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nonconformity, and assisting the families of such as had thus suffered in their cause. The course which the feoffees pursued, made their intention evident; they were manifestly the main instruments for the Puritan faction to undo the Church: they were, therefore, called into the Court of Exchequer, the feoffment condemned as being illegal, and the impropriations which they had acquired were confiscated to the King's use.

The ostensible purport of this feoffment was so unexceptionably good, that the multitude, who were incapable of understanding the dangerous end to which it was directed, joined with the enemies of the Church in lamenting its suppression; and this measure increased the animosity with which Laud, the new Primate, was assailed. His love of learning, his liberal temper, his munificence, and his magnanimity, would have made him an honour and a blessing to the Church in its happiest ages; his ardent, incautious, sincere, uncompromising spirit, were ill adapted to that in which his lot had fallen. But the circumstances which brought on, together with his destruction, the overthrow of the Church and State, the murder of the King, and the long miseries of the nation, were many and widely various; some of remote and foreign origin, others recent and of home growth.

The establishment of the Dutch republic was one of those causes. Nothing in the history of the modern world had as yet so strongly and so worthily excited the sympathy of upright and intelligent minds, as the struggle in which the Netherlanders engaged for their civil and religious liberties. Never was good cause more virtuously and gloriously defended. But by those wars the way was prepared for that preponderance of the French power which has produced such evils to Europe, and in all human likelihood will yet produce more: and as the doctrinal disputes which in their consequences subverted the Church of England, were principally derived from the synod of Dort, so from the Dutch wars were the seeds of English republicanism imported. English and Scotchmen were trained in those wars as soldiers of fortune, ready to embark in any cause. A great proportion of the trading part of the community, especially of the Londoners, seeing the commercial prosperity of the Dutch,

1 Laud's Hist. of his Troubles, p. 372, 373.

imputed it to the form of their' commonwealth; for they were too ignorant to know what had been the previous condition of the Low Countries. And at the same time many of the higher classes had imbibed from their classical studies2 prejudices in favour of a popular government, which are as congenial to the generous temper of inexperienced youth, as they are inconsistent with sound knowledge and mature judgement. Thus, while some men of surpassing talents were so infatuated with political theories, that for the prospect of realizing them they were willing to incur the danger and the guilt of exciting a civil war, others were ready to co-operate with them for the hope of destroying3 episcopacy, and establishing, with the discipline of Geneva, the irreversible decrees of Calvinism by rigorous laws. And they who for these secret purposes, which they dared not as yet avow, systematically attacked the government, were strengthened by the aid of many wise and moderate men, (the best of the nation,) who from the purest motives opposed the injurious measures of the Crown, till the same sense of duty which had induced them to resist it in its strength, made them exert themselves and sacrifice themselves for its support in its hour of weakness and distress. To these were added those who, being neither under the restraint of good principles nor the delusion of erroneous ones, cared not whether they aggrandized themselves by compelling the Crown to grant them honours and emoluments, or by overthrowing it and sharing in its spoils; the crafty, who looked for opportunities of promoting their own interest in the troubles which they fomented; and they who from timidity and wariness adhered always to the stronger side, though with no worse motive than that of preserving themselves and their families from ruin.

While these persons swam with the stream, they whose determination it was to shake the throne and to subvert the altar, practised without scruple any means whereby their designs might be promoted. One of their most effectual arts was to possess the people with an opinion that the King in his heart favoured popery, and that Laud was seeking to re-establish it. In both cases the imputation was nefariously false. Charles had inherited his father's wise and tolerant feelings toward the Roman1 Hobbes, p. 489, ed. 1750. 2 Ibid. p. 489. 3 Clarendon's Life, i. p. 81

ists. Had it been possible to bring about a reunion with the Romish Church, preserving the principles and the independence of the Church of England, he would gladly have co-operated in a measure so devoutly to be wished. But knowing that the difficulties were insuperable, he contented himself with endeavouring to lessen the evils of the separation as far as his power might extend; and in the intercourse of courtesy which he maintained with Rome, he made known his resolution that no Papist under his reign should suffer death on the score of his religion. Laud heartily accorded with the King in these feelings and intentions; but the Papal Court was not tolerant enough to understand their conduct; that which proceeded from humanity and wisdom and Christian charity, was supposed at Rome to indicate an unsettled faith; hopes were entertained there of the King's conversion, and a Cardinal's hat was actually offered to the Primate. The calumny, therefore, that they were in collusion with the Papal Court, was easily raised by bigoted or designing men, and greedily received by the multitude who were then in the delirium of fanatical zeal: and to this day it is audaciously repeated, in defiance of the most conclusive evidence of history and the most notorious and indubitable facts. But the zealots of faction are neither capable of shame nor of remorse. For never were two men more conscientiously attached to the Church of England, more devoutly convinced of its doctrines, more deeply sensible of its inestimable value to the nation, than this King and this Primate, who, in their lives, were the most stedfast of its defenders, and the most munificent of its benefactors, and in their deaths the most illustrious of its martyrs.

