The absence of accessories
may be as intolerable to some mmds as the pre
sence of them is to others. Worship may become
a burden, if not a mockery, to those who find in
it nothing to express or stimulate their deepest
emotions. The only way to make worship gene
rally acceptable is to present it in a great variety
of types. This brings us near to the third answer.
3. The answer of the Independents. Government
interference with religion is unlawful. Each group
of men that meets together for worship must be
allowed to worship in the way that suits them
best. Every congregation must fix its own ritual
for itself.
This is at least as valuable as the second answer ;
and both have contributed towards the discovery
of a true religious toleration. Chilhngworth and
Hales wished for considerable freedom of thought
combined with complete unity of worship. The
Independents contended for complete freedom of
worship combined with considerable unity of thought.
What was wanted was that the State should leave
each religious body free to manage its own reUgious
affairs, so far as this could be done without danger
to the nation ; and should leave each individual free
to belong to what religious body he pleased, or to

AND MONARCHY 145
abstain from belonging to any. But the time for
that had not yet come.^ In the religious struggles
of that time it was the Independents who carried
the day. The intolerance of Laud was followed
by the intolerance of the Puritans ; and then the
one-sided and imperfect toleration of the Inde
pendents swept away both. The experiment ad
vocated by Hales and Chillingworth was not even
tried. If Charles alienated many by his folly, so also,
after August 1641, did the Commons: and in the
same way ; they assumed powers which they did not
possess. Not even Parliament as a whole, still less the
Commons alone, and least of all a bare majority in
the Commons, was competent to determine a system of
doctrine and worship for the whole nation. And the
nation had never intended that it should do so.
The men who constituted the Long Parliament were
sent there to rescue the liberties of the nation from
the despotic methods of Charles, and to put an
end to the detested activity of Strafford and Laud.
' In the work of winning religious freedom for Christendom,
"England took the lead. Yet even here the end was not attained
without a struggle, carried on with unexampled perseverance and
devoted self-sacrifice. A bloody civil war lasting for years, the
upsetting of a throne, and the overthrow of a dynasty, had to
intervene before the principle of liberty of conscience became a
national convictiou penetrating all civil and political life. Not
until then did all parties recognise that without liberty of con
science men cannot attain to civil freedom, or maintain it for any
length of time" (Dollinger, Addresses on Historical and Literary
Subjects, p. 243).

146 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
They were not sent there to revolutionize the State,
and still less to revolutionize the Church. It was
the mingled obstinacy and weakness of Charles
which led some of even the best of the Commons to
go onwards to political revolution. But when it
came to ecclesiastical revolution, many of those who
were on the national side refused to take this step,
and drew towards the King. When the majority in
the Commons persisted in enforcing Puritanism,
they alienated large numbers in the House, and
ultimately more than half the nation. It was not
as King that Charles found so many to fight for
him ; for he had proved a tyrannical ruler. It was
not his family connexions that won him many
adherents ; for he was a Scot, who had married a
foreigner and a Eoman Catholic : and the Scots
were his first opponents, while the French sent no
help. It was not his personal character which made
many devoted to him ; for he was never to be
reUed upon, even by those who served him best :
Strafford's death had proved that. It was as the
defender of the English Church and of the Book of
Common Prayer that he was so enthusiastically
served. Thousands fought for him, who would
never have drawn a sword if they had not believed
that his authority was necessary to save the historic
Church of England from extinction.
Thus each side lost adherents through its extra
vagance. And in few things was extravagance
more conspicuous than in external behaviour. The
Eoyahsts erected jollity into a virtue ; the Puritans

AND MONARCHY 147
denounced cheerfulness as a vice. Like the Phari
sees before them, thc Puritans gloried in the strict
morality of their side : yet in practice they cared
more for the strictness than for the morality. And
if there were Pharisees among the Puritans, there
were Sadducees and publicans among the Eoyalists :
men of lax morals and reckless life, with no guiding
principle but a love of adventure and a hatred of
puritanical gloominess.^ Was there not as much to
be dreaded as to be hoped for in the victory of
either side ? And was there no alternative between
Calvinistic rigorism on the one hand and riotous
irreligion on the other ? If neither thinkers nor
fanatics could find an answer to the difficult pro
blems of the age, certainly Eupert and his dissolute
troopers, with no policy beyond the cutting down of
" Psalmsinging Eoundheads," were not likely to help
matters. On the other hand, " of the Parliament it
may be said, with not greater severity than truth,
that scarce two or three public acts of justice,
humanity, or generosity, and very few of pohtical
wisdom or courage, are recorded of them from their
quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Crom
weU" (Hallam).
^ The Eoyalist writer Symmon, in his Defence of King Charles /.,
says : "Never had any good undertaking so many unworthy
attendants, such horrid blasphemers and wicked wretches, as ours
hath had. I quake to think, much more to speak, what miue ears
have heard from some of their lips ; but to discover them is not my
present business." Culpeper wrote to Lord Digby: " Good men
are so scandalised at the horrid impiety of our armies, that they
will not believe that God can bless any cause in such hands."

148 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
The Civil War began when Charles hoisted the
royal standard at Nottingham, 22ncl August 16,^2.^
We have no time to follow its course, but must
confine ourselves to noting certain results. At
Edgehill, where the first blood was drawn, Sunday,
23rd October, the battle was a victory for neither
side. But by the middle of the next summer the Parlia
ment seemed to be near total defeat. Ju.ne and July
1643 mark the highest tide of Eoyalist success.
The defeats of the Fairfaxes in Yorkshire, and of
Waller in Devonshire, and the surrender of Bristol,
had made the Eoyalist cause almost triumphant.
Gloucester was being besieged, and if that was
taken, the Parliament would have been driven to
make terms. It was this desperate condition of the
forces of the Parliament which was the immediate
cause of the downfall of Episcopacy in England.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the majority,
or even a large minority, of the men who con
stituted the Long Parliament came to Westminster
in 1640 with a desire to abolish Episcopacy. It
would be nearer the truth to say that the
majority h.ad a positive dislike to Presbyterianism.
Some wished that Bishops should be turned out
of the House of Lords. Probably most wished
that the powers of Bishops should be considerably
curtailed. But very few indeed desired that the
government of the Church of England should be
1 The 22nd fell on a Monday, as in 1904. Those who regarded
omens noticed that a few days later the standard was blown
down by a high wind.

