If we look into our own country, we shall find numerous proofs of the same antichristian spirit and practice. Even our first reformers, who had seen the flames which the papistshad kindled against their brethren, yet lighted fires themselves to consume those who differed from them. Cranmer’s hands were stained with the blood of several.[319]He had a share in the prosecution and condemnation of that pious and excellent martyr John Lambert, and consented to the death of Ann Askew, who were burnt for denying the corporal presence; which, though Cranmer then believed, he saw afterwards reason to deny.
In the year 1549, Joan Bocher was condemned for some enthusiastical opinions about Christ, and delivered over to the secular power. The sentence being returned to the council, King Edward VI. was moved to sign a warrant for her being burnt, but could not be prevailed with to do it. Cranmer endeavoured to persuade him by such arguments, as rather silenced than satisfied the young king: so he set his hand to the warrant with tears in his eyes, saying to the archbishop, that if he did wrong, since it was in submission to his authority, he should answer for it to God. Though this struck Cranmer with horror, yet he at last put the sentence in execution against her.
About two years after one George Van Pare, a Dutchman, was accused, for saying, “That God the Father was only God, and that Christ was not very God.” And though he was a person of a very holy life, yet because he would not abjure, he was condemned for heresy, and burnt in Smithfield. The Archbishop himself was afterwards burnt for heresy; which, as Fox observed, many looked on as a just retaliation from the providence of God, for the cruel severeties he had used towards others.
The controversy about the Popish habits was one of the first that arose amongst the English reformers. Cranmer and Ridley were zealous for the use of them, whilst other very pious and learned Divines were for laying them aside, as the badges of idolatry and antichrist. Amongst these was Dr.Hooper, nominated to the bishoprick of Gloucester; but because he refused to be consecrated in the old vestments, he was by order of council first silenced, and then confined to his own house; and afterwards, by Cranmer’s means, committed to the Fleet prison, where he continued several months.
[320]In the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, A. C. 1559, an act passed for the uniformity of common prayer, and service in the church, and administration of the sacraments; by which the queen and bishops were empowered to ordain such ceremonies in worship, as they should think for the honour of God, and the edification of his church. This act was rigourously pressed, and great severities used to such as could not comply with it. Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, made the clergy subscribe to use the prescribed rites and habits; and cited before him many of the most famous Divines who scrupled them, and would allow none to be presented to livings, or preferred in the church, without an intire conformity. He summoned the whole body of the London pastors and curates to appear before him at Lambeth, and immediately suspended 37, who refused to subscribe to the unity of apparel; and signified to them, that within three months they should be totally deprived, if they would not conform. So that many churches were shut up; and though the people were ready to mutiny for want of ministers, yet the archbishop was deaf to all their complaints, and in his great goodness and piety was resolved they should have no sacraments or sermons without the surplice and the cap. And in order to prevent all opposition to church tyranny, the Star Chamber published a decree for sealing up the press, and prohibiting any person to print or publish any book against the queen’s injunctions, or against the meaning of them. This decree was signed by the bishops of Canterbury and London.
This rigid and fanatical zeal for habits and coremonies, caused the Puritans to separate from the established church,and to hold private assemblies for worship. But the queen and her prelates soon made them feel their vengeance. Their meetings were disturbed, and those who attended them apprehended, and sent in large numbers, men and women, to Bridewell, for conviction. Others were cited into the spiritual courts, and not discharged till after long attendance and great charges. Subscriptions to articles of faith were violently pressed upon the clergy, and about one hundred of them were deprived, anno 1572, for refusing to submit to them. Some were closely imprisoned, and died in jail, through poverty and want.
And that serious piety and christian knowledge might gain ground, as well as uniformity, the bishops, by order of the queen, put down the prophesyings of the clergy, anno 1574, who were forbid to assemble as they had done for some years, to discourse with one another upon religious subjects and sermons; and as some serious persons of the laity were used to meet on holidays, or after they had done work, to read the scriptures, and to improve themselves in christian knowledge, the parsons of the parishes were sent for, and ordered to suppress them.
