I

LAUD'S EARLY CAREER

Laud.

5

a man of ordinary but very honest birth." He had risen slowly, and not without lapses and disappointments, Early career and through many interesting experiences. As a of William child he must have been stirred by the national enthusiasm in the days of the Armada. As a boy at St. John's College, Oxford, he had for chamber-fellow a bright lad with strong leanings towards Romanism, who afterwards became a Benedictine, and for tutor one who became a good parish priest and a good bishop, and who taught him to found his studies on "the noble foundations of the Fathers, councils, and the ecclesiastical historians." As a man he had first an academic, then a wider training. In the university he was first scholar, then fellow, of St. John's College, Oxford, and later tutor and proctor. In the world he was chaplain to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, succeeding in the office a brother-fellow of his college. In this post it was that he committed the error which all his life he never ceased to bewail. He married his master to the unhappy lady who had long been his mistress, Penelope, Lady Rich, the "Stella" of Philip Sidney's romantic verse, a divorced woman, whom the law of the Church would not suffer to wed. "Serving my ambition and the sins of others," was his own sad comment on the act. Yet it is significant that he studied ancient authorities on the subject of divorce, both before and after his act; and when he concluded that he was wrong he honestly expressed it. "The authority of the canon law, true, to putting away his wife, but neither silent nor unexpressed to marrying again," he wrote in his comment on the Earl of Devonshire's tract, written after Lord Mountjoy had been raised in the peerage. Thus Laud's first contact with the world was unfortunate. In the university, too, he was not at his ease. He had become a definite and active opponent of the Calvinistic teaching, and he had suffered, as the restorers of old paths so often suffer. In dissertations and in sermons he championed the position, familiar to the leaders of the English Reformation, and emphatically asserted by Andrewes and Buckeridge, that the English Church had departed from Rome only as regards her errors, and that the right of reform, so long as the foundation was untouched, belonged to every national church. Νο less did he depart from the extreme Protestants by his asser

tion of the Divine right of Episcopacy. He was attacked by the Calvinists, and was convented before the Vice-Chancellor, but he was saved from condemnation by the intervention of more liberal thinkers from outside, and of the Chancellor of the University himself.

66

In August 1608 Laud became chaplain to Bishop Neile of Rochester, a man -so wrote Heylin in later days— "who very well understood the constitution of the Church of England, though otherwise not so eminent in all parts of learning as some other bishops of his time; but what he wanted in himself he made good in the choice of his servants, having more able men about him from time to time than any other of that age." Neile introduced his chaplain to King James, who soon appreciated his talents, but seems always to have doubted his wisdom. In 1611 Laud was elected president of his college after a hot contest, which even went, on appeal, to the visitor, and at last to the king. For eleven years he "governed the college in peace, without so much as the show of a faction." His good work was recognised. He lived down the Calvinist opposition, was made a royal chaplain, and in 1616 became Dean of Gloucester, with the king's special command to "reform and set in order what he found there to be amiss." He carried out Queen Elizabeth's injunctions as to the position of the altar, having it moved to the east end. Beyond this he did nothing of note. In 1621 he became Bishop of St. David's. From that time he began gradually to be employed in affairs of State, became acState. quainted in some degree of intimacy with Prince Charles, and was the close friend of Buckingham. He was preaching at Whitehall on March 27, 1625, when the news came that the king was dead.

Laud and the

For the late king Laud had a sincere respect as "the most learned prince that this kingdom hath ever had for matters of religion," with "an assured confidence in Christ." For his son he had a genuine affection. Within a week of the old king's death his successor chose Laud to preach at the opening of Parliament. The sermon, owing to the plague, which caused all ceremony to be laid aside, was not preached till June 19. It very clearly set out the lines of the

I

His

ment of

political principles.

