blessed memory, should prescribe for the apparel of kirk men, and send in writ to his clerk of register, should be a sufficient warrant for inserting the same in the books of parliament, to have the strength of any act thereof; the present parliament agrees, that the same power shall remain with our sovereign lord that now is, and his successors." The bill touching religion ratifies and approves all acts and statutes made before, about the liberty and freedom of the true kirk of God, and the religion at present professed within this kingdom, and ordains the same to stand in full force as if they were particularly mentioned. The king left his native country July 16, having lost a great deal of ground in the affections of his people,* by the contempt he poured upon the Scots clergy, and his high behaviour in favour of the English ceremonies. His majesty was attended throughout his whole progress by Laud bishop of London, which service his lordship was not obliged to, and no doubt would have been excused from, if the design of introducing the English liturgy into Scotland had not been in view. He preached before the king in the royal chapel at Edinburgh, which scarce any Englishman had ever done before, and insisted principally upon the benefit of the ceremonies of the church, which he himself observed to the height. It went against him to own the Scots presbyters for ministers of Christ; taking all occasions to affront their character, which created a high disgust in that nation, and laid the foundation of those * Dr. Grey confronts Mr. Neal here with a passage from lord Clarendon to shew that his account of the king's reception in Scotland differs widely from this of our author. "The great civility of that people (says his lordship) being so notorious and universal, that they would not appear unconformable to his majesty's wish in any particular." But this quotation has little or no force against Mr. Neal, who is not representing the reception the king met with, but the impressions left on the minds of the people by the time of his departure. The king's entry and coronation, bishop Burnet says, was managed with such magnificence, that all was entertainment and show yet, he adds, "that the king left Scotland much discontented." The proceeding on the bill concerning the royal prerogative, &c. shew, that every proposal from the court was not pleasing. Whitelocke (Memoirs, p. 18) tells us, that though the king was crowned with all show of affection and duty, and gratified many with new honours; yet, before he left Scotland, some began to murmur and afterward to mutiny; and he was in some danger passing over Dumfrith. And such in particular was the effect of the prosecution of lord Balmerino on the public mind, that the ruin of the king's affairs in Scotland was in a great measure owing to it. Dr. Grey refers to the preambles to some acts passed in the Scotch parliament, as proving the high degree of esteem the king was then in amongst them; as if an argument were to be drawn from formularies drawn up according to the routine of the occasion, and composed, probably, by a court lawyer: as if such formularies were proof against matter of fact. Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. 1. p. 24-31. 12mo.-ED. + Clarendon, vol. 1. p. 81, 82. resentments that they expressed against him under his sufferings. When the king left Scotland, he erected a new bishoprick at Edinburgh; and about two months after, Laud, being then newly advanced to the province of Canterbury, framed articles for the reformation of his majesty's royal chapel in that city, which were sent into Scotland under his majesty's own hand, with a declaration, that they were intended as a pattern for all cathedrals, chapels, and parish-churches, in that kingdom.* The articles appoint, "that prayers be read twice a day in the choir, according to the English liturgy, till some course be taken to make one that may fit the custom and constitution of that church. That all that receive the sacrament in the chapel do it kneeling. That the dean of the chapel always come to church in his whites, and preach in them. That the copes which are consecrated to our use be carefully kept, and used at the celebration of the sacrament; and that all his majesty's officers and ministers of state be obliged, at least once a year, to receive the sacrament at the royal chapel, kneeling, for an example to the rest of the people." Thus were the liberties of the kirk of Scotland invaded by an English bishop, under the wing of the supremacy, without consent of parliament or general assembly. The Scots ministers in their pulpits preached against the English hierarchy, and warned the people against surrendering up the liberties of their kirk into the hands of a neighbouring nation, that was undermining their discipline; so that when the new liturgy came to be introduced about four years after, all the people as one man rose up against it. The king was no sooner returned from Scotland than Dr. Abbot archbishop of Canterbury died. He was born at Guilford in Surrey 1562, and educated in Baliol-college, Oxford, where he was a celebrated preacher. In the year 1597, he proceeded doctor in divinity, and was elected master of University-college: two years after he was made dean of Winchester, and was one of those divines appointed by king James to translate the New Testament into English. In the year 1609, he was consecrated bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, from thence he was translated to London, * Rushworth, part 2. vol. 2. p, 205, 206. and upon the death of archbishop Bancroft, to Canterbury, April 9, 1611, having never been rector, viear, or incumbent, in any parish-church in England. Lord Clarendon* has lessened the character of this excellent prelate, contrary to almost all other historians, by saying that "he was a man of very morose manners, and of a very sour aspect, which in that time was called gravity; that he neither understood nor regarded the constitution of the church; that he knew very little of ancient divinity, but adhered stiffly to the doctrine of Calvin, and did not think so ill of his discipline as he ought to have done; but if men prudently forbore a public reviling and railing at the hierarchy, let their private practice be as it would, he would give them no disturbance; that his house was a sanctuary to disaffected persons, and that he licensed their writings, by which means his successor [Laud] had a very difficult task to reduce things to order." The Oxford historian,† who was no friend