<299>On his return from Scotland, Charles had ridden hastily in advance of his retinue, anxious to rejoin the Queen at Greenwich before her approaching confinement. On October 14 she gave birth to a second son, baptized James by Laud, in memory of his grandfather.
Laud was no longer Bishop of London. When he entered the King’s presence for 1633.August 6.Laud named Archbishop.the first time after he had left Scotland, he received an unexpected greeting. “My Lord’s Grace of Canterbury,” said Charles, “you are very welcome.” The news of Abbot’s death had just reached the Court.[421]
The change made by Laud’s promotion may not seem to have been great. Before, as after, his accession to the archbishopric, Results of his promotion.he was possessed of Charles’s fullest confidence, and he had not scrupled to interfere in the King’s name in dioceses not his own. In reality the consequences of the change were enormous. Charles was indeed ready to make himself the centre of the ecclesiastical administration, and he had definite ideas on the direction in which he wished to go; but he had not the force of character or the perception of the reality of things at a distance which marks out a great administrator, and, determined as he was to make his will felt, he rarely knew enough of what was going on to rouse himself to action. All that was wanting to Charles <300>was supplied by Laud. Every man who had a grievance against the Puritans, who could complain that Church property was embezzled or Church services irregularly performed, that this minister neglected to wear a surplice, and that the other minister omitted to repeat the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer, appealed to Laud. As Bishop of London, Laud, if he pleased, could go to the King and procure his order that the complaint should be redressed; but he could hardly conceal from himself that the world looked upon his interference as impertinent. As archbishop he had his hand upon the spring by which, except in the remote and poor northern province, the whole ecclesiastical machinery was moved. His authority might be vague and undefined. There might be some doubt how far he was justified in interfering with the other bishops; but there could be no doubt that the authority existed, and it was certain that in his hands its claims would be pushed to the utmost. It was nothing to him that the bishops would sink into mere agents of a central authority. The danger to society of taking away the habit of initiative from inferior officials was one which was not likely to alarm him. He cared merely that the right thing should be done, very little that men should put their hearts into their work at the risk of sometimes going a little wrong.
No doubt Abbot had been negligent. To the inertness of character and age he united the inertness of a man who knew that Abbot’s last report.he was powerless to carry his ideas into practice. Eight months before his death he had sent in to the King a report of the state of his province. He did not care to know anything about it. The bishops, ‘for aught it appeared,’ had been keeping residence. For aught that he could learn, ordinations had been canonically kept. Here and there there had been something wrong, but it would be a comfort to his Majesty to hear that ‘so little exorbitancy’ could be found.[422] The reins were soon to be grasped by a tighter hand.
Abbot was scarcely dead when some one — probably an <301>ecclesiastic attached to the household of the Queen — offered Laud a Cardinal’s hat if he would place himself at the disposition of the Pope, and A Cardinal’s hat offered to Laud.the offer was repeated a fortnight later. “Something dwells within me,” was the reply of the new Archbishop, “which will not suffer me to accept that till Rome be other than it is.”
Neither the emissaries of Rome nor the Puritans who charged Laud with entering into a secret understanding with Rome Laud’s principles.understood his character. Half the dogmatic teaching of the Papal Church, half the dogmatic teaching of the Calvinistic Churches, was held by him to be but a phantom summoned up by the unauthorised prying of vain and inquisitive minds into mysteries beyond the grasp of the intellect of man, as unreal as were the Platonic ideas to the mind of Aristotle. The craving after certainty which sent the Calvinist to rest upon the logical formulas of his teacher, and which sent the Roman Catholic to rest on the expositions of an infallible Church, had no charms for him. It was sufficient for him that he knew enough, or thought he knew enough, to guide his steps in the practical world around him. As he shunned the extremes of intellectual life, so too did he shun the extremes of emotional life. The fervour of asceticism, and the sharp internal struggles by which the Puritan forced his way to that serene conviction of Divine favour which he called conversion, were to Laud mere puerile trivialities which a sober and truthful man was bound to avoid.
Soberness of judgment in matters of doctrine, combined with an undue reverence for external forms, an entire want of Laud not suited to his work.imaginative sympathy, and a quick and irritable temper, made Laud one of the worst rulers who could at this crisis have been imposed upon the English Church. For it was a time when, in the midst of diverging tendencies of thought, many things were certain to be said and done which would appear extravagant to his mind; and when the bond of unity which he sought to preserve was to be found rather in identity of moral aim than in exact conformity with any special standard. The remedy for the diseases of the time, in short, was to be sought in liberty, and of the <302>value of liberty Laud was as ignorant as the narrowest Puritan or the most bigoted Roman Catholic.
Those who are most Rumours of Laud’s leanings to Rome.prone to misunderstand others are themselves most liable to be misunderstood. The foreign ecclesiastic, if such he was, who offered Laud a Cardinal’s hat, did not stand alone in his interpretation of Case of Ludowick Bowyer.the tendencies of the new Archbishop. One Ludowick Bowyer, a young man of good family, who may have been mad, and was certainly a thief and a swindler, went about spreading rumours that Laud had been detected in Nov. 30.raising a revenue for the Pope, and been sent to the Tower as a traitor. The Star Chamber imprisoned him for life, fined him 3,000l., ordered him to be set three times in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to be branded on the forehead with the letters L and R, as a liar and a rogue. “His censure is upon record,” wrote Laud coolly in his diary, “and God forgive him.”[423]
Whether Ludowick Bowyer was mad or not, there can be no doubt of the insanity of Lady Eleanor Davies, the widow of Case of Lady Eleanor Davies.the poetic Irish Chief Justice, Sir John Davies. Two years before, her brother, the Earl of Castlehaven, had been executed for the commission of acts of wickedness so atrocious and disgusting as to be explicable only by confirmed aberration of mind. His sister’s madness was fortunately only shown in words. She believed herself a divinely inspired interpreter of the prophecies of Daniel, and she published a book in which she recorded her ravings. October.She was brought before the High Commission. On the title-page was printed backwards her maiden name, Eleanor Audeley, followed by the anagram, Reveale O Daniel. Sir John Lambe pointed out that to make this correct, an ‘I’ had to be substituted for the ‘Y,’ and suggested as a truer result from ‘Dame Eleanor Davies,’ ‘Never so mad <303>a ladie.’[424] Loud laughter followed, but the poor woman was not allowed to benefit by the jest. She was imprisoned in the Gatehouse and fined 3,000l. She immediately discovered that Laud was the beast in the Revelation, and that he would die before the end of November.[425] Such a case was precisely one in which Laud, if he had had any magnanimity in him, would have used all his influence in favour of a relaxation of the punishment of a lady whose follies were their own penalty, and who, if she needed restraint, needed restraint of a tender and affectionate kind. The sentence was, however, carried out with extreme severity. Lady Eleanor’s daughter petitioned in vain that her mother might be allowed to take the air, and that ‘for womanhood’s sake’ she might have some one of her own sex to attend upon her, as well as some grave divines to comfort her in the troubles of her mind.[426]
The sharpness and irritability with which Laud was commonly charged were not inconsistent with a readiness to use persuasion Laud’s harshness.rather than force as long as mildness promised a more successful issue. When once he discovered that an opponent was not to be gained over, he lost all patience with him. He had no sense of humour to qualify the harshness of his judgment. Small offences assumed in his eyes the character of great crimes. If in the Star Chamber, any voice was raised for a penalty out of all proportion to the magnitude of the fault, that voice was sure to be the Archbishop’s.
Almost immediately after his promotion Laud received a letter from the King which was doubtless written at his own instigation. Sept. 19.Restriction of ordination.In this letter he was directed to see that the bishops observed the canon which restricted their ordinations to persons who, unless they held certain exceptional positions, were able to show that they were about <304>to undertake the cure of souls.[427] In this way the door of the ministry would be barred against two classes of men which were regarded by the Archbishop with an evil eye, and at which he had already struck in the King’s Instructions issued four years before.[428] No man would now be able to take orders with the Lecturers and chaplains.intention of passing his life as a lecturer, in the hope that he would thus escape the obligation of using the whole of the services in the Prayer-book. Nor would any man be able to take orders with the hope of obtaining a chaplaincy in a private family where he would be bound to no restrictions except those which his patron was pleased to lay upon him. Only peers and other persons of high rank were now to be permitted to keep chaplains at all.
