I. archbishop's that "at Biddenham in Kent he suspended one Warren, a CHARLES schoolmaster, for refusing to subscribe the articles, and take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience. This precisian Part of the had a strange humorsome conscience. He would read nothing annual acbut divinity to his scholars. He could not so much as reconcile himself to Lillie's Grammar, except Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, Pol, and depol were expunged. "In the diocese of Lincoln, now under the archbishop's care, he complains of a great many Nonconformists in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire; and that there were a great number of very poor and miserable vicarages and curateships in this large diocese. "The bishop of Norwich certifieth, that in his diocese several towns are depopulated, no houses left standing but the manor-house and the church, and that turned to the lord's barn, or a worse use. In other towns the churches lie in rubbish; and the inhabitants are thrust upon neighbouring parishes, where they pay few or no duties. "From the diocese of Exeter, it was certified, that several captives in Morocco being ransomed and returned home, the bishop was somewhat at a loss with what penance and form these people, who had renounced Christianity, might be readmitted into the Church; and, having acquainted the archbishop with this deplorable case, they agreed upon a form, which was approved by the bishops of London, Ely, and Norwich, and afterwards confirmed by his majesty. count. 781. See Records, num. 112. Hist. of the Troubles, Laud. "The rest of the dioceses, from whence certificates were returned, came forward in conformity, and were in tolerable good order." Laud, to silence the clamour of his being popishly affected, &c. of procured a proclamation for calling in a popish book, written Archbishop in French, by Francis Sales, bishop of Geneva, translated into English, and entitled "An Introduction to a Devout Life." The translation of This book, brought for a license to Haywood, the archbishop's Sales's "Inchaplain, was returned expunged in several unorthodox pas- &c. called sages. Notwithstanding this precaution, the deletions were in. printed. For this foul practice the printer was apprehended, the translator searched for, the book was called in, and the copies seized and publicly burnt. But that which did the archbishop most service, in his reputation, was his reprinting the conference between him and Fisher, with enlargements. A.D. 1638. This was so considerable a performance, that sir Edward troduction," LAUD, Deering, one of his greatest enemies, had the justice to Abp. Cant, confess, that, in this book, "Laud had muzzled the Jesuit, Deering's and would strike the Papists under the fifth rib when he was dead and gone; and, being dead, that, wheresoever his grave should be, Paul's would be his perpetual monument, and his own book his epitaph." commenda tion of Laud. Deering's Collection of Speeches, p. 5. the Star chamber for regulating the press. The archbishop was no less solicitous to suppress the growth of heterodoxy of a different complexion, and to prevent the Socinians and Puritans from gaining upon the Church and disturbing her repose. To this purpose he procured a Star-` A decree of chamber decree for regulating the press. By this order, none but master-printers were allowed to print, under the penalty of being set in the pillory, and suffering such other punishment as the court shall appoint; that none of the master-printers should print any book in divinity, law, physic, philosophy, or poetry, without a licence; and that no person should reprint any book without a new licence; that no merchant, bookseller, or other person, should import any printed books, without giving in a catalogue of them to the archbishop of Canterbury or bishop of London for the time being; and that they should not deliver or expose to sale any imported books till the chaplains of the said archbishop or bishop, or some other learned person appointed by them, together with the master and wardens of the company of stationers, or one of them, shall take a view of the same, with power to seize all schismatical and offensive books; and, lastly, that no merchant, bookseller, &c., should print any English books beyond sea, nor import any such into this kingdom. By the advantage of this order, he prevented the spreading of Socinian and Puritanical books. It had been the custom of people disaffected to the doctrine and discipline of the Church, to print their heterodoxies beyond sea in our language, and import them into England. To stop this mischief, there was a particular provision in the Star-chamber decree. A book entitled" Disquisitio Brevis was published about this time. Some Socinian tenets were covertly couched in this tract: they were pretended expedients for drawing the controversy between the Churches of Rome and England into a less compass. Hales, of Eton, a man of considerable learning and parts, was supposed the author'. There was likewise 22 1 Vide "Golden Remains of the ever memorable Mr. John Hales of Eton College." I. a discourse in manuscript concerning schism handed about CHARLES at the same time: the design of it was to indulge private reason, to the prejudice of the Church's authority. Hales being reputed the author of both these unserviceable books, the archbishop sent for him to Lambeth, and, after some hours' conference, brought him off his singularities, and gained him to the Church. trenched and By the archbishop's care, seconded by his suffragans, the Lectures relecturers were either retrenched or recovered, and brought brought under a due regulation. Those who refused reading Common under due regulation. Prayer in their hoods and surplices were disabled from preaching by the king's instructions; and thus many of the single lecturers dropped off. As for those lectures which were furnished from a combination of the clergy, these men were generally nominated by the bishops, tied to the canonical prayer in the pulpit, and reading the second service at the communion-table in hood and surplice; and thus the rigid Calvinists were forced to quit the pulpits in market towns. ministers into Hol However, the people, having been connived at, and gone loose as to ceremony some time, took check at the pressing of conformity. When they found