as also by witnesses, and all other ways and means they could devise; to examine offenders upon oath, and punish them by fine or imprisonment, at discretion." These powers, great as they were, were less than those in the place of which they were substituted. They were afterwards grossly abused: but during Elizabeth's reign the practice was less objectionable than the principle. The Church was right in exacting conformity from its ministers, its error was in not permitting men of narrow minds and ricketty consciences to associate and worship after their own way. But the malecontents would not have been satisfied with this. It was not for toleration that they contended, but for the establishment of their own system, under which no toleration would have been allowed. Their demands were founded upon the assumption that they themselves were infallible, and that the system of the established Church was intolerable. It was the opinion of the greatest statesmen in those days, that uniformity of religion is absolutely necessary to the support of a government; and therefore that toleration cannot be granted to sectaries with safety. The principle of intolerance, indeed, was common to those who exercised authority, and to those who resisted it and the inevitable consequence was, that contumacy and persecution exasperated each other. Authority, which at first was justly exercised, was provoked to act oppressively; and the opposition, which began in caprice and pertinacious conceit, became respectable and even magnanimous in suffering. The Romanists, seeing the miserable schism which had arisen, looked upon the establishment as a divided, and therefore an unstable Church, and were withheld from joining it, as much by this consideration, and by the extravagance of the sectaries, as by the

"That is," says Neal, "by Inquisition, by the rack, by torture, or by any ways and means that forty-four sovereign judges shall invent. Surely this should have been limited to LAWFUL ways and means."-(Hist. of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 414.) And surely this most prejudiced and dishonest of all historians, ought to have observed, that it was so limited twice in the very commission itself. It is but too true, that the torture was then in use in cases of treason, and that upon that score, many of the Romish martyrs were put to the rack. But such cases were not within cognizance of this court; they had no authority to use the torture; nor is there the slightest proof, or presumption, that it was ever exercised by them. "If any article did touch the party any way, either for life, liberty, or scandal, he might refuse to answer: neither was he urged thereunto." These were Whitgift's words at the Hampton-court conference. What the sufferers under the high commission complained of, was the miserable state of the prisons wherein they were confined; an evil which, to the disgrace of the country, continued with little or no amendment till our own days, and is not yet everywhere removed.

efforts of their own Clergy. Baffled thus in its plans of comprehension and conciliation, the Government had recourse to stronger compulsive measures, not perceiving that persecution never can effect its object, unless it be carried to an extent at which humanity shudders and revolts. The fine for not attending church on Sundays, which had been fixed at twelve pence for each omission, was raised to the enormous sum of twenty pounds per month; and the punishment for writing, printing, or publishing any false, seditious, or slanderous matter, to the defamation of the Queen, or to the stirring up of insurrection and rebellion, was made death, as in cases of felony. Some of the men concerned in the libels against the Church, suffered under this statute. More truculent libels never issued from the press; but the punishment exceeded the offence, and therefore inflamed in others the spirit which it was intended to abate. The error of understanding, the presumptuousness of youth, the heat of mind in which such writings originated, time would have corrected; and, where there was any generosity of heart, merciful usage would have produced contrition. This effect was, in fact, produced upon Cartwright, who, more than any other individual, had contributed to excite and diffuse the spirit of resistance and dissension. Age sobered him, clemency softened him, experience made him wise, and his latter days were passed in dutiful and peaceful conformity. "In controversies of this kind," says Fuller, men, when they consult with their gray hairs, begin to abate of their violence." At his death he lamented the troubles which he had raised in the Church by promoting an unnecessary schism, and wished he could begin his life again, that he might testify how deeply he disapproved his former ways.?

1 Fuller, book ix. p. 3.

2 Strype's Whitgift, p. 554.

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CHAPTER XVI.

JAMES I.

DURING the last years of Elizabeth's reign the Puritans remained quiet they saw that the state was resolved to make the clergy conform to the institutions of their church: their libels were put down less by the severity of the law than by a set of writers who replied to them with equal scurrility and more wit; and they lived in hope that upon Elizabeth's death an order of things more conformable to their views, would be established by a King who had been bred up in Presbyterian principles. The Romanists also looked with equal expectations to the new reign. They reminded' King James of his mother's prayers, that he might be such as they most desired; and they assured him that they rejoiced at his accession no otherwise than the Christians in old times had done upon the entrance of Constantine into the empire after Diocletian,2 or of Jovian after Julian. These halfhearted Englishmen rejoiced at Elizabeth's death; but never had any sovereign reigned more to his own honour, or to the advantage of his subjects; and so sensible was the sound part of the nation of the benefits which it had derived from her wise and happy government, that pictures of her monument were hung up "in most London and many country churches, every parish being proud of the shadow of her tomb; "3 and the anniversary of her accession was for some generations observed as a holy-day throughout the kingdom.