AND MONARCHY 149
transferred to a body of elders. On the Sth of
February 1641, Digby said in the House : " If we
hearken to those who would quite extirpate Episco
pacy, I am confident that, instead of every Bishop
we should put dowu in a diocese, we should erecc a
pope in each parish." Falkland said that there was
now nothing to be feared from the tyranny of
Bishops, and that therefore there was no need on
a few days' debate to change an order which had
lasted 1600 years, and with it to change the whole
face of the Church.
But in the first half of 1643, as the fortunes of
the Parliament went lower and lower, it became
evident that, if Charles was to be vanquished, the
help of Scotland must be secured. Negotiations went
on for some time ; but the Scots absolutely refused
to help, unless the English Parliament adopted the
Solemn League and Covenant ; i.e. unless the govern
ment of the Church of England was made Presby
terian. There must be uniformity of Church
government in the two kingdoms. The English
Parliament would have avoided this condition, if it
could ; but the Scots were inexorable. And when
the agreement was drawn up that the Church of
England was to he made like " the Church of Scotland
in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government,"
Vane proposed an amendment, which was accepted,
that the words should be added, " according to the word
of God." The Scottish system was to be adopted
only so far as it was agreeable to the word of God.
This left a door open for subsequent modifications.

150 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
There may have been English members of Parliament
who rejoiced at the downfall of Episcopacy, but to
the House as a whole it was an unwelcome necessity.
The agreement with the Scots was Pym's last work.
He died Sth December 1643, worn out with excite
ment and unceasing toil. Hampden had fallen the
previous June : and now the one commanding figure
on the side of the Parliament is Oliver Cromwell.
With his Lronsides, whieh were never beaten, he
decided the war. We must pass on to the decisive
year, 1645.
On the 4th of January the Lords passed the BiU
of Attainder against Archbishop L^aud. He had been
in the Tower since 1640, but had not been brought
up for trial until March 1644. As in Strafford's
case, the impeachment for high treason broke down,
and he was then disposed of by Attainder ; and he
was executed 10th January. In the first instance
he was condemned to be hanged ; but, at his own
request, he was spared that brutal indignity.
There are few characters in English history to
whom it is less easy to do justice than to William
Laud. As in the case of Elizabeth, we owe so
much gratitude, and yet there is so much which it
is impossible to approve. There is, however, this
great difference between the two cases. It is
scarcely possible to beUeve that Elizabetb was a
religious person. None but the most prejudiced
would doubt that Laud was a sincerely devout man.
His own description of the way in which he was
treated at his trial might almost suffice for that.

AND MONARCHY 151
" My very pockets searched ; my Diary, my very
Prayer Book, taken from me, and after used against
me ; and that in some cases not to prove but to
make a charge. Yet I am thus far glad, even for
this sad accident. For by my Diary your Lord
ships have seen the passages of my life ; and by my
Prayer Book the greatest secrets between God and
my soul ; so that you may be sure you have me at
the very bottom : yet, blessed be God, no disloyalty
is found in the one, no Popery in the other." It
may be added, as further evidence of sincerity, that
Laud's Diary, Uke the Confessions of St. Augustine,
is sometimes addressed to Almighty God.
It is very easy, with Macaulay, to scoff at Laud ;
to point to things which he unquestionably did, to
quote from his Diary what he unquestionably wrote,
and then to pour contempt on him for having done
and written them.^ What public man's character
would stand, if every foolish or unjust thing that he
ever did or uttered were remembered, while all the
good which he did or attempted to do was forgotten ?
Let Laud be held responsible for all the mischief
which he did. But if we desire to be fair to him,
we must also remember, not merely the good which
he accomplished, but also the good which it is quite
evident that he intended and tried to do.
We have no time for details ; but his grievous
shortcomings may be summed up under two heads :
1. As a Bishop, he was (in modern phraseology) too
^ MUton leads the way in this kind of criticism : see Eikono
klastes, i. 28.

152 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
little of a Father in God, and too much of a father-
in-law. Fully convinced as he was that his juris
diction was by Divine Apostolical right, yet, in
exercising it, he seems to have acted almost entirely
as a government ofiicial. Whether in deaUng with
clergy or laity, and especially in dealing with
supposed offenders, the paternal relation in which he
stood to them by virtue of his sacred office was
forgotten, and he acted as if all his powers were
derived simply from the Crown, and as if it was
simply on the King's behalf that he was exercising
his jurisdiction. This was nothing less than tragic.
Throughout the land Laud was labouring to teach
men the spiritual character of the Church ; and all
the while, by the way in which he discharged his
duties as the chief representative of the Church, he
led men to think that the Church had no spiritual
character at all. He behaved as if the Church was
a department of the State, and as if Episcopacy was
a combination of powers delegated from the Crown.
That a Primate who could point so firmly to the
primitive Church as the standard for his own
Church's doctrine and practice, should adopt methods
so utterly unlike those of primitive Christianity, is
as surprising as it is distressing.
2. Laud not only secularized his spiritual office
by the manner in which he exercised it, he added
to it official work which was purely secular. In the
Middle Ages there was something to be said for
Bishops becoming ministers of State. They were
often the ablest men ; they were generally the best

AND MONARCHY 153
educated men ; and they were frequently men of
the best character. In the seventeenth century the
ablest and most cultivated and most estimable men
were by no means always, or even most frequently,
Bishops : and Laud did both the Church and the
nation very bad service by accepting civil duties in
addition to ecclesiastical work which would have
taxed any man's powers to the uttermost. The
consequence was that the Church's work was often
done hurriedly, or entrusted to incompetent hands,
or not done at all. Moreover, over-work made Laud
irritable and peremptory, less and less able to take
a just view of things, or to act with discretion in
critical situations. A further consequence of Laud's
purely secular work was that the Church was dragged
into political troubles and made to appear as the sup
porter of the King's despotism.
But let us turn from these necessary criticisms
to the pleasanter task of pointing out some of the
services which, at great personal labour and risk,
Laud rendered, not merely to his own generation,
but (still more) to the Church of England throughout
all generations. And if we wish to know his mind
about his own work, we shall perhaps find it best
in his " Conference with Fisher, a Jesuit," first pub
lished in 162S,five years before he became Primate
and became overwhelmed with secular and temper-
trying duties. With some of his utterances there
and elsewhere as our guide in estimating his actions,
we may place his merits, like his demerits, under
two heads :

154 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
1. Like Bishop Butlei-, a century or more later, he
was well aware of the importance of externals in religion.
With the Prayer Book in his hand he saw clearly what
the public worship of the Church ought to be ; and,
when he visited parish churches, or made inquiries
of other Bishops, he learned that, in a large number
of instances, the minimum of decency prescribed by
the Book was not even distantly approached. And
he set to work, with great courage and diligence,
though with far too little sympathy and considera
tion, to get this great evil remedied. This is his own
account of the matter : — " No one thing hath made
conscientious men more wavering in their minds, or
more apt to be drawn aside from the sincerity of
religion professed in the Church of England, than
the want of uniform and decent order in too many
churches in the kingdom. And the Eomanists have
been apt to say, the houses of God could not be
suffered to lie so nastily as in some places they have
done, were the true worship of God observed in
them, or did the people think that such it were.
It is true, the inward worship of the heart is the
great service of God, and no service acceptable
without it, but the external worship of God in His
Church is the great witness to the world that our
heart stands right in that service of God. . . .
These thoughts are they, and no other, which have
made me to labour so much as I have done for a
decency and orderly settlement of the external wor
ship of G od in the Church " (Letter to Charles i., dedi
cating the " Conference with Fisher " to him, p. xvi).