to our archbishop's principles, confesses that he was a pious grave person, exemplary in his life and conversation, a plausible preacher, and that the many things he has written shew him to be a man of parts, learning, and vigilance; an able statesman, and of unwearied study, though overwhelmed with business. Fuller says, he was an excellent preacher, and that his severity towards the clergy was only to prevent their being punished by lay judges, to their greater shame. Mr. Coke and Dr. Welwood § add, that he was a prelate of primitive sanctity, who followed the true interests of his country, and of the reformed churches at home and abroad; that he was a divine of good learning, great hospitality, and wonderful moderation, shewing upon all occasions an unwillingness to stretch the king's prerogative or the act of uniformity, beyond what was consistent with law, or necessary for the peace of the church; this brought him into all his troubles, and has provoked the writers for the prerogative, to leave a blot upon his memory, which on this account will be reverenced by all true lovers of the Protestant religion, and the liberties of their country; and if the court had followed his wise and prudent counsels, the mischiefs that befel the crown and * Clarendon, vol. 1. p. 88, 89. Church History, b. 11. p. 123. † Athenæ Oxon. vol. 1. p. 499. church some years after his death, would have been prevented. We have mentioned his casual homicide in the year 1621, which occasioned his keeping an annual fast as long as he lived, and maintaining the widow. Notwithstanding this misfortune, if he would have betrayed the Protestant religion, and been the dupe of the prerogative, he might have continued in high favour with his prince; but for his steady opposition to the arbitrary measures of Buckingham and Laud, and for not licensing Sibthorp's sermon, he was suspended from his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, [1028*], whereupon he retired to Croydon, having no more interest at court, or influence in the government of the church; here he died in his archiepiscopal palace, August 4, 1633, aged seventy-one, and was buried in Trinity-church in Guilford, the place of his nativity, where he had erected and endowed an hospital for men and women. There is a fine monument over his grave, with his effigies in full proportion, supported by six pillars of the Doric order of black marble, standing on six pedestals of piled books, with a large inscription thereon to his memory.† * Rushworth, vol. 1. p. 435. † In addition to our author's character of archbishop Abbot, it may be observed that Dr. Warner has entered largely into the description of it," not only (he says) in conformity to the rule he prescribed to himself in his work, but (he adds) to rescue the memory of this prelate from the injury done to it by lord Clarendon, with so notorious a partiality as does no honour to his history." The doctor sums up his view of archbishop Abbot's character, by saying, "that he was a man of good parts and learning as a divine; that he was a prelate of a very pious exemplary conversation; and an archbishop who understood the constitution of his country in church and state, to which he steadfastly adhered, without any regard to the favour or the frowns of princes." The learned translator of Mosheim also censures lord Clarendon's account of this eminent prelato as most unjust and partial and in a long note, ably and judiciously appreciates the archbishop's merit and excellence. It was, he shews, by the zeal and dexterity of Abbot, that things were put into such a situation in Scotland as afterward produced the entire establishment of the episcopal order in that nation. It was by the mild and prudent counsels of Abbot, when he was chaplain to the lord-high-treasurer Dunbar, that there was passed a famous act of the general assembly of Scotland, which gave the king the authority of calling all general assemblies, and investing the bishops, or their deputies, with various powers of interfe rence and influence over the Scotch ministers. These facts confate the charge of his disregarding the constitution of the church. It deserves to be mentioned, that this prelate had a considerable hand in the translation of the New Testament now in use. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. 4. p. 513, and note (f.) 1768. Warner's Eccles. History, vol. 2. p. 522–524. Granger's Biogr. History of England, vol. 1. p. 341. 8vo.-ED. CHAP. IV. FROM THE DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP ABBOT TO THE BEGINNING OF THE COMMOTIONS IN SCOTLAND, IN THE YEAR 1637. DR. LAUD was now at the pinnacle of preferment, being translated to the see of Canterbury two days after arch'bishop Abbot's death. His grace was likewise chancellor of the universities of Oxford and Dublin, privy-counsellor for England and Scotland, first commissioner of the exchequer, and one of the committee for trade, and for the king's revenues: he was also offered a cardinal's cap [August 17], which he declined, as he says, because there was something dwelt within him which would not suffer it, till Rome was otherwise than it was. We are now to see how he moved in this high sphere. Lord Clarendon admits, "that the archbishop had all his life eminently opposed Calvin's doctrine, for which reason he was called a Papist; and it may be (says his lordship) the Puritans found the more severe and rigorous usage for propagating the calumny. He also intended, that the discipline of the church should be felt as well as spoken of." The truth of this observation has appeared in part already, and will receive stronger evidence from the seven ensuing years of his government. The archbishop's antipathy to Calvinism, and zeal for the external beauty of the church, carried him to some very imprudent and unjustifiable extremes; for if the Puritans were too strict in keeping holy the sabbath, his grace was too lax in his indulgence, by encouraging revels, may-games, and sports, on that sacred day. Complaint having been made to the lord-chief-justice Richardson, and baron Denham, in their western circuit, of great inconveniences arising from revels, church-ales, and clerk-ales, on the Lord's day, the two judges made an order at the assizes for suppressing them, and appointed the clerk to leave copies of the order with every parish-minister, who was to give a note under his hand, to publish it in his church yearly, the first Sunday in February, and the two Sundays before Easter.* Upon the return of the cir * Prynne's Cant. Doom. p. 153. |