him; but such was his modesty to forbear it, because though Rome be a true visible Church, in his opinion, yet something dwelt with him that hindered it for a time, . . . to wit, said this wicked advocate, I suppose his dwelling here, till this his leprosy had so infected all, that there remained no other cure but the sword of justice.

:

Troubled as Laud was at hearing himself thus vilified, he collected himself, and requested of the Lords, that they would expect proof before they gave belief to these loud but loose assertions. Innocent as he was, and being what he was, for him to plead for life at that bar, was worse than losing it: "As for the sentence," said he, "(I thank God for it,) I am at St. Paul's ward if I have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die; for I bless God, I have so spent my time, as that I am neither ashamed to live, nor afraid to die; nor can the world be more weary of me than I of it: for seeing the malignity which hath been raised against me, I have carried my life in my hands these divers years' past." With regard to the charge of seeking to overthrow the laws, he said, his soul had always hated an arbitrary government, and that he had ever believed and preached that human laws bind the conscience, and had himself made conscience of observing them: "As for religion," he continued, "I was born and bred up in and under the Church of England, as it yet stands established by law: I have, by God's blessing and the favour of my Prince, grown up in it to the years which are now upon me, and to the place of preferment which I yet bear; and in this Church, by the grace and goodness of God, I resolve to die. I have ever, since I understood aught in divinity, kept one constant tenour in this my profession, without variation, or shifting from one opinion to another for any worldly ends; and if my conscience would have suffered me to shift tenets or religion with time and occasion, I could easily have slid through all the difficulties which have pressed upon me in this kind. But of all diseases, I have ever hated a palsy in religion; well knowing, that too often a dead-palsy ends that disease in the fearful forgetfulness of God and his judgements. Ever since I came in place, I laboured nothing more than that the external public worship of God (too much slighted in most parts of this

Hist. of his Troubles, p. 222.

kingdom) might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion, that unity cannot long continue in the Church, where uniformity is shut out at the church-door; and I evidently saw that the public neglect of God's service on the outward face of it, and the nasty lying of many places dedicated to that service, had almost cast a damp upon the true and inward worship of God, which, while we live in the body, needs external helps, and all little enough to keep it in any vigour. And this I did to the uttermost of my knowledge, according both to law and canon, and with the consent and liking of the people; nor did any command issue out from me against the one, or without the other, that I know of.'

""Tis charged that I have endeavoured to bring in Popery. Perhaps, my Lords, I am not ignorant what party of men have raised this scandal upon me, nor for what end; nor perhaps, by whom set on but I would fain have a good reason given me, if my conscience lead me that way, and that with my conscience I could subscribe to the Church of Rome, what should have kept me here, before my imprisonment to endure the libels, and the slanders, and the base usage of all kinds which have been put upon me, and these to end in this question for my life?... Is it because of any pledges I have in the world to sway against my conscience? No, sure! For I have no wife nor children to cry out upon me to stay with them; and if I had, I hope the call of my conscience should be heard above them. Is it because I was loth to leave the honour and the profit of the place I was risen unto? I desire your Lordships and all the world should know I do much scorn honour and profit, both the one and the other, in comparison of my conscience: besides, it cannot be imagined by any reasonable man, but that if I could have complied with Rome, I should not have wanted either.

cause I lived here at ease, and was loth to venture the loss of that? Not so neither; for whatsoever the world may be pleased to think, I have led a very painful life, and such as I could have been very well content to change, had I well known how. Let nothing be spoken against me but truth, and I do here challenge whatsoever is between Heaven and Hell to say three words against me in point of my religion; in which, by God's grace, I 1 Hist. of his Troubles, p. 224, 225.

have ever hated dissimulation: and had I not hated it, perhaps it might have been better with me for worldly safety than now it is. But it can no way become a Christian Bishop to halt with God."

He then stated what persons he had, by his individual exertions, preserved or reclaimed from popery. Buckingham was one, Chillingworth another. When the business of the day was over, Hugh Peters followed him out of the house and abused him, till the Earl of Essex accidentally came up, and with an honourable feeling, delivered him from the insults of this brutal fanatic. In no case where the appearance of law was thought necessary for destroying an obnoxious individual, has the determination to destroy him ever been more decidedly manifested throughout the whole proceedings. The weightiest proofs which could be produced of his traitorous endeavours to introduce a tyrannical government were a passage in his diary, and a few words which he was accused of having spoken at the council table. He had entered in his diary that, upon the Scotch rebellion, Strafford and Hamilton, and he himself, proposed a parliament, and these words followed, "a resolution voted at the board to assist the King in extraordinary ways, if the Parliament should prove peevish and refuse," &c. There was no proof that he had advised that vote, and he demanded whether, though the epithet peevish were a very peevish word, he might not write it in his private notes without treason?" The other charge was, that after the dissolution of the last parliament he had said to the King, now he might use his own power. This was attested by Sir Henry Vane the elder, whose hands were so ingrained with the blood of Strafford, that no second act of the same kind could fix a stain upon them. The Archbishop denied the words, either in terms or in sense, to the uttermost of his knowledge; and if he had spoken them, either, he said, they were ill-advised, but no treason; or treasonable, and then he ought, by law, to have been tried for them within six months. And, moreover, they were charged upon him by a single witness. Strange," said he, "it is to me, that at such a full table, no person of honour should remember such a speech but Sir Henry Vane. He is a man of some years, and memory is one of the first