AND MONARCHY 155
2. The other great merit of Laud is that he saw
clearly what was, in some measure perceived by
Elizabeth, the immense possibilities which lay before
the Church of England. He saw the difference be
tween an English Church and an Anglican Church, i.e.
betvveen a communion which was merely to satisfy
the religious needs of a majority of the English
nation, and a great central spiritual power capable
of becoming in the fullest and best sense Catholic. A
National Church is a fine thing : it sanctifies patriot
ism, and enables the people to follow after that
righteousness which alone exalteth a nation. But a
Church which is both National and Catholic is a
far finer thing : it has a world-wide mission, capable
of holding out hands of sympathy, and sometimes
of fellowship, to Churches that lie on the right
hand and on the left, and of offering to those who
have no Church a system of truth and of discipline
that cannot fail to bring a blessing to them. Laud
had this grand conception of the Anglican Church,
and he asked men to begin to realize it by making
the externals, which expressed this noble spirit, as
comely as, in such a cause, they ought to be. We
are still a good way off from the realization of this
ideal. But we are a great deal nearer to it than
Laud was : and those of us who believe in the ideal,
and think that it is worth working for and praying
for, ought not, while criticizing some of Laud's
methods, to forget the nobility of his aims.
If the execution of Strafford was criminal, be
cause utterly unnecessary, much more criminal was

156 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
the execution of Archbishop Laud. Hallam rightly
calls it "one of the greatest reproaches of the Long
Parliament," and a far more unjustifiable instance
of " tyrannical use of power " " than any that was
alleged against him." Hallam attributes it to " the
remorseless and indiscriminate bigotry " which
" heaped disgrace on Walton, trampled on the old
age of Hales, and embittered with insult the dying
moments [and funeral] of Chillingworth."
At the battle of Naseby, 14th June 1645, Charles
was flnally crushed} From that time onwards the
question was not as to which side would win, but
how long the death-struggle could be prolonged.^
Yet, for the Parliament, this victory, won hy Crom
well and his Lndependents, was full of diffeulty.
^ A week or two beforehand, Digby had written : ' ' Ere one month
be over, we shall have a battle of all for all ;" and he was right.
Naseby, if not one of the "Decisive Battles of thc World," was
decisive of EngUsh history.
^ "Now the King and the Crown
Are tumbling down,
And the realm doth groan with disasters ;
And the Scum of the Land
Are the men that command,
And our slaves are become our masters.''
Alexander Beome in 1645.
Nearly all the verse-makers of the time were on the Eoyalist side.
The poets of the National cause were George Wither, Andrew
Marvell, and John Milton. See Sir Samuel Luke's account of the
battle, written the following day (Ellis, Original Letters, third
series, iv. p. 253). A week before the battle he had been very
despondent about " the Parliament cause," which he thought "was
never in soe declineing a condition as at present " (p. 213). It was
Luke whom Cromwell commissioned to carry the treasure taken at
Naseby to Northampton.

AND MONARCHY 157
The Independent Ironsides were splendid in the
field ; but what was to be done with them when
the fighting was over ? They claimed to have
fought for religious liberty, and they refused to
sheath their swords till this was secured. They
saw that to enforce religious liberty at the point
of the sword was impossible. Military force
might win this freedom ; but the civil power was its
proper guardian. The King and Parliament ought
to undertake this duty. But neither King nor Parlia
ment thought religious liberty desirable. Each wanted
to enforce a special form of reUgion. The army of
Independents offered to support Charles if he would
accept their views ; but he was intriguing with the
Scots, and refused to Usten to them. In short, the
difference between the Independent army and the
Presbyterian Parliament became so acute that op
position to Charles was almost the only bond which
kept them still united. ParUament wanted to make
all people accept the Covenant ; but the Independ
ents had not fought their way over the bodies of
their fellow-countrymen simply to exchange the
conformity of Laud for the conformity of the Pres
byterians. Tlieir object was to sweep away conformity
altogether, and leave every congregation free to wor
ship as it pleased. After Cromwell had finished
the war, he for two years made London his head
quarters, while the contest between the Presbyterian
metropolis and the Independent army continued.
It ended wholly in favour of the latter ; and 7 th
August 1647, the army took possession of London.

158 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
Charles, as usual, was intriguing with two or three
different parties at once,— with the Scots, with the
army, and with Parliament.^ His negotiations with
the Scots hore fruit. In April 1648, a Scottish
army, under the Duke of Hamilton, was ordered to
march into England.
Cromwell's army was furious at being again
obliged to risk their lives because of the King's
duplicity in trying to put the kingdom in the power
of the Scots, who, if victorious, would enforce Pres
byterianism. The officers, in a prayer-meeting at
Windsor, resolved, " that it was their duty, if ever
the Lord brought them back in peace, to call Charles
Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that
blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his
utmost against the Lord's cause and people, in these
poor nations."
What is sometimes called the Second Civil War
lasted from April to August. In August, after
three days' fighting, Hamilton's army was cut to
pieces and scattered to the winds. Both Charles
and the Parliament were now at the angry army's
mercy. During its absence, Charles, who had fied
from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, had
continued to negotiate with the Commons. But
the Commons insisted upon Presbyterianism., and to
'' From Hampton Court, where he was allowed freedom of corre
spondence, he wrote to the Queen : "Be quite easy as to the con
cessions whieh I may grant ; when the time comes I shall very
well know how to treat these rogues, and, instead of a silken garter,
I will fit them with a hempen halter." The letters captured at
Naseby were of a similar character.