their lectures struck off, and the parochial clergy of their persuasion not well able to stand the test of a visitation, they began to grow weary of the country. Under this discontent several families, in maritime Some Nontowns especially, transported themselves. The Dutchmen led conformist them the way, who chose rather to quit the kingdom and and families transport return home, than comply with the archbishop's injunctions. themselves Goodwin, Nye, Burroughs, Bridges, and Simpson, were some land. of the first nonconformist ministers that left the kingdom. These men, with some of their party, settled in Holland. Soon after their arrival, their congregations swelled to so considerable a number, that it was thought proper for them to part, and settle at wider distance. Thus Goodwin and Nye went off to Arnheim, in Guelderland; leaving Rotterdam, in Holland, to Simpson and Bridges. These men, neither liking the strict discipline of the Presbyterians, nor the latitude and license of the Brownists, projected a temper, and settled upon Robinson's model. They struck out a co-ordinate scheme of Church government; and thus they formed a sort of spiritual association for countenance and correspondence, without anything of superiority and command. This seems 782. LAUD, to have been the rise of the Independents. But this loose, Abp. Cant. precarious polity made them break into farther subdivisions. Bridges was forced to quit Rotterdam; and Ward, who succeeded him, found no good quarter. At Arnheim they had a better understanding amongst themselves. Here they seemed to strain for apostolic usage and higher perfection than the rest. To this purpose they had hymns and prophesyings, not received in their sister Churches. They likewise revived the office of widows, the holy kiss, and extreme unction. Cyprian. The bishops complain against the Covenanters. To go back to the beginning of the year, and take a short survey of the condition of the Church of Scotland. The hierarchy being outraged, the Common Prayer Book suppressed, and the faction engaged in a covenant in the manner above-mentioned, the prelates who stayed in Scotland sent up a list of their grievances to the archbishop of St. Andrew's, and the rest of the Scotch prelates in London. They complain, the Covenanters had changed the moderator of the presbytery at Edinburgh, and were carrying on that pretended reformation through the whole kingdom; that the council of Edinburgh had made choice of Mr. Alexander Henderson to be an assistant to Mr. Andrew Ramsay, and intended to admit him without the bishop's consent; that the ministers of Edinburgh, who refused subscribing the covenant, were cursed and reviled to their faces, and their stipends detained; that all non-subscribing ministers were treated with the same ill usage; and that the rakish part of the mob are raised for this service, Memoirs of and let loose honest men." upon Duke of 41. missioner for Scotland. The king, being willing to compose matters and prevent the May, 1638. use of extreme remedies, sent the marquis of Hamilton down The marquis high commissioner to settle that kingdom. At his coming of Hamilton sent down to Dalkeith, four miles from Edinburgh, his commission was high-comopened; but the Covenanters paid him no attendance, or took any notice of his character. But not long after, upon his coming to Edinburgh, some of the heads of the faction waited upon him; and, being demanded first what they desired of the king for redress of grievances, and, in the next place, what security they would give for returning to their duty and renouncing the covenant, to the first they replied, that nothing short of a general assembly and a parliament could give them satisfaction; to the second their answer was, that hitherto I. L'Estrange, Hist. King they had not failed in any part of loyalty, therefore there was CHARLES no occasion to insist upon a return to it. And as for the covenant, they were so hardy as to declare, "that they would sooner renounce their baptism than this engagement; that this proposal was so harsh, that they would never endure to hear the mention of it repeated." By the way, there was a proclamation penned in strong Charles 1. terms for recanting the covenant, in which "all those are declared traitors that shall refuse disclaiming the said bond or bonds, within so many days mentioned in the proclamation." This instrument was drawn by the earl of Traquair; but the marquis of Hamilton, finding the faction resolved against going this length of submission, stopped the publishing this paper, and drew up another in a softer form, in which the denouncing clause was omitted. Memoirs of ton. Id. p. 55. tions of the Covenanters. ;Id. p. 55. In the mean time the Covenanters went boldly on in their revolt, and blocked up the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling. Of these disorders the marquis sent the king an account, acquainting him with the desperate obstinacy of the faction and that in all likelihood nothing but force could bring them to a sense of their duty. But here the marquis suggested some motives to clemency, and put the king in mind, that these disorders were "the madness of his own poor people." To this the king answers in his letter to Hamilton, that he was of the commissioner's opinion, that the obstinacy of the Scots was past curing by gentle applications. However, he thought the gaining of time a prudential expedient; and that it was most advisable to forbear the publishing the latter and more disgusting part of the declaration, until his fleet had set sail for Scotland. He gives his commissioner leave to The king's sooth the faction, and keep them from flying out into further excesses. But all this caressing was to be within a rule: for nant. he was not to humour the revolters so far, as to consent to the calling a parliament, or a general assembly, until the covenant was openly disclaimed. His majesty owns his regret, for being forced to come to these extremities with his own people: but adds, the last necessity compels him to these measures : that his crown lies at stake; that his honour must be lost, and his character disabled for ever, if this insulting his authority should go unpunished: and that, to use his majesty's June 11, words, "He will rather die, than yield to those impertinent, Id. p. 55. resentment of the Cove A.D. 1638. |