IN THE PURITAN PERIOD.
[Illustration: The Papal Gorgon. (Reign of Elizabeth, 1581.)]
The annexed picture,[15] a favorite with the Protestants of England,
Holland, and Germany for more than a century, is composed of twenty-two
articles and objects, most of which are employed in the Roman Catholic
worship. A church-bell forms the hat, which is decorated by crossed
daggers and holy-water brushes. A herring serves for a nose. The mouth
is an open wine-flagon. The eye is a chalice covered by the holy wafer,
and the cheek is a paten, or plate used in the communion service. The
great volume that forms the shoulders is the mass-book. The front of the
bell-tiara is adorned by a mitred wolf devouring a lamb, and by a goose
holding a rosary in its bill; the back, by a spectacled ass reading a
book, and by a boar wearing a scholar's cap. At the bottom of the
engraving the pierced feet of Christ are seen resting upon two creatures
called by the artist "the Queen's badges." The whole figure of Christ is
supposed to be behind this mass of human inventions; for in the original
these explanatory words are given, "Christ Covered."
[Footnote 15: From "Malcolm's Caricaturing," plate 2, and p. 23. See,
also, "Catalogue of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,"
Division I., vol. ii., p. 177.]
It was by this device that Master Batman, at the beginning of the
Puritan period, sought to present to the eye a summary of what the
Reformation had accomplished, and what it had still to fear. Half a
century before, Henry VIII. being still the Defender of the Faith, the
various articles used in Master Batman's satirical picture were objects
of religious veneration throughout Great Britain. They had now become
the despised but dreaded rattle-traps of a suppressed idolatry. From the
field of strife one of the victors gathered the scattered arms and
implements, the gorgeous ensigns and trappings of the defeated, and
piled them upon the plain, a trophy and a warning.
There is no revolution that does not sweep away much that is good. The
reformation in religion, chiefly wrought by Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and
Calvin, was a movement of absolute necessity to the further progress of
our race. The intelligence of Christendom had reached a development
which was incompatible with respect for the assumptions of the papacy,
and with a belief in the fictions which the papacy had invented or
adopted. The vase must have broken, or the oak planted in it must have
ceased to grow. Nevertheless, those fictions had their beauty and their
use. There was a good and pleasing side to that system of fables and
ceremonies, which amused, absorbed, and satisfied the people of Europe
for a thousand years. If we could concede that the mass of men must
remain forever ignorant and very poor, we could also admit that nothing
was ever invented by man better calculated to make them thoughtlessly
contented with a dismal lot than the Roman Catholic Church as it existed
in the fifteenth century, before the faith of the people had been shaken
in its pretensions. There was something in it for every faculty of human
nature except the intellect. It gave play to every propensity except the
propensity of one mind in a thousand to ask radical questions. It
relieved every kind of distress except that which came of using the
reason. All human interests were provided for in it except the supreme
interest of human advancement.
One must have been in a Catholic community, or else lived close to an
important Catholic church, in order to form an idea of the great part
the Church once played in the lives and thoughts of its members--the
endless provision it made for the _entertainment_ of unformed minds in
the way of festivals, fasts, processions, curious observances, changes
of costume, and special rites. There was always something going on or
coming off. There was not a day in the year nor an hour in the day which
had not its ecclesiastical name and character. In our flowery observance
of Easter and in our joyous celebration of Christmas we have a faint
traditional residue of festivals that once made all Christendom gay and
jocund. And it was all so adapted to the limited abilities of our race!
In an average thousand men, there is not more than one man capable of
filling creditably the post of a Protestant minister, but there are a
hundred who can be drilled into competent priests.
Consider, for example, a procession, which was formerly the great event
of many of the Church festivals, gratifying equally those who witnessed
and those who took part in it. In other words, it gratified keenly the
whole community. And yet how entirely it was within the resources of
human nature! Not a child so young, not a woman so weak, not a man so
old, but could assist or enjoy it. The sick could view it from their
windows, the robust could carry its burdens, the skillful could contrive
its devices, and all had the feeling that they were engaged in enhancing
at once the glory of God, the fame of their saint, the credit of their
town, and the good of their souls. It was pleasure; it was duty; it was
masquerade; it was devotion. Some readers may remember the exaltation of
soul with which Albert Duerer, the first of German artists in Luther's
age, describes the great procession at Antwerp, in 1520, in honor of
what was styled the "Assumption" of the Virgin Mary. One of the pleasing
fictions adopted by the old Church was that on the 15th of August, A.D.
