of the in 1627; of the county of the north, and so zealous did he become in the popular cause that he was put upon the penal list of sheriffs appointed in order to insure their absence from Charles' second parliament, which met in February, 1626.1 While there is no evidence to prove that he favored the impeachment of Buckingham which then took place, the fact remains that in the following July he was abruptly dismissed as justice of the dismissed peace, and the office of custos rotulorum bestowed upon his as justice hated rival in the county, Sir John Savile. Aroused by such peace; an insult, he became more resolute than ever in his opposition as a member of the country party, suffering imprisonment in imprisoned 1627 for his refusal to pay the forced loan demanded in that year. Thus it was that he was able to grasp the leadership in the first session of Charles' third parliament, which began in March, 1628, and whose labors ended in the adoption of the Petition of Right, which drew its substance from Wentworth real author and its form from Coke. But with that great event ended Petition his connection with the popular cause. On the 26th of June of Right; the first session was prorogued, and on July 22 Wentworth was his convercreated a peer and entered into the royal favor. And yet the cause of master of the history of that epoch claims that he was neither the crown; deserter nor apostate; that having removed through the Petition of Right all abuses which he regarded as prejudicial to good government, he took his place naturally at Charles' side because in his eyes "Presbyterianism in the church and Parliamentarism in the state would seem to be two forms of one disease of the error which sought to control the government of the wise few by the voice of the ignorant many." As a maintainer of the constitution in its Tudor form, Wentworth is he is said said to have been for a time "with the opposition, but not of it." Whatever his real motives for change may have been, the oppothis born administrator was certainly steadfast to the last in the cause of his master, and scornful of all private ends in the desperate struggle which he waged to build up in England, as Richelieu was building up in France, a system of despotism whose organization was to be "thorough." In August, 1628, the dagger of Felton removed Buckingham from his path, and 1 See above, p. 258. 2 See above, p. 264. 8 See above, p. 268. 4 Gardiner, vol. vi. p. 335; vol. vii. pp. 137, 152. sion to the to have been "with sition, but not of it;" made president of the the North, then lord Ireland; in the following December he was made president of the Council of the North, the first great object of his ambition. Not Council of until November, 1629, was he sworn of the privy council, about the time from which his close alliance with Laud is said to have begun. In January, 1632, he was appointed lord deputy deputy for for Ireland, but he did not enter Dublin until July of the following year. Before the six years of despotic rule which then began had drawn to a close, Wentworth was able to write to Laud that "the king is as absolute here as any prince in the with Laud. world can be;"1 and when in February, 1637, the judges for the second time expressed themselves in favor of the legality of ship-money, he wrote: "This decision of the judges will therefore make the king absolute at home and formidable abroad. Let him only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to the payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors." 2 his correspondence Laud made primate in August, 1633; It was natural that Wentworth should thus pour his political aspirations into the sympathetic ear of Laud, who, on the 6th of August, 1633, only a few days after the lord deputy's arrival in Ireland, had been raised by Charles to the primacy of the kingdom. A brief statement has already been made as to Laud's career prior to that time, including a summary of that time; the leading dogmas which he, as the chief of the Arminian his career prior to element, proposed to substitute for the Calvinistic tenets so firmly engrafted by the Puritan clergy upon the doctrines of the state church. His first serious effort in that direction was made when, as bishop of London, he urged the king in the Thirty- December, 1628, to reissue the Thirty-nine Articles, prefaced Articles to by a royal Declaration that they should be accepted and be accepted expounded by all only "in the literal and grammatical sense," a blow at Puritan interpretation which was fiercely resented cal sense;" by that party in the resolutions adopted by the house in the stormy session which occurred at the close of Charles' third nine "in the literal and grammati 1 In the course of this confidential correspondence the word "thorough or "through was familiarly used to describe the general policy of which they were both advocates. 2 Strafford Papers, vol. ii. p. 61. For his views upon Hampden's conduct in resisting ship-money, see Ibid., pp. 136, 156. 3 See above, p. 254. 4 The Declaration, which every new minister was bound to read, was set as a preface to the edition of the articles of 1628, and is still printed in the Book of Common Prayer. forced upon for their dissolved; parliament in March, 1629.1 Undaunted, however, by that rebuke, Laud moved steadily on with his purpose to force the Puritan element within the church to conform to both creed and ritual as expounded by him, an undertaking that involved the substitution, for that phase of religion dear at the time to the mass of Englishmen, of a more ceremonial system, which as viewed by its adversaries counterfeited the pomp of Rome. Before the close of 1631, Laud gave the Puritan clergy to conformity understand that they must conform to the last tittle or sur- the Puritan render their livings, and when an effort was made to keep clergy; them in office by buying up impropriations of livings to be held for their benefit,2 the feoffees were cited to appear in the exchequer chamber, where in February, 1633, a decree was rendered dissolving the feoffments and declaring that all such feoffments patronage should be placed at the king's disposal.3 And after benefit his appointment as archbishop, which took place in that year, Laud also made it impossible for the Puritan clergy to escape conformity in the rôle of lecturers or chaplains by taking away forbidden from the country gentlemen the right to have chaplains at all. lecturers or The "thorough" system of coercion thus employed within the chaplains; church was extended with even greater severity to the sepa- persecution ratists, who were dragged before the high commission from tists; their hiding-places in the woods, where they vainly sought immunity from mandates by which even private meetings for prayers or preaching were strictly prohibited. Under the pressure of such a ruthless system of persecution, carried on with the aid both of the star chamber and high commission, the tide of Puritan emigration to the New World, which began to Puritan rise with the departure of Winthrop, soon reached such a to the New height that in February, 1634, an order in council was adopted World; prohibiting the sailing of any more vessels. While the church 1 See above, p. 278. It was as a member of the committee upon that subject that Cromwell made his first speech in parliament. For a statement of the matter from the Arminian point of view, see Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., pp. 497-500. 26 The originator of this scheme was the famous' Dr. Preston, a Puritan College Doctor of immense 'fame' in those and prior years.". Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, p. 44, 3 Exchequer Decrees, vol. iv. p. 88. 5 See Laud's letter to Windebank, 6 A week later this order was so to act as of separa emigration the new Laudian clergy; Laud and his system attacked by the unlicensed press; was thus being emptied of bishops and ministers, who refused to accept Laudian standards, the archbishop was careful to supply their places by a new clergy, whose corporate influence he attempted to enhance by breathing a fresh life into the ecclesiastical courts, and by elevating in 1636 Juxon, bishop of London, to the great post of lord high treasurer, an office which, as Laud states in his diary, "no churchman" had held "since Henry the Seventh's time."1 At this stage of his career it was that Laud and his system were subjected to bitter attacks from the unlicensed press, whose Parthian arrows now pierced him from every side. Chief among the offenders were Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, pamphleteers of the old Martin Mar-Prelate type,2 who in June, 1637, were brought before the star chamber, charged with libels against the bishops in which were contained denunciations of the entire system of innovation that had been brought about under Laud's direction. Two of the three were then suffering imprisonment for past offences. In 1634 Prynne, a bigoted Puritan lawyer, had been punished by the star chamber for publishing a ponderous and stupid book called "Histriomastrix," in which he denounced with the virulence of that time all innocent human recreations in general, and female actors in particular. Bastwick, who was a physician, had been punished by the high commission in 1635 for an argument in favor of presbyterianism published Bastwick's under the name of "Flagellum Pontificis."4 Prynne and Bast"Flagellum wick then committed new offences, which brought them before the star chamber in 1637, with Burton, who the year before had published two sermons under the title of "For God and the King," in which he attacked directly or indirectly the entire episcopal system. So sharply was Laud assailed that he felt called upon to defend himself in an elaborate speech 5 before the star chamber, which rewarded his zeal by a cruel sentence against all three prisoners, who were condemned to lose their by the star ears and to suffer heavy fines, in addition to life imprisonment." But when the time came for the first part of the sentence Prynne's "Histriomastrix;" Pontificis ;" Burton's "For God and the King;" all three condemned chamber; 318, as to the "increase of emigration 1 Laud's Works, vol. iii. p. 226. had taken part in a little play called The Shepherd's Pastoral. 4 State Papers, Dom., cclxi. 178. 5 See Works, vol. vii. p. 355 6 State Trials, vol. iii. pp. 711 770. to be carried out, the widespread manifestations of sympathy with the prisoners unmistakably revealed the fact that the tide of popular indignation was rising.1 The quick response from the government was a star chamber decree, which sharpened the censorship of the press by reducing the number of the censorship licensed printers to twenty, and by providing that any one not sharpened. of that number who should dare to print a book or pamphlet was "to be set in the pillory and whipped through the city of London." 2 attempt upon the While Laud, thus aided by the heavy hand of the law, was Laud's forcing uniformity upon all within the realm, whether within to force or without the pale of the state church, he entered upon the uniformity more difficult task of subjecting to the same process that tur- Scotch kirk; bulent kirk across the northern border which, at the beginning of the Reformation, had adopted not only the dogmatic theology, but the entire system of church government devised by the organizing genius of Calvin. The attempt has already been made to explain how difficult it was for James to force upon this democratic and aggressive body, with its kirk sessions, presbyteries, and general assembly, the yoke of the episcopal system, which was entirely incompatible with the principles of its organization. So limited was James' success James' in building up the rule of bishops in his Scottish kingdom, that establish when Laud in his earlier days tried to induce him to go a step the rule of farther by stripping the kirk of its presbyterian character, in Scotland; order to drive it into conformity with the English canons and ritual, he waved him away as a foolish man who "knows not the stomach of that people."4 Instead of attempting any doctrinal changes, James contented himself with establishing in himself 1609 a court of high commission,5 by means of which he forced with estab the kirk to bow in many particulars to the royal authority. court of But if the mind of Laud was narrow and bigoted, it was firm mission; and persistent in its concentration upon a single object. The Laud's scheme which James contemptuously rejected, Laud was able put to a practical to put to a practical test in 1636, when upon the sole authority 1 Strafford Papers, vol. ii. pp. 99, 114. Cf. also Brodie, Hist. Brit. Empire, vol. ii. p. 334. 2 Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 450, App. 306; State Papers, Dom., ccclxiv. III. See above, pp. 212, 214. 4 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iii. p. 179. 5 This court, established without any authority from parliament or assembly, was abolished in 1638. failure to bishops in contented lishing a high com scheme test in 1636; |