Undoubtedly the system thus attacked was an evil system. The separation between the lecturer who preached and the Faults of the system.conforming minister who read the service was admirably contrived to raise feelings of partisanship in a congregation and division amongst the clergy themselves. The lecturer who sat in the vestry till the prayers were over, and then mounted the pulpit as a being infinitely superior to the mere reader of prayers who had preceded him, was not very likely to promote the peace of the Church. The system of chaplaincies was fraught with evils of another kind. The chaplain of a wealthy patron might indeed be admitted as the honoured friend of the house, the counsellor in spiritual difficulties, the guide and companion of the younger members of the family; but in too many instances the clergyman who accepted such a position would sink into the dependent hanger-on of a rich master, expected to flatter his virtues and to be very lenient to his faults, to do his errands and to be the butt of his jests. Promoters of ecclesiastical discipline like Laud, and dramatic writers who cared nothing for ecclesiastical discipline at all, were of one mind in condemning a system which brought the ministers of the gospel into a position in which they might easily be treated with less consideration than a groom.[429]
<305>Nevertheless that system had not been entirely mischievous. Hitherto the upper classes, by the appointment of chaplains, and the middle classes, Its uses.by the appointment of lecturers, had preserved, in a very irregular manner, some security that they should not be compelled to listen to religious instruction which they regarded as untrue. It was to be so no longer. Yet if the English people were not to be handed over to be moulded into the shape which suited any religious party which happened to gain for the moment the favour of the Crown, the right to select its own instructors must one day or another be restored to it. By restricting the right of teaching to those who had the sanction of the authorities, Laud was creating a necessity for that system of toleration which would give back, in a wider and more open manner, that which he had taken away. Though resistance to Laud was not easy, symptoms were not wanting that his persistent efforts to bring the clergy under control were being met by a growing Sept. 2.Raine’s will.distrust of the authorities of the Church. One Raine, for instance, a citizen of London, left a small sum in his will for the support of a lecturer. The lecturer was to be appointed by the Drapers’ Company. He was to read the prayers of the Church of England. The testator was, however, not without disquieting fears for the future of the Church. He added that if there should be any alteration of religion, his bequest was to lapse to the Company. Against the mode in which Raine had directed the appointment of the lecturer to be made Laud determinately waged war. “My most humble suit to your Majesty,” he wrote in his first report of the state of his diocese, “is that no layman whatsoever, and least of all companies and corporations, may, under any pretence of giving to the Church or otherwise, have power to put in or put out any lecturer or other minister.” “Certainly,” wrote Charles in the margin, with emphatic approbation, “I cannot hold fit that any lay person or corporation whatsoever should <306>have the power these men would have to themselves. For I will have no priest have any necessity of a lay dependency. Wherefore I command you to show me the way to overthrow this, and to hinder the performance in time of all such intentions.”[430]
Laud’s intense concentration upon the immediate present hindered him from perceiving the ultimate consequence of his acts. Laud’s view of the Royal authority.His strong confidence in the power of external discipline to subdue the most reluctant minds encouraged him to seize the happy moment when the King, and, as he firmly believed, the law, was on his side. Deeper questions about the suitability of that law to human nature in general or to English nature in particular he passed over as irrelevant. He did not look to the King to carry out some ideal which the law knew nothing of. He had ‘ever been of opinion that the King and his people’ were ‘so joined together in one civil and politic body, as that it’ was ‘not possible for any man to be true to the King that shall be found treacherous to the State established by law, and work to the subversion of the people.’[431] In his eyes, no doubt the King possessed legal powers which the medieval churchman would have regarded as a tyrannical usurpation. As the King administered justice by his judges, and announced his political resolutions by his Privy Council, so he exercised his ecclesiastical authority through his bishops or his Court of High Commission.[432] Though the bishops might give him advice which he would not find elsewhere, and though they might owe their power to act to a special Divine appointment, yet all their jurisdiction came from the Sovereign, as clearly as the jurisdiction of the King’s Bench and the Exchequer came from him.[433] Hence Laud cared as little for the spiritual independence of bishops as he cared for the spiritual independence of congregations. His counterpart in our own times is to be found, not in the ecclesiastics who magnify the authority of the Church, but in the lawyers who, substituting the supremacy <307>of the House of Commons for the supremacy of the Crown, strive in vain to reply to all spiritual and moral questionings by the simple recommendation to obey the law.
Laud understood far better how to deal with buildings than with men. The repairs at St. Paul’s were being carried briskly on Repairs at St. Paul’s.under the superintendence of Inigo Jones. During the remainder of Laud’s time of power from 9,000l. to 15,000l. a year were devoted to the work, arising partly from contributions more or less of a voluntary nature, partly from fines imposed by the High Commission which were set aside for the purpose. Much to the King’s annoyance, rumours were spread that the greater part of this money was not applied to the building at all,[434] but went to swell the failing revenues of the Crown. The restoration of the external fabric drew attention to an abuse of long standing. The nave and aisles had, State of the interior.from times beyond the memory of men then living, been used as places of public resort. Porters carried their burdens across the church as in the open street. Paul’s Walk, as the long central aisle was called, was the rendezvous of the men of business who had a bargain to drive, and of the loungers whose highest wish was to while away an idle hour in agreeable society. To the men of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. it was all that the coffee-houses became to the men of the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and all that the club-houses are to the men of the reign of Victoria. There were to be heard the latest rumours of the day. There men told how some fresh victory had been achieved by Gustavus, or whispered how Laud had sold himself to the Pope, and how Portland had sold himself to the King of Spain. There too was to be heard the latest scandal affecting the credit of some merchant of repute or the good name of some lady of title. When the gay world had moved away, children took the place of their elders, making the old arches ring with their merry laughter. The clergy within the choir complained that their voices were drowned by the uproar, and <308>that neither prayers nor sermon reached the ears of the congregation.
With this misuse of the cathedral church of the capital, Charles, not a moment too soon, resolved to interfere. He October.Charles interferes.issued orders that no one should walk in the nave in time of service, that burdens should not be carried in the church at all, and that the children must look elsewhere for a playground. In order to meet the wants of the loungers excluded from their accustomed resort, he devoted 500l. a year to the building of a portico at the west end, for their use. The straight lines of the Grecian architecture of the portico contrasted strangely with the Gothic traceries above. If it reminds us as we see it in the old prints, of the deadness of feeling with which even a great artist, such as Inigo Jones, regarded the marvels of medieval architecture, it may also bring before us the memory of one instance in which Charles thought it necessary to conciliate opposition.[435]
In his care for St. Paul’s, Laud was not likely to neglect his own chapel at Lambeth. Abbot had left it in much disorder. The chapel at Lambeth.Fragments of painted glass were mingled confusedly with white spaces in the windows. The painted glass was now restored to the condition in which it had originally been when placed there by Archbishop Morton. It contained scenes from the Old and New Testament; a representation of the Saviour hanging upon the Cross — a crucifix as the Puritans termed it — occupying the east end. When the windows were completed, the communion-table was moved to the eastern wall. Towards this the Archbishop and his chaplains bowed whenever they entered. There does not seem to have been anything gorgeous or pompous in the ceremonial observed, which would have distinguished it from that which is to be seen in almost every parish church in England at the present day.
The taste for church restoration was not confined to Laud. <309>Williams, opposed as he was to Laud’s ecclesiastical system, June.The communion-table at Leicester.sympathised with him in his love of church music and decoration. At Leicester the chancel of a parish church had been converted into a library. Williams persuaded the inhabitants to restore it to its original use, and to provide elsewhere a room for the books. He headed a subscription list for the increase of the library, and directed that the communion-table should be placed in the restored chancel, and should be moved down when needed for use, in accordance with the precedent which he had established at Grantham.
In a letter addressed to the Mayor of Leicester, Williams laid down the principles on which he acted. The table, he said, was Sept. 18.Letter of Williams.to stand on steps at the upper end, ‘at such times as it shall not be used in the participation of’ the ‘sacred mysteries.’ “At that time,” he added, “the law doth appoint it shall be set in the most convenient place either of the chancel or body of the church, whereunto the people may have best access, and where the minister that officiates may be most audibly heard, which, as I am informed, is the place where it stood before. Let it therefore at such times be placed there again, until by complaint of the minister or churchwardens of the inconvenience thereof, I shall give order to the contrary. Only both then and at other times my earnest suit unto you is that your table may be fairly covered and adorned wheresoever it stands, that whereas all men that are not extremely malicious, must needs commend your wise and discreet managing of the civil, idle people may have no occasion to tax your disposing of church affairs, and I assure you that a little charge in this kind would be well placed, being a thing acceptable to God, to the King, and to all good people.”[436]
It is hardly open to doubt that Williams’s decision would <310>have been accepted as satisfactory by the majority of religious people in England. The communion-table at St. Gregory’s.It would not, however, be acceptable to the King and the Archbishop. Under their guidance another restoration had led to a very different result. For two years the little church of St. Gregory’s which nestled under the lofty fabric of St. Paul’s, as St. Margaret’s stands to this day under Westminster Abbey, had been undergoing extensive repairs.[437] The cost, exceeding 2,000l., had been borne by the parishioners. The parish, which was exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, was under the care of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, by whom authority was now given to place the communion-table altarwise at the east end, and to surround it there with railings, on the ground that it had been treated with irreverence whilst standing in the nave, where some persons ‘had not been ashamed to sit on it, others to write, others to transact there other and perhaps viler matters of business, distinguishing nothing or little between the Lord’s table and a profane or convivial table.’
As soon as the change had been made, five of the parishioners complained to the Court of Arches. They alleged that Oct. 18.Complaint of the parishioners.in parish churches the custom was that the table should stand in the nave or chancel, not altarwise, but so that ‘one end might be towards the west, in order that the minister might stand at the north side.’[438]
The King would not suffer the suit to be carried on. The Dean of Arches, Sir Henry Marten, was certain to decide in favour of the complainants.[439] Nov. 3.The question before the Council.The prerogative of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters was even more vaguely defined than in civil matters, and the King’s right to interfere immediately was perhaps recognised by the Act of Supremacy. Charles therefore stopped the <311>proceedings, and summoned the parties, as well as the judge, before the Privy Council, there to discuss the matter in his own presence. Marten, as might be expected, was deeply annoyed, and he showed his vexation by his language. The communion-table in its new place, he said, would make a good Court cupboard. ‘Arundel and Portland argued that it was unfit that the table should stand one way in the mother church, and quite otherwise in the parochial annexed.’ Laud spoke strongly in favour of the change. After the arguments on both sides were exhausted, Charles gave his decision.