45, the Virgin Mary, aged seventy-five years, made a miraculous ascent
into heaven. Hence the annual festival, which was celebrated throughout
Europe with pomp and splendor. The passage in the diary of Duerer has a
particular value, because it affords us a vivid view of the bright side
of the ancient Church just before the reformers changed its gorgeous
robes into the Puritan's plain black gown, and substituted the long
prayer and interminable sermon for the magnificent ceremonial and the
splendid procession.
Albert Duerer was in sympathy with Luther, but his heart swelled within
him as he beheld, on that Sunday morning in Antwerp, the glorious
pageantry that filed past for two hours in honor of the "Mother of
God's" translation. All the people of the city assembled about the
Church of "Our Lady," each dressed in gayest attire, but each wearing
the costume of his rank, and exhibiting the badge of his guild or
vocation. Silver trumpets of the old Frankish fashion, German drums and
fifes, were playing in every quarter. The trades and guilds of the
city--goldsmiths, painters, masons, embroiderers, statuaries,
cabinet-makers, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, butchers, curriers,
weavers, bakers, tailors, shoe-makers, and laborers--all marched by in
order, at some distance apart, each preceded by its own magnificent
cross. These were followed by the merchants, shop-keepers, and their
clerks. The "shooters" came next, armed with bows, cross-bows, and
firelocks, some on horseback and some on foot. The city guard followed.
Then came the magistrates, nobles, and knights, all dressed in their
official costume, and escorted, as our artist records, "by a gallant
troop, arrayed in a noble and splendid manner." There were a number of
women in the procession, belonging to a religious order, who gained
their subsistence by labor. These, all clad in white from head to foot,
agreeably relieved the splendors of the occasion. After them marched "a
number of gallant persons and the canons of Our Lady's Church, with all
the clergy and scholars, followed by a grand display of characters."
Here the enthusiasm of the artist kindles, as he recalls the glories of
the day:
"Twenty men carried the Virgin and Christ, most richly adorned, to the
honor of God. In this part of the procession were a number of delightful
things represented in a splendid manner. There were several wagons, in
which were representations of ships and fortifications. Then came a
troop of characters from the Prophets, in regular order, followed by
others from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation, the Wise Men
of the East riding great camels and other wonderful animals, and the
Flight into Egypt, all very skillfully appointed. Then came a great
dragon, and St. Margaret with the image of the Virgin at her girdle,
exceedingly beautiful; and last, St. George and his squire. In this
troop rode a number of boys and girls very handsomely arrayed in various
costumes, representing so many saints. This procession, from beginning
to end, was upward of two hours in passing our house, and there were so
many things to be seen that I could never describe them all even in a
book."
In some such hearty and picturesque manner all the great festivals of
the Church were celebrated age after age, the entire people taking part
in the show. There was no dissent, because there was no thought. But the
reformers preached, the Bible was translated into the modern tongues,
the intelligence of Christendom awoke, and all that bright childish
pageantry vanished from the sight of the more advanced nations. The
reformers discovered that there was no reason to believe that the aged
Virgin Mary, on the 15th of August, A.D. 45, was borne miraculously to
heaven; and in a single generation many important communities, by using
their reason even to that trifling extent, grew past enjoying the
procession annually held in honor of the old tradition. All the old
festivals fell under the ban. It became, at length, a sectarian
punctilio _not_ to abstain from labor on Christmas. The Puritan Sunday
was gradually evolved from the same spirit of opposition, and life
became intense and serious.