Eleven Dutchmen, who were anabaptists, were condemned in the consistory of St. Paul to the fire, for heresy; nine of whom were banished, and two of them burnt alive in Smithfield. In the year 1583, Copping and Thacker, two Puritan ministers, were hanged for non-conformity. It would be endless to go through all the severities that were used in this reign upon the account of religion. As the queen was of a very high and arbitrary temper, she pressed uniformity with great violence, and found bishops enough, Parker, Aylmer, Whitgift, and others, to justify and promote her measures; who either entered their sees with persecuting principles, or embraced them soon after their entrance, as best befitting the ends of their promotion. Silencings, deprivations, imprisonments, gibbets, and stakes, upon the account of religion, were some of the powerful reasonings of those times. The bishops rioted in power, and many of them abused it to the most crueloppressions. The cries of innocent prisoners, widowed wives, and starving children, made no impression on their hearts. Piety and learning with them were void of merit. Refusal of subscriptions, and non-conformity, were crimes never to be forgiven. A particular account of these things may be seen in Mr. Neal’s history of the Puritans, who hath done some justice to that subject.
I shall only add, that the court of high commission established in this reign, by the instigation of Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, by which the commissioners were impowered to inquire into all misdemeanors, by all such ways and means as they could devise, and thought necessary; to examine persons upon oath, and to punish those who refused the oath by fine or imprisonment, according to their discretion, was an high stretch of the prerogative, and had a very near resemblance to the courts of inquisition; and the cruelties that were practised in it, and the exorbitant fines that were levied by it in the two following reigns, made it the universal abhorrence of the nation, so that it was dissolved by parliament, with a clause that no such court should be erected for the future.
[321]King James I. was bred up in the kirk of Scotland, which professed the faith and discipline of those called Puritans in England; and though he blessed God, “For honouring him to be king over such a kirk, the sincerest kirk in the world,” yet, upon his accession to the English throne, he soon shewed his aversion to the constitution of that kirk; and to their brethren, the puritans in England. These were solicitous for a farther reformation in the church, which the bishops opposed, instilling this maxim into the king,[322]“No Bishop, no King;” which, as stale and false a maxim as it is, hath been lately trumped up, and publicly recommended, in a sermon on the 30th of January. In the conference at Hampton Court, his Majesty not only sided with the bishops, but assured the puritan ministers, who were sent for to it, that“he had not called the assembly together for any innovations, for that he acknowledged the government ecclesiastical, as it then was, to have been approved by God himself;” giving them to understand, that “if they did not conform, he would either hurry them out of the kingdom, or else do worse.”[323]And these reasonings of the king were so strong, that Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, with an impious and sordid flattery said, “He was verily persuaded that the king spoke by the spirit of God.”
It was no wonder that the bishops, thus supported by an inspired king, should get an easy victory over the puritans; which possibly they would not have done, had his majesty been absent, and the aids of his inspiration withdrawn; since the archbishop did not pretend that himself or his brethren had any share of it. But having thus gotten the victory, they strove by many methods of violence to maintain it; and used such severities towards the non-conformists, that they were forced to seek refuge in foreign countries. The truth is, this conference at Hampton Court was never intended to satisfy the puritans, but as a blind to introduce episcopacy into Scotland, and to subvert the constitution and establishment of that church.
His majesty, in one of his speeches to his Parliament, tells them, that “he was never violent and unreasonable in his profession of religion.” I believe all mankind will now acquit him of any violent and unreasonable attachment to the protestant religion and liberties. He added in the same speech, it may be questioned whether by inspiration of the spirit, “I acknowledge the Roman church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions.” And he did behave as a very dutiful son of that mother church, by the many favours he shewed to the papists during his reign, by his proclamations for uniformity in religion, and encouraging and supporting his bishops in their persecutions of such as differed from, or could not submit to them.
Bancroft, promoted to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury,was, as the historian[324]calls him, “A sturdy piece,” a cruel and inflexible persecutor, treating the non-conformists with the greatest rigour and severity; and who, as Heylin tells us,[325]“was resolved to break them, if they would not bow.” He put the canons and constitutions agreed on A. C. 1603, furiously into execution, and such as stood out against them, he either deprived or silenced. And indeed, as the aforementioned author says,[326]“Who could stand against a man of such a spirit, armed with authority, having the law on his side, and the king to his friend? During his being archbishop he deprived, silenced, suspended, and admonished, above three hundred ministers. The violencies he and his brethren used in the high-commission courts, rendered it a publicgrievance.”grievance.”[327]“Every man must conform to the episcopal way, and quit his hold in opinion or safety. That court was the touchstone, to try whether men were metal for their stamp; and if they were not soft enough to take such impressions as were put upon them, they were made malleable there, or else they could not pass current. This was the beginning of that mischief, which, when it came to a full ripeness, made such a bloody tincture in both kingdoms, as never will be got out of the bishop’s lawn sleeves.”