7

POLITICAL PRINCIPLEs of the reign alliance between Church and king as they appeared to the sovereign and to his chief ecclesiastical adviser. Two significant passages may be quoted, for they announceserve as clues to much that came after. If there was to be a settled and flourishing State and a a Church without "dissolution," then "the king must trust and endear his people; the people must honour, obey, and support their king; both king and peers and people must religiously serve and honour God. Shut out all superstition in God's name, the farther the better; but let in no profaneness therewhile. If this be not done, take what care you can, God is above all human wisdom, and in some degree or other there will be liquefactio terræ, a 'melting,' or a waste, both in Church and State." And again, with a reminiscence of Hooker, he said, "It is not possible in any Christian commonwealth that the Church should 'melt' and the State stand firm; for there can be no firmness without law, and no laws can be binding if there be no conscience to obey them; penalty alone could never, can never, do it. And no school

can teach conscience but the Church of Christ." opinions Charles was in thorough sympathy.

With such

AUTHORITIES.-Clarendon, History of the Great Civil War; Heylin, Cyprianus Anglicus. For the coronation of Charles I. see the volume with that title, edited by the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth for the Henry Bradshaw Society; Laud's Works (Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology).

CHAPTER II

THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Charles and

CHARLES at once showed that he placed the utmost confidence in Laud. Within a fortnight of his father's death he requested a list of the most eminent divines the Puritans. to be prepared for him that he might from among them select his chaplains and those whom he should consider worthy of promotion. Laud drew up the list and Buckingham gave it to Charles. Each name was marked with the letter O or P. Of Puritans Charles had a very clear opinion. He looked upon them, says Clarendon, "as a very dangerous and seditious people, who would, under pretence of conscience, which kept them from submitting to the spiritual jurisdiction, take the first opportunity they could find, or make, to withdraw themselves from his temporal jurisdiction, and therefore his Majesty caused these people to be watched, and provided against with the utmost vigilance." It was not likely that he would promote any of the clergy who held their views. He would clearly give his favour to the Orthodox.

This was soon put to the test. The Roman controversy advanced a stage in the first year of Charles's reign.

controversy.

It

passed from the study of theologians into the arena The Roman of public life. The earlier contentions between English and Romanist writers have been dealt with in Volume V. of this history, and the names with which we have now to deal have already been referred to. But the details belong so definitely to the reign of Charles I. and are so closely connected with his chief ecclesiastical adviser that they must be spoken of more fully here.

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CHAP. II

LAUD AND FISHER

9

The fame of Laud himself had largely been won by a contest with a Romanist, while King James was still on the throne, in May 1622.

Fisher.

Laud's conference with Fisher was, like many of the controversies of the time, caused by a pressing personal case of conscience. The Countess of Buckingham, Laud's conmother of the brilliant George Villiers, had prob- ference with ably already been converted to Romanisin, by one Percy, or Fisher, a very notable Jesuit; she had been followed by her son's wife, and the duke himself seemed very likely to be lost to the English Church. Conferences at first took place, by Buckingham's wish or the king's command, between Dr. Francis White, Rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill, and Fisher. After two meetings had been held, the king desired Laud, then Bishop of St. David's, to take part in the discussion. Fisher printed his account of the conferenceand White also: and Laud at last was compelled to do the same. Reply and retort followed, and eventually in 1639seventeen years after the conference had taken place-Laud found it necessary to publish a complete record of the proceedings. The form of the book makes it irksome reading nowadays. Sentence by sentence Fisher's book is taken, and dissected, and answered. Such a method has the advantage of completeness, but it can hardly fail to be extremely tedious. It is difficult to collect and marshal the arguments it is hard to see the wood for the trees.

Some account of the contents of this famous book must be given before the principles upon which Laud conducted this, his most important controversy, are stated, as a necessary introduction to the special contests controversy.

which followed.

Points of the

The points round which the battle was fought were chiefly :

(1) The Apostolic succession as the guarantee of the infallibility of the Faith in the Church: the Jesuit claimed that this guarantee could be found only in Rome.

(2) The Roman claim that "the Roman Church only, and such others as agree with it in faith, hath true Divine, infallible faith, necessary to salvation."