AND MONARCHY 159
this Charles would not consent. Nor would the
army. They declared that those who liked Bishops
might have them, and those who liked elders might
have them ; but no one was to be punished for
preferring either to the other. One of them went
so far as to say, " If I should worship the sun or
moon, like the Persians, or that pewter-pot on the
table, nobody has anything to do with it." But
this was in advance of most, who would not allow
freedom of worship to Eoman Catholics.^ Not even
Milton, who otherwise taught toleration, could see
his way to including Eomanists.^
Charles had fled to the Isle of Wight for safety,
but he soon found that he was really a pirisoner at
Carisbrook. But whose prisoner ? The Parlia
ment's or the army's ? To remove all doubt on
that point, the army had him taken to Hurst Castle,
a solitary fortress on the sea-coast of Hampshire,
1st December 164S ; thence to Windsor, and thence
to London. The Parliament wished to come to
terms with him. But on the 5 th of December
Cromwell returned to London; and on the 6th and
7th Colonel Pride administered his "purge" to thc
House of Commons. Every inember who had voted
for making terms with the King was got rid of.
Forty -seven were imprisoned ; among them Wil-
^ No English Eomanist seems to have joined the Parliament
against the King ; but it was said at the time, that out of about
five hundred gentlemen who died fighting for Charles, nearly two
hundred were Eoman Catholics.
^ See Mode of Establishing a Free Commonwealth, §§ 14, 40 ;
Areopagilica, § 77.

160 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
liam Prynne, Laud's victim, M.P. for Newport in
Cornwall, and Charles Vaughan, M.P. for Honiton.
Ninety-six were expelled ; among them the Mem
bers for Devon, Exeter, Plymouth, and Barnstaple.
Many fled. A House of about three hundred was
reduced to about eighty. This is the infamous Rump
Parliament, which continued to act as the repre
sentative of the Long Parliament, until Cromwell,
at the dictation of the army (which, he said, " had
made him their drudge upon all occasions "), put
an end to its shameful existence, 20th April 1653.
Just after the " Purge," it voted that Charles Stuart
should be tried, for treason against the people : seventy-
eight were present, and twenty-eight of these voted
against it. The vote for trying Charles was de
manded by the army, which meant to have his life.
In obtaining it, the army had to be content with
a mere shadow of ParUamentary authority. The
Upper House refused to concur. With a fragment
of the House of Commons the work of murder was
done. Of Cromwell's share in it, about which much
has been written, we can say no more than that he
certainly made no attempt to c^tssuade those who
declared that the death of Charles was necessary.
The army, with a small remnant of the House of
Commons as its instrument, satisfied its desire for
vengeance, without one word of protest from Crom
well. That is certain. To what extent he approved,
and why to any extent he approved, are futile ques
tions. He made no sign and left no confession. The
secret went with him into the grave. What we

AND MONARCHY 161
know is this. A word from him might have saved
Charles, and the word was not spoken. The regicide
assembly put Charles to death, and, of the fifty-
nine who signed the warrant for his execution, ten
were kinsmen of Cromwell.
Carlyle has told us that " this action of the
EngUsh regicides did in effect strike a damp Uke
death through the heart of fiunkeyism universally
in this world ; whereof fiunkeyism, cant, cloth-
worship, and whatever ugly name it have, has gone
incurably sick ever since, and is now at length in
these generations rapidly dying."
The statement is astounding. Sentimental cant
and cloth-worship have thriven on this crime and
blunder ever since. Who feels any sentimental
attachment to James ii. or Napoleon iii. ? It is
because Charles i. ended his days on the scaffold,
rather than in the ignoble obscurity of a comfort
able exile, that so many of us are apt to forget
the criminal wrong-headedness and perfidy which
brought him into colUsion with his subjects. The
true lessons to be learned from the overthrow of
Charles i. are these : that rulers must measure their
powers by the needs and reasonable desires of their
subjects ; and that the one royal prerogative which
is worth any sacrifice to keep is , the confldence and
respect of the people. In order to preserve quite
worthless, and indeed obsolete and impossible pre
rogatives, Charles sacrificed this, — the absolutely
necessary possession of a king, — over and over again.
It was the first thing that he threw overboard in
II

162 DOWNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
his courageous but unworthy struggle to save more
showy accessories.
But while we condemn his tyranny and duplicity,
we cannot forget the crimes of those who overthrew
him. The responsibility of being the first to appeal
to force perhaps rests with him. But as soon as the
appeal was made, many of those who opposed him
seem to have thought that his perfidy freed them
from the common obligations of honesty and honour.
They infiamed the populace with misrepresentations,
and even calumny. They exercised a power far
more autocratic and unconstitutional than that of
which they deprived the King : they punished on
mere suspicion, and with a high-handed disregard
of even the forms of law : they disposed at will of
the persons and property of their fellow-countrymen.
Such things are perhaps inseparable from revolution ;
they are certainly inseparable from civil war. But
we feel that a strange nemesis has overtaken the
revolutionists, when we see that the outrages which
preceded and followed the death of Charles were
committed by the men who had begun the struggle
against their King with the cry for right and
justice. It was in front of the banqueting room at
Whitehall, the place where English kings used to
show themselves to their people after their corona
tion, that the bloody deed was done. When the
masked executioner held up the severed head, cry
ing " This is the head of a traitor," there rose from
the vast multitude, that pressed upon the encircling

AND MONARCHY 163
troops, a cry at once of remorse, of powerlessness,
and of terror, the irrepressible utterance of outraged
human nature, a voice the impression of which
haunted some who heard it to their dying day.
On the scaffold Charles had said that he died as
the martyr of the people. It is incredible that a few
minutes before his death he should have uttered
what he knew to be untrue. Yet it was as the
martyr of an expiring form of royalty that Charles
died, rather than as a martyr of the people. If
ever there was prince who fought by all means
secret and open for the personal exercise of his own
power, that prince was Charles i. But there is a
sense in which it is true that Charles was the martyr
of the people. Faithless as he often was, he had
some high convictions with which he never trifled,
and against which no pressure could induce him to
act. He died on the scaffold sooner than violate
them. He might have saved himself in one of
two ways ; by sanctioning the establishment of
Presbyterianism, as the religion of England, or by
allowing the complete independence of the army. The
one meant the destruction of the English Church ; ^
the other meant the destruction of political liberty.
The man who was willing to lose his head, rather
than sacrifice either of these to the clamours of a
' In October 1641, Charles sent from Scotland to his Secretary of
State a pledge which proved prophetic : "I command you to assure
all my servants that I am constant to the discipline and doctrine
of the Church of England established by Queen Elizabeth and my
father, that / resolve by the grace of God to die in the maintenance
of it." This was a pledge which he nobly kept.