“His Majesty … was pleased to declare his dislike of all innovations and receding from ancient constitutions grounded upon The King’s decision.just and warrantable reasons, especially in matters concerning ecclesiastical order and government, knowing how easily men are drawn to affect novelties, and how soon weak judgments in such cases may be overtaken and abused. … He was also pleased to observe that if these few parishoners might have their wills, the difference thereby from the aforesaid cathedral mother church, by which all other churches depending thereon ought to be guided, would be the more notorious, and give more subject of discourse and disputes that might be spared, by reason of St. Gregory’s standing close to the wall thereof.” Then, after glancing at the plea of the parishioners, who had abandoned the firm ground of Williams’s settlement, to argue ‘that the book of Common Prayer and the eighty-second Canon do give permission to place the communion-table where it may stand with most fitness and conveniency,’ the King proceeded to lay down the law of the future. “For so much,” he said, “as concerns the liberty given by the said Common Prayer-book or Canon, for placing the communion-table in any church or chapel with most conveniency; that liberty is not so to be understood as if it were ever left to the discretion of the parish, much less to the particular fancy of any humorous person, but to the judgment of the ordinary, to whose place and function it doth properly belong to give direction in that point, both for the thing itself and for the time when and how long, as he may find cause.” In this case the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s were the ordinaries, and Marten <312>was therefore directed to give judgment against the complainants, if they persisted in their suit.[440]
The decision thus given was in accordance with Charles’s principles of government. In political matters he demanded from his subjects Importance of this decision.the strict observance of the law, whilst he reserved to himself a discretionary power to modify it according to circumstances, or, in other words, according to his own wishes. The same principle was now to be applied to ecclesiastical affairs. The habitual practice of congregations, the feelings and prejudices of the parishioners were to be set at naught, in order that a law passed in another age and under other conditions might be enforced against them. Whilst no regard was to be paid to the congregations, a discretionary power was to remain in the hands of the bishops to modify and apply the law as they thought best.
The working of such a principle would depend on the amount of discretion which the bishops happened to possess. Used The discretion of the bishops.to smooth away asperities, and to modify the hard rule of the law in accordance with the devotional tendencies of various congregations, such a power might have been productive of the greatest advantages. It might have facilitated the passage from the old world of enforced conformity to the new world of diversity and life. It was not so that Charles and Laud understood the discretion which they claimed. What they asserted was the right of the bishop to set aside the spirit of the law and the wishes of the congregation at one and the same time.[441] In this way they simply dealt a death-blow to the Elizabethan compromise which Williams had attempted to revive. That compromise, embodied on rubric and canon, plainly contemplated a table to be moved from one place to another at the time of administration. <313>The King’s decision deliberately avoided any recognition of this fact. If, under cover of interpreting the law, Charles had not openly violated the law, he had at least given every encouragement to its evasion.
No doubt, if the Elizabethan compromise was to be set aside, the practice recommended by Laud was more commendable on The question of decencythe score of decency than that which had been generally adopted. It was not becoming that a table used for purposes upon which both parties looked with reverence should stand where men could put their hats on it, scribble accounts on it, or sit on it. The irreverent action was doubtless in many cases a symbol of an irreverent mind. A church was often looked upon as a place in which sermons were to be heard comfortably, and not as a house of prayer. “Pews,” said and principle.the witty Bishop Corbet, “are become tabernacles with rings and curtains to them. There wants nothing but beds to hear the word of God on.”[442] The position of the communion-table could never be a question of mere decency. The table at the east was the outward expression of one set of religious ideas. The table in the centre was the outward expression of another set of religious ideas. Elizabeth had done her best — awkwardly it might be — to avoid a conflict between them. Laud now threw compromise aside. If the decision in the case of St. Gregory’s was to be enforced upon all other parish churches in England, a tempest might be raised which it would be difficult to lull.
It was hardly likely that the temptation to convert this decision into a uniform rule would be avoided. As vacancies occurred Laudian bishops.the sees were being filled with bishops after Laud’s own mind. Juxon, who had succeeded Laud as President of St. John’s, now succeeded him as Bishop of London. Noted as he was for the suavity of his manners and the placability of his disposition, he had no kindness to spare for nonconformists. Upon Harsnet’s death, Neile, so lately translated to Winchester, was translated to York, and Laud had the satisfaction of knowing that the Northern <314>Archbishopric was in the hands of a disciplinarian as strict as himself. Pierce went to Bath and Wells, Corbet to Norwich, Bancroft to Oxford, Lindsell to Peterborough, Curle to Winchester, all of them men ready to carry out the schemes of the Archbishop. Morton, who atoned for Calvinistic opinions in theology by his respect for the ceremonies of the Church, followed Howson at Durham.
Laud’s anxiety to secure uniformity in England led him to cast suspicious glances across the sea. It is true that he never troubled himself The English churches on the Continent.with the condition of the Continental Protestants. He never dreamed of establishing an Anglican propaganda among the Dutch, the French, or the Germans. When John Durie, a Scotch clergyman who had been attached to the household of Sir James Spens, came to England to ask for means to enable him to travel in order to bring about a union between the Lutheran and the Calvinistic Churches of the Continent he met with but a languid support from the Archbishop. Laud held it to be his business to reduce the Church of England to order, not to meddle with other churches. He could speak without irritation of Presbyterianism beyond the sea so long as the Presbyterians were not subjects of King Charles; but it was altogether another matter if Englishmen acquired Presbyterian habits abroad. Although it might be of little importance to him how these men prayed or preached at the Hague or Rotterdam, it might be that they would some time or another return to England, bringing with them an infection which might taint the flock under his care.
It seemed indeed that as soon as Englishmen engaged in commerce left their native soil, their first thought was to throw away the Prayer-book. 1632.The Hamburg congregation.One day, as Pennington was lying in the Elbe off Hamburg, he was asked to allow Dr. Ambrose, a clergyman on board, to preach in the English church. When the time came for the service to commence, Ambrose called for a Bible and Prayer-book. A Bible was easily forthcoming, but no Prayer-book was to be had. Ambrose drew one out of his pocket, and began reading. The congregation was soon in an uproar, and the officials begged him to desist. “If you will have no prayers,” he <315>replied, “you shall have no sermon,” and walked out of the church.[443] In the Netherlands the Prayer-book was equally neglected. The congregations in the Netherlands.John Forbes, who had been expelled from Scotland for maintaining the independence of the General Assembly against James,[444] preached in the Merchant Adventurers’ church at Delft. Hugh Peters presided over a congregation of Englishmen at Rotterdam, and drew his salary from the States-General.[445] These and other English churches were organised after the Presbyterian or Separatist model, with elders and deacons. The opinions which prevailed were embodied in a book written by Dr. Ames, the Fresh suit against human ceremonies. “We,” he wrote, “as becometh Christians, stand upon the sufficiency of Christ’s institutions for all kinds of worship, and that exclusively. The word,” say we, “and nothing but the word in matters of religious worship.” “The prelates rise up on the other side, and will needs have us allow and use certain human ceremonies of religion in our Christian worship. We desire to be excused, as holding them unlawful.”[446]
The difference between Laud and the extreme Puritans could not be more sharply expressed. Laud did not see that he was doing his best to make Ames’s theory popular. As yet, by Ames’s own confession, only a very small minority adopted it in England. Already, however, English clergymen deprived for nonconformity were flocking over to Holland, and it was not without reason that Laud feared that the principles which they were sowing in the Netherlands would one day bear fruit in England.
Pressure might easily be brought to bear on the Delft congregation, which was supported by the Merchant Adventurers. Sir William Boswell, the English Minister at the Hague, was directed to see that Laud’s instructions were carried out, and 1633.March.he had Misselden, the deputy of the company, on his side. Forbes himself, now too old to engage in further contest, expressed his readiness to resign his <316>office.[447] He was summoned to England, gave up his relations with the church at Delft, and was succeeded by a minister chosen by Laud. 1634.The Prayer-book introduced.In the summer of 1634 the Prayer-book was read in the Merchant Adventurers’ church, much to the dissatisfaction of those who were compelled to listen to its unaccustomed sound.[448]
In the English regiments in the Dutch service, the practice varied with the disposition of the colonel. In the regiment 1632.Chaplains in the English regiments.commanded by Lord Vere of Tilbury, the veteran who, as Sir Horace Vere, had commanded in the Palatinate, a few prayers taken from the Prayer-book were used by the chaplain, Stephen Goffe, in the summer of 1632. 1633.April.The Dutch Council of State, by which the chaplains were paid, took umbrage, and directed that no novelties should be introduced. Many of the English officers, however, took Goffe’s side, and the Prayer-book was sent by the Council to the Divinity professors of Leyden for examination. Boswell took high ground, bidding the professors to consider ‘into what a labyrinth they might cast themselves’ if they presumed to pass judgment on the Liturgy of the Church of England. The professors drew back, and contented themselves with suggesting the danger of allowing English bishops to exercise jurisdiction in the Netherlands. Boswell having tamed the professors, turned to the Council of State. English soldiers, he said, had always used their Prayer-book. They were fed with it as with their mothers’ milk. As the officers were mainly on Laud’s side, the recalcitrant chaplains were removed and replaced by others more conformable.