But nothing displeased the sober part of the nation more, than the publication of the Book of Sports, which the bishops procured from the king, and which came out with a command, enjoining all ministers to read it to their parishioners, and to approve of it; and those who did not, were brought into the high commission, imprisoned, and suspended; this book being only a trap to catch some conscientious men, that they could not otherwise, with all their cunning, ensnare.
[328]“These, and such like machinations of the bishops,” says my author, “to maintain their temporal greatness, ease, and plenty, made the stones in the walls of their palaces, and the beam in the timber, afterwards cry out, moulder away, andcome to nothing; and caused their light to go out offensive to the nostrils of the rubbish of thepeople.”people.”
Indeed many of the king’s bishops, such as Bancroft, Neal, and Laud, who was a reputed papist in Oxford, and a man of a dangerous turbulent spirit, were fit for any work; and as they do not appear to have had any principles of real piety themselves, they were the fittest tools that could be made use of to persecute those who had. Neal, when he was Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, prosecuted one Edward Wightman, for broaching erroneous doctrine, and having canonically condemned him, got the king’s warrant for his execution; and he was accordingly burnt in Litchfield. One Legat also was prosecuted and condemned for heresy, by King Bishop of London, and expired in the flames of Smithfield. He denied the divinity of our Saviour, according to the Athanasian mode of explaining it; but as Fuller tells us, he was excellently skilled in scripture, and his conversation very unblameable. But as these sacrifices were unacceptable to the people, the king preferred, that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in prison, rather than to amuse others with the solemnity of a public execution.
In the reign of the Royal Martyr,[329]the church grew to the height of her glory and power; though such is the fate of all human things, that she soon sickened, languished, and died. Laud, carried all before him, and ruled both church and kingdom with a rod of iron. His beginning and rise is thus described by Archbishop Abbot, his pious and worthy predecessor.
[330]“His life in Oxford was to pick quarrels in the lectures of the public readers, and to advertise them to the then Bishop of Durham, that he might fill the ears of King James with discontents against the honest men that took pains in their places, and settled the truth, which he called puritanism, in their auditors.
“He made it his work to see what books were in the press, and to look over epistles dedicatory, and prefaces to the reader, to see what faults might be found.
“It was an observation what a sweet man this was like to be, that the first observable act he did, was the marrying the Earl of Devonshire to the Lady Rich, when it was notorious to the world that she had another husband, and the same a nobleman, who had divers children then living by her. King James did for many years take this so ill, that he would never hear of any great preferment of him: insomuch that the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Williams, who taketh upon him to be the first promoter of him, hath many times said, that when he made mention of Laud to the King, his Majesty was so averse from it, that he was constrained oftentimes to say, that he would never desire to serve that master, who could not remit one fault to his servant. Well, in the end he did conquer it, to get him to the Bishoprick of St. David’s; which he had not long enjoyed, but he began to undermine his benefactor, as at this day it appeareth. The Countess of Buckingham told Lincoln, that St. David’s was the man that undermined him with her son. And verily, such is his aspiring nature, that he will underwork any man in the world, so that he may gain byit.it.”
[331]He had a peculiar enmity to Archbishop Abbot, a man of an holy and unblameable life, because he had informed King James that Laud was a reputed papist in Oxford, and of a dangerous, turbulent spirit; and as James I. was wrought up into an incurable animosity against the puritans, “this was thought to be fomented by the papists, whose agent Bishop Laud was suspected to be: and though the king was pleased with asservations to protest his incentive spirit should be kept under, that the flame should not break out by any preferment from him; yet getting into Buckingham’s favour, he grew into such credit, that he was thought to be the bellows whichblew those flames that were every where rising in the nation.
