ARCHBISHOP LAUD.
1633-1639
Archbishop Laud.--The Church.--System of the English Church.--The
Archbishop of Canterbury.--Canterbury.--The
Cathedral.--Officers.--Laud made archbishop.--His business
capacity.--Laud's character.--Episcopacy in England and the
United States.--Opposition to the Established Church.--The
Puritans.--Disputes about the services of the Church.--Controversy
about amusements on Sunday.--Laud's contention with the
judges.--Severe punishments for expression of opinion.--Case
of Lilburne.--His indomitable spirit.--The young lawyer's
toast.--Ingenious plea.--Laud's designs upon the Scotch
Church.--Motives of Laud and the king.--The Liturgy.--The
Scotch.--Laud prepares them a Liturgy.--Times of tumult.--Preaching
to an empty church.--The Scotch rebel.--The king's fool.--A
general assembly called in Scotland.--The king's expedition to the
north.--The army at York.--The oath.--The king's march.--Artifice
of the Scots.--The compromise.--The army disbanded.--The king's
difficulties.--He thinks of a Parliament.
In getting so deeply involved in difficulties with his people, King
Charles did not act alone. He had, as we have already explained, a
great deal of help. There were many men of intelligence and rank who
entertained the same opinions that he did, or who were, at least,
willing to adopt them for the sake of office and power. These men he
drew around him. He gave them office and power, and they joined him in
the efforts he made to defend and enlarge the royal prerogative, and
to carry on the government by the exercise of it. One of the most
prominent and distinguished of these men was Laud.
The reader must understand that _the Church_, in England, is very
different from any thing that exists under the same name in this
country. Its bishops and clergy are supported by revenues derived from
a vast amount of property which belongs to the Church itself. This
property is entirely independent of all control by the people of the
parishes. The clergyman, as soon as he is appointed, comes into
possession of it in his own right; and he is not appointed by the
people, but by some nobleman or high officer of state, who has
_inherited_ the right to appoint the clergyman of that particular
parish. There are bishops, also, who have very large revenues,
likewise independent; and over these bishops is one great dignitary,
who presides in lofty state over the whole system. This officer is
called the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is one other archbishop,
called the Archbishop of York; but his realm is much more limited and
less important. The Archbishop of Canterbury is styled the Lord
Primate of all England. His rank is above that of all the peers of the
realm. He crowns the kings. He has two magnificent palaces, one at
Canterbury and one at London, and has very large revenues, also, to
enable him to maintain a style of living in accordance with his rank.
He has the superintendence of all the affairs of the Church for the
whole realm, except a small portion pertaining to the archbishopric of
York. His palace in London is on the bank of the Thames, opposite
Westminster. It is called Lambeth Palace.
[Illustration: LAMBETH PALACE.]
The city of Canterbury, which is the chief seat of his dominion, is
southeast of London, not very far from the sea. The Cathedral is
there, which is the archbishop's church. It is more than five hundred
feet in length, and the tower is nearly two hundred and fifty feet
high. The magnificence of the architecture and the decorations of the
building correspond with its size. There is a large company of
clergymen and other officers attached to the service of the Cathedral.
They are more than a hundred in number. The palace of the archbishop
is near.
The Church was thus, in the days of Charles, a complete realm of
itself, with its own property, its own laws, its own legislature, and
courts, and judges, its own capital, and its own monarch. It was
entirely independent of the mass of the people in all these respects,
as all these things were wholly controlled by the bishops and clergy,
and the clergy were generally appointed by the noblemen, and the
bishops by the king. This made the system almost entirely independent
of the community at large; and as there was organized under it a vast
amount of wealth, and influence, and power, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who presided over the whole, was as great in authority as
he was in rank and honor. Now Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury.
King Charles had made him so. He had observed that Laud, who had been
advanced to some high stations in the Church by his father, King
James, was desirous to enlarge and strengthen the powers and
prerogatives of the Church, just as he himself was endeavoring to do
in respect to those of the throne. He accordingly promoted him from
one post of influence and honor to another, until he made him at last
Archbishop of Canterbury. Thus he was placed upon the summit of
ecclesiastical grandeur and power.
