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UNPOPULARITY OF THE COURTS

71

"Let

court, and to note their divergence from the truth. men know," he said in the case of a clergyman named Harrison, "that he is not sentenced for not wearing the surplice, but for drunkenness, profaning of marriages, and making men live in perpetual adultery, that he is a briber, a beggar, à drunkard, a Bedlam." Laud added that it was time to punish such a man as this, "seeing they have sent us this printed libel from Amsterdam, wherein they accuse us for conniving with such men," and he read the words, 66 although he be the vilest wretch that lives under the sun, yet if he will wear the surplice, and cross the child with thumb, he shall be countenanced by you much better than the best." Other notable cases were those of Leighton, with whom the High Commission dealt only in degrading him after his sentence for libel by the Star Chamber; Ward, who was sentenced to suspension for contemning the Prayer-book and committed to prison because he would not acknowledge his offence; Barnard, who declared that the English bishops were Roman Catholics at heart, and no Roman Catholics could be saved; Lady Eleanor Davies, who was sentenced for foolish prophecies, and ought to have been recognised as insane, and again more severely when, "with a kettle in one hand and a brush in the other," she entered Lichfield cathedral church "to sprinkle some of her holy water (as she called that in the kettle) upon the (altar) hangings and the bishop's seat, which was only a composition of tar, pitch, sink-puddle water, etc., and such kind of nasty ingredients."

of the

of Laud.

Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of the acts of the High Commission, and whatever excuses may be made for the severity of its judgments, there can be no doubt that its activity was widely resented. Nor can it be General denied that the vehemence of Laud, his sharp unpopularity language and his bitter feeling towards those who courts and offended against the settled order of the king and realm, did much, though probably within a limited circle, to increase the rising animosity towards the rulers in Church and State, and to direct it, with special violence against the "urchin," the "little meddling hocus-pocus" (as Bishop Williams called him) himself. Good was done by the court, but harm was done also, and good was not done in the right

way. There was chapter and verse for all that was done for the decency and order of Divine worship, but it bore so much the air of being enforced by an unsympathetic power from London that it was bitterly resented, often by country squires and sometimes by country parsons.

In spite of this, the aims of the archbishop were to a very considerable extent realised even during the few years when he was in power. The age needed peace, order, tolerance, settled dwelling-places on a sure foundation. For these he built, and though what he built seemed to be swept away, he had gone deep and built sure. As time went on Reason suggested articles of peace on the lines which he had laid down. It was something also, to have seen clearly where the dividing line came. His measures made it clear to Englishmen that a rigid Calvinism and a Presbyterian hierarchy were alike inconsistent with the principles of the Church of England. Two centuries and a half after his death the order and the worship of our parish churches represent his ideal: and it has been well said by Dr. S. R. Gardiner that "his refusal to submit his mind to the dogmatism of Puritanism, and his appeal to the cultivated intelligence for the solution of religious problems, has received an ever-increasing response, even in regions in which his memory is devoted to contemptuous obloquy."

AUTHORITIES.-The State Papers, Domestic (which are here sometimes quoted verbatim from the abridgment in the Calendars), and the pamphlet literature of the time are the most important. Next to these must be placed Laud, Works; Hacket, Scrinia Reserata; the correspondence of Laud and Strafford (Strafford Papers); the Visitation Articles of the chief bishops, especially Laud, Neile, Juxon, and Mountague. Much information as to the conduct of the different dioceses, and as to the charges against the bishops, is to be found in the Tanner MSS. (Bodleian Library), notably vols. clxviii., CCXX. Vol. lxx. fol. 124 sqq. contain the articles drawn up by the court lawyers against Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, March 11, 1635. A New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny (1641), by Prynne, contains his account of the trials of himself, Bastwick, and Burton. A full account of the period is to be found in Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, and there are many documents in Rushworth, Historical Collection. See also S. R. Gardiner, History of England, vols. vii.-ix.

CHAPTER VI

POLITICAL OPPOSITION TO THE CHURCH

Interaction

No

THUS far we have dealt chiefly with the internal history of the Church. We have now to see how the agitation against the measures associated with Laud and his school found expression in Parliament, and how that expression of politics and religion. made war inevitable. In one aspect the opposition to Laud's reforms was simply a part of the opposition to the policy of the crown, the policy of James and Buckingham, and of Charles, as seen after Buckingham's death, in his own personal government. "No bishop no king" was a phrase of double meaning. The critical divergence of view between king and Commons led inevitably to an attack upon the Church. one can think that there would have been a rebellion of Puritans if there had been no rebellion of Parliamentarians. May, the historian of the Long Parliament, even considers that the just constitutional cause of the Commons suffered from the fanatics who would always put religion into the first place in every attack upon the government. But none the less the rulers of the Church were gravely unpopular. The country gentry resented the attack upon what they considered their privileges in Church matters, and resented the new dignity given to the clergy, whom they were too often accustomed to think of as dependents and "hedge-priests." Hacket in his Life of Williams says, "The clamour might have warned wisdom to stop. Policy ought to listen abroad to the talk of the streets and the market-places, and not to despise rumours when they are sharpened against the innovating of any discipline."

Unpopularity of the bishops.

The feeling

As early as 1637 it was clear that, in London, for example, the measures of Laud were frequently unacceptable to the people. There is among the State Papers of that in London. year the petition of the parishioners of All-Hallows, Barking, to the archbishop. "Of late years," they say, "our Parish Church has been repaired, and the communion table as before placed and railed about according to the laws and customs of the Church of England. Now there is a new font erected, over which certain carved images and a cross are placed, and also our communion table is removed out of its ancient accustomed place, and certain images placed over the rail which stands about the table, all which, as we conceive, tends much to the dishonour of God, and is very offensive to us parishioners, and also perilous. We have desired our doctor to give way, that the images might be taken down, yet he refuses so to do. The petitioners pray the archbishop to command that the images may be taken down and the communion table be restored its place." The doctor in question was Laud's nephew by marriage, Edward Layfield, who (it is probable) introduced the custom of mingling the chalice, which continued at All-Hallows from the archbishop's till a much later time. It is not likely that the petitioners met with any sympathy from Laud.1

Laud's sharp tongue and his intense activity made him personally unpopular. Clarendon well says of him that "his greatest want was that of a true friend, who would The personal unpopularity reasonably have told him of his infirmities, and of Laud. what people spake of him. It is the misfortune of persons of that condition that they receive for the most part their advertisements from clergymen, who understand the least and take the worst measure of human affairs, of all mankind that can read and write." The second sentence of this opinion no doubt expresses the lay feeling of the time as fully as the first; and behind it there was a great deal of local and family pride, which disliked that influence in

1 It must not, however, be supposed that all feeling was on one side. See the amusing skit, Some small and simple reasons delivered in a hollow tree in Waltham Forest in a lecture on the 23rd of March last, by Aminadab Blower, a devout bellows-mender of Pimlico, etc., 1633.

H

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THE POSITION OF THE ALTARS

75

the country should be counteracted by the importance of ecclesiastical officials who had close links with the court. Political and social feeling were mixed. Thus Mrs. Hutchinson can speak of Laud as leading the van of the king's evil councillors, and as "a fellow of mean extraction and arrogant pride"; and of the clergy in general she says, "The corrupted bishops and other profane clergy of the land, by their insolences grown odious to the people, bent their strong endeavours to disaffect the prince to his honest, godly subjects."

of the altars.

But stronger than this was the feeling of the sincere and powerful body of religious Puritans, men trained in the doctrines of Calvin and Cartwright, sympathetic towards the Scottish Reformation, and determined, The position like their predecessors under Elizabeth and James I., to sweep away all that survived of the doctrine and associations of the pre-Reformation Church of England. Matters such as the order as to the position of the altar seemed to these men at once to attack the vital principles of their faith. And the fact that many of the clergy were of their mind must not be forgotten, nor the position of men like Williams on the same question ignored. When John Carter, minister of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, gave his opinion of the lawfulness of reading service at the communion table, now placed at the east end of the church, he evidently felt that he was making a great concession to lawful authority, as he argued that it could not be unlawful to read the service in any part of the church, "being the whole temple is the house of prayer." The authority placed over him, being lawful, ordered him thus to read the prayers, and that on pain of ceasing his ministry. He assured his friends that this was no sufficient cause for leaving the ministry, and so he would consent to obey. This grudging concession shows the temper of the times. As Clarendon says, "On this unhappy subject proceeded a schism among the bishops themselves and a world of uncharitableness in the learned and moderate clergy towards one another. And, without doubt, many who loved the Church, nor did dislike the order and decency which they saw mended, yet they liked not any novelties, and so were liable to entertain jealousies that more was intended than was hitherto proposed."