The more independent English congregations were beyond the reach of Laud. Hugh Peters continued to preach at Rotterdam against innovation and corruption.[449] Before long <317>he was joined by John Davenport, one of the late feoffees, who Separatist congregations.hoped to instal himself as minister of a congregation at Amsterdam. To Boswell’s glee, the Dutch magistrates of that Calvinistic city had their own notions about orthodoxy which Davenport was unable to satisfy, and it was The Massachusetts colony.only in New England that he at last found a refuge.[450] There was, in fact, but one spot of land under English rule where the principles and practices proscribed in England were predominant. During the two years which followed Winthrop’s emigration to New England, only three hundred and forty persons had followed in his steps. No danger was apprehended at home from so small a number of malcontents, and when charges were brought against them in England they met with but a cool reception from the Council. In January 1633 a complaint against the colonists was dismissed, and the King declared distinctly that ‘he would have them severely punished who did abuse his Governor and the Plantation.’ Some of the Privy Councillors added ‘that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England’ in Massachusetts, ‘for that it was considered that it was the freedom from such things that made people come over.’
In 1633, however, probably through the increasing strictness of ecclesiastical discipline at home, the emigration increased. In the course of the year seven hundred persons crossed the seas, amongst whom was John Cotton of Boston, and other leading Puritan divines. The English Government took alarm lest the example of the successful establishment of extreme Puritanism in America should give encouragement to those who aimed at the realisation of the Puritan ideal on the eastern side of the Atlantic.[451] 1634.Emigration to New England stayed;A cry came up to Laud from Ipswich that six score emigrants were preparing for a voyage across the ocean, and that six hundred more were soon to follow. The kingdom, said his informant, would be depopulated. Trade would be ruined. Bankrupts would assert that they were flying from the <318>ceremonies when they were in reality flying from their creditors. Feb. 28.but permitted under conditions.An Order in Council at once prohibited the sailing of the vessels. A week later, however, a fresh order was issued. Masters of ships would be allowed to carry emigrants upon entering into bonds to punish all persons on board guilty of blasphemy, as well as to compel the attendance of passengers and crew upon the daily service of the Prayer-book.[452]
A flying separatist was not likely to be so squeamish as to refuse liberty on the condition of a compulsory attendance for April 1.Proceedings against separatists at home.a few weeks upon a service which he abhorred read perfunctorily by a ship’s captain. At home extreme nonconformity had received an impulse from Laud’s proceedings. In April the High Commission thought it necessary to call upon the justices of the peace to make search for those sectaries who, ‘under pretence of repetition of sermons,’ kept ‘private conventicles and exercises of religion by the laws of the realm prohibited.’[453]
If Laud was intolerant whenever Church order and discipline were concerned, the Puritans whom he combated were The Puritan Sabbath.no less intolerant when they believed that the interests of morality were concerned. No greater contrast can be drawn than between the Puritan Sabbath and the traditional Sunday of the Middle Ages. The Puritan, however, was not content with passing the day in meditation or self-examination unless he could compel others to abandon not merely riotous and disorderly amusements, but even those forms of recreation to which they and their fathers had been accustomed from time immemorial. The precepts of the Fourth Commandment were, according to his interpretation, of perpetual obligation. The Christian Lord’s Day was but the Jewish Sabbath, and it was the duty of Christian magistrates to enforce its strict observance. The opponents of Puritanism took a precisely opposite view. The institution of the Christian <319>Sunday, they argued, had been handed down simply by the oldest Church tradition, and it was therefore for the Church to say in what manner it should be observed. Nor could the Church, as a loving mother, forget that the mass of her children were hardly worked during six days of the week, and that it would be cruelty to deprive them of that relaxation which they had hitherto enjoyed.
The question assumed a practical shape through a dispute which had recently arisen in Somerset. It had long been a custom in that and The Somerset wakes.in the neighbouring counties to hold feasts under the name of wakes on the day of the saint to whom the parish church was dedicated. In the sixteenth century these wakes were, for the most part, transferred to the preceding or the following Sunday. Such convivial gatherings always afford a temptation to coarse and unrefined natures, and the wakes not unfreqently ended in drunkenness and in the indulgence of the lower passions. In the Interference of the judges.days of Queen Elizabeth the judges of assize and the justices of the peace had forbidden them as unlawful meetings for tippling. In 1615, two manslaughters having been committed at one of these festivals, a more stringent order was issued, in which ‘the continual profanation of God’s Sabbath’ was for the first time mentioned. In 1627 the judges directed that this order should be yearly published 1632.March.Richardson’s order.by every minister in his parish church, and a return made of those who had rendered obedience to this command. In 1632 these directions were reissued by Chief Justice Richardson.
Others besides the Puritans of the county gave their support to Richardson. Lord Poulett, who had thrown all his influence on the side of the Crown in the days of Buckingham, headed a petition against the wakes. On the other hand, Sir Robert Phelips, who had been drawing nearer to the Court ever since the disturbance at the end of the last session, complained to Laud, and Laud complained to the King, of the conduct of the judges.[454]
<320>Laud was specially indignant at the presumption of the judges in directing the clergy to read their orders in church, which Laud’s interference.he regarded as an interference with the jurisdiction of the bishop. The King approved of his objection, and sent a message to Richardson requiring him to 1633.Richardson revokes the order disrespectfully.revoke the order at the next Lent Assizes. Richardson took no notice of the message. Before the summer assizes[455] Charles repeated his directions in person. The judge did not any longer venture to refuse obedience, but he took care to show that he was acting under compulsion.
Charles lost patience. Richardson was summoned before a Committee of the Council. Laud rated him soundly for his disobedience. Is rated by Laud.He left the room with tears in his eyes. “I have been almost choked,” he said, “with a pair of lawn sleeves.” He was forbidden ever to ride the Western Circuit again.
Laud had already written to Pierce, the new bishop of the diocese, requesting him to ask the opinion of some ministers in the county. Nov. 5.Report of Bishop Pierce.The bishop’s report was doubtless too highly coloured. The seventy-two ministers to whom he directed his questions were probably not selected at random, and they must have known what sort of answer would be acceptable to their ecclesiastical superiors; still it is difficult to set aside their evidence altogether. Friendships, they said, were cemented, and old quarrels made up at these gatherings. The churches were better frequented than on any other Sunday in the year. “I find also,” added Pierce, “that the people generally would by no means have these feasts taken away; for when the constables of some parishes came from the assizes about two years ago, and told their neighbours that the judges would put down these feasts, they answered that it was very hard if they could not entertain their kindred and friends once a year to praise God for his blessings, and to pray for the King’s <321>Majesty, under whose happy government they enjoyed peace and quietness, and they said they would endure the judge’s penalties rather than they would break off their feast-days. It is found also true by experience that many suits in law have been taken up at these feasts by mediation of friends, which could not have been so soon ended in Westminster Hall.”
The Bishop then pointed out what he considered to be the real motive for the objection taken. The precise sort, he said, disliked the feasts because they were held upon Sundays, ‘which they never call but Sabbath days, upon which they would have no manner of recreation.’ Some of the ministers whom he had consulted were of the contrary opinion. They thought that ‘if the people should not have their honest and lawful recreations upon Sundays after Evening Prayer, they would go either into tippling-houses, and there upon their ale-benches talk of matters of the Church or State, or else into conventicles.’[456]
Without waiting for Pierce’s reply, Charles ordered the republication of his father’s Declaration of Sports. The late King, Oct. 10.Republication of the Declaration of Sports.he said, had ‘prudently considered that, if these times were taken from them, the meaner sort which labour hard all the week should have no recreations at all to refresh their spirits.’ Once more it was announced from the throne that as soon as the Sunday afternoon service came to an end the King’s ‘good people’ were not to ‘be disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, Oct. 18.such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation, nor from having of May-games, Whit-ales and morris dances, and the setting up of maypoles, and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time without impediment or neglect of divine service.’[457]
As yet the only notion of liberty entertained by either of the Church parties was the removal of restrictions which the <322>opposite party considered it all-important to impose. The Puritan objected to the compulsory observance of the Laudian ceremonies. Laud objected to the compulsory observance of the Puritan Sabbath.
It was necessary that the King’s intentions should be as widely known as possible. As in the last reign, the readiest way seemed to be The Declaration to be read in churches.to order the clergy to read the Declaration from the pulpit. Once more the old difficulty occurred. There were many amongst the clergy to whom the Declaration was mere profanity, and some of these had the courage to act upon their opinions. One London clergyman read the Declaration first, and the ten commandments afterwards. “Dearly beloved,” he then said, “ye have heard the commandments of God and man, obey which you please.”[458] Others preserved an obstinate silence.[459] Many were suspended or deprived for their refusal. It is true that Richardson and the Somerset justices had not scrupled to require the clergy to read an announcement of an opposite character. Laud was nothing loth to follow their example. In his eyes a minister was bound, like a constable or a justice of the peace, to communicate the intentions of the Government to the people, whenever he was ordered to do so by the proper ecclesiastical authorities. If the Church gained in organisation in Laud’s hands, the gain was compensated by the loss of much of its spiritual influence.
If Charles was unwise in peremptorily directing the clergy to read a manifesto which many of them regarded as sinful, his 1634.Belief in witchcraft.conduct on the main question had been eminently judicious. He was equally judicious in dealing with another case upon which the wisest men were, in that age, likely to pronounce unwisely.