“For the papists used all the artifices they could to make a breach between the king and his people; and to accomplish this, amongst other methods, they sowed the seeds of division betwixt puritan and protestant; for all those were puritans, with this high grown Armenian popish party, that held in judgment the doctrine of the reformed churches, or in practice live according to the doctrine publicly taught in the church of England. And they attributed the name of protestant,
“1. To such papists, as either out of policy, or by popish indulgence, held outward communion with the church of England.
“2. To such protestants, as were either tainted with, or inclinable to their opinions.
“3. To indifferent men, who embrace always that religion, that shall be commanded by authority. Or,
“4. To such neutrals as care for no religion, but such as stands with their own liking; so that they allow the church of England the refuse both of their religion and ours.”
Thus far Wilson: and though Laud might be, as the same historian relates, of “a motley form of religion” by himself, yet the whole course of his tyrannical administration gave but too just reason for suspicion, that his strongest inclinations were towards Rome and Popery.[332]The first parliament of Charles I. re-assembled at Oxford in 1625, complained that Popery and Arminianism were countenanced by a strong party in the kingdom; and Neal Bishop of Winchester, and Laud, then of St. David’s, were chiefly looked upon as the heads and protectors of the Arminians, nay, as favourers of Popery.
The reasons of this suspicion were many. He was drove on by a rigid, furious, and fanatical zeal for all the ceremonies of the church of England, even for such as seemed the leastnecessary. And not content with these, he promoted and procured the introduction of many others, which never had been enjoined by lawful authority.
January 16, 1630, he consecrated, as Bishop of London, St. Catharine Creed Church, with all the fopperies of a popish superstition.[333]“AtAtthe bishop’s approach to the west door, some that were prepared for it, cried with a loud voice, “Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may enter in.” Immediately enters Laud. Then falling down upon his knees, with his eyes lifted up, and his arms spread abroad, he cried out “This place is holy: the ground is holy: in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.” Then he took up some of the dust, and threw it up into the air several times, in his going up towards the chancel. When they approached near to the rail, and communion table, the bishop bowed towards it several times; and returning, they went round the church in procession, singing the 100th psalm; after that the 19th psalm; and then said a form of prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, &c.” concluding, “We consecrate this church, and separate it unto thee as holy ground, not to be profaned any more to common use.”
“After this the bishop being near the communion table, and taking a written book in his hand, pronounced curses upon those that should afterwards profane that holy place, by musters of soldiers, or keeping profane law courts, or carrying burdens through it; and at the end of every curse he bowed towards the east, and said, “Let all the people say,” Amen. After this he pronounced a number of blessings upon all those who had any hand in framing and building of that sacred and beautiful church, and those that had given, or should hereafter give any chalices, plate, ornaments, or utensils; and at the end of every blessing he bowed towards the East, saying, “Let all the people say,” Amen.
“After this followed the sermon; which being ended, the bishop consecrated and administered the sacrament in manner following.
“As he approached the communion table, he made many lowly bowings, and coming up to the side of the table, where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed seven times; and then, after the reading of many prayers, he came near the bread, and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin wherein the bread was laid; and when he beheld the bread, he laid it down again, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times towards it; then he drew near again, and opened the napkin, and bowed as before. Then he laid his hand on the cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it; which he let go, then went back, and bowed thrice towards it. Then he came near again; and lifting up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before. Then, he received thesacramentsacrament, and gave it to some principal men; after which many prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended.”
In this manner have I seen high mass celebrated pontifically. And from whence did the pious Laud learn all these kneelings, bowings, throwings of dust, cursings, blessings, and adorations of the sacramental elements; from the sacred scriptures, or the writings of the primitive fathers? No: it was an exact copy of the Roman Pontifical, which was found in his study; and though he alledged in his defence that it was a form communicated by Bishop Andrews to him, it was ridiculous, since Andrews himself had it from the same pontifical.