He commenced his work, however, of strengthening and aggrandizing the
Church, before he was appointed to this high office. He was Bishop of
London for many years, which is a post, in some respects, second only
to that of Archbishop of Canterbury. While in this station, he was
appointed by the king to many high civil offices. He had great
capacity for the transaction of business, and for the fulfillment of
high trusts, whether of Church or state. He was a man of great
integrity and moral worth. He was stern and severe in manners but
learned and accomplished. His whole soul was bent on what he
undoubtedly considered the great duty of his life, supporting and
confirming the authority of the king and the power and influence of
English Episcopacy. Notwithstanding his high qualifications, however,
many persons were jealous of the influence which he possessed with the
king, and murmured against the appointment of a churchman to such high
offices of state.
There was another source of hostility to Laud. There was a large part
of the people of England who were against the Church of England
altogether. They did not like a system in which all power and
influence came, as it were, from above downward. The king made the
noblemen, the noblemen made the bishops, the bishops made the clergy,
and the clergy ruled their flocks; the flocks themselves having
nothing to say or do but to submit. It is very different with
Episcopacy in this country. The people here choose the clergy, and the
clergy choose the bishops, so that power in the Church, as in every
thing else here, goes from below upward. The two systems, when at
rest, look very similar in the two countries; but when in action, the
current of life flows in contrary directions, making the two
diametrically opposite to each other in spirit and power. In England,
Episcopacy is an engine by which the people are ecclesiastically
governed. Here, it is the machinery by which they govern. Thus, though
the forms appear similar, the action is very diverse.
Now in England there was a large and increasing party that hated and
opposed the whole Episcopal system. Laud, to counteract this tendency,
attempted to define, and enlarge, and extend that system as far as
possible. He made the most of all the ceremonies of worship, and
introduced others, which were, indeed, not exactly new, but rather
ancient ones revived. He did this conscientiously, no doubt, thinking
that these forms of devotion were adapted to impress the soul of the
worshiper, and lead him to feel, in his heart, the reverence which his
outward action expressed. Many of the people, however, bitterly
opposed these things. They considered it a return to popery. The more
that Laud, and those who acted with him, attempted to magnify the
rites and the powers of the Church, the more these persons began to
abhor every thing of the kind. They wanted Christianity itself, _in
its purity_, uncontaminated, as they said, by these popish and
idolatrous forms. They were called _Puritans_.
There were a great many things which seem to us at the present day of
very little consequence, which were then the subjects of endless
disputes and of the most bitter animosity. For instance, one point was
whether the place where the communion was to be administered should be
called the communion table or the altar; and in what part of the
church it should stand; and whether the person officiating should be
called a priest or a clergyman; and whether he should wear one kind of
dress or another. Great importance was attached to these things; but
it was not on their own account, but on account of their bearing on
the question whether the Lord's Supper was to be considered only a
ceremony commemorative of Christ's death, or whether it was, whenever
celebrated by a regularly authorized priest, _a real renewal_ of the
sacrifice of Christ, as the Catholics maintained. Calling the
communion table an altar, and the officiating minister a priest, and
clothing him in a sacerdotal garb, countenanced the idea of a renewal
of the sacrifice of Christ. Laud and his co-adjutors urged the adoption
of all these and similar usages. The Puritans detested them, because
they detested and abhorred the doctrine which they seemed to imply.
Another great topic of controversy was the subject of amusements. It
is a very singular circumstance, that in those branches of the
Christian Church where rites and forms are most insisted upon, the
greatest latitude is allowed in respect to the gayeties and amusements
of social life. Catholic Paris is filled with theaters and dancing,
and the Sabbath is a holiday. In London, on the other hand, the number
of theaters is small, dancing is considered as an amusement of a more
or less equivocal character, and the Sabbath is rigidly observed; and
among all the simple Democratic churches of New England, to dance or
to attend the theater is considered almost morally wrong. It was just
so in the days of Laud. He wished to encourage amusements among the
people, particularly on Sunday, after church. This was partly for the
purpose of counteracting the efforts of those who were inclined to
Puritan views. They attached great importance to their sermons and
lectures, for in them they could address and influence the people. But
by means of these addresses, as Laud thought, they put ideas of
insubordination into the minds of the people, and encroached on the
authority of the Church and of the king. To prevent this, the
High-Church party wished to exalt the _prayers_ in the Church service,
and to give as little place and influence as possible to the sermon,
and to draw off the attention of the people from the discussions and
exhortations of the preachers by encouraging games, dances, and
amusements of all kinds.