The belief in the reality of witchcraft was strongly rooted in the minds of the population. James I., in his book on Demonology, had only echoed opinions which were accepted freely by the multitude, and were tacitly admitted without <323>inquiry by the first intellects of the day. Bacon and Raleigh alike took the existence of witches for granted. Reginald Scot, indeed, wise before his time, had in 1584, discoursed to ears that would not hear on the shallowness of the evidence by which charges of witchcraft were sustained, but even Reginald Scot Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft. Harsnet’s Popish Impostures.did not venture to assert that witchcraft itself was a fiction. A few years later, Harsnet, who rose to be bishop of Norwich and Archbishop of York, charged certain Jesuits and priests with imposture in pretending to eject devils from possessed persons, in sheer forgetfulness of the fact that these priests did no more than take in sober earnestness the belief which was everywhere around them. There was, however, a slight indication that the tide was beginning The Witch of Edmonton.to turn in The Witch of Edmonton, a play produced on the London stage about 1622, the authors of which directed the compassion of their hearers to an old woman accused of having entered into a league with Satan, in order that she might obtain the power of inflicting diseases upon her neighbours and injury upon their cattle and their crops. Yet even here the old woman was treated as being in actual possession of the powers which she claimed. The sympathy of the audience was demanded for her, not because she was unjustly accused, but because she was driven to seek infernal aid by the brutality and ill-usage of her neighbours, who called her a witch long before she was one, and who beat her and ill-treated her in consequence.
Even this amount of sympathy was rarely asked for in London, and could never be looked for in country districts. Lancashire was The Lancashire witches.at that time the poorest county in England, and the least likely to shake off a prevalent superstition. In 1612 a whole bevy of miserable women had been hanged at Lancaster upon a charge of witchcraft, and a younger generation was prepared to repeat the accusations which had found credence in the days of their fathers. At the spring assizes in 1634 there were numerous condemnations, and Sir William Pelham, a gentleman of fortune and education, gravely expressed a suspicion that the Lancashire witches had had a hand in raising the storm by <324>which the King’s safety had been endangered in crossing from Burntisland to Leith in the preceding summer.[460]
Fortunately the judge who presided over the trial had his doubts, and reprieved the prisoners till he had time to communicate with the Council. June.Their examination by the bishop.Bishop Bridgeman, the bishop of Chester, was accordingly directed to examine into the case of the seven condemned women. He reported that three of them were already dead, and that another was sick beyond hope of recovery. Of the remaining three, Story of Margaret Johnson,he described Margaret Johnson, a widow of sixty years, as the penitent witch. “I will not,” she said, “add sin to sin. I have already done enough, yea too much, and will not increase it. I pray God I may repent.” This victim of the hallucinations of an unsound mind confessed herself to be a witch, and was spoken of by the bishop as ‘more often faulting in the particulars of her actions, as one having a strong imagination of the former, but of too weak a memory to retain or relate the others.’ The devil, she affirmed, had often met her as a gentleman dressed in black, offering her power to hurt whom she would in exchange for her soul. At last she consented, and took from him money which vanished immediately. Afterwards he appeared in the shapes of various animals and sucked her blood. She had still, she said, the mark of the wound which he had inflicted on her body.
The other two denied the truth of the accusation entirely. Frances Dicconson stated that she had been falsely accused of of Frances Dicconson,changing herself into a dog by a boy named Robinson, whose father had a quarrel with her husband, and that the second witness had fallen out with her over a bargain for some butter. and of Mary Spencer.Mary Spencer, a young woman of twenty, said that her accuser bore malice against her parents. Her father and mother had been convicted of witchcraft at the last assizes, and were now dead. She repeated the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and told the bishop that she defied the devil and all his works. A story had been told that she used to call her pail to follow her as <325>she ran. The truth was that she would often trundle it down hill, and call to it to come after her if she outstripped it. When she was in court she could have explained everything, ‘but the wind was so loud and the throng so great, as she could not hear the evidence against her.’
The last touch completes the tragedy of the situation. History occupies itself perforce mainly with the sorrows of the educated classes, whose own pens have left the record of their wrongs. Into the sufferings of the mass of the people, except when they have been lashed by long-continued injustice into frenzy, it is hard to gain a glimpse. For once the veil is lifted, and we see, as by a lightning flash, the forlorn and unfriended girl to whom the inhuman laws of her country denied the services of an advocate, baffled by the noisy babble around her in her efforts to speak a word on behalf of her innocence. The very bishop who now examined her was under the influence of the legal superstition that every accused person was the enemy of the King. He had heard, he said, that the father of the boy Robinson had offered, for forty shillings, to withdraw his charges against Frances Dicconson, ‘but such evidence being, as the lawyers speak, against the King,’ he ‘thought it not meet without further authority to examine.’[461]
Accused and accusers were summoned to London. Seven surgeons and midwives reported that Margaret Johnson had been July.The truth comes out.deceived in supposing that there was any mark on her body which could be appealed to as evidence that her blood had been sucked.[462] The boy Robinson, separated from his father, blurted out the truth to the King’s coachman. He had heard stories told of witches and their doings, and had invented the hideous tale to save himself a whipping for neglecting to bring home his mother’s cows.[463] The three women were admitted to an interview with the King, and were assured that their lives were no longer in danger. Yet even Charles did not think fit to set them at <326>liberty.[464] Still less had the detection of imposture any effect upon popular opinion. 1635.Fresh cases.In the spring of the following year, four more women were condemned to death as witches at the Lancashire assizes. Bishop Bridgeman, who was again ordered to make inquiries, found that two of the number had died in gaol, and that, of the remaining two, one had been condemned on the accusation of a madman and on the evidence of a beggar-woman of ill-repute. As to the other, there was nothing against her, except that a piece of flesh of the size of a hazel-nut grew on her right ear, the end of which being bloody was supposed to have been sucked by a familiar spirit.[465] These two women were doubtless pardoned, as the others had been, without being liberated. It might, perhaps, have endangered their lives to set them free. Their neighbours were no more inclined to disbelieve in the reality of witchcraft because certain persons had been falsely alleged to be witches, than men would now be inclined to disbelieve in the reality of murder because certain persons had been falsely alleged to be murderers. 1634.The witches on the stage.Two playwrights, Brome and Heywood, had already seen that it would strike the fancy of the public to bring the Lancashire witches on the stage. Even the step gained in The Witch of Edmonton was lost in the play now produced. Its authors gave no hint of any such ill-treatment as might have led the victims of superstition astray. All the lies of the boy Robinson were accepted as undoubted truths. A London audience was called to listen credulously to stories of women transformed into dogs and of pails which trundled along the ground of their own accord. The leading incident of the drama is the bringing home to a gentleman, who had hitherto been sceptical on the subject of witchcraft, of the conviction that his own wife is one of the accursed crew, a conviction so complete that he cheerfully delivers her up to the gibbet, though his married life had been one of happiness and affection.
<327>It was not to be expected that the dramatic writers of the day should raise themselves far above the ignorance which Immorality of the stage.prevailed universally around. Unhappily they had every temptation to stoop to pander to the low and vulgar tastes of the audiences by whose applause they lived. Even Massinger, whose ideal of an unswerving and self-sustained virtue was nearly as high as that of Milton himself,[466] was guilty of introducing scenes of purposeless obscenity which were utterly unneeded for the delineation of character or the advancement of the plot.[467] In vain he sought to still the remonstrances of his conscience by arguing that the mere representation of evil conveyed a reproof to those who had come to laugh at the coarse jest or to gloat over the indecent action.[468] It may be that the half-felt reluctance injured his popularity. It is certain that Beaumont and Fletcher were, far more than Massinger, the favourites with the playgoers of the day, and Beaumont and Fletcher had never been tired of repeating in ever-varying forms the wearying tale of the siege laid by vice to the defences of female chastity. In their hands the woman who succumbs to temptation is only less repulsive than the woman who resists the seducer. Familiarity with evil is the same in both, and the absence of maidenly purity repels the more when it is associated with self-conscious vanity. The reader turns away sickened from the contemplation of the female rout, to seek, if he is wise, a health-giving draught from the cup of the master who drew the lineaments of Imogen and Cordelia.
There was much room for the lash of a wise and sympathetic critic. Unluckily the scourge was snatched by Prynne, and 1632.Histriomastix.Prynne never handled any argument without making it repulsive to those whom he sought to profit. He had long brooded over the iniquities presented in the theatres, and somewhere about 1624 had shown to Dr. Goad a portion of the book which he afterwards issued to the <328>world under the title of Histriomastix; A Scourge of Stage Players. He took special offence at the then prevalent custom of employing boys to represent female characters. As if it were not enough to dwell upon the cruelty of placing young boys in situations which could hardly fail to fill their minds with corrupting thoughts, he fell back upon the argument that under all circumstances it was a deadly sin for anyone to appear in the dress of the opposite sex. Goad was not convinced. “If,” he said, “a man in his house were besieged by pagans, would he not disguise himself in his maid’s apparel to escape?” “I would rather die first,” was the reply of the unbending theorist. So absolute a method of treating moral questions deprived Prynne’s arguments of all weight with reasonable men.
To such a writer it appeared unnecessary to study minutely the phases of the evil which he unsweepingly condemned. There was no measure in his indignation. Stage plays, from Antigone or King Lear down to the last tale of incest which had issued from the brain of Ford,[469] were all alike treated as the spawn of the devil, as hateful provocatives to drunkenness and lust. The fathers of the Church, the philosophers and historians of antiquity, the divines of more recent times, were equally available as evidence. The author’s original vituperation was swelled by a mass of extract and quotation till it covered more than a thousand wearisome pages. The reader is tempted to doubt the existence of an evil which is assailed by abuse so unmeasured, and of the details of which the writer appears to know so little. Prynne had indeed scarcely ever entered a theatre, and there is no evidence that he had even read the plays of his own day with any sort of attention.
