CHAPTER VI POLITICAL OPPOSITION TO THE CHURCH Interaction and religion. 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 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. No 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 The personal greatest want was that of a true friend, who would 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. VI THE POSITION OF THE ALTARS 66 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." Bishop Williams, far too vigorous and astute a man to be finally suppressed by his conviction or his imprisonment, was still working behind the scenes. He represented himself as being not so much in disgrace as was Bishop Williams. popularly supposed. "The king allowed of him in all those things of which he was complained against," he said. Yet he would hold his own. "No king in the world should make him do what Sir John Coke told him was the king's pleasure." He was as ready to ally himself with the political opposition to the crown as with the religious opposition to Laud. In that double opposition there lay a new chance for recovery of power. To see how this was so it is necessary to return to an earlier date. The course of the Parliamentary opposition to the religious measures with which the king sympathised may now be briefly sketched. Resolution of Charles's endeavours in 1628 to silence contending parties, followed by his injudicious promotions, completely failed. In January 1629 a Committee of the House of Commons the House of on religion presented its report, and Pym emphaticCommons, ally asserted the supremacy of Parliament. Eliot in Jan. 1629. a great speech protested against the Declaration, and still more against Laud, and Neile, and Mountague. And in the result the House passed this resolution. "We the Commons now in Parliament assembled do claim, profess, and avow for truth the sense of the Articles of Religion which were established in Parliament in the reign of our late Queen Elizabeth, which, by the general and concurrent exposition of the writers of our Church, have been delivered to us, and we do reject the sense of the Jesuits and Arminians." This meant, as Eliot explained, that though the Lambeth Articles had no Church sanction, they, with their unhesitating Calvinism, were accepted by the Commons as explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles. The laity were to enforce on the clergy, in contradiction to the opinion of the bishops, a new series of dogmas. This was the key to the position. It was felt to be so in 1629; it was proved to be so during the next sixty years. Nor has the idea yet been forgotten. Had the Parliament the right to enforce on the Church, clergy and laity, its own interpretation of documents which the Church and realm had equally received, which were capable of two interpretations, and which VI CHARLES'S PERSONAL RULE 77 a considerable party accepted in a sense different from that declared by Parliament? Arminianism had become simply a cant name for refusal to accept the whole Calvinistic theology. This famous and revolutionary resolution was followed by attacks on Cosin and on Neile. Cromwell made his first speech, and, as it afterwards appeared, the revolution was begun. The Commons were in a frenzy of excitement: rumours of Jesuit plots were eagerly credited- -a Roman agent had spoken after the manner of his kind of 150,000 Romanists in England. of the Commons, After scenes of the wildest excitement, culminating in the holding of the Speaker (Finch) down in the chair while three resolutions were put, Charles dissolved the Parlia- Protestation ment. One of the resolutions was this: "Whosoever shall bring in innovation in religion, or by March 2, favour seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism, or other opinions disagreeing from the true and orthodox Church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth." 1629. He would Charles's Charles, in his proclamation of March 10, 1629, took his stand on the law as opposed to all innovations. allow no novelties in the Church; but neither there, nor in matters of State, would he submit to reply. the rule of the House of Commons. It was thus that Charles and Laud stood before the country when the eleven years of personal government began. The personal rule and Laud. It was during these years that Laud was able to work practically unfettered. Church and State went hand in hand. Laud was never above or in advance of his age. He had no desire to invent a new theory of the relations between Church and State. He took such of Charles matters in practice as well as in theory very much as he found them. In his mind the theory of Divine right assumed no prominence. "I was never yet such a fool," he said, "as to embrace arbitrary government." It was enough for him to accept the royal supremacy in the Church as it was established by existing law and custom, and, through his own close association with the king, to use it for the great ends which he hoped to accomplish by its means. Thus Church and king fell together. The events of the years 1629-40, apart from Laud's administration of the Church, may be briefly |