James had been too well educated by Buchanan ever to be ensnared in the toils of Romish sophistry; he was but half a King to the papists, he said, being lord over their bodies, while their souls were the Pope's: and there could be no continued obedience where there was not true religion. He came also armed with sound learning against the speculative errors of

Father Parsons's Three Conversions. Addition to the Epistle Dedicatory. 2 Ibid. Fuller, b. ix. p. 5.

Puritanism, and with no predilection for its discipline, for he had both seen and felt its practical consequences. Once when ambassadors from France were about to leave his court, and he had desired the magistrates of Edinburgh to give them a feast before their departure, the ministers of that city proclaimed a fast for the day appointed; and to detain the people at church, the three ordinary preachers delivered sermons in St. Giles's one after another, denouncing curses on those who obeyed the King on that occasion, and threatening the magistrates with excommunication. A rabid preacher had even from the pulpit denounced against the King himself by name, the curse which fell on Jeroboam, that he should die childless and be the last of his The friends of the establishment had looked to the new reign with uneasy apprehensions, dreading what they called the Scotch mist; but James was a person who liked fair weather, and on his arrival in England he soon perceived that he was got into a better climate.

race.

The Puritans, like all factious minorities, endeavoured, by activity, to make amends for their want of numbers. They exerted themselves to get men of their opinions returned to parliament; they set forth books, and presented what they called the humble petition of the Thousand Ministers, (though the subscription fell short of that amount by some hundreds,) desiring that the offences in the church might be some removed, some amended, and some qualified; offering to show that what they complained of as abuses were not agreeable to the Scriptures, if the King would be pleased to have the point discussed either in writing or by conference among the learned. The true sons of the church were not idle at this juncture: both universities disclaimed the petition, and Oxford in its answer represented to the King how inconvenient and insufferable it was in Christian policy to permit a long and well-settled state of government to be so much as questioned, much more to be altered for a few of his subjects; especially considering the matter pretended to be the cause of these men's griefs and of their desired reformation, unjustly so called. James, however, was induced, as much by inclination as a sense of duty, to permit the proposed conference; and accordingly it was held before the privy council at Hampton Court, the King himself presiding as moderator, four of the

Puritan clergy being summoned as representatives of the millenaries, for so the petitioners were called.

On the first day James conferred with the Bishops and some of the Deans who were summoned with them. He had not called that assembly, he said, for any innovation, for as yet he saw no cause to change, but rather to confirm what was well settled. Yet because nothing can be so absolutely ordered but that something may be added thereunto, and corruption in any state will insensibly grow either through time or persons, ... and because he had received many complaints of many disorders, and much disobedience to the laws, with a great falling away to popery, . . . his purpose was, like a good physician, to examine and try the complaints; and fully to remove the occasions thereof, if scandalous, . . . cure them, if dangerous, . . . and take knowledge of them, if but frivolous; thereby to cast a sop to Cerberus, that he might bark no more. And he had called them in severally, that if any thing should be found meet to be redressed, it might be done without visible alteration. There were some points concerning the Book of Common Prayer and the service of the church wherein he desired to be satisfied. They related to confirmation, . . . that name seeming to imply that baptism is of no validity without it; he abhorred this opinion and the abuse which made it a sacrament; to absolution, which he had heard likened to the Pope's pardon; and to private baptism, which if it meant that any beside a lawful minister might baptize, he utterly disliked. Upon the two first points the Bishops fully satisfied the King: upon the third he retained his objection to the custom which allowed midwives or other persons to administer baptism in case of necessity; and the Bishops were ordered to consult, whether in the rubrick which then left it indifferently to all, the words curate or lawful minister might not be inserted. He propounded also, whether the name of excommunication might not be altered in cases of less moment, and whether some other mode of coercion might not be substituted; and to this the Bishops easily assented, as a thing which had been often and long desired.

The Puritans were called in on the second day, and Dr. Reynolds as their spokesman stated, all they required might be reduced to these four heads, that the doctrine of the Church