The judges in one of the counties, at a regular court held by them,
once passed an order forbidding certain revels and carousals connected
with the Church service, on account of the immoralities and disorders,
as they alleged, to which they gave rise; and they ordered that public
notice to this effect should be given by the bishop. The archbishop,
Laud, considered this an interference on the part of the civil
magistrates, with the powers and prerogatives of the Church. He had
the judges brought before the council, and censured there; and they
were required by the council to revoke their order at the next court.
The judges did so, but in such a way as to show that they did it
simply in obedience to the command of the king's council. The people,
or at least all of them who were inclined to Puritan views, sided
with the judges, and were more strict in abstaining from all such
amusements on Sunday than ever. This, of course, made those who were
on the side of Laud more determined to promote these gayeties. Thus,
as neither party pursued, in the least degree, a generous or
conciliatory course toward the other, the difference between them
widened more and more. The people of the country were fast becoming
either bigoted High-Churchmen or fanatical Puritans.
Laud employed the power of the Star Chamber a great deal in the
accomplishment of his purpose of enforcing entire submission to the
ecclesiastical authority of the Church. He even had persons sometimes
punished very severely for words of disrespect, or for writings in
which they censured what they considered the tyranny under which they
suffered. This severe punishment for the mere expression of opinion
only served to fix the opinion more firmly, and disseminate it more
widely. Sometimes men would glory in their sufferings for this cause,
and bid the authorities defiance.
One man, for instance, named Lilburne, was brought before the Star
Chamber, charged with publishing seditious pamphlets. Now, in all
ordinary courts of justice, no man is called upon to say any thing
against himself. Unless his crime can be proved by the testimony of
others, it can not be proved at all. But in the Star Chamber, whoever
was brought to trial had to take an oath at first that he would answer
all questions asked, even if they tended to criminate himself. When
they proposed this oath to Lilburne, he refused to take it. They
decided that this was contempt of court, and sentenced him to be
whipped, put in the pillory, and imprisoned. While they were whipping
him, he spent the time in making a speech to the spectators against
the tyranny of bishops, referring to Laud, whom he considered as the
author of these proceedings. He continued to do the same while in the
pillory. As he passed along, too, he distributed copies of the
pamphlets which he was prosecuted for writing. The Star Chamber,
hearing that he was haranguing the mob, ordered him to be gagged. This
did not subdue him. He began to stamp with his foot and gesticulate;
thus continuing to express his indomitable spirit of hostility to the
tyranny which he opposed. This single case would be of no great
consequence alone, but it was not alone. The attempt to put Lilburne
down was a symbol of the experiment of coercion which Charles in the
state, and Laud in the Church, were trying upon the whole nation; it
was a symbol both in respect to the means employed, and to the success
attained by them.
One curious case is related, which turned out more fortunately than
usual for the parties accused. Some young lawyers in London were
drinking at an evening entertainment, and among other toasts they
drank confusion to the Archbishop of Canterbury. One of the waiters,
who heard them, mentioned the circumstance, and they were brought
before the Star Chamber. Before their trial came on, they applied to a
certain nobleman to know what they should do. "Where was the waiter,"
asked the nobleman, "when you drank the toast?" "At the door." "Oh!
very well, then," said he; "tell the court that he only heard a part
of the toast, as he was going out; and that the words really were,
'Confusion to the Archbishop of Canterbury's enemies.'" By this
ingenious plea, and by means of a great appearance of humility and
deference in the presence of the archbishop, the lawyers escaped with
a reprimand.
Laud was not content with establishing and confirming throughout all
England the authority of the Church, but attempted to extend the same
system to Scotland. When King Charles went to Scotland to be crowned,
he took Laud with him. He was pleased with Laud's endeavors to enlarge
and confirm the powers of the Church, and wished to aid him in the
work. There were two reasons for this. One was, that the same class of
men, the Puritans, were the natural enemies of both, so that the king
and the archbishop were drawn together by having one common foe. Then,
as the places in the Church were not hereditary, but were filled by
appointments from the king and the great nobles, whatever power the
Church could get into its hands could be employed by the king to
strengthen his own authority, and keep his subjects in subjection.
We must not, however, censure the king and his advisers too strongly
for this plan. They doubtless were ambitious; they loved power; they
wished to bear sway, unresisted and unquestioned, over the whole
realm. But then the king probably thought that the exercise of such a
government was necessary for the order and prosperity of the realm,
besides being his inherent and indefeasible right. Good and bad
motives were doubtless mingled here, as in all human action; but then
the king was, in the main, doing what he supposed it was his duty to
do. In proposing, therefore, to build up the Church in Scotland, and
to make it conform to the English Church in its rites and ceremonies,
he and Laud doubtless supposed that they were going greatly to improve
the government of the sister kingdom.