For it is not in a single generation, nor in ten, that the human mind,
after having been bound and confined for a thousand years, learns to
enjoy and safely use its freedom. Luther the reformer was only a little
less credulous than Luther the monk. He assisted to strike the fetters
from the reason, but the prisoner only hobbled from one cell into
another, larger and cleaner, but still a cell. No one can become
familiar with the Puritan period without feeling that the bondage of the
mind to the literal interpretation of some parts of the Old Testament
was a bondage as real, though not as degrading nor as hopeless, as that
under which it had lived to the papal decrees. You do not make your
canary a free bird by merely opening the door of its cage. It has to
acquire slowly, with anguish and great fear, the strength of wing,
lungs, and eye, the knowledge, habits, and instincts, which its
ancestors possessed before they were captured in their native islands.
It is only in our own day that we are beginning really to enjoy the
final result of Luther's heroic life--a tolerant and modest freedom of
thought--for it is only in our own day that the consequences of peculiar
thinking have anywhere ceased to be injurious.
If there are any who can not yet forgive the Puritans for their
intolerance and narrowness, it must be they who do not know the agony of
apprehension in which they passed their lives. It is the Puritan age
that could be properly called the Reign of Terror. It lasted more than a
century, instead of a few months, and it was during that long period of
dread and tribulation that they acquired the passionate abhorrence of
the papal system which is betrayed in the pictures and writings of the
time. There was a fund of terror in their own belief, in that awful
Doubt which hung over every soul, whether it was or was not one of the
Elect; and, in addition to that, it seemed to them that the chief powers
of earth, and all the powers of hell, were united to crush the true
believers.
[Illustration: Spayne and Rome Defeated. (London and Amsterdam, 1621.)]
Examine the two large caricatures, "Rome's Monster" and "Spayne and Rome
Defeated," in the light of a mere catalogue of dates. The Field of the
Cloth of Gold, which we may regard as the splendid close of the old
state of things, occurred in 1520, three years after Luther nailed up
his theses. Henry VIII. defied the Pope in 1533; and twenty years after,
Bloody Mary, married to Philip of Spain, was burning bishops at
Smithfield. Elizabeth's reign began in 1558, which changed, not ended,
the religious strife in England. The massacre of St. Bartholomew
occurred in 1572, on that 24th of August which, as Voltaire used to say,
all the humane and the tolerant of our race should observe as a day of
humiliation and sorrow for evermore. In 1579 began the long struggle
between the New and the Old, which is called the Thirty Years' War. The
Prince of Orange was assassinated in 1584, in the midst of those great
events which Mr. Motley has made familiar to the reading people of both
continents. Every intelligent Protestant in Europe felt that the weapon
which slew the prince was aimed at his own heart. The long dread of the
Queen of Scots' machinations ended only with her death in 1587. Soon
after, the shadow of the coming Spanish Armada crept over Great
Britain, which was not dispelled till the men of England defeated and
the storm scattered it in 1588. In 1605 Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder
Plot struck such terror to the Protestant mind, that it has not, in this
year, 1877, wholly recovered from it, as all may know who will converse
with uninstructed people in the remoter counties of Great Britain.
Raleigh was beheaded in 1618. The civil war began in 1642. In 1665 the
plague desolated England, and in the next year occurred the great fire
of London, good Protestants not doubting that both events were traceable
to the fell influence of the Beast. The accession of James II., a Roman
Catholic, filled the Puritans with new alarm in 1685, and during the
three anxious years of his reign their brethren, the Huguenots, were
fleeing into all the Protestant lands from the hellish persecution of
the priests who governed Louis XIV.
Upon looking back at this period of agitation and alarm, it startles the
mind to observe in the catalogue of dates this one: "Shakspeare died
1616." It shows us, what the ordinary records do not show, that there
are people who retain their sanity and serenity in the maddest times.
The rapid succession of the plays--an average of nearly two per
annum--proves that there was a _public_ for Shakspeare when all the
world seemed absorbed in subjects least akin to art and humor. And how
little trace we find of all those thrilling events in the plays! He was
a London actor when the Armada came; and during the year of the
Gunpowder Plot he was probably meditating the grandest of all his
themes, "King Lear!"
The picture entitled "Spayne and Rome Defeated"[16] was one of the most
noted and influential broadsheets published during the Puritan period.
