ing of heresy, schism, profaneness, libertinism, anabaptism, atheism." The House of The presentation of this petition was treated by the House of Commons as a crime; and the petitioners were imprisoned. It was a crime not to agree with the dominant party. Commons For the High Commission and Star Chamber was supreme. substituted the House of Commons. And how this new supreme court was to act was prefigured by the Declaration of April 8, 1642, published in every market town of England and Wales: "The Lords and Commons do declare that they intend a due and necessary reformation of the government and liturgy of the Church, and to take away nothing in the one or the other but what shall be evil and justly offensive, or at the least unnecessary and burdensome; and on the better effecting thereof speedily to have consultation with godly and learned divines. And because this will never of itself attain the end sought therein, they will therefore use their utmost endeavours to establish learned and preaching ministers, with a good and sufficient maintenance throughout the whole kingdom, wherein many dark corners are miserably destitute of the means of salvation, and many poor ministers want necessary provision." What the bishops had done or failed to do the Parliament was to endeavour. Would it succeed better? Moderate though the tone of this was, it was in clear distinctness Erastian, and in probable application Presbyterian. The nineteen propositions sent by the two Houses of Parliament to the king at York on June 1 requested the king's assent to this practically in the same words. The claim was one of parliamentary supremacy. Ecclesiastical interests were on both sides bound to political affairs at their crisis. It was this which made peace impossible. AUTHORITIES.-Journals of the House of Lords. All the important constitutional documents are given in S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution; State Papers, Domestic, as before; Laud, Works; Hacket, Scrinia Reserata; Journals of the House of Commons. The Thomason Collection of Tracts in the British Museum arranges the fugitive literature of the time according to dates. The Canons of 1640 are reprinted in Laud's Werks. Throughout the long period of political conflict covered by this chapter S. R. Gardiner's History of England, 1603-42, is invaluable. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY BEFORE THE CIVIL WARS THE years which immediately preceded the Great Rebellion seem, when we read the political history of the time, to have been almost entirely days of strife and confusion. But when we look below the surface we find that quiet religious work was quietly proceeding, and that in all classes there were men of deep piety who cordially approved of the action of those in high place, and that a deep-rooted attachment to the Church of England, "as opposed to Popish and Puritan innovations," existed, which sufficiently explains the warmth of devotion that followed her fortunes during the period of their eclipse, and of enthusiasm to welcome her when she received her own again. When Charles I. came to the throne old men could still remember the days of Queen Mary, and men still in middle life recalled old customs which had only gradually Church old days. died out. At the end of his life—he died in 1643 survivals of -Dr. Kettell, President of Trinity College, Oxford, would speak of the rood-lofts, and the wafers in the sacrament, which he remembered everywhere. They had become uncommon. The vestments were often preserved, sometimes used, in colleges, as well as in cathedral churches. Old customs of festal use survived even in small parish churches. The parish priest, according to George Herbert, would take order that his church was "at great festivals strawed or stuck with boughs and perfumed with incense." Among church. wardens' accounts are found (as in those of St. Mary's, Reading, where the charge is six shillings, and begins in 1622), "for decking the church at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, with holly, ivy, rosemary, bays, and green boughs." At Durham the influence of Cosin introduced, so Smart objected, customs "not used in other cathedral churches within this realm, nor in former times used in Durham, as, namely, standing up at the Nicene Creed, Gloria Patri, wearing of copes at the second service,1... setting tapers burning, and not burning, on the communion table." The organs, too, were played there during the administration of the sacraments of holy communion and of baptism. And there were many score of images bravely painted and gilded, says the same distempered critic. Paintings and glass. Aubrey tells how, when Lord Saye and Sele came to visit the University of Oxford, there were paintings in the chapel of Trinity of two altars, with much other old work. Of the pictures the eccentric President Kettell said, "Truly, my Lord, we regard them no more than a dirty dish-clout," and thus saved them. Medieval glass at Salisbury remained in 1629 to provoke the anger of Henry Sherfield, and to lead to his prosecution in the Star Chamber. Laud was at pains to collect and restore the glass in Lambeth Palace chapel; and though the Puritan fear of idolatry had a special distrust of painted windows, the feeling was not at all general in England. At Fairford the famous fifteenth-century glass was preserved entire throughout the Civil War. And though this was unusual, there