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spirit and of the broad principles on which it was possible to defend the doctrines of the English Church. It is, above all things, a plea for liberty. It protests against the "presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men's consciences together, under the equal penalty of death and damnation." It was an assertion of intellectual honesty and of the welcome which the English Church gave to a free and rational inquiry. The Religion of Protestants, as the Church of England knew it, was declared to be " a safe way of salvation." It was a book which was destined greatly to influence the thought of the future; and through it Laud's penetrating insistence on the fact that "the Church of England never declared that every one of her Articles are fundamental in the faith

came to be

a prominent thought in the minds of the next generation of theologians. 'Nothing is necessary to be believed but what is plainly revealed," was a clear statement; but like all similar statements there were difficulties in the interpretation of it.

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Sir Kenelm Digby, a genius and an eccentric, was another in whose conversion Laud took the keenest interest, though not with the same success. The relations between Sir Kenelm the two men are, however, a happy example of the Digby. goodness and affection" which those who knew him recognised in the archbishop. Throughout, they were spiritual motives alone to which Laud appealed. A touching letter from Sir William Webbe, who had profited by the ministry of John Cosin, then rector of Brancepeth, and who was one of Laud's converts, well illustrates this.

AUTHORITIES.-Laud's Works; State Papers, Domestic; Strafford Papers; the correspondence of Panzani, Con, and Rossetti (transcripts in the Record Office); and The Pope's nuntioes, or the negotiations of Seignior Panzani, Seignior Con, etc., London, 1643; Berington, Memoirs of Panzani; E. L. Taunton, The English Black Monks. On the position of Chillingworth Tulloch's Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century (which may be compared with Dr. Gardiner's History) sketches the relations of Falkland with the theologians of the time.

CHAPTER V

LAUD'S ADMINISTRATION OF THE CHURCH

AFTER this survey of his attitude towards some of those who stood outside we are in a position to examine and estimate the nature of the work which Laud as archbishop undertook. It has often been asserted that he was a reformer, and that his chiefest interest was the conflict with Calvinism. But it is certain that he would have repudiated any idea of innovation, and that he took no active measures to suppress freedom of speculation on the Calvinistic or any other theology, provided it did not desert the limits of loyalty to the Church. To the world his work seemed to be mainly practical. And there was need of it.

Scandals in the Church.

The case of Anthony Bourne and Edward Hewitt, churchwardens of Knottingley, Bedfordshire, is perhaps an extreme one: but that it should be possible showed the need of action. They were charged in the High Commission Court in 1637 with allowing the most disgraceful scandals in Church. It was alleged that in 1634 and the two following years fighting cocks were brought into the chancel of the church of Knottingley, and there fought in front of the altar, in the presence of many spectators who betted and performed "the other offices ordinarily used by cock-fighters." The churchwardens and the minister of the parish were themselves present, with many others "both youths and men, laughing and sporting as spectators at a cock-fight use to do." As we do not know the result of the - proceedings taken it is possible that there may be much exaggeration in this tale: but it is certain that in many

cases the grossest irreverence prevailed in the use of parish churches. The churches often "lay nastily"; and the altars were often left in the middle of the chancel, contrary to the Injunctions of Elizabeth, with the result that men lounged upon them or covered them with their hats and cloaks.

old customs.

Many customs too survived in country places which " a godly and thorough reformation" should have swept away. A curious petition, for instance, reached Laud in 1637 from Survival of the parish of Clungunford, Salop, a "spacious wide parish," containing "many very old and ancient people," and having an ancient custom time out of mind that after evening prayer on Easter day the parson should provide a church-feast, in the church, of bread and cheese and ale or beer, for the refreshing of those ancient people that repaired to evening prayer, having received the holy sacrament the same day "in the morning, and also for relief of the poor of the parish that repair thither for relief, and have always had sufficient provision of bread and cheese given them by the inhabitants to serve them and their families a good space afterwards." About fifty years past, the petitioners asserted, it was ordered by the then Archbishop of Canterbury that this feast should be thenceforth kept, not in the church but in the parsonage house. It had been so kept until the last Easter, when Samuel Barkeley, the present rector, discontinued the custom altogether. The inhabitants appealed to the archbishop to have it restored. Laud answered: "I

shall not go about to break this custom, so it be done in the parsonage house in a neighbourly and decent way; but I cannot approve of the continuance of it in the church, and if ever I shall hear it be so done again, I will not fail to call the offenders into the High Commission."

