he was exposed, and which his impolitic conduct was increasing every year. Because his chief enemies were caged in the Tower, and the necessary instruments for effecting his purposes were gathered around him, he imagined himself safe.* With a council fertile in arbitrary expedients, and judges prepared to confirm the legality of his measures; with the court of Star Chamber for a hall of judgment, ever ready to respond to his royal will and execute his vengeance, and with a body of court bishops only too willing to eulogize his misdeeds and minister to his vanity ;why should he fear any mischance in the accomplishment of his despotic aims! For a season he was apparently successful; but after that brief season had passed, retribution overtook him and he was overwhelmed.

The reign of tyranny commenced with the prosecution of the patriots, the narration of which is one of the most interesting portions of English history. Our space forbids our entering into any details. Never was law so prostituted; never were judges so tampered with and so recreant; never did attorneygeneral act so shameless a part. In vain was the Petition of Right, so recently assented to, pleaded by the counsel for the patriots. The forms of legal procedure were gone through, but malice and revenge presided and prevailed. For the discharge of their duty in the House, these representatives of the people were sentenced to imprisonment during the king's pleasure, to be fined in several sums from two thousand to five thousand pounds, and not to be released

* For a brief but interesting account of the members composing Charles's Council, see Mackintosh's England, vol. v. p. 121-125.

without security for good behaviour and submission for their offences.*

From this time all public affairs were directed by proclamation of the king and council. Imposts were laid upon every species of merchandize, and under various pleas more than a million yearly was extracted from the people. This grievance was submitted to with great forbearance, but not without a growing expectation of being able to remove it at some future period. Severe as was the trial of temper to which the system of extortion exposed the nation, it was not so irritating as that which originated in the ecclesiastical progress of affairs. Laud was now the presiding genius of the church. He had gradually insinuated himself into power, and by skilful management had secured the confidence of the king. It is difficult to form a proper estimate of his character. While his own party have been divided respecting his merits, his enemies have added needless depth of shadow to the dark portraiture of his infamy. Perhaps the briefest and yet fullest description of him would be-that he had all the instincts of the ecclesiastic, and that opportunity favoured their development. Alternations, therefore, of meanness and pride, sycophancy and cruelty, self-sacrifice and ambition, sacerdotal pietism and remorseless inhumanity, marked his conduct, according as he looked upwards or downwards, on his Creator, king, and church-or

* Sir John Eliot died in prison, Nov. 27th, 1632. For a faithful and earnest biography of this great man and martyr, see Forster's Life of Eliot; and for this portion of his history, Vaughan's History of England, vol. i. 255–258. Also, Price's Hist. of Nonconformity, vol. ii. 38—44.

*

on his subordinates and victims. The only check upon him at the present time, was the prolonged existence of Archbishop Abbot, whose puritan leanings served to preserve his inferior from that inordinate excess of despotism which the church and nation were destined to witness. It has been affirmed by Neal, that Laud aimed at uniting the two churches of England and Rome. This, however, may be more than doubted. As he rose in office, he appears to have been less given to such policy, and to have aspired to an English popedom which should centre in himself. He had a passion for managing the church; and he sought to gratify it at all hazards. His ideal was in the Romish system; but he was of too practical a turn to pass the power out of his own hands. He would have made the pope a creature of his own, if he could. At the same time, the measures he adopted were essentially popish; and hence the alarm with which his progress was viewed by all that abhorred popery, whether from sectarian motives, or from higher considerations connected with the love of civil, intellectual, and spiritual freedom.

One of the first things by which the evil influence of Laud was felt throughout the nation, was a measure that tended to rid the church of all parties unfavourable to the hierarchy. In every part of England there were, at this period, pious and intelligent men, many of them educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who could not conform to the church of England. They were known as puritans and "inconformitans" only. But while the majority were favourable to presbyterianism, many of them were, undoubtedly, favourable to Congregational Indepen*Hist. of the Puritans, i. 540.

dency. The Brownists had never died out in England, and the rigid puritans had perpetuated their principles far beyond the range of Jacob's influence, whose church still existed in London. Moreover, the intercourse with Holland and New England kept alive the agitation of church questions, and led many of the most thoughtful minds of the day to embrace the views of the Independents. The parties now referred to, both presbyterians and congregationalists, were evangelical in doctrine, and deeply concerned to diffuse the gospel, without conforming to the church. They accomplished their object by becoming chaplains in the families of the noble or wealthy, and by lecturing in the parish churches. The enormous wealth of the members of the House of Commons, lately dissolved, may serve to show how many families there were in the kingdom that could afford to maintain private chaplains; and the high religious and intellectual character of some of those families, evinced in the history of these times, affords equal proof of the beneficial results attending the system. In many instances, however, the addition of a lectureship to a chaplaincy was felt to be advantageous. The maintenance was thereby improved, and the usefulness of the minister extended. It was becoming a somewhat

* See the sermons of the period in proof. For example, "A Coal from the Altar, &c., by Sam. Ward, B. D., of Ipswich, 1622," p. 79. "As for our Sundaies church-service, which is all that God gets at our hands, how perfunctorily, and fashionably is it slubbered over; how are his Saboths made the voyder and dunghill for all refuse businesse, divided between the church and the ale-house, the Maypole commonly beguiling the pulpit ! This want of devotion makes the foule-mouthed papists to spet at us : this want of reformation makes the queasi-stomached Brownists cast themselves out of the church."

common thing for a man of piety and learning to seek out such a mode of life as was thus provided for; and some of the most zealous and popular preachers of the day were those who had leisure, in the bosom of godly families, to prepare the sermon for the Sunday afternoon. The care of the parish and the reading of the common prayer generally devolved upon the

parochial clergyman, who, in too many instances, was willing to obtain assistance to any extent and on the easiest terms. Thus there was little obligation on the part of the lecturer; and his position was as favourable as possible for the formation of an independent opinion on matters of theology and church government. Neither was there much scrupulousness on the part of the parochial clergy generally, in respect to the mode in which the lecturer acquitted himself, so long as he was acceptable with the parish. Some, therefore, found themselves at liberty to preach the gospel with as much freedom as if they had been living in better times, and dispensed with the attire prescribed by the rubric, in favour of the Geneva cloak, without fear of rebuke.*

This state of things could not escape the observation of Laud. He detected the kind of influence attached to it, in relation not only to the people who flocked to hear the popular preacher, but also to the class of men for whom a provision was thereby secured. He was keen enough to perceive that puritanism had its strong-hold in this extraparochial and extra-hierarchical system. He deter

* Heylin (Life of Laud, p. 198) complains of the "multitude of irregular lecturers, both in city and country, whose work it was to undermine as well the doctrine as the government of the church."