164 DOAVNFALL OF EPISCOPACY
victorious faction, may be truly called the martyr
of the people. We may feel indignant when we
see Charles counting the violation of royal pledges
a price worth paying for the preservation of royal
power, and reckoning the happiness of his subjects
of less account than his own hereditary privileges ;
but there should be nothing but grateful admiration,
when we see him valuing his own life less cheaply
than those national treasures, which, by perishing
himself, he has preserved for ourselves (see Eanke,
History of England, ii. suh fin.).
We shall continue to dispute about the chequered
Ufe and character of Charles L But there ought
to be no dispute about the grandeur of his death.^
' Bishop Burnet says that in his day it had often been observed
(and the remark has often been repeated since) that the whole race
of the Stuarts "bore misfortunes better than prosperity" (Histoiy
of His Own Time, i. p. 81). The saying is eminently true of
Charles. As Andrew Marvell rightly sang of him :
"He nothing common did, or moan,
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try ;
Nor called the gods with vulgar- spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed."

APPENDIX.

In the period treated in these lectures we have had
the execution of two Stuart sovereigns, Mary, Queen
of Scots, and her grandson, Charles i. of England.
To both of them compositions have been attributed,
which are said to have been written by the royal
prisoners in the time of captivity which preceded
their deaths. There is extant a rhythmical Latin
prayer, which Mary of Scots is stated to have com
posed for her own use during her imprisonment :
and there seems to be no good reason for doubting
that it is really hers. Certainly there is real warmth
ancl devotion in it, touchingly expressed. The verses
said to have been written by Charles at Carisbrook
in 1648 are of a different character: they lack
reality, and remind us too much of the frigid and
self-complacent tone of the Eikon Basilike. Possibly,
as in that more famous production, they contain
some elements which come from Charles himself.
But one would prefer to think that none of the
verses are his : there is as little of true piety as of
true poetry to be found in them. Only the first
two and last three stanzas are even in form a
165

166 APPENDIX
prayer, and they are such as few people would care
to retain for their own use. In the intermediate
nineteen stanzas the verse-maker gives a great deal
of information to Omniscience. Mary's simple ex
pressions, however, come home to the heart with
a power wholly wanting in the laboured triplets
attributed to her grandson : probably many persons
have often used them. The Latin original has a
charm, which cannot be reproduced in English ; but
for those who know no Latin an English rendering
is here added. PEAYEE OF MAEY QUEEN OF SCOTS
IN CAPTIVITY.
0 Domine Deus, speravi in Te.
0 care mi Jesu, nunc libera me.
In dura catena,
in misera poena,
desidero Te.
Languendo, gemendo, genuflectendo,
adoro, implore,
ut liberes me.
My Lord and my God, I have hoped in Thee.
0 dearest Lord Jesus, deliver Thou me.
Bound by my chain,
In sorrow and pain,
I long sore for Thee.
Sighs and groans sending,
My knees to Thee bending,
I pray and beseech Thee,
Deliver Thou me.
With the easy fiow of these genuine petitions
contrast the strained grandiloquence of the following
address to the Almighty : —

APPENDIX 167
MAJESTY IN MISEEY.
An Imploration to the King of Kings.
Carisbrook, 1648.
1. Great Monarch of the world, from whose power springs
The policy and power of kings,
Eecord the royal woe my suffering sings ;
2. And teach my tongue, that ever did confine
Its faculties in truth's seraphic line,
To track the treasons of thy foes and mine.
3. Nature and law, by thy divine decree
(The only root of righteous royalty,)
With this dim diadem invested me :
4. With it, the sacred sceptre, purple robe.
The holy unction, and the royal globe :
Yet am I levell'd with the life of Job.
5. The fiercest furies, that do daily tread
Upon my grief, my grey discrowned head,
Are those that owe my bounty for their bread.
6. They raise a war, and christen it the cause,
Whilst sacrilegious hands have best applause,
Plunder and murder are the kingdom's laws ;
7. Tyranny bears the title of taxation,
Eevenge and robbery are reformation,
Oppression gains the name of sequestration.
8. My loyal subjects who in this bad season
Attend me (by the law of God and reason)
They dare impeach, and punish for high treason.
9. Next at the clergy do their furies frown,
Pious episcopacy must go down,
They will destroy the crosier and the crown.
10. Churchmen are chain'd, and schismatics are freed.
Mechanics preach, and holy fathers bleed,
The crown is crucified with the creed.

168 APPENDIX
11. The Church of England doth all faction foster,
The pulpit is usurp'd by each impcstor,
Ex tempore excludes the pater noster.
12. The presbyter and independent seed
Springs with broad blades ; to make religion bleed,
Herod and Pontius Pilate are agreed.
13. The corner stones misplaced by every pavier ;
With such a bloody method and behaviour,
Their ancestors did crucify our Saviour.
14. My royal consort, from whose fruitful womb
So many princes legally have come,
Is forced in pilgrimage to seek a tomb.
15. Great Britain's heir is forced into France,
Whilst on his father's head his foes advance :
Poor child ! he weeps out his inheritance.
16. With my own power my majesty they wound,
In the King's name the King himself's uncrown'd :
So doth the dust destroy the diamond.
17. With propositions daily they enchant
My people's ears, such as do reason daunt,
And the Almighty will not let me grant.
18. They promise to erect my royal stem,
To make me great, t' advance my diadem,
If I will first fall down and worship them !
19. But for refusal they devour my thrones.
Distress my children, and destroy my bones,
I fear they'll force me to make bread of stones.
20. My life they prize at such a slender rate,
That in my absence they draw bills of hate,
To prove the King a traitor to the State.
21. Felons obtaiii more privilege than 1,
They are allow'd to answer ere they die ;
'Tis death for me to ask the reason why.

APPENDIX 169
22. But, sacred Saviour, with thy words I woo
Thee to forgive, and not be bitter to
Such as thou know'st do not know what they do.
23. For since they from their Lord are so disjointed
As to contemn these edicts he appointed.
How can they prize the power of his anointed 1
24. Augment my patience, nullify my hate,
Preserve my issue, and inspire my mate ;
Yet, though we perish, bless this Church and State.
A comparison of these twenty-four verses with
the twenty-eight chapters of the Eikon Basilike will
show, not only that the same topics are touched
upon in both, but also that to a large extent they
occur in the same order. Compare the allusion to
Job in verse 4 with the allusion in chapter x. ; the
contents of verse 9 with those of chapter xiv. ; of
verse 1 1 with those of chap)ter xvi. ; of verse 1 6
with those of chapter xxii. ; of verses 1 8 and 1 9
with those of chapter xxvii. ; and of the last three
verses with those of chapter xxviii. The conjecture
seems to be reasonable that the hand which pro
duced the Eikon Basilike in 1648 produced these
verses also.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