Hist. of his Troubles, p. 224, 225.

2 Ibid. p.

228.

powers of man on which age works; and yet his memory so good, so fresh, that he alone can remember words spoken at a full council table, which no person of honour remembers but himself. But I would not have him brag of it; for I have read in St. Augustin, that quidam pessimi, some, even the worst of men, have great memories, and are tanto pejores, so much the worse for them. God bless Sir Henry!"1

These charges, utterly untenable as they were upon any principle of law, were the weightiest which could be brought against him. The others proved only, in many instances, the falsehood of the witnesses, and in all, the malice of the prosecutors. It was made a charge of treason against him, that when in the progress of repairing St. Paul's, it was necessary to demolish some of the houses which had been built about it, a committee had been appointed with power to compound with the tenants, or pull the houses down if they would not compound: that the goldsmiths had been forbidden to keep their shops any where but in Cheapside and Lombard Street: and that, as appeared by his diary, he meant to support the London Clergy in their claim of tithes. The sentences of Prynne and the other libellers were brought forward as treasonable acts in him; the censures passed for nonconformity, and every petty case of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which could be made to appear as a grievance; the prolongation of the convocation; the canons; the language in which the university had addressed him; his having mended the painted window at Lambeth, the pictures in his gallery, the missals in his study. "True, my Lords," replied the indignant Prelate, "I had many, but I had more of the Greek liturgies than the Roman: and I had as many of both as I could get. And I would fain know how we shall answer their errors if we may not have their books? I had liturgies, all I could get, both ancient and modern. I had also the Alcoran in divers copies; if this be an argument, why do they not accuse me to be a Turk?" 1

The trial, if so it may be called, lasted twenty days, during which Laud displayed a courage answerable to his cause and character, and a promptitude not to have been expected at his years. With such a brave innocence did he defend himself, and

'History of his Troubles, p. 232.

2 Ibid. p. 314.

1

so utterly demolish the evidence against him, in spite of all the care with which it had been concerted, that, possessed as the citizens were with the spirit of sectarian rancour, some of them admitted he had answered many things very well; yet, they added, he must suffer somewhat for the honour of the House. On the day appointed for his defence Prynne published his diary, garbled in some parts, and interpolated in others, artfully and wickedly; and when the Archbishop came to the bar, he saw that the book had been presented to every one of the Lords who were to pronounce sentence on him. A little while the sight troubled him, as it was designed to do; but comforting himself with that trust in God, which never for a moment forsook him through all his long affliction, he entered upon his defence, and entreated the House to bear in mind that he had been sifted to the very bran, . . . " my diary," said he, "nay, my very prayer-book taken from me, and used against me, and that in some cases not to prove, but to make a charge. Yet I am thus far glad even for this; for by my diary your Lordships have seen the passages of my life; and by my prayer-book the greatest secrets between God and my soul; so that you have me at the very bottom; yet, blessed be God, no disloyalty is found in the one, no popery in the other." Then briefly but forcibly going over the charges and the evidence against him, he answered the assertion of the prosecutors, that though none of these actions were urged against him as treason, yet the result of all amounted to it.3 "I must be bold to tell your Lordships," said he, "that if no particular which is charged upon me be treason, the result from them cannot; for the result must be of the same nature and species with the particulars from which it rises, and this holds in nature, in morality, and in law. So this imaginary result is a monster in nature, in morality, and in law; and if it be nourished, will devour all the safety of the subject of England, which now stands so well fenced by the known law of the land. And, therefore, I humbly desire your Lordships,

2 Ibid. p. 413.

3 When after this he

1 Hist. of his Troubles, p. 412. was heard by his counsel, Sergeant Wilde, on behalf of the Commons, repeated that though it was not alleged that any one of his crimes amounted to a treason or felony, yet all his misdemeanors put together did, by way of accumulation, make many grand treasons. To which the Archbishop's advocate replied, "I crave your mercy, good Mr. Sergeant, I never understood before this time, that two hundred couple of black rabbits would make a black horse."