is enough medieval glass still remaining in many parts of the country to show how much more there must have been before the war broke and fittings Out. The Puritan Neal's account of the cathedral of the altar. church of Canterbury is perhaps exaggerated; but he is too systematic to be incorrect when he speaks of "two candlesticks, tapers, a basin for oblations, a cushion for the service-book, a silver-gilt canister for the wafers, . . . a credentia, or side-table, with a basin and ewer and napkins, and a towel, to wash before consecration," and adds that " on some altars there was a pot called the incense pot, and a knife to cut the communion bread." Heylin, Laud's chaplain, thus describes Manwaring's changes at Worcester : Decorations 1 In his Memoranda Smart contradicts this statement of his Articles, for he states that when James I. was at Durham copes were worn at the communion. "He erected a fair table of marble, standing on four wellfashioned columns; he covered the wall behind the same with azure-coloured stuff, having white silk lace upon every seam, and furnished it with palls and fronts, as he had observed it in his Majesty's and some bishops' chapels; and ordered the king's scholars, being forty in number, who formerly used to throng tumultuously into the choir, to go in rank, by two and two, and make their due obeisances at their coming in." In Laud's metropolitical visitation, inquiry, as we have seen, was made whether there " was a convenient and decent communion table standing upon a frame, with a carpet of silk or some other decent stuff." A green carpet was purchased for the communion table of St. Mary's, Reading, which cost £2: 8s. St. Edmund's, Salisbury, had in 1631 one cloth of red damask and gold for the communion table.” Among the articles plundered from St. George's Chapel at Windsor by Parliamentary soldiers when Christopher Wren, brother of the Bishop of Ely, was dean, were "two fair doublegilt chalices with covers, two fair double-gilt flagons, and a bason, gilt, for the bread at great communions." It was alleged against Cosin in the articles of his impeachment, that "at the first Candlemas day, at night, he caused three hundred wax candles to be set up and lighted in the church at once in honour of our Lady, and placed threescore of them upon and about the altar." The offended Prebendary Smart, who has already been mentioned, preached bitterly against all that Cosin had done in that great cathedral. Our young Apollo repaireth the quire, and set it out gaily with strange Babylonish ornaments; the hallowed priests dance about the altar, making pretty sport and fine pastime with trippings and turnings, and crossing and crouching." Church music. While Puritans made mock there were many in the North, where there survived a traditional affection for ceremonial, who warmly approved. Smart had heard, he said, "A strange speech, little better than blasphemy, uttered lately by a young man in the presence of his lord and many learned men. 'I had rather go forty miles to a good service than two miles to a sermon (Os durum).' And what meant he by a good service ? His meaning was manifest: where goodly Babylonish garments were worn, embroidered with images, where he might have a delicate noise of singers, with shakebuts and cornets and organs, and, if it were possible, all kinds of music, used at the dedication of Nabuchodonosor's golden image.' Church The movement was far from generally unpopular. And it was no mere love of show that dictated it. The endeavour to introduce a certain standard of ceremonial, based, as Laud argued; upon the unbroken usage of the royal chapels, the example of most of the cathedral churches, and the custom of Queen Elizabeth's days, was accompanied, it is restoration. interesting to note, by a genuine zeal for church building and restoration. In 1636, Archbishop Neile observed that in the past year there had been expended in the archdeaconries of York, the East Riding, and Nottingham, in "repairing and adorning churches," the large sum of £6562 :15:7. Many cases are recorded of the entire rebuilding of churches, such as that of Little Gidding by the Ferrar family. Laud and Juxon were noted as builders and restorers-Abergwili, Lambeth, Croydon, Fulham, all bearing witness to their zeal. All through this period, too, the restoration and refitting of St. Paul's Cathedral proceeded apace. Laud's correspondence is full of references to it, and it was thought that the fines in the High Commission Court were the heavier because they were devoted to that object. St. Paul's. The most famous instance, however, of church restoration is that undertaken by John, Viscount Scudamore, a friend of Laud's, who, after eminent public services, settled Abbey Dore. down on his country estate and undertook the re-endowment and re-edification of the churches of which he was patron. Having obtained advice from the archbishop and the necessary licence in mortmain to re-endow, he took in hand the rebuilding of the ancient church of Abbey Dore. So "ruinous and mean was the condition of this "venerable place" that, according to the writer who describes Lord Scudamore's work, one who "well remembered the rebuilding of the church of Door saith Mr. John Gyles, otherwise then called Sir Gyles, curate here before the present church was rebuilt, read prayers under an arch of the old demolished church to preserve his Prayer Book from wet |