1566. Visit of Elizabeth to the University of Oxford, 31st August-
6th September.
1568. Mary of Scots, escaped from Lochleven Castle, became a
prisoner in England.
1569. The Northern Eebellion.
1570. Excommunication and Deposition of Elizabeth pronounced
by Pius v.
1571. Eidolfi's Plot.
1572. Executions of the Dukes of Norfolk and Northumberland.
Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
1573. William Laud born, 7th October.
1575. Death of Archbishop Parker, 17th May.
1576. Arrival of seminary priests from Douai.
1577. Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester ; Piers, Bishop of Salisbury.
Suspension of Archbishop Grindal.
1580. Parsons and Campian come to England,
1581. Execution of Campian, 1st December.
1583. Death of Archbishop Grindal, 6th July ; Whitgift succeeds
him.
Court of High Commission reorganized.
1584, Throgmorton's Plot : extorted confession revoked on the
scaffold.
1585, Dr, Parry's Plot, and execution,
1586. Babington's Plot, and execution.
1587. Execution of Mary of Scots, Sth February.
Spanish fleet at Cadiz destroyed by Drake,
1588. Martin Mar-prelate's Tracts published.
The Invincible Armada,
Death of Eobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
in

172 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1590. Death of Sir Francis Walsingham,
1592. Visit of Elizabeth to the University of Oxford, 22nd-28th
September,
1593. Execution of John Penry (Mar-prelate) for libel,
1594. Execution ofthe Jew, Eoderigo Lopez, for conspiracy.
1595. Hutton, Archbishop of York ; Matthew, Bishop of Durham.
1596. Cadiz captured by the Earl of Essex.
Bilson, Bishop of Worcester.
1597. Bancroft, Bishop of London ; Bilson, Bishop of Winchester.
1598. Death of Lord Burghley, 4th August.
Death of Philip ii. of Spain, 13th September.
1601, Execution of the Earl of Essex, 25th February.
Parliament protested against monopolies.
1602. Proclamation against Jesuits and Eomish priests.
1603. Death of Elizabeth, 24th March.
Union of the two kingdoms under James i.
Plot against James i. ; imprisonment of Ealeigh.
1604. Hampton Court Conference, 14th-l 8th January.
Death of Archbishop Whitgift, 29th February ; Bancroft
succeeds him.
1605, Gunpowder Plot, November,
1606. Execution of Faux, SOth January ; of Garnet, 3rd May.
1610. Death of Archbishop Bancroft, 2nd November; Abbot
succeeds him.
1611. Authorised Version published.
Laud elected President of St. John's College, Oxford,
lOth May.
Baronets created, 22nd May.
1613, Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, 13th September.
1615. Disgrace of the Earl of Somerset.
1616. Death of Shakespeare, 23rd Aprih
Dismissal of Sir Edward Coke.
1617. Visit of James I. to Scotland, Laud attending him.
1618. Book of Sjyorts TpnUished, 24th May.
Execution of Sir W. Ealeigh, 29th October.
1620. The Pilgrim Fathers.
1621. Impeachments of Mompesson and Mitchell.
Impeachment of Lord Chancellor Bacon.
Laud, Bishop of St. David's, 18th November.
Protestation of privileges by the Commons, 18th December.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 173
1622. Conference between Laud and Fisher, the Jesuit, 24th May.
Laud "became C. to my Lord of Buckingham, " 15th June.
1623. Prince Charles and Buckingham start for Spain, 17th
February ; return, 5th October.
Legat burned at Smithfleld, Wrightman at Norwich, for
heresy.
1624. Laud's "Conference with Fisher tho Jesuit, printed, came
forth," 16th April.
Impeachment of Lord Treasurer Cranfield (Middlesex), 13th
May.
Act against monopolies,
1625, Death of James i,, 27th March.
1626. Impeachment of Buckingham.
Laud, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
Death of Bishop Andrewes, 25th September.
1627. Enforced loan ; arbitrary imprisonment ; martial law ; etc.
1628. Petition of Eight.
Laud, Bishop of London.
Assassination of Buckingham, 23rd August.
Mountague, Bishop of Chichester, 24th August.
1629. Eliot, Holies, and Valentine imprisoned.
1630. Laud elected Chancellor of Oxford, 12th April.
Leighton (Sion's Plea against Prelacy) mutilated and im
prisoned.
1633. Prynne (Histriomastix) and Bastwick (Elcnchus Papismi)
mutilated and imprisoned.
Charles i. crowned at Holyrood, 18th June.
Deatii of Archbishop Abbot, 4th August ; Laud succeeds
him,
1634, First writ of ship-money issued, 20th October,
1635. Controversy about altars,
1636, Bishop Juxon made Lord Treasurer.
1637. Hampden prosecuted for refusing ship-money.
Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton mutilated and imprisoned
for life.
1638. Lilburne whipped and imprisoned ; Hampden condemned.
1639. First Bishops' War and Pacification of Berwick.
1640, The Short Parliament.
The Canons and the Et eaetera Oath,
The Long Parliament.

174 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Imprisonment of Dean Cosin.
Impeachment of Strafford ; sent to the Tower, 25th
November.
Eoot and Branch Petition presented, llth December.
1641, Execution of Strafford, 12th May,
Impeachments of Laud, Finch, and others.
Massacre of Protestants in Ireland, 23rd October,
Grand Eemonstrance,
Twelve bishops sent to the Tower, 30th December.
1642, Attempted arrest of Pym, Hampden, Holies, Haslerig, and
Strode, 4th January,
Bishops expelled from the House of Lords, 14th February.
Eoyal standard raised at Nottingham, 22nd August.
1643, Solemn League and Covenant imposed on England and
Wales, 25th September.
Deaths of Hampden, Falkland, and Pym.
1644. Trial of Archbishop Laud, March-October.
Parliament ordered Christmas Day to be kept as a fast.
1645, Execution of Laud, lOtli January,
Prayer Book forbidden and Directory imposed, 17th April.
Use of Prayer Book in private homes forbidden, 23rd
August,
Decisive Battle of Naseby, llth June.
1647. The King a prisoner.
1648. Second Civil War.
Pride's Purge, 6th and 7th December.
1649. Impeachment of the King before a Committee of the Eunip
Parliament, 20th January.
Execution of the King, SOtli January.