By 1630 the book, much increased in bulk, was ready to be given to the world. November.The book printed.Abbot’s chaplain glanced over the sheets with a friendly eye and licensed it for the press. The printing was finished about the end of October or the beginning of November 1632.[470]
<329>Heylyn, Laud’s chaplain, pounced upon the book as soon as it issued from the press, to examine it with unscrupulous malignity. One paragraph was specially offensive. In 1629, London had been visited by a company of French players which had offended English prejudices by assigning the female parts to actresses. The poor women were hooted from the stage and forced to return to their own country. Prynne’s wrath was Prynne’s attack upon female actors.moved as deeply by the appearance of women upon the stage as it had been moved before by the appearance of boys upon the stage. If indeed he had drawn attention to the indecency of exposing a young woman to the contamination of the scenes in which she would be expected to take part, he would have had on his side every man who held female modesty and innocence in respect. All this advantage he threw away by the unguarded violence of his attack. He did not ask that the theatre should be purified till its language became such as could be used with propriety in the presence of young and innocent women. He simply declared that at all times and under all circumstances female actors were notoriously deserving of the most degrading appellation which language can bestow upon a woman.
Unluckily for Prynne there was reason to believe that his words had a special application. About ten weeks after his last proof sheets were corrected, Was the Queen attacked?the Queen took part in a slight dramatic performance, The Shepherd’s Pastoral, from the pen of Walter Montague,[471] the second son of the Earl of Manchester, and Prynne afterwards argued that he could not possibly have aimed his shafts by anticipation at the royal actress. It is certain, however, that the intention of the Queen was known in <330>October, about the very time that Prynne was completing his proofs, and that the incriminated passage appeared on the last page of the book which was then passing through his hands.[472] Whether this attack were directly aimed at the Queen or not, there was enough in Prynne’s pages to rouse indignation. Dancing was declared to be scandalous and of ill-repute, and it was well known that the Queen was fond of dancing. To look on at a play was to be a sharer in degrading wickedness, and both Charles and Henrietta Maria were lovers of the drama. Prynne too had declared it to be the duty of magistrates to suppress stage-plays, and his warning might be interpreted as charging the King with remissness in the performance of his duty. Nero’s murder was spoken of as well deserved on account of his habit of frequenting plays, and an adverse critic might easily draw the inference that the author was of opinion that King Charles merited the same fate. Beyond the words to which exception was taken, there was a ring of Puritanism in the book which may well have given dire offence.
Prynne was sent to the Tower. The High Commission was to deal with him for Prynne sent to the Tower.words offensive to the clergy. A prosecution for libel was at the same time commenced against him in the Star Chamber.
Prynne’s bitterness of tone and the rashness of his denunciation awoke opposition beyond the precincts of the Court. Scarcely had 1633.November.The Inns of Court prepare a masque.Charles returned from Scotland when he learned that the Inns of Court were preparing a masque to be presented to him as a token of the detestation in which Prynne’s coarse abuse was held by his brother lawyers. The arrangements were entrusted to men who were soon to be arrayed on opposite sides. Young Edward Hyde, with Noy, who was soon to be the inventor of ship-money, and Herbert who, as Attorney-General, was to impeach the five members, were joined with Bulstrode Whitelocke, the son of the judge, and the future Keeper of the Great Seal under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and with Selden, who had been lately released from the prison into which he had <331>been cast as one of the prime movers of the disturbance in the last House of Commons. The display took place at Whitehall on February 2. 1634.Feb. 2.Its presentation.All the details were arranged with unusual magnificence. Large sums had been expended on the dresses of the actors. The spectators were equally splendid in their attire. So crowded was the Banqueting Hall with gaily attired ladies and with gentlemen of rank and quality, that the King and Queen when they arrived had some difficulty in reaching their seats. After the performance was at an end, some of the masquers were invited to dance with the Queen, and were flattered by her remark, that they were ‘as good dancers as ever she saw.’ Those who were less highly honoured had no difficulty in finding partners amongst the fairest and noblest ladies of the land. It was almost morning when the festivities were brought to an end with a stately banquet.[473]
The masque itself, The Triumph of Peace, from the pen of Shirley, was free from all indecency of expression. Four days later The Gamester, by the same writer, was acted in the presence of the King. As far as words went the play was innocent enough. It contained no coarse jests or gross expressions. For all that, the plot was profoundly immoral, and the plot had been suggested by Charles himself. The amusement is conveyed by situations in which criminal or vicious intentions are hindered by accidental circumstances from being carried into action, and the play as a whole is calculated to leave the audience under the impression that foul thoughts and desires defile not a man unless they have been realised in action.[474] It has often been said of Charles, that whatever his political failings may have been, he was at least <332>an artist and a Christian. The art of the play which he now patronised was in flagrant contradiction with the art of Shakspere. Its morality was in no less flagrant contradiction with the morality of the Sermon on the Mount.
The day after The Gamester was represented at Court, Prynne appeared before the Star Chamber. His own advocates seem to have Feb. 7.Star Chamber proceedings against Prynne.had little hope of an acquittal, and contented themselves with maintaining that his intentions had been good, and with giving a milder interpretation to some of his strongest expressions. Feb. 17.In the Court itself not a voice was raised in favour of moderation. Even Richardson, who could be so severe on the drunken revels of the poor, had no word to say against the profligacy of the rich. Laud, who was no doubt delighted to aim a blow at so bitter an opponent of his ecclesiastical system as the author of Lame Giles, his haltings, declared that to speak of frequenters of plays as ‘devils incarnate’ was a direct incitement to rebellion against a king who took pleasure in these entertainments. It was not true that plays were unlawful in themselves. “Take away the scurf and rubbish which they are incident unto, they are things indifferent.” As to the indecencies charged against them, ‘if there be such things now, it is a scandal and not to be tolerated.’ It was the business of the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels to see to that.
Laud, in short, excused his own remissness on the ground that the licensing of plays was out of his own official province. Such an excuse carried with it its own condemnation. The charge brought was that in the King’s Court a fountain of vice had been opened in the midst of the nation. Surely this concerned an Archbishop whose personal influence over his sovereign was greater than that of any prelate since the days of Wolsey. What were all the sins against uniformity to this, the hats placed by rude country peasants on the communion-table, or their slouching into church with their heads covered? If Prynne’s charge was true, Laud was but busy in cleaning the outside of the cup and the platter. If only a tithe of it was true, at least there would have been room for a man <333>of generous instincts to find some excuse for indignation which had hurried the combatant against vice into rash and unseemly words.
The sentence of the Court was extravagant in its brutality. Prynne was to be imprisoned for life, fined 5,000l., expelled from Lincoln’s Inn, The sentence.rendered incapable of returning to the practice of his profession, degraded from his degree in the University, and set in the pillory, where both his ears were to be cut off.[475]
Such a sentence was far more unjustifiable than that which had been passed four years before upon Leighton. Prynne had made no attack upon the constitution in Church or State. He had merely spoken in rude and intemperate language of amusements patronised by the King. Nevertheless there was no thought of remitting any part of his outrageous penalty. May 7.Its execution.The fine indeed remained unpaid, but on May 7 one of Prynne’s ears was shorn away at Westminster. Three days later his other ear was shorn away at Cheapside. Such copies of his book as could be found were burnt under the pillory so close to him that he was almost suffocated by the smoke.[476] The University of Oxford joyfully complied with the sentence, and thrust the author forth from its membership.
Prynne’s indomitable spirit was not to be crushed. In a long letter, couched in the most exasperating language, he replied to June.Prynne’s letter to Laud.Laud’s arguments, tore to shreds his defence of theatres, and charged him with illegality in issuing a warrant for the seizure of his books.
Laud placed the letter in Noy’s hands. The Attorney-General sent for the writer, and asked him whether it was in his handwriting. June 10.He destroys it.Prynne took it to the window on pretence of examining it more closely, tore it into small fragments, and flung the pieces out. “That,” he said, “will never rise in judgment against me.”
<334>The next day Prynne stood once more before the Star Chamber. Noy demanded that he might be prohibited from the June 11.Is brought again before the Star Chamber.use of pen and ink, and from going to church. This was too much for Laud. He was harsh in his judgments upon offences the root and origin of which he was unable to comprehend, but he was not cruel by nature. Noy’s proposal struck upon ground which was common to the prisoner and himself. “I confess,” he said, “I do not know what it is to be close prisoner, and to want books, pen, ink, and company.” If a man were left alone in such a case, who could tell into what temptations he might fall? Noy had said that Prynne was past all grace. If so, the more need he had of permission to go to church. As to the seizure of his books, it had been done without his knowledge, and he should have them back. Richardson, the ‘jeering judge,’ spoke in a different tone. “Let him have the Book of Martyrs, for the Puritans do account him a martyr.”[477]
The court appears to have inflicted no further penalty upon Prynne. Indeed his punishment was already so severe that it would be His sentence probably not unpopular.difficult to increase it. Yet there is no evidence to show that popular indignation was roused by his sentence. Nothing is heard of any token of disapprobation shown in the streets as the masquers passed along to Whitehall, or even when, a few weeks later, they threaded their way through the City to repeat their exhibition at Guildhall at the King’s command. No doubt there were not a few who regarded Prynne as an oracle. A lady had recently bequeathed a sum of money to Sion College for the purchase of books, accompanying her legacy with a request that Prynne’s works might be the first to be added to the library. The only actual complaint heard was a cry from the privileged classes. “Most men,” wrote D’Ewes, “were affrighted to see that neither his academical nor barrister’s gown could free him from the infamous loss of his ears.”[478] They complained, in short, not that Prynne was unjustly punished, but <335>that his station in life was such that he ought not to be punished in such a way, whether he deserved it or not.