[334]The next year, 1632, Henry Sherfield, Esq. recorder of Sarum, was fined in the Star Chamber £500. on the following occasion. There was in the city of Salisbury a church called St. Edmund’s, whose windows were painted with the history of the creation; where God the Father was representedin the form of an old man, creating the world during the first six days, but painted sitting on the seventh, to denote the day of rest. In expressing the creation of the sun and moon, the painter had put in God’s hand a pair of compasses, as if he was going to measure them. The recorder was offended with this profaneness; and, by an order of vestry, took down those painted glasses, and broke some of the panes with his stick, and ordered others to be put up in their room. Upon this an information was exhibited against him in the Star Chamber, by the attorney-general; where Sherfield was for this reason charged with being ill-affected to the discipline of the Church of England, and the government thereof by bishops, because he had broken excellent pictures of the creation, and fined for his crime in the sum above mentioned, committed to the Fleet, removed from his recordership, and bound to his good behaviour. Nor was Laud ashamed, in justification of such pictures, to urge, as the papists continually do, that place in Dan. vii. 9, in which God is described as “the ancient of days;” shewing himself a worse divine, or a more popishly affected one, than the Earl of Dorset, who then sat with him in the court, and said, that by that text was meant “the eternity of God, and not God to be pictured as an old man, creating the world with a pair of compasses. But I wish” added the Earl, “there were no image of the Father, neither in the church, nor out of the church; for, at the best, they are but vanities and teachers of lies.”
In 1633,[335]Laud was made Archbishop of Canterbury; and having observed that the placing the communion table in the body of the church, or at the entrance of the chancel, was not only a prostitution of the table to ordinary and sordid uses, but the chancel looked like an useless building, fit only for a schooling and parish-meeting, though originally designed for the most solemn office of religion; to redeem these places, as he termed it, from profaneness, and restore them tothe primitive use of the holy sacrament, the archbishop used his utmost diligence to remove the communion table from the body of the church, and fix it at the upper end of the chancel, and secure it from the approach of dogs, and all servile uses, by railing it in, and obliging the people to come up to those rails to receive the sacrament with more decency and order. This affair, says Lord Clarendon, he prosecuted more passionately than was fit for the season, and created disputes in numberless places;[336]so that the high commission had frequent occasions to punish the ministers, who were suspected of too little zeal for the Church of England. And as since the reformation the altars were changed into communion tables, and placed in the middle of the chancel, to avoid superstition; many imagined, and that with too much reason, the tables were again turned into altars with intent to revive a superstitious worship.
In the year 1634,[337]he set up and repaired Popish images in the glass windows of his chapel at Lambeth; particularly one of God the Father, in the form of a little old man. This Laud himself owned, that he repaired the windows at no small cost, by the help of the fragments that remained, and vindicated the thing. He introduced also copes, candlesticks, tapers, and such like trumperies. So that L’Estrange, whom no man will charge with partiality against the archbishop, says of him:[338]“The Archbishop of Canterbury stands aspersed, in common fame, as a great friend at least, and patron of the Romish Catholics, if he were not of the same belief. To which I answer by concession: true it is, he had too much and long favoured the Romish faction—though not the Romish faith. He tampered indeed to introduce some ceremonies, bordering upon superstition, disused by us, and abused by them. From whence the Romanists collected such a good disposition in him to their tenets, as they began not only to hope, but in good earnest to cry him up for theirproselyte.”proselyte.”
Under the year 1635,[339]the author of the notes to the Complete History tells us, that one of the great offences taken by wise and good men against the archbishop, was the new attempt of reconciling the Church of England to the Church of Rome. The design was to accommodate the articles of the Church of England to the sense of the Church of Rome, for the reconciliation of the two churches. Davenport, an English Franciscan Friar, published a book to this purpose, under the name of Franciscus de Sancta Clara, which was dedicated to the king, and said to have been directed to Archbishop Laud. And it was an article objected against him, that for the advancement of popery and superstition in this realm, he had wittingly and willingly harboured and relieved divers popish priests and jesuits, and particularly Sancta Clara, who hath written a popish and seditious book, wherein the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England are much traduced and scandalized, the said archbishop having divers conferences with him, while he was writing the said book. The archbishop did not seem to deny his acquaintance with the man, nor with the design of the book; but was rather afraid the book would not answer the design.
The same author farther adds, that the best observations on this matter were made by Mr. Rous, in a speech against Dr. Cosin, March 16, 1640, “A second way by which this army of priests advanceth this popish design, is the way of treaty. This hath been acted both by writings and conference. Sancta Clara himself says,‘Doctissimi eorum, quibuscunque egi.’‘Doctissimi eorum, quibuscunque egi.’So it seems they have had conference together. And Sancta Clara, on his part, labours to bring the articles of our church to popery, and some of our side labour to meet him in the way. We have a testimony that the great arch-priest himself hath said:‘It were no hard matter to make a reconciliation, if a wise man had the handling of it.’”‘It were no hard matter to make a reconciliation, if a wise man had the handling of it.’”