INDEX

Abbot, Archbishop, 99.
Addled Parliament, 63.
Allegiance, Oath of, 60.
AUen, WOliam, 12, 15.
Altars, moved by Laud, 112,
130.
Andrewes, Bishop, 116.
Anglican Church and English
Church, 155.
Anglicanism, 56.
Armada, 25, 26,
Army supreme in London, 157,
160.
Arrest ofthe Five Members, 141.
Articles, Lambeth, 31.
Assassination sanctioned, 15,
Assassinations attempted and
effected, 15, 16.
Association, Voluntary Bond of,
20.
Attainder, Bills of, 67, 135,
150.
Authorised Version, 58, 74,
Babington, Antony, 24.
Bacon, Francis, 27, 38, 43, 51,
52, 53, 63, 67, 68.
Essays, 2, 92,
Praise of the Queen, 25.
Baillie, Eobert, 135.
Ballard, John, 24.
Bancroft, Bishop, 37, 54, 74, 75,
Baronets instituted, 62.
Basilikon Doron, 55.

Bedford, Earl of, 136.
Benevolences, 63.
Berwick, 46.
Berwick, Pacification of, 120.
Bilson, Bishop, 61.
Bishops, Elizabethan, 33,
Bishops and Divine Eight, 48,
78.
Bishops' War, First, 120 ;
Second, 127.
Bodin's Republic, 95.
Bolingbroke, 87.
Book of Common Prayer, 4, 29,
120, 146.
Books of devotion, 117.
Bossuet, 92.
Brome, Alexander, 156.
Browning, 134.
Buchanan, 58,
Buckingham, Duke of, 62, 65, 87.
contrasted with Laud, 89,
assassination, 101,
Bull, Regnans in excelsis, 10,
Burghley, Lord, 11, 36, 43.
Burnet, Bishop, 64, 82, 94,
138, 164.
Cadiz, expedition to, 96.
Calvin, 9, 30.
Calvinism, 29, 33.
in the House, 103, 104.
Camden, 13.
Campian (Campion), the Jesuit,
13.

176

176

INDEX

Canons of 1604, 59, 74 ; of
1640, 128, 131,
Cardinal's hat offered to Laud,
109, 110,
Carey, Sir Eobert, 45,
Carlton, Sir Dudley, 70,
Carlyle, 161,
Caroline divines, 48, 78, 116,
13L
Carr, Eobert (Somerset), 61.
Cartwright, the Puritan, 30.
Casaubon, Isaac, 56.
Cecil, Eobert (Salisbury), 47,
49, 61,
Cecil, William, 12.
Charles 1. —
accomplishments, 86,
blindness, 119, 161.
courage, 120,
duplicity, 91, 94, 106, 158.
fortitude, 102, 164.
friendship with Bucking
ham, 96.
at Newark, 107.
at Carisbrook, 159, 167.
execution, 160, 162.
" the martyr of the people,"
163.
Chillingworth, William, 117,
142, 143.
Church, Dean, 12, 38.
Civil War, 141, 148.
Clarendon, Earl of (Hyde), 98,
102, 133, 136.
Clergy, English, 33, 59, 79, 98,
116, 132.
Cleveland, John, 129, 137.
Coke, Edward, 66, 67, 68, 69,
92, 100.
Commission, Court of High, 19,
110, 115, 138.
Commons, House of, tyrannical,
145, 156, 162.
Conformity, 14, 70, 75, 76,
157.
Convocation of 1640, 128,
Cosin, John, 116,
Counter-Eeformation, 5,

Cranfield, Lord Treasurer, 72.
Cromwell, Oliver, 99, 139, 150.
the " drudge " of the army,
160.
Crown, prerogatives of the, 45,
66, 69, 86, 91, 100, 161, 164.
Delaroche, Paul, 39.
Denham, Sir John, 137,
Digby, Lord, 147, 149, 156.
Divine Eight, 48, 59, 77, 79.
Dollinger, 145,
Dollinger and Eeusch, 15.
Donne, John, 115.
Douai, English College at, 12,
14.
Earle's Miero-cosmographie, 76.
Ecclesiastical Polity, 32, 38.
Eikon Basilike, 132, 138, 165,
169.
Eikonoklastes, 133, 151.
Elector Palatine, 65, 70, 121,
Eliot, Sir John, 63, 107, 114.
Elizabeth, Queen, 5, 10, 14, 24.
contrasted 'with Mary of
Scots, 21.
with James I., 51, 77, 81.
caprice, 43, 44.
courage, 16, 25.
despotism, 20, 35.
dislike of Puritanism, 29, 34.
popularity, 35, 39, 77.
robbery of the Church, 33,
36, 73.
tolerant policy, 17, 29, 34.
death, 39.
Elizabeth, daughter of James i.,
65.
Elizabethan Bishops, 33.
England and religious freedom,
145.
Episcopacy, 54, 141, 148.
Essex, Earl of, 47, 61, 137.
Et coitera Oath, 129.
Falkland, Viscount, 136, 139,
142, 149.

INDEX

177

Ferrars, The, 116,
Finch, Sir John, 107,
Five Members, arrest of the, 141.
Forced loan, 97, 99.
France, irreligion in, 7.
Gardiner, S. E., 58.
Genevan Version, 74.
Gondomar, 49, 62, 70.
Grand Eemonstrance, 141.
Green, J. E., 31.
Gregory xm. , 12.
Grindal, Archbishop, 35.
Gunpowder Plot, 60.
Habeas Cmpus, 98.
Hales, John, 116, 142, 143,
Hall, Bishop, 142.
Hallam, 31, 95, 100, 147, 156.
Hammond, Henry, 117.
Hampden, John, 119, 133, 139,
150.
Hampton Court Conference, 31,
52.
Hatton, Sh Christopher, 23,
105.
Hausser, 50, 69,
Heton, Bishop, 37.
Henrietta Maria, 72, 92, 94.
Henry, Prince of Wales, 49, 61.
" Henry the Ninth," 61.
Herbert, George, 116.
Herrick, Eobert, 116.
Heywood, Jasper, 13.
High Commission Court, 19, 110,
115, 138.
Holies (Hollis), Denzil, 114,
137.
Hooker, Eichard, 32, 37, 78,
Howell, James, 71.
Humphrey, Dr. Laurence, 34.
Hyde, Edward (Clarendon), 98,
102, 133, 136.
Impeachments, 67, 72, 96, 135,
137.
Indecency of James l.'s Court,
66, 79, 85,

Independents, 144, 157.
Inquisition, 6.
Invincible Armada, 25, 26,
Irish Parliament, 125.
Janies i,, 45, 50.
Anglicanism, 55, 73.
appearance, 51.
character, 79,
learning, 57, 80.
death, 73, 88.
Jesuits, 6-9, 15, 20, 30, 76,
Jewel, Bishop, 4, 37.
Jonson, Ben, 84.
Journals of the House of Com
mons, 69.
Judges, Enghsh, 66, 68, 110.
Juxon, Bishop, 98,
Knighthood, 52, 115.
Lambeth Articles, 31.
Laud, William, 87, 92, 99, 105,
112, 135, 141.
appearance, 89,
Diary, 'is, 99,151,
friendship with Bucking
ham, 89.
mistakes, 109, 112, 119,
152, 153.
services to the Church, 153,
154.
execution, 150, 156.
Lawyers opposed to Charles i.,
112.
Lawyers in Parliament, 93,
Leicester, Earl of, 22, 33, 105,
Leslie, Bishop, liO.
Lingard, 57, 89.
Little Gidding, 116.
Loan, forced, 97, 99.
Long Parliament, 133.
Lopez, Eodrigo, 39.
London dominated by the army,
157, 160.
Lords, House of, 69, 97, 135, 160.
Loyola, Ignatius, 9, 13.
Luke, Sir Samuel, 156.