There was in those days, as now, in the English Church, a certain
prescribed course of prayers, and psalms, and Scripture lessons, for
each day, to be read from a book by the minister. This was called the
Liturgy. The Puritans did not like a Liturgy. It tied men up, and did
not leave the individual mind of the preacher at liberty to range
freely, as they wished it to do, in conducting the devotional
services. It was on this very account that the friends of strong
government _did_ like it. They wished to curtail this liberty, which,
however, they called license, and which they thought made mischief. In
extemporaneous prayers, it is often easy to see that the speaker is
aiming much more directly at producing a salutary effect on the minds
of his hearers than at simply presenting petitions to the Supreme
Being. But, notwithstanding this evil, the existence of which no
candid man can deny, the enemies of forms, who are generally friends
of the largest liberty, think it best to leave the clergyman free. The
friends of forms, however, prefer forms on this very account. They
like what they consider the wholesome and salutary restraints which
they impose.
Now there has always been a great spirit of freedom in the Scottish
mind. That people have ever been unwilling to submit to coercion or
restraints. There is probably no race of men on earth that would make
worse slaves than the Scotch. Their sturdy independence and
determination to be free could never be subdued. In the days of
Charles they were particularly fond of freely exercising their own
minds, and of speaking freely to others on the subject of religion.
They thought for themselves, sometimes right and sometimes wrong; but
they would think, and they would express their thoughts; and their
being thus unaccustomed, in one particular, to submit to restraints,
rendered them more difficult to be governed in others. Laud thought,
consequently, that _they_, particularly, needed a Liturgy. He prepared
one for them. It was varied somewhat from the English Liturgy, though
it was substantially the same. The king proclaimed it, and required
the bishops to see that it was employed in all the churches in
Scotland.
The day for introducing the Liturgy was the signal for riots all over
the kingdom. In the principal church in Edinburgh they called out "_A
pope! A pope!_" when the clergyman came in with his book and his
pontifical robes. The bishop ascended the pulpit to address the people
to appease them, and a stool came flying through the air at his head.
The police then expelled the congregation, and the clergyman went
through with the service of the Liturgy in the empty church, the
congregation outside, in great tumult, accompanying the exercises with
cries of disapprobation and resentment, and with volleys of stones
against the doors and windows.
The Scotch sent a sort of embassador to London to represent to the
king that the hostility to the Liturgy was so universal and so strong
that it could not be enforced. But the king and his council had the
same conscientious scruples about giving up in a contest with
subjects, that a teacher or a parent, in our day, would feel in the
case of resistance from children or scholars. The king sent down a
proclamation that the observance of the Liturgy must be insisted on.
The Scotch prepared to resist. They sent delegates to Edinburgh, and
organized a sort of government. They raised armies. They took
possession of the king's castles. They made a solemn covenant, binding
themselves to insist on religious freedom. In a word, all Scotland was
in rebellion.
It was the custom in those days to have, connected with the court,
some half-witted person, who used to be fantastically dressed, and to
have great liberty of speech, and whose province was to amuse the
courtiers. He was called the _king's jester_, or, more commonly, _the
fool_. The name of King Charles's fool was Archy. After this rebellion
broke out, and all England was aghast at the extent of the mischief
which Laud's Liturgy had done, the fool, seeing the archbishop go by
one day, called out to him, "My lord! who is the fool now!" The
archbishop, as if to leave no possible doubt in respect to the proper
answer to the question, had poor Archy tried and punished. His
sentence was to have his coat pulled up over his head, and to be
dismissed from the king's service. If Laud had let the affair pass,
it would have ended with a laugh in the street; but by resenting it,
he gave it notoriety, caused it to be recorded, and has perpetuated
the memory of the jest to all future times. He ought to have joined in
the laugh, and rewarded Archy on the spot for so good a witticism.
The Scotch, besides organizing a sort of civil government, took
measures for summoning a general assembly of their Church. This
assembly met at Glasgow. The nobility and gentry flocked to Glasgow at
the time of the meeting, to encourage and sustain the assembly, and to
manifest their interest in the proceedings. The assembly very
deliberately went to work, and, not content with taking a stand
against the Liturgy which Charles had imposed, they abolished the
fabric of Episcopacy--that is, the government of bishops--altogether.
Thus Laud's attempt to perfect and confirm the system resulted in
expelling it completely from the kingdom. It has never held up its
head in Scotland since. They established Presbyterianism in its place,
which is a sort of republican system, the pastors being all officially
equal to each other, though banded together under a common government
administered by themselves.
The king was determined to put down this rebellion at all hazards. He
had made such good use of the various irregular modes of raising money
which have been already described, and had been so economical in the
use of it, that he had now quite a sum of money in his treasury; and
had it not been for the attempt to enforce the unfortunate Liturgy
upon the people of Scotland, he might, perhaps, have gone on reigning
without a Parliament to the end of his days. He had now about two
hundred thousand pounds, by means of which, together with what he
could borrow, he hoped to make one single demonstration of force which
would bring the rebellion to an end. He raised an army and equipped a
fleet. He issued a proclamation summoning all the peers of the realm
to attend him. He moved with this great concourse from London toward
the north, the whole country looking on as spectators to behold the
progress of this great expedition, by which their monarch was going to
attempt to subdue again his _other_ kingdom.
Charles advanced to the city of York, the great city of the north of
England. Here he paused and established his court, with all possible
pomp and parade. His design was to impress the Scots with such an
idea of the greatness of the power which was coming to overwhelm them
as to cause them to submit at once. But all this show was very hollow
and delusive. The army felt a greater sympathy with the Scots than
they did with the king. The complaints against Charles's government
were pretty much the same in both countries. A great many Scotchmen
came to York while the king was there, and the people from all the
country round flocked thither too, drawn by the gay spectacles
connected with the presence of such a court and army. The Scotchmen
disseminated their complaints thus among the English people, and
finally the king and his council, finding indications of so extensive
a disaffection, had a form of an oath prepared, which they required
all the principal persons to take, acknowledging allegiance to
Charles, and denying that they had any intelligence or correspondence
with the enemy. The Scotchmen all took the oath very readily, though
some of the English refused.
At any rate, the state of things was not such as to intimidate the
Scotch, and lead them, as the king had hoped, to sue for peace. So he
concluded to move on toward the borders. He went to Newcastle, and
thence to Berwick. From Berwick he moved along the banks of the Tweed,
which here forms the boundary between the two kingdoms, and, finding a
suitable place for such a purpose, the king had his royal tent
pitched, and his army encamped around him.
Now, as King Charles had undertaken to subdue the Scots by a show of
force, it seems they concluded to defend themselves by a show too,
though theirs was a cheaper and more simple contrivance than his. They
advanced with about three thousand men to a place distant perhaps
seven miles from the English camp. The king sent an army of five
thousand men to attack them. The Scotch, in the mean time, collected
great herds of cattle from all the country around, as the historians
say, and arranged them behind their little army in such a way as to
make the whole appear a vast body of soldiers. A troop of horsemen,
who were the advanced part of the English army, came in sight of this
formidable host first, and, finding their numbers so much greater than
they had anticipated, they fell back, and ordered the artillery and
foot-soldiers who were coming up to retreat, and all together came
back to the encampment. There were two or three military enterprises
of similar character, in which nothing was done but to encourage the
Scotch and dishearten the English. In fact, neither officers,
soldiers, nor king wished to proceed to extremities. The officers and
soldiers did not wish to fight the Scotch, and the king, knowing the
state of his army, did not really dare to do it.
Finally, all the king's council advised him to give up the pretended
contest, and to settle the difficulty by a compromise. Accordingly, in
June, negotiations were commenced, and before the end of the month
articles were signed. The king probably made the best terms he could,
but it was universally considered that the Scots gained the victory.
The king disbanded his army, and returned to London. The Scotch
leaders went back to Edinburgh. Soon after this the Parliament and the
General Assembly of the Church convened, and these bodies took the
whole management of the realm into their own hands. They sent
commissioners to London to see and confer with the king, and these
commissioners seemed almost to assume the character of embassadors
from a foreign state. These negotiations, and the course which affairs
were taking in Scotland, soon led to new difficulties. The king found
that he was losing his kingdom of Scotland altogether. It seemed,
however, as if there was nothing that he could do to regain it. His
reserved funds were gone, and his credit was exhausted. There was no
resource left but to call a Parliament and ask for supplies. He might
have known, however, that this would be useless, for there was so
strong a fellow-feeling with the Scotch in their alleged grievances
among the people of England, that he could not reasonably expect any
response from the latter, in whatever way he might appeal to them.