The grosser and more palpable enormities of the stage felt the weight of Prynne’s assault. The dramatic writers might Prynne’s action upon the drama.express their contempt for him as scornfully as they pleased. It is none the less true that from this time their productions became less openly indecent. For the subtler immorality of the drama, for the hateful teaching that the act alone is sinful, whilst the evil thought is blameless, Prynne’s coarse vituperation afforded no remedy. That theme needed to be dealt with in a higher strain than that which the legal bookworm had at his command. The fitting answer to Prynne’s railing was to embody pure thoughts and noble teaching in a dramatic form. No living Englishman was so capable of giving such a refutation as the singer of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. Milton soon found his opportunity. The Earl of Bridgewater, the son of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, had attached himself to Buckingham with undeviating devotion. Like others who honoured Charles’s favourite, he received his reward from Charles. In 1631 he was appointed President of Wales and the Marches. He did not take up his duties personally till 1634, and the festivities with which his arrival at his official residence at Ludlow Castle was greeted, only took place Milton’s Comus.in the autumn of that year. For these festivities Milton prepared his Comus at the instigation of his friend Henry Lawes, at that time the first musician in England.
To the spectators seated in the castle hall, the fair young girl, Lady Alice Egerton, who with her brothers took the leading part in the performance, was doubtless the central figure in the evening’s entertainment. We are no longer under the spell of that bright presence, but the spiritual beauty of the Lady of the Comus abides with us still. As yet Milton had not taken up a position of hostility to the Court, though he had already resolved to abandon his youthful intention of finding a place in the ranks of the clergy. He did not hesitate to place his talents at the disposal of so thorough a Royalist as the new Lord President of Wales. He could not give his voice for the sour asperities of the Histriomastix. Shakspere and Jonson, with <336>the older glories of the Athenian stage, had a place too deep in his reverence for that. But neither could he content himself with the uproarious jollities of the Inns of Court masquers. He had to appeal from Shirley and Ford to the great Shaksperian models, and to bring before a courtly audience the lesson that purity of thought and nobility of intention are to be sought first, in order that high and virtuous action may follow. Even beauty itself, Milton held, was but the outward garment of virtue.
“So dear to Heaven is saintly chastityThat when a soul is found sincerely so,A thousand liveried angels lackey her,Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,And in clear dream and solemn visionTell her of things that no gross ear can hearTill oft converse with heavenly habitantsBegin to cast a beam on the outward shape,The unpolluted temple of the mind,And turns it by degrees to the soul’s essence,Till all be made immortal. But, when lust,By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin,Lets in defilement to the inward parts,The soul grows clotted by contagion,Imbodies and imbrutes till she quite loseThe divine property of her first being.”[479]
<337>The beautiful soul makes beautiful the outward form; the base act debases the soul of him who commits it. This was Milton’s highest message to the world. This was the witness of Puritanism at its best. This was ‘the sage and serious doctrine of virginity,’ of that singleness of heart and spirit which is the safeguard of purity in marriage or out of marriage.
Between the ideal of womanhood formed by Milton in his youth and that of even such a man as Massinger there is a great gulf. Women of Milton and Massinger.To Milton the world is a place in which the lady can break the spells of Comus by the very force of innocence. To Massinger it is a place to be shunned and avoided as altogether evil. His Camiola can only find rest by its renunciation. “Look,” says the priest, when she declares her intention of spending the rest of her days in a nunnery —
“Look on this Maid of Honour, nowTruly honoured in her vowShe pays to heaven: vain delightBy day, or pleasure of the nightShe no more thinks of. This fair hair(Favours for great kings to wear)<338>Must now be shorn; her rich arrayChanged into a homely gray;The dainties with which she was fedAnd her proud flesh pampered,Must not be tasted; from the springFor wine, cold water we will bring,And with fasting mortifyThe feasts of sensuality.”
If Milton judged more truly of the great world around him, did not Massinger judge more truly of the world of the Court? Court poets.To the poets who were then in favour, the Carews and the Sucklings, a woman was no more than an enticing bodily form, whose capture might be the amusement of a few hours of leisure. Even with more serious men she was little more than a child of larger growth, capable of tender emotions and inspired with the spirit of sacrifice, but never to be treated as an equal. Married life of Wentworth.Wentworth himself, whose affections were deep, and who wrote that ‘the fellowship of marriage ought to carry with it more of love and equality than any other apprehension,’ never thought of imparting his highest joys and sorrows to his wife. He wrote to her when absent of the gossip of the day, of marriages made and planned; but if he is betrayed for a moment into the slightest hint of political news, he draws himself sharply up with ‘What’s all this to you wenches? What’s all this to you?’[480]
The state of female education was partly in fault. There were no Lady Jane Greys at Charles’s Court. Anne of Denmark had Female education.led the way in the race of frivolity, and Henrietta Maria had followed, in a more elegant way, in her predecessor’s steps. The Queen herself, like her husband, was The Queen’s Court.looked up to as a model of conjugal devotion. Her confessor was able to express his full assurance that no impure desire had ever crossed her mind;[481] but she <339>had no abhorrence of vice in others. It was enough for her if a man or a woman was clever, witty, and amusing; if a courtier could tell a story well, or make a good figure in a dance. Without seriousness of purpose herself, she gathered round her a frivolous and flighty crew, in which a serious thought was unknown.
One of those to whose good stories the Queen most loved to listen was Henry Jermyn. Shortly before his confinement Case of Henry Jermyn.on account of the part which he had taken in the challenge sent to Weston by Holland, he had seduced Eleanor Villiers, one of the Queen’s maids of honour, and a niece of the late Duke of Buckingham. With the prospect of becoming a mother, the poor girl confessed her shame, and the whole Villiers family angrily called upon the King to force Jermyn to make reparation to his victim by marrying her. The King consented, sent both parties to prison, and declared that, as he was certain that a promise of marriage had passed between them, Jermyn should either marry the lady or be banished for ever from the Court. Eleanor Villiers herself, however, distinctly admitted that there had been no promise of marriage. Her love for Jermyn, she said, was so great that she had made no conditions with him. Charles therefore contented himself with excluding his wife’s favourite from Court. Henrietta Maria, however, could not long dispense with the amusement which he gave her, and she soon persuaded her husband to call him back again, to be the life and soul of her festive gatherings at Somerset House.[482]
In a Court in which Jermyn formed a principal figure the ideas which Massinger embodied in his Maid of Honour grew. Reaction in favour of celibacy.There is a close connection between a low state of female attainment and a superstitious reverence for a celibate life. If the best to which a beautiful girl can look is to be flattered with empty nothings about the roses on her cheeks and the whiteness of her bosom, her higher nature will revolt against a life so empty and so purposeless. <340>She will look upon unmarried life as something holy and virtuous in itself, not as something preferable to the society of a coarse-minded and vulgar husband, or as affording special opportunities of usefulness. Even writers like Habington, who turned aside from the allurements of profligacy, did not succeed in painting married life in very attractive colours. His Castara, as for poetic purposes he termed his wife, was praised rather for her negative than for her positive qualities — for her demure coyness in the presence of men, rather than as a living spring of influence for good upon her family and friends. Habington, as he writes, seems scarcely able to control his satisfaction that his beloved wife is not an adulteress.
Such a tone of thought gave many an opening to the Jesuits. The Laudian ceremonies were often tried and found wanting. Laud without female admirers.Laud himself was too hard and unbending, too careful of the framework of ecclesiastical life, to exercise influence over the heart of woman. No leader of any great Church party before or since was ever so entirely without female admirers. The imagination was left untouched, and the devotional feeling was scarcely roused by the cry of obedience to the letter of the rubrics, which was the Beauty of Holiness to Laud.
As yet the womanhood of England was nurtured in the great Protestant tradition. In the home of the citizen or the country gentleman, The women of England Puritan.the wife was of far greater importance than she was in the household of a great lord or a minister of state. As a helper of the poor, or as the maintainer of kindliness amongst neighbours, she could share in the work of the master of the house; and in the simple personal religion which she drew from the Bible and from a few text-books of Protestant theology, she found herself bound to her husband by a tie which secured his respect. There is a mingled strength and sweetness in the characters of the Englishwomen who confront us in the biographical sketches of the day the moment we leave the precincts of the Court. Margaret Winthrop, Isabella Twisden, and in a later generation Anne Murray and Alice Thornton offer but various developments of the same type. It matters little whether in after times <341>they range themselves from family association on the side of King or Parliament; it matters little whether they seek support in their spiritual troubles in the Common Prayer-book or in Puritan books of devotion. The foundation of the character is essentially Protestant, if not Puritan. They seem to have caught the final adjuration of the Spirit of the Comus:—
“Mortals, that would follow me,Love Virtue; she alone is free:She can teach ye how to climbHigher than the sphery chime;Or if Virtue feeble were,Heaven itself would stoop to her.”
[421] Heylyn, Cypr. Angl. 250.
[422] Abbot’s Report, Jan. 2, 1633, Laud’s Works, v. 309.