Laud's un

The archbishop, indeed, was often unwilling to interfere, whatever his own opinions may have been. For example, a preacher before the University of Cambridge, named willingness Adams, is said to have asserted the necessity of conto interfere fession to a priest. Rushworth records the investigation of the subject by the Heads, with the result that a majority voted that he had taught nothing contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England. The papers in the case were sent to Laud, but he made no comment on them,

needlessly.

THE LECTURESHIPS

51

The case of Welwyn is another instance which shows similar absention where popular opinion regarded the archbishop as a violent innovator. The following extract from the Canway Papers in the Record Office will serve to illustrate this attitude of Laud:

"The same week, sixteen men in the parish of Welling in Hertfordshire, came to their archdeacon, Dr. Holdworth, here in London, to complain of the Parson of their Parish, for having refused the three Sundays before, to administer the Sacrament unto them, only because they would not come upp to receive yt: at the Rayle about the communion table. I heare there hath been greate contention betweene the minister and the Parishioners which the Archdeacon not being able to compose, hee therefore with these sixteen, Parishioners, addresseth his complainte to my Lord Grace of Canterbury, who haveing heard all the differences, referres all back to Dr. Holdsworth, to settle peace between all parties saying, hee wonders the Parson should exact their comeing upp to the rayle to receave the Sacrament, if soe bee the Pewes be conveniently seated in the Church to administer in them."

His

Laud, it is clear, could not interfere everywhere, and when he did interfere he was by no means always indiscreet. hands were certainly full.

The lecture

In the north there was much nonconformity, and especial difficulties arose through the popular practice of endowing lectureships, where the lecturers preached, apart from the Prayer-book services, and not without ships. contempt of the parish clergy. Thus in January 1634 Archbishop Neile of York reported to the king that the dioceses of Carlisle and Chester were far from obedient to the directions of the Prayer-book, the clergy often "chopping, changing, altering, omitting and adding." Many, he said, "knew not how to read the service according to the book, and those deemed themselves conformable that did not oppose it." A curious example of the absence of order was to be found in the usage of the two cathedral churches of those dioceses. In each there were parochial as well as cathedral services, and "the service with voices and organs in the choir and the reading service in the body of the church" actually proceeded at the same time, to the con

fusion of the worshippers. At Bunbury, in Cheshire, was a gross example of the evil of lectureships. The Haberdashers' Company had appointed a preacher, and a curate, and claimed power to dismiss them at pleasure: and they had already been suspended for nonconformity. When Charles received this report he wrote sharp comments on the margin. The cathedral service should be ordered as the archbishop wished; and 66 'see next year that ye give me a good account thereof."

On the lecturers he made fuller comment: "I have had the like complaint from the Archbishop of Canterbury, wherefore as I have answered him so I tell you, that I will not endure that any lay person (much less a corporation) have power to place and displace curates or beneficed priests at their pleasure, therefore you may be sure of more than my protection in this."

Neile's letter concluded with an account of the recusants in his provinces: Charles's comment was, "the neglect of punishing Puritans breeds papists." He had in fact already ordered that lecturers should always before preaching read the service, in surplice and hood, and that "if a corporation do maintain a lecturer, he be not suffered to preach until he profess his willingness to take upon himself a living with cure of souls within that corporation." The lectureships had threatened indeed to set up an imperium in imperio within the Church of England: the lecturers were the leaders of resistance against Episcopal authority; and the feoffees who had bought up impropriations for the sake of endowing lecturers "kept them in their own hands, and disposed of the profits to such lecturers and ministers, and in such proportions and for so long a time as pleased them." The law was invoked against the corporation of feoffees: and the king's injunctions were reissued when Laud became archbishop. He was determined to suppress vagrant ministers and trencher-chaplains."

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The principles upon which Laud determined to act. are expressed with great clearness in his dedication of his Conference with Fisher to the king: "No one thing hath made conscientious men wavering in their own minds, or more apt and easy to be drawn aside from the sincerity of religion pro

Laud's principles.

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