The charitable temper of Laud toward the Papists, and the humanity with which he sometimes interfered in behalf of the imprisoned priests, might alone have rendered him unpopular among the Puritans. But his zeal for the Church over which he presided entitled him to their hatred; and the clear knowledge, which, like his predecessors Parker and Whitgift, he possessed of their ends and aim, drew upon him the rancorous and deadly hatred of the factions who were now leagued against the state. That knowledge he expressed in a sermon preached at the opening of Charles's first Parliament. "They," said he," who

Nalson, vol. ii. p. 5.

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ever they be that would overturn sedes ecclesiæ, the seats of ecclesiastical judgement, will not spare if ever they get power to have a pluck at the throne of David; and there is not a man that is for parity, all fellows in this Church, but he is against monarchy in the State. And certainly either he is but halfheaded to his own principles, or he can be but half-hearted to the House of David."

His first act upon being made Dean of the Chapel, displayed the sense of duty with which he entered upon his functions. It had been the ill custom of the court, during the preceding reign, that whenever the King came into his closet, which looked into the Chapel, the prayers were immediately broken off, and the anthem begun, that the preacher might without delay ascend the pulpit. Justly disliking this, Laud requested "his Majesty that he would be present every Sunday at the liturgy as well as the sermon, and that at whatsoever part of the service he might enter, the minister should regularly proceed with it; Charles not only assented to his request, but thanked him for the admonition. Had he met with the same good intentions and sense of duty in the whole of his Clergy, which he found in his Sovereign, the task of restoring discipline would have been easy. But Abbot had been so wilfully remiss, that every pragmatical or discontented clergyman did with the service as he thought fit; till inconformity 2 had become well nigh general. It was difficult to curb the licence which had thus begun to plead privilege in its defence; still more so to correct the sour spirit of Calvinism with which the Clergy were now leavened. The zeal with which he attempted this necessary reform, was not always accompanied with discretion; and such is ever the malignity of faction, that while his virtues, his learning, and his splendid liberality, were overlooked, his errors and weaknesses were exaggerated, his intentions traduced, and even his best actions represented as crimes.

His reverence for antiquity, his love for the pomps and ceremonies of worship, and the impression which he allowed to be made upon his mind by dreams and imagined omens, exposed him to a charge of superstition, from those who were so super

'Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 158.

Hamond L'Estrange, p. 137.

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stitious themselves, that they accused him of having brought on tempests and shipwrecks, by omitting a prayer for fine weather in the last form of service for a fast day, that day having been appointed at a time when the harvest had just happily been won! At the same time he was loudly arraigned for profaneness, because the King, as his father had done before him, published a declaration authorizing lawful sports on Sundays, in opposition to the Sabbatarian notions with which the Puritans were possessed. These factious people, although impatient of any observances which the institutions of their country enjoined, were willing to have imposed upon themselves and others obligations far more burthensome: they would have taken Moses for their lawgiver, so ill did they understand the spirit of the Gospel; and they adopted the rabbinical superstitions concerning the sabbath, overlooking or being ignorant that the sabbath was intended to be not less a day of recreation than of rest. The motives for this declaration were unobjectionably good; but the just liberty which in happier times, and under proper parochial discipline, would have been in all respects useful, proved injurious in the then distempered state of public feeling. It displeased the well-intentioned part of the Calvinized Clergy, and it was abused in officious triumph by those who were glad of an opportunity for insulting the professors of a sour and dismal morality. Laud's unpopularity was farther increased, by his enjoining that the Communion-table should be placed in the Chancel and decently railed in, and by his practice of bowing toward it, which his enemies considered to be a mark of Popish superstition. Offence was taken also, because the University of Oxford, to which he was a most munificent and judicious benefactor, addressed him by the titles of his Holiness, and most holy Father; and because he publicly declared that in the disposal of ecclesiastical preferments, he would, when their merits were equal, prefer the single to the married men. But nothing exasperated the feeling of the people against him, so much as the inhuman sentences passed in the Star Chamber upon Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, as libellers. They were condemned to a fine of five thousand pounds each, to lose their ears in the pillory, and to

Rushworth, vol. ii. part 2, app. p. 120.

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Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 212.