It may properly be termed a broadsheet, since the copy of the original
in the British Museum measures 20-2/3 inches by 13. The Puritans of
England saw with dismay the growing cordiality between James I. and the
Spanish court, and watched with just apprehension the visit of Prince
Charles to Spain, and the prospect of a marriage between the
heir-apparent and a Spanish princess. At this alarming crisis, 1621, the
sheet was composed in England, and sent over to Holland to be engraved
and printed, Holland being then, and for a hundred and fifty years
after, the printing-house and type-foundry of Northern Europe. Some of
the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts, then residing at Leyden, and still
waiting to hear the first news of the _Mayflower_ company, who had
sailed the year before, may have borne a hand in the work. Pastor
Robinson, we know, gained part of his livelihood by co-operating with
brethren in England in the preparation of works designed for
distribution at home.
[Footnote 16: From Malcolm, who copied it from the original in the
British Museum. See Malcolm's "Caricaturing," plate 22.]
Besides being one of the most characteristic specimens of Puritan
caricature which have been preserved, it presents to us a _resume_ of
history, as Protestants interpreted it, from the time of the Spanish
Armada to that of Guy Fawkes--1588 to 1605. It appears to have been
designed for circulation in Holland and Germany as well as in England,
as the words and verses upon it are in English, Dutch, and Latin. The
English lines are these:
"In Eighty-eight, Spayne, arm'd with potent might,
Against our peacefull Land came on to fight;
But windes and waves and fire in one conspire,
To help the English, frustrate Spaynes desire.
To second that the Pope in counsell sitts,
For some rare stratagem they strayne their witts;
November's 5th, by powder they decree
Great Brytanes state ruinate should bee.
But Hee, whose never-slumb'ring Eye did view
The dire intendments of this damned crew,
Did soone prevent what they did thinke most sure.
Thy mercyes, Lord! for evermore endure."
This interesting sheet was devised by Samuel Ward, a Puritan preacher of
Ipswich, of great zeal and celebrity, who dedicated it, in the fashion
of the day, thus:
"To God. In memorye of his double deliveraunce from y{e}
invincible Navie and y{e} unmatcheable powder Treason, 1605."
It was a timely reminder. As we occasionally see in our own day a public
man committing the absurdity of replying in a serious strain to a
caricature, so, in 1621, the Spanish embassador in London, Count
Gondomar, called the attention of the British Government to this
engraving, complaining that it was calculated to revive the old
antipathy of the English people to the Spanish monarchy. The obsequious
lords of the Privy Council summoned Samuel Ward to appear before them.
After examining him, they remanded him to the custody of their
messenger, whose house was a place of confinement for such prisoners;
and there he remained. As there was yet no habeas corpus act known among
men, he could only protest his innocence of any ill designs upon the
Spanish monarchy, and humbly petition for release. He petitioned first
the Privy Council; and they proving obdurate, he petitioned the king. He
was set free at last, and he remained for twenty years a thorn in the
side of those who dreaded "Spayne and Rome" less than they hated
Puritans and Parliaments.
This persecution of Samuel Ward gave his print such celebrity that
several imitations or pirated editions of the work speedily appeared, of
which four are preserved in the great collection of the British Museum,
each differing from the original in details. Caricatures aimed directly
at the Spanish embassador followed, but they are only remarkable for the
explanatory words which accompany them. In one we read that the
residence of Count Gondomar in England had "hung before the eyes of many
good men like a prodigious comet, threatening worse effects to Church
and State than this other comet," which had recently menaced both from
the vault of heaven. "No ecclipse of the sunne," continues the writer,
"could more damnifie the earth, to make it barraine and the best things
abortive, than did his interposition." We learn also that when the count
left England for a visit to his own country, in 1618, "there was an
uproare and assault a day or two before his departure from London by the
Apprentices, who seemed greedy of such an occasion to vent their own
spleenes in doing him or any of his a mischiefe." Another picture
exhibits the odious Gondomar giving an account of his conduct in England
to the "Spanishe Parliament," in the course of which he attributes the
British abhorrence of Spain to such men as "Ward of Ipswich," whom he
describes as "light and unstayed wits," intent on winning the airy
applause of the vulgar, and to raise their desperate fortunes. Nor does
he refrain from chuckling over the penalty inflicted upon that enemy of
Spayne and Rome: "And I think that Ward of Ipswich escaped not safely
for his lewed and profane picture of '88 and their Powder Treason, one
whereof, my Lord Archbishop, I sent you in a letter, that you might see
the malice of these detestable Heretiques against his Holiness and the
Catholic Church." This broadsheet being entitled "Vox Populi," the
writer concludes his explanation by styling the embassador "Fox Populi,
Count Gondomar the Great."