[423] Kendrick to Windebank, Sept. 13. Same to Windebank, Sept. 26, Oct. 5. Windebank’s Notes, Nov. 13, S. P. Dom. ccxlvi. 28, 82, ccxlvii. 21, ccl. 59. Laud to Wentworth, Nov. 15, Strafford Letters, 1, 155; sentence, Rushworth, ii. App. 65. The fine appears never to have been paid.
[424] As Heylyn tells the story, and as it has constantly been repeated, she tried to get the anagram out of Eleanor Davis. What I have given must be right, as it stands so on the title-page. Lambe’s anagram is only right by spelling Davies. The book is in S. P. Dom. cclv. 21.
[425] Nicholas to Pennington, Oct. 28. Lines and petition, S. P. Dom. ccxlviii. 65, 93, cclv. 20.
[426] Petition of Lady Hastings, S. P. Dom. cclv. 21.
[427] The King to Laud, Sept. 19, Heylyn, 240.
[429] Macaulay exaggerates when he says, ‘nor would it be easy to find in the comedy of the seventeenth century a single instance of a clergyman <305>who wins a spouse above the rank of a cook.’ In Fletcher’s Scornful Lady, which he quotes. Roger marries ‘a waiting gentlewoman,’ i.e. a lady of equal birth with her mistress, taking service, as Buckingham’s mother did, on account of poverty.
[430] Laud’s Report, Jan. 2, 1634, Works, v. 317.
[431] Works, iii. 396.
[432] Works, iv. 141.
[433] Ibid. iii. 396.
[434] Montague to the clergy of his diocese, 1633 (?). Laud to the Lord Mayor, Jan. 22. The King to Laud, April 23, S. P. Dom. cclvii. 114, cclix. 22, cclxvi. 21.
[435] Council Register, Jan. 18, 1632. Report by Noy and Rives, March. Windebank to the King, Oct. 20. Articles by the King, 1632 (?) S. P. Dom. ccxiv. 94, ccxxiv. 20, ccxxix. 116. Compare Dugdale, Hist. of St. Paul’s, 145.
[436] Williams to Burdin, June 19. Williams to the Mayor of Leicester, Sept. 18, S. P. Dom. ccxli. 18, ccxlvi. 42. The date of this last letter controverts Heylyn’s statement (Cypr. Angl. 269) that Williams’s directions were intended as an answer to the King’s decision in the case of St. Gregory’s.
[437] Stow’s London, iii. 227.
[438] The original act was destroyed in the Fire of London, but a copy has been preserved, of which Mr. Napper kindly lent me a photograph. A translation was read by him before the Surrey Archæological Society in 1871, and was edited for their Transactions by Mr. J. G. Nichols.
[439] Articles. Oct. 18, S. P. Dom. ccxlviii. 18.
[440] Prynne, Cant. Doom, 87; Laud’s Works, iv. 225. This judgment quite accounts for the fact that the laity did not afterwards appeal to the courts. They had no chance of obtaining a hearing.
[441] It is true that Charles laid stress on the fact that only five persons had appealed. But without further inquiry, this fact was unimportant. The poorer or less influential members of the congregation may have left their case to be represented by the five.
[442] Corbet’s speech to the clergy, April 29, 1634, S. P. Dom. cclxvi. 58.
[443] Heylyn, Cypr. Angl. 219.
[444] See Vol. I. pp. 309–316.
[445] Brereton’s Travels, 6.
[446] Fresh Suit, Pref. Sig. h.
[447] Instructions to Boswell, Aug. 2, 1632; Declaration of the Merchant Adventurers, Nov. 27; Misselden to Windebank, Jan. 22, 1633; Boswell to Coke, March 8; Order of the States-General, April 12⁄22: Boswell to Coke, April 30, S. P. Holland.
[448] Boswell to Coke, Sept. 5, S. P. Holland. Goffe to Sheldon, Feb. 3; Laud and Juxon to the Merchants, June 21, S. P. Dom. cclx. 13, cclxx. 3.
[449] Covenant of Hugh Peters, Dec. 10, 1633, S. P. Dom. cclii. 12.
[450] Boswell to Coke, Dec. 4, 1633; Jan. 2, 1634, S. P. Holland.
[451] Palfrey, Hist. of New England, i. 364.
[452] Dade to Laud, Feb. 4, S. P. Dom. cclx. 17; Council Register, Feb. 21, 28.
[453] The Commissioners to the Justices of the Peace, April 1, S. P. Dom. cclxv. 6.
[454] In a letter from the King to Phelips, dated Aug. 30, 1629 (Hist. MSS. Reports, iii. 282), Charles asks him to look to his interest rather <320>than to the favour of the multitude, an expression which would hardly have been used if Phelips had not separated himself from Eliot. All that we know of Phelips during the rest of his life points to the same inference.
[455] Prynne gives the date of this as 1634, which must be a mistake.
[456] Prynne, Cant. Doom, 128. Heylyn, Cypr. Angl. 241. Laud’s Works, iv. 133. The King to Phelips, May 2. Order to Phelips and Richardson, Nov. 12, Hist. MSS. Reports, iii. 286.
[457] Rushworth, ii. 193.
[458] Garrard to Wentworth, Dec. 6, Strafford Letters, i. 166.
[459] Laud’s Works, iv. 25. Prynne, Cant. Doom, 148.
[460] Pelham to Conway, May 16, S. P. Dom. cclxviii. 12.
[461] Bishop Bridgeman to Coke and Windebank, June 15, S. P. Dom. cclxix. 85.
[462] Certificate of surgeons and midwives, July 2, ibid. ccclxxi. 9.
[463] Examination of Robinson, July 16, ibid. cclxxi. 91.
[464] In 1636, F. Dicconson and M. Spencer, with eight other persons, were still confined as witches in Lancaster gaol. Farington Papers, 27. Chetham Society.
[465] Bishop Bridgeman to Coke, March 13, May 11, 1635, Melbourne MSS.
[466] Professor Hales pointed out to me the Miltonic character of the scene between Antiochus and the Courtesan in Believe as You List.
[467] An instance of this is in the conversation of the Gentlewoman with Francisco in the Duke of Milan, iii. 2.
[468] The Roman Actor, i. 3.
[469] ’Tis pity she’s a whore was printed in 1633, and had no doubt been upon the stage for some months.
[470] The dates are from Prynne’s letter to Laud of June 11, 1634. Documents relating to Prynne, Camd. Soc. He there says that the book was <329>‘finished at the press about ten weeks before her Majesty’s Pastoral,’ which, as we learn from Salvetti’s News-Letter of Jan. 11⁄21, was acted on Jan. 9⁄19, 1633.
[471] In the Museum Library is a copy dated 1629, the date which is usually given as that of the first edition. But as the comedy is said on the title-page to have been ‘privately acted before the late King Charles,’ this is doubtless a misprint. As the publisher’s name is not the same as that of the 1659 edition, it possibly ought to be 1649. Mr. Arber informs me that it is not entered in the Stationers’ lists in 1629.
[472] Salvetti’s News-Letters, Oct. 19⁄29, Nov. 2⁄12.
[473] Whitelocke, 19.
[474] See, as a further illustration, The Witty Fair One, by the same author, in which a libertine who is baffled in an attempt to seduce a lady is rewarded by the hand of that lady upon a mere profession to live virtuously hereafter. She is represented as herself perfectly modest and virtuous, but she lets herself make immodest proposals in jest simply because she does not mean to allow them to be accepted, and she seems to have no notion that there is any corruption in the mind of her lover accruing from his former life.
[475] Whitelocke, 22. The report of the trial printed in Documents relating to Prynne, Camd. Soc. is far better than that in the State Trials, where the date is wrongly given as 1632–3. Laud’s speech is in his Works, vi. 234.
[476] State Trials, iii. 586. Garrard to Wentworth, Straff. Letters, i. 260.
[477] Prynne to Laud, June (?) Documents relating to Prynne. Rushworth, ii. 247. Laud’s Diary, Works, iii. 221.
[478] Autobiography, ii. 105.
[479] The germ of this is perhaps in the Duke’s words in Measure for Measure (iii. 1). “The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.” Afterwards, in pleading for Angelo, Isabella maintains the opposite position (v. 1):—
“For Angelo,His act did not o’ertake his bad intent;And must be buried but as an intentThat perished by the way: thoughts are no subjects;Intents but merely thoughts.”
The thought of the first of these two passages finds, as was pointed out to me by Professor Hales, a still more striking expression in Spenser’s Hymn of Beauty. Thus, for instance:—
<337>“So every spirit, as it is most pure,And hath in it the more of heavenly light,So it the fairer body doth procureTo habit in, and it more fairly dightWith cheerful grace and amiable sight;For of the soul the body form doth take;For soul is form, and doth the body make.”
It is possible, on the other hand, that Milton was repelled by the lines put into the mouth of the infamous Giovanni by Ford in ’Tis pity she’s a whore, published the year before (ii. 5):—
It is a principle which you have taughtWhen I was yet your scholar, that the frameAnd composition of the mind doth followThe frame and composition of the body.So, where the body’s furniture is beauty,The mind’s must needs be virtue.”
The speech of Comus (706) looks very like a résumé of opinions which are sown broadcast in the dramas of the day.
[480] Wentworth’s letters to his wife are published by Miss Cooper in her Life of Wentworth.
[481] Con to Card. Barberini, Aug. 15⁄25, Add. MSS. 15,389, fol. 196.
[482] Examination of Eleanor Villiers, May 6, 1633, S. P. Dom. ccxxxviii. 35. Clarendon, Life, i. 13. Garrard to Wentworth, Jan. 9, 1634, Strafford Letters, i. 174.