Such was the good opinion which the papists had of Laud,and of his inclinations to popery, that it is certain they offered him a cardinal’s cap. Eachard and others say he refused it.
[340]But the Lord Wiquefort, as cited by Mr. Oldmixon, informs us, in his Treatise of the Ambassador and his Function, that Laud treated with Count Rosetti, the popish agent in England, for a pension of 48,000 livres a year; which if the Pope would have settled upon him, he would not only have accepted the cardinal’s cap, but have gone to Rome, and have dwelt with the Pope and his cardinals as long as he lived.
The bitter and relentless fury with which he treated the puritans, and others, who were friends to the Church of England, and some of the best protestants in the kingdom, is a demonstration that he was more papist than protestant. Of the puritans he used to say, as Heylin tells us, that “they were as bad as the papists;” and indeed he used them in a much worse manner.
In the Considerations he presented to the King, “Anno 1629, for the better securing the Church Government,” he prayed his Majesty, amongst other things, that Emanuel and Sydney Colleges in Cambridge, which are the nurseries of puritanism, may from time to time be provided of grave and orthodox men for their governors. In the several accounts of his province, which he sent to the King, we read almost of nothing but conformity and non-conformity to the church, refractory people to the church, peevish and disorderly men, for preaching up the observation of the sabbath, breach of church canons, wild, turbulent preachers, for preaching against bowing at the name of Jesus, and in disgrace of the common prayer book; and in consequence of these things, presentments, citations in the high commission court, censures, suspensions from preaching, and other like pious methods, to reduce and reform them.[341]And so grievous and numerous were the violencies he exercised on these and the like occasions, in the star chamber, high commission, and spiritualcourts, that many excellent and learned men were forced to leave the kingdom, and retire to the West-Indies. And yet even this was unmercifully forbidden them. For in the year 1637, a proclamation was issued to stop eight ships going to New England; and another warrant from the council, of which Laud was one, to the Lord Admiral, to stop all ministers unconformable to the discipline and ceremonies of the church, who frequently transport themselves to the summer islands, and other plantations; and that no clergyman should be suffered to go over, without approbation of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of London. These prohibitions, as the Complete Historian observes, increased the murmurs and complaints of the people thus restrained, and raised the cries of a double persecution, to be vexed at home, and not suffered to seek peace or refuge abroad.
But how were the papists treated all this while? why with brotherly mildness and moderation. For whilst these severities were exercising against protestants, there were many pardons and indulgencies granted to popish offenders. The papists were in reality his favourites and friends.
On July 7, 1626,[342]Montague’s books, intitled, “An Appeal to Cæsar,” and “A Treatise of the Invocation of Saints,” were called in question by the House of Commons, and reported to contain false, erroneous, papistical opinions. For instance: “That the Church of Rome hath ever remained firm, upon the same foundation of sacraments and doctrines instituted by God. That the controverted points (between the Church of England and that of Rome) are of a lesser and inferior nature, of which a man may be ignorant, without any danger of his soul at all. That images may be used for the instruction of the ignorant, and excitation of devotion.[343]That there are tutelar saints as well as angels.” The House of Commons voted his books to be contrary to the established articles; to tend to the King’s dishonour, and tothe disturbance of church and state. And yet this zealous protestant Bishop Laud was, as the Complete Historian assures us, “a zealous friend to the person and opinions of Mr.Montague;”Montague;”[344]and made this entry in his diary on this affair. “Jan. 29. Sunday. I understand what D. B. had collected concerning the Cause, Book, and Opinions of Richard Montague, and what R. C. had determined with himself therein. Methinks I see a cloud arising, and threatening the Church of England;” viz. because the popish opinions of this turbulent priest were censured as contrary to the established articles of the church of England. He was fit to be made one of Laud’s brethren; and accordingly was preferred to the Bishoprick of Chichester, anno 1629.