[Illustration: From Title-page to a Sermon, "Woe to Drunkards," by
Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, 1627.]
Ward of Ipswich continued to be heard from occasionally during the first
years of the reign of Charles I. Ipswich itself acquired a certain
celebrity as a Puritan centre, and the name was given during the
life-time of Samuel Ward to a town in Massachusetts, which is still
thriving. One of his sermons upon drunkenness was illustrated by a
picture, of which a copy is given here,[17] designed to show the
degeneracy of manners that had taken place in England in his day. Mr.
Chatto truly remarks that twenty years later the picture would have been
more appropriate with the inscriptions transposed.
[Footnote 17: From Chatto's "Origin and History of Playing Cards," p.
131, London, 1848.]
The marriage of Charles I. with the Princess Henrietta of France, in
1625, was one of the long series of impolitic acts which the king
expiated on the scaffold in 1649. It aggravated every propensity of his
nature that was hostile to the liberties of the people. Under James I.
the _elite_ of the Puritans had fled to Holland, and a little company
had sought a more permanent refuge on the coast of New England. During
the early years of the reign of Charles, the persecution of the Puritans
by his savage bishops became so cruel and so vigilant as to induce men
of family and fortune, like Winthrop and his friends, accompanied by a
fleet of vessels laden with virtuous and thoughtful families, to cross
the ocean and settle in Massachusetts. Boston was founded when Charles
I. had been cutting off the ears and slitting the noses of Puritans for
five years. All that enchanting shore of New England, with its gleaming
beaches, and emerald isles, and jutting capes of granite and wild roses,
now so dear to summer visitors--an eternal holiday-ground and
resting-place for the people of North America--began to be dotted with
villages, the names of which tell us what English towns were most
renowned for the Puritan spirit two hundred and fifty years ago. The
satirical pictures preserved in the British Museum which relate to
events in earlier reigns number ninety-nine in all; but those suggested
by events in the reign of Charles I. are nearly seven hundred in number.
Most of them, however, were not published until after the downfall of
the king.
Several of these prints are little more than portraits of the
conspicuous persons of the time, with profuse accounts on the same sheet
of their sufferings or misdeeds. One such records the heroic endurance
of "the Reverend Peter Smart, mr of Artes, minister of God's word at
Durham," who, for preaching against popery, lost above three hundred
pounds per annum, and was imprisoned eleven years in the King's Bench.
The composer adds these lines:
"Peter preach downe vaine rites with flagrant harte;
Thy Guerdon shall be greate, though heare thou Smart."
Another of these portrait pieces exhibits Dr. Alexander Leighton, who
spoke of Queen Henrietta as "the daughter of Hell, a Canaanite, and an
idolatresse," and spared not Archbishop Laud and his confederates. For
these offenses he was, as the draughtsman informs us, "clapt up in
Newgate for the space of 15 weekes, where he suffered great miserie and
sicknes almost to death, afterward lost one of his Eares on the
pillorie, had one of his nosthrills slitt clean through, was whipt with
a whip of 3 Coardes knotted, had 36 lashes therewith, was fined
1000_ll._, and kept prisoner in the fleet 12 yeares, where he was most
cruelly used a long time, being lodged day and night amongst the most
desperately wiked villaines of y{e} whole prison." He was also branded
on the cheek with the letters S. S.--sower of sedition. Several other
prints of the time record the same mark of attention paid by the
"martyred" king to his Catholic wife. By-and-by, the crowned and mitred
ruffians who did such deeds as these being themselves in durance,
Parliament set Dr. Leighton free, and made him a grant of six thousand
pounds.