178

INDEX

Manwaring, Eoger, 99, 106.
Marsden, 28.
"Martyr ofthe people," 163.
Marvell, Andrew, 156, 164.
Mary l. of England, 19.
Mary of Scots, 5, 23, 25, 166.
contrasted with Elizabeth,
21.
prayer in captivity, 166.
execution, 24,
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 11.
"Mayflower," The, 59.
Miero-cosmographie, 76,
Mildmay, Sir Walter, 18.
Millenary Petition, 52, 59.
Milton, 118, 119, 124, 137, 143,
151, 159.
Moderate Churchmen, 29.
Monopolies, 39, 45, 68, 115.
Montaigne (Mountain), Bishop,
99.
Montesquieu, 42.
Morley, John, 48, 94, 120, 134,
139, 143.
Mountague, Bishop, 106.
Napoleon 1., 62.
Naseby, decisive battle of, 156.
Newark, Charles i. at, 107.
Northern rebellion, 10, 11, 17,
23.
Nottingham, royal standard at,
148.
Oath, et eaetera, 129.
Oath of Allegiance, 60.
Opposition to Charles i.. Ill, 113,
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 62.
Oxford, Elizabeth at, 13, 34, 44.
Pacification of Berwick, 120.
Paoli, 62.
Papal aggressiveness, 17, 18.
Parliaments of Elizabeth, 17, 20,
39. James I., 61, 63, 67, 72.
Charles i., 94, 96, 99, 125,
132.

Parsons (Persons), the Jesuit,
13, 38.
Passive obedience, 79, 98.
Persecution, 19.
Petition, Millenary, 52, 59,
Petition of Eight, 100, 106.
Philip II. of Spain, 5, 25.
Pliilip IV. of Spain, 71, 94.
Piers, Bishop, 26.
Pilgrim Fathers, 59.
Pius v., 6, 12,
Plot, Babington's, 24,
Gunpowder, 60,
Lopez's, 39.
Parry's, 16,
Eidolfi's, 11.
Throgmorton's, 15.
Polemical literature, 14, 32.
Prayer Book, Anglican, 4, 29,
120, 146.
Prayer Book for Scotland, 119.
Presbyterian Orders, 55.
Presbyterianism unwelcome in
England, 53, 148.
Pride's Purge, 159.
Primitive Christianity, appeal
to, 34, 56, 131,
Prophesyings, 35,
Protestation of privileges, 69.
Prynne, William, 88, 119,
Puritan objections, 53, 75.
Puritanism, constructive, 28.
destructive, 27, 28, 30.
limitations of, 118, 147.
Puritans, intolerance of the, 27,
104, 140, 143.
lawlessness of the, 131.
Purveyance, 51.
Pym, John, 63, 69, 126, 132,
139, 150.
Ealeigh, Sir Walter, 47, 49, 52,
64, 65.
Eanke, 60, 71.
Eecusants, 14.
Eeformation, necessity of the, 3.
results ofthe, 4, 113.
Regnans in excelsis, 10.

INDEX

179

Religion of Protestants, 117.
Eemonstrance, Grand, 141.
Eeusch, 15.
Eevolution, 114, 140,
Eeynolds, Dr. John, 63, 74.
Eidolfi, 11.
Eochelle, English failure at, 97,
106.
Eomanists in England, 10, 13,
15, 17, 48, 159.
Eoyal prerogative, 45, 66, 69,
86, 91, 100, 161, 164.
Eoyal proclamations, 61,
Eunip Parliament, 160.
St. Bartholomew's Day, 11.
St. Paul's Cathedral, 115.
Sanders, the Jesuit, 14,
Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 81,
Scottish Covenant, 149.
Second Bishops' War, 127.
Second Civil War, 158.
Sectarianism, 142.
Seminaries, 13.
Ship-money, 127, 138.
"Shopkeepers, a nation of," 62.
Short Parliament, 125,
Sibthorpe, Eobert, 98.
Solemn League and Covenant,
149.
Somerset, Earl of, 61.
Somerville, John, 15.
Southwell, Lady, 39.
Spain, English enmity to, 63,
70, 95.
Spanish ambassadors, 32, 49,
62.
Spanish marriage projects, 64,
70.
Spenser's Faery Queene, 10, 22.
Shepherd's Calendar, 35.
Spoliation of benefices, 33, 36,
73.
Star Chamber, 67, 110, 115,
138.

Strafford, Earl of, 63, 92, 99,
100, 120, 134, 137.
Stuarts, shiftiness of the, 48,
73, 86, 90.
Stuarts, "unfortunate," 47, 49.
Supremacy, question of, 59, 104.
Symmon, 147.
Taylor, Jeremy, 116.
Throgmorton, Francis, 15.
Toleration, unknoAvn, 76, 159.
imperfect views of, 144,
Tonnage and poundage, 102,
108,
Treasonable literature, 14,
Ultra-Eeformation, 26.
Uniformity, 34, 36, 111, 144.
Union of England and Scotland,
46, 47.
Urban vm., 11.
Usher, Archbishop, 136.
Vane, 149.
Version, the Authorised, 58, 74.
Villiers, George (Buckingham),
62, 65, 87, 101.
Voluntary Bond of Association,
20.
Waller, Edmund, 102.
Waller, Sir William, 148.
Walsingham, 18, 23, 43.
Wentworth, Thomas (Strafford),
63, 92, 99, 100, 120,
change ot sides, 114.
policy, 120, 134, 136,
execution, 137.
Whitgift, Archbishop, 31, 36.
Whittingham, Dean, 31,
William the Silent, 16.
Williams, Lord Keeper, 95.
Women proselytizers, 32.
Wood, Anthony, 105,
Wordsworth, 10.

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