[345]The author of the Remarks on the Complete Historian farther tells us, under the year 1632, that great prejudice was taken against some of Bishop Laud’s churchmen, by one of them protesting to die in the communion of the Church of Rome; Dr. Theodore Price, prebendary of Winchester, and sub-dean of Westminster. Mr. Prynne affirmed, that this man, very intimate with the archbishop, and recommended by him specially to the King to be a Welch Bishop, in opposition to the Earl of Pembroke, and his chaplain Griffith Williams, soon after died a reconciled papist, and received extreme unction from a priest. The remarker adds, “It is strange partiality in the Oxford Historian, to question this matter, when Laud himself, in his MS notes upon that relation given by Mr. Prynne, doth by no means deny the fact, but excuses the using his interest for him; and says, ‘he was more inward with another bishop, and who laboured his preferment more thanI.’”I.’”
In the same year, 1632,[346]Mr. Francis Windbank was made secretary of state by the interest of Bishop Laud, who hath entered it in his Diary. “1632. June 15. Mr. Francis Windbank, my old friend, was sworn Secretary of State;which place I obtained for him of my gracious master King Charles.” He proved so much a creature of the queen’s, and such an advocate and patron of all suffering papists and jesuits, that he had the character of a papist, and brought a very great odium upon Laud who preferred him. That which created him the more envy, was the turning out the old secretary, Sir John Coke, who was displaced by Laud “for his honest firmness against popery,” as the author of the remarks on the complete historian assures us, and for his hatred and opposition to the jesuits. This job was labouring for three years’ space and at last obtained by Laud’s influence on the King.
These instances, and many others which might be mentioned, are sufficient to discover what sort of a protestant Laud was, and how he stood affected to the church of Rome. I shall now consider his character for piety, which was exactly of a piece with his protestantism.
He was a creature of the Duke of Buckingham, who was one of the lewdest men in thekingdom.kingdom.This man, as Archbishop Abbot said of him, was the only inward counsellor with Buckingham; “sitting with him sometimes privately whole hours, and feeding his humour with malice and spite.” His marrying the Earl of Devonshire to the Lady Rich, though she had another husband, is a glorious argument of his regard to the laws of God, and particularly of his reverence for the seventh commandment.
He gave, also, notable proofs of his zeal to maintain the honour of the fourth. The liberties taken at Wakes, or annual feasts of the dedication of churches, on Sundays, were grown to a very high excess, and occasioned great and numerous debaucheries. The lord chief justice Richardson,[347]in his circuit, made an order to suppress them, Laud complained of this to the king, as an intrusion upon the ecclesiastical power; upon which Richardson was severely reprimanded,and forced to revoke the order. The justices of the peace upon this drew up a petition to the king, shewing the great inconveniences which would befal the country, if those revels, church-ales and clerk-ales, upon the Lord’s-day, were permitted. But before the petition could be delivered, Laud published by the king’s order, the declaration concerning recreations on the lord’s-day, “out of a pious care for the service of God,” as that declaration expresses it towards the conclusion of it. However, this “pious care” of Laud and the king was resented by the soberest persons in the nation, as irreligious and profane, as those revels had been the occasion of an “infinite number of inconveniences;” and the declaration for publishing the lawfulness of them through all parish-churches,[348]“proved a snare to many ministers, very conformable to the church of England, because they refused to read the same publicly in the church, as was required: For upon this many were suspended, and others silenced from preaching.” An instance of great piety, unquestionably this; first to establish the profanation of the Lord’s-day by a public order, and then to persecute and punish those ministers who could not, in conscience, promote the ends of “so godly a zeal,” by reading the king’s order for wakes and revels on the Lord’s-day out of that very place, where perhaps they had been just before publishing the command of the most high God, not to profane but to keep it holy.
His treatment of Mr. Prynne may also be added, as another instance of this prelate’s exemplary love of virtue, and pious zeal for the service of God.[349]That gentleman published in the year 1632 his Histrio-Mastix, or book against stage-plays; in which, with very large collections, he exposed the liberties of the stage, and condemned the lawfulness of acting. Now, because the court became greatly addicted to these entertainments, and the queen was so fond of them, as meanly to submit to act a part herself in a pastoral; therefore this treatiseagainst plays “was suspected” to be levelled against the court and the queen; and it “was supposed an innuendo,” that in the table of the book this reference was put, “women actors notorious whores.” Now mark the christian spirit, the burning zeal of the pious Laud. Prynne was prosecuted in the star chamber by Laud’s procurement, who shewed the book to the king, and pointed at the offensive parts of it; and employed Heylin to pick out all the virulent passages, and “N. B. to give the severest turn to them;” and carried these notes to the attorney general for matter of information, and urged him earnestly to proceed against the author.