A caricature of the same bloody period is entitled, "Archbishop Laud
dining on the Ears of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton." We see Laud seated
at dinner, having an ear on the point of his knife and three more ears
in the plate before him, the three victims of his cruelty standing
about, and two armed bishops at the foot of the table. The dialogue
below represents Laud as rejecting with scorn all the dainties of his
table, and declaring that nothing will content him but the ears of
Lawyer Prynne and Dr. Bastwick. He cuts them off himself, and orders
them to be dressed for his supper.
"_Canterbury._ This I doe to make you examples,
That others may be more careful to please my palate.
Henceforth let my servants know, that what I will, I _will_ have done,
What ere is under heaven's Sunne."
[Illustration: "Let not the World devide those whom Christ hath
joined."]
A burst of caricature heralded the coming triumph of the Puritans in
1640, the year of the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. Many of the
pictures recorded both the sufferings and the joyful deliverance of the
Puritan clergymen. Thus we have in one of them a glowing account of the
return of the three gentlemen whose ears furnished a repast for the
Archbishop of Canterbury. They had been imprisoned for many years in the
Channel Islands, from which they were conveyed to Dartmouth, and thence
to London, hailed with acclamations of delight and welcome in every
village through which they passed. All the expenses of their long
journey were paid for them, and presents of value were thrust upon them
as they rode by. Within a few miles of London they were met by such a
concourse of vehicles, horsemen, and people that it was with great
difficulty they could travel a mile in an hour. But when at length, in
the evening, they reached the city, masses of enthusiastic people
blocked the streets, crying, "Welcome home! welcome home!" and strewing
flowers and rosemary before them. Thousands of the people carried
torches, which rendered the streets lighter than the day. They were
three hours in making their way through the crowd from Charing Cross to
their lodgings in the city, a distance of a mile.
It was during the exaltation of the years preceding the civil war that
such pictures appeared as the one here given, urging a union between the
Church of England and the Church of Scotland against the foe of both.
This is copied from an original impression in the collection of the New
York Historical Society.
The caricaturists pursued Laud and Strafford even to the scaffold. The
archbishop was the author of a work entitled "Canons and Institutions
Ecclesiastical," in which he gave expression to his extreme High-church
opinions. In 1640 the victorious House of Commons canceled the canons
adopted from this work, and fined the clergy who had sat in the
Convocation. A caricature quickly appeared, called "Archbishop Laud
firing a Cannon," in which the cannon is represented as bursting, and
its fragments endangering the clergymen standing near. Laud's committal
to the Tower was the occasion of many broadsheets, one of which exhibits
him fastened to a staple in a wall, with a long string of taunting
stanzas below:
"Reader, I know thou canst not choose but smile
To see a Bishop tide thus to a ring!
Yea, such a princely prelate, that ere while
Could three at once in _Limbo patrum_ fling;
Suspend by hundreds where his worship pleased,
And them that preached too oft by silence eas'd;
"Made Laws and Canons, like a King (at least);
Devis'd new oaths; forc'd men to sweare to lies!
Advanc'd his lordly power 'bove all the rest.
And then our Lazie Priests began to rise;
But painfull ministers, which plide their place
With diligence, went downe the wind apace.
"Our honest Round heads too then went to racke;
The holy sisters into corners fled;
Cobblers and Weavers preacht in Tubs for lacke
Of better Pulpits; with a sacke instead
Of Pulpit-cloth, hung round in decent wise,
All which the spirit did for their good devise.
"Barnes, Cellers, Cole-holes, were their meeting-places,
So sorely were these babes of Christ abus'd,
Where he that most Church-government disgraces
Is most esteem'd, and with most reverence us'd.
It being their sole intent religiously
To rattle against the Bishops' dignity.
"Brother, saies one, what doe you thinke, I pray,
Of these proud Prelates, which so lofty are?
Truly, saies he, meere Antichrists are they.
Thus as they parle, before they be aware,
Perhaps a Pursuivant slips in behind,
And makes 'em run like hares before the wind.
"A yeere agone 'tad been a hanging matter
T'ave writ (nay, spoke) a word 'gainst little Will;
But now the times are chang'd, men scorne to flatter;
So much the worse for Canterbury still,
For if that truth come once to rule the roast,
No mar'le to see him tide up to a post.
"By wicked counsels faine he would have set
The Scots and us together by the eares;
A Patriark's place the Levite long'd to get,
To sit bith' Pope in one of Peter's chaires.
And having drunke so deepe of Babels cup,
Was it not time, d'ee think, to chaine him up?"
In these stanzas are roughly given the leading counts of the popular
indictment against Archbishop Laud. Other prints present him to us in
the Tower with a halter round his neck; and, again, we see him in a
bird-cage, with the queen's Catholic confessor, the two being popularly
regarded as birds of a feather. In another, a stout carpenter is holding
Laud's nose to a grindstone, while the carpenter's boy turns the handle,
and the archbishop cries for mercy:
"Such turning will soon deform my face;
Oh! I bleed, I bleed! and am extremely sore."
But the carpenter reminds him that the various ears that he had caused
to be cut off were quite as precious to their owners as his nose is to
him. A Jesuit enters with a vessel of holy water with which to wash the
extremely sore nose. One broadsheet represents Laud in consultation with
his physician, who administers an emetic that causes him to throw off
his stomach several heavy articles which had been troubling him for
years. First, the "Tobacco Patent" comes up with a terrible wrench. As
each article appears, the doctor and his patient converse upon it:
"_Doctor._ What's this? A book? _Whosoever hath bin at church may
exercise lawful recreations on Sunday._ What's the meaning of this?
"_Canterbury._ 'Tis the booke for Pastimes on the Sunday, which I
caused to be made. But hold! here comes something. What is it?
"_Doctor._ 'Tis another book. The title is, 'Sunday no Sabbath.' Did
you cause this to be made also?
"_Canterbury._ No; Doctor Pocklington made it; but I licensed it.
"_Doctor._ But what's this? A paper 'tis; if I be not mistaken, a
Star-Chamber order made against Mr. Prinne, Mr. Burton, and Dr.
Bastwicke. Had you any hand in this?
"_Canterbury._ I had. I had. All England knoweth it. But, oh, here
comes up something that makes my very back ake! O that it were up
once! Now it is up, I thank Heaven!
"_Doctor._ 'Tis a great bundle of papers, of presentations and
suspensions. These were the instruments, my lord, wherewith you
created the tongue-tied Doctors, and gave them great Benefices in the
Country to preach some twice a year at the least, and in their place
to hire some journeyman Curate, who will only read a Sermon in the
forenoone, and in the afternoone be drunke, with his parishioners for
company."
By the same painful process the archbishop is delivered of his "Book of
Canons," and finally of his mitre; upon which the doctor says, "Nay, if
the miter be come, the Divell is not far off. Farewell, my good lord."
There still exist in various collections more than a hundred prints
relating directly to Archbishop Laud, several of which give burlesque
representations of his execution. There are some that show him asleep,
and visited by the ghosts of those whom he had persecuted, each
addressing him in turn, as the victims of Richard III. spoke to their
destroyer on Bosworth Field. One of the print-makers, however, relented
at the spectacle of an old man, seventy-two years of age, brought to the
block. He exhibits the archbishop speaking to the crowd from the
scaffold:
"Lend me but one poore teare, when thow do'st see
This wretched portraict of just miserie.
I was Great Innovator, Tyran, Foe
To Church and State; all Times shall call me so.
But since I'm Thunder-stricken to the Ground,
Learn how to stand: insult not ore my wound."
This one poor stanza alone among the popular utterances of the time
shows that any soul in England was touched by the cruel fanatic's bloody
end.
[Illustration: "England's Wolfe with Eagle's Clawes" (Prince Rupert),
1647.]
During the civil war and the government of Cromwell, 1642 to 1660, nine
in ten of all the satirical prints that have been preserved are on the
Puritan side. A great number of them were aimed at the Welsh, whose
brogue seems to have been a standing resource with the mirth-makers of
that period, as the Irish is at present. The wild roystering ways of the
Cavaliers, their debauchery and license, furnished subjects. The
cruelties practiced by Prince Rupert suggested the annexed illustration,
in which the author endeavored to show "the cruell Impieties of
Blood-thirsty Royalists and blasphemous Anti-Parliamentarians under the
Command of that inhumane Prince Rupert, Digby, and the rest, wherein the
barbarous Crueltie of our Civill uncivill Warres is briefly discovered."
Beneath the portrait of England's wolf are various narratives of his
bloody deeds. One picture exhibits the plundering habits of the
mercenaries on the side of the king in Ireland. A soldier is represented
armed and equipped with the utensils that appertain to good forage: on
his head a three-legged pot, hanging from his side a duck, a spit with a
goose on it held in his left hand as a musket, a dripping-pan on his arm
as a shield, a hay-fork in his right hand for a rest, with a string of
sausages for a match, a long artichoke at his side for a sword, bottles
of canary suspended from his belt, slices of toast for shoe-strings, and
two black pots at his garters. This picture may have been called forth
by an item in a news-letter of 1641, wherein it was stated that such
"great store of pilidges" was daily brought into Drogheda that a cow
could be bought there for five shillings and a horse for twelve.
[Illustration: Charles II. and the Scotch Presbyterians, 1651.
"_Presbyter._ Come to the grinstone, Charles; 'tis now too late
To recolect, 'tis presbiterian fate.
"_King._ Yon Covenant pretenders, must I bee
The subject of your Tradgie Comedie?
"_Jockey._ I, Jockey, turne the stone of all your plots,
For none turnes faster than the turne-coat Scots.
"_Presbyter._ We for our ends did make thee king, be sure,
Not to rule us, we will not that endure.
"_King._ You deep dissemblers, I know what you doe,
And, for revenges sake, I will dissemble too."]
The abortive attempt of Charles II., after the execution of his father,
to unite the Scots under his sceptre, and by their aid place himself
upon the throne of England, called forth the caricature annexed, in
which an old device is put to a new use. A large number of verses
explain the picture, though they begin by declaring:
"This Embleme needs no learned Exposition;
The World knows well enough the sad condition
Of regal Power and Prerogative.
Dead and dethron'd in _England_, now alive
In _Scotland_, where they seeme to love the Lad,
If hee'l be more obsequious than his Dad,
And act according to Kirk Principles,
More subtile than were Delphic Oracles."
In the verses that follow there is to be found one of the few explicit
justifications of the execution of Charles I. that the lighter
literature of the Commonwealth affords:
"But _Law and Justice_ at the last being done
On the hated Father, now they love the Son."
The poet also taunts the Scots with having first stirred up the English
to "doe Heroick Justice" on the late king, and then adopting the heir on
condition of his giving _their_ Church the same fell supremacy which
Laud had claimed for the Church of England.
The Ironsides of Cromwell soon accomplished the caricaturist's
prediction:
"But this religious mock we all shall see,
Will soone the downfall of their Babel be."
We find the pencil and the pen of the satirist next employed in
exhibiting the young king fleeing in various ludicrous disguises before
his enemies.
An interesting caricature published during the civil wars aimed to cast
back upon the Malignants the ridicule implied in the nickname of
Roundhead as applied to the Puritans. It contained figures of three
ecclesiastics, "Sound-head, Rattle-head, and Round-head." Sound-head, a
minister sound in the Puritan faith, hands a Bible to Rattle-head, a
personage meant for Laud, half bishop and half Jesuit. On the other side
is the genuine Round-head, a monk with shorn pate, who presents to
Rattle-head a crucifix, and points to a monastery. Rattle-head rejects
the Bible, and receives the crucifix. Over the figures is written:
"See heer, Malignants Foolerie
Retorted on them properly,
The Sound-head, Round-head, Rattle-head,
Well placed, where best is merited."
Below are other verses in which, of course, Rattle-head and Round-head
are belabored in the thorough-going, root-and-branch manner of the time,
_Atheist_ and _Arminian_ being used as synonymous terms:
"See heer, the Rattle-heads most Rotten Heart,
Acting the Atheists _or_ Arminians part."
In looking over the broadsheets of that stirring period, we are struck
by the absence of the mighty Name that must have been uppermost in every
mind and oftenest on every tongue--that of the Lord Protector, Oliver
Cromwell. A few caricatures were executed in Holland, in which "The
General" and "Oliver" and "The Protector" were weakly satirized; but as
most of the plