II

HOUSE OF COMMONS AND MOUNTAGUE

19

While Mountague was still in prison he made him his chaplain, and on July 9 intimated to the House of Commons that "what had been there said and resolved without consulting him in the case was not pleasing to him." On the 11th Parliament was prorogued. The action of the king seemed more magnanimous than safe, for, says Heylin, "There was much magnaminity in preferring the man whom he beheld as well in his personal sufferings as in his great abilities, yet was it not held safe for the king, as his case then stood, to give such matter of exasperation to the House of Commons." On August 2, when the Parliament was sitting at Oxford, Mountague was too ill to attend, and after a hot discussion, in which Coke and Heath spoke with great bitterness, proceedings were laid aside for the moment, though with a threat of impeachment.

of the bishops.

Shortly afterwards conferences were held on the doctrinal questions involved. Early in the year the Bishops of London (Mountain or Montaigne), Durham (Neile), Winchester (Andrewes), Rochester (Buckeridge), and St. David's (Laud) were consulted by the king's command and reported in The opinion Mountague's favour. Already three of the bishops, while the House of Commons was sitting, had written to Buckingham in support of the opinions Mountague had expressed. The Church of England, they maintained, was in her Reformation never "busy with every particular schoolpoint. The cause why she held this moderation was, because she could not be able to preserve any unity amongst Christians, if men were forced to subscribe to curious particulars disputed in schools." The points with which Mountague dealt, they declared, were partly the "resolved doctrine of the Church of England," partly those "fit only for schools, and to be left at more liberty for learned men to expound in their own sense, so they keep themselves peaceable and distract not the Church." To this plea for tolerance the three bishops added a dignified protest of constitutional rights. The clergy's submission under Henry VIII. was not in any matter to Parliament, but that "if any difference, doctrine or other, fell in the Church, the king and the bishops were to be judges of it in a National Synod or Convocation; the king first giving leave, under his broad seal, to handle the points in difference. But the Church never submitted to any other judge, neither, indeed,

can she, though she would." To do other would be to "depart from the ordinances of Christ, and the continual course and practice of the Church." A shrewd hint was added that the opinions which Mountague had attacked were subversive also of the government, and that the countenance of the Synod of Dort to such teaching was of no avail—" and our hope is that the Church of England will be well advised, and more than once over, before she admit a foreign synod, especially of such a church as condemneth her discipline and manner of government, to say no more." This was on August 2, 1625, and the hands subscribed were those of Buckeridge and Howson as well as of him whose mind spoke most clearly in the words, Laud, Bishop of St. David's

Their certifi

The later report was signed on January 16, 1626. Its imimportant words were these: "We have met and considered, and for our particulars do think that Mr. Mountague, cate of Moun- in his book, hath not affirmed anything to be the tague's doctrine of the Church of England but that which in orthodoxy. our opinion is the doctrine of the Church of England, or agreeable thereunto. And for the preservation of the peace of the Church we in humility do conceive that his Majesty shall do most graciously to prohibit all parties, members of the Church of England, any further controverting of these questions by public preaching or writing, or any other way, for the disturbance of the peace of this Church for the time to come."

The advice was followed. Already Charles was in a position of grave political distress. The Commons were high in opposition, Eliot was rousing enthusiasm as the leader of a constitutional party, foreign relations were in disorder to the point of disgrace, and Buckingham was dismissed. By the summer of 1626 the king seemed face to face with war at home and abroad. In the Church only he hoped to find peace.

The

But the Church was no more quiet than the State. Pamphlets against Mountague still poured from the press. "A Dangerous Plot Discovered: by a discourse pamphlet wherein is proved that Mr. Richard Mountague in warfare. his two books, the one called A New Gag, the other A Just Appeal, laboureth to bring in the faith of Rome and

II

KING'S DECLARATION, 1626

21

Arminius under the name and pretence of the doctrine and faith of the Church of England" (London, printed for Nicholas Bourne at the Exchange, 1626), was addressed “to the High and Honourable Court of Parliament, praying that you will (1) take this cause into your consideration; (2) preserve the faith of our Church in the purity it hath had hitherto; (3) endeavour to prevent the corrupting of it in time to come." A good example of the feeling which was now readily finding expression, it protested against all the points on which Mountague had controverted the Puritan view, as on the authority of the Church, the efficacy of baptism, and the real presence. A "second parallel" tried to convict Mountague of Arminianism, and "Pelagius Redivivus" compared "the new to the old error." Charles determined to silence the disputants. Parliament was dissolved on June 15. following day was issued a proclamation to enforce on controverted points. Who was the gainer by these disputes but only the Church of Rome? Let men be silent on the deep points which had "given much offence to the sober and well grounded readers and hearers of these late written books on both sides."

On the silence

Declaration of the

king.

The two parties.

Did men think then that Reason would suggest articles of peace? If they did they must have known little of the history of mankind. It was no day in which the voice of wise moderation could be heard. "The bishops were more liberal than the House of Commons," says a great modern authority. Students understood their subject as amateurs could not; and with the students was the knowledge and the temper which alone, and in the future, should make settlement possible. Charles, with real delicacy of insight, looked beyond the petty disputes to larger and more statesmanlike issues for the Church. At his back stood a man of clear vision and determined will, who would not palter with his conscience. Unity was the passion of their lives, and for nothing was the age, in England or abroad, less prepared. The king's declaration, and many a wise saying of wise men, fell on empty ears.

AUTHORITIES. Besides those given for Chap. I., Hacket, Scrinia Reserata; Fuller, Church History; the works of the chief divines, most of which are reprinted in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. The pamph

let literature is voluminous and important. There are many contemporary diaries, the most notable of which is Laud's. The State Papers, Domestic, are full of details of importance. Among modern writers, S. R. Gardiner, History of England; G. G. Perry, History of the Church of England; and the lives of the prominent persons of the day in the Dictionary of National Biography. An excellent new edition of Laud's Controversy with Fisher, by C. H. Simpkinson, 1901.

CHAPTER III

THE RISE OF LAUD

power.

WITH the dissolution of Parliament and the issue of the king's proclamation it seemed perhaps for a moment as if there might be peace. Two years passed. Buckingham's The beginning murder removed one great danger from the king. of Laud's The news came to Laud as he was with the Archbishop at Croydon, consecrating Mountague to the see of Chichester, on August 24, 1628. Whatever the king might say in proclamations, it was clear that he had his own opinions in Church matters, and that they were those of Mountague and Laud. Such promotion indeed was more magnanimous than safe.” But Buckingham's place must be filled, and, though not outwardly, Laud filled it.

Williams.

Since 1626 much had happened, of which we have first to tell. The one competitor had already, by Buckingham himself, been swept from Laud's path. On October The rivalry 25, 1626, John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, of Bishop Dean of Westminster, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, was required to give up the ensign of his high legal office. It seemed the end of a great career. A subtle Welshman, of ancient family and ready learning, he had been brought forward by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. "The chaplain," says his friend and eulogist, Bishop Hacket, "understood the soil on which he had set his foot, that it was rich and fertile, able with good tendance to yield a crop after the largest dimensions of his desires." Preferments came rapidly to him. As a parish priest he "walked as a Burning Light before his brethren," a