Prynne was accordingly prosecuted; and being sufficiently convicted by suspicions, suppositions, and innuendoes, he was sentenced, Laud sitting as one of his judges, to have his book burnt in the most public manner; to be himself put from the bar, and made for ever incapable of his profession; to be excluded from the society of Lincoln’s Inn, and degraded in Oxford; to stand in the pillory in Westminster and Cheapside, and lose both his ears, one in each place; with a paper on his head, declaring his offence to be “an infamous libel” against both their majesties, the state and the government; to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. Good God! what cruelty and barbarity is here? what insolent sporting with men’s fortunes, liberties, and bodies? What was the occasion of this bloody severity? A gentleman’s writing against the abuses of plays. Who ordered the prosecution against him for writing against plays? Archbishop Laud. Who sat at the head of his judges, who pronounced this infamous sentence? Archbishop Laud. Excellent archbishop! how christian, how commendable his zeal! How gloriously must religion flourish under his archiepiscopal inspection, and by his becoming “the most reverend” abettor, encourager, and great patron of plays on week days, and revels on sundays?
[350]’Tis true, he was for building colleges, repairing churches,settling statutes for cathedrals, annexing commendams to small bishoprics, settling of tithes, building hospitals, aggrandizing the power, and encreasing the riches of the clergy; and these things may be esteemed arguments of his piety, and of “the greatness of his soul above the ordinary extent of mankind:” This I do not take on me to deny; but it puts me in mind of the Carthusian monk, mentioned by Philip de Comines, in his “Commentaries of the Neapolitan war:”CominesComineswas looking on the sepulchre of John Galeacius, first duke of Milan of that name, in the Carthusian church of Pavia, who had governed with great cruelty and pride, but had been very liberal in his donations to the church and clergy. As he was viewing it, one of the monks of the order commended the virtue, and extolled the piety of Galeacius. Why, says Comines, do you thus praise him as a saint? You see drawn on his sepulchre the ensigns of many people, whom he conquered without right. “Oh,” says the monk, “it is our custom to call them saints, that have been our benefactors.”
But let us pass on from his piety to his christian tenderness and compassion, of which there are many very remarkable instances on record.
[351]The case of Mr. Prynne, I have already mentioned. Another instance is that of the Rev. Mr. Peter Smart, who, July 27, 1628, preached on the Lord’s Day against the innovations brought by Dr. Cosins into the cathedral church of Durham; such as fonts, candles, pictures, images, copes, singings, vestments, gestures, prayers, doctrines, and the like. Cosins demeaned himself during the sermon very turbulently, and immediately afterwards summoned him before the high commission; by whom he was censured by two acts of sequestration, and one of suspension. After this they unlawfully transmitted him to London, to answer there in the high commission, for the same cause, before the inquisitors general for the kingdom; who sent him back again with proper instructionsto the high commission at York, where they fined him £500. committed him to jail, detained him under great bonds, excommunicated him, sequestred all his ecclesiastical livings, degraded him, “ab omni gradu et dignitate clericali;” by virtue of which degradation, his prebendship and parsonage were both taken from him, and himself kept in jail. By these oppressions his life was several times endangered, and himself and children lost and spent above fourteen thousand pounds of real estate, whereby they were utterly undone. The hand of Laud was in all this evil, as appears by the book published by Mr. Smart himself, with the title of “Canterbury’s Cruelty.”
The truth is, many of the most worthy and learned protestant gentlemen and divines were treated by him with the utmost indignity and barbarity; some of them dying in jail, and others being made to undergo the most cruel bodily punishments, for daring to oppose his arbitrary and superstitious proceedings. No man of compassion can read his treatment of Dr. Leighton, without being shocked and moved in the same tender manner as the House of Commons were, who several times interrupted, by their tears, the reading of the Doctor’s petition, which I shall here present my reader with entire, and leave him to form what character he pleases of the man that could contrive and carry on such a scene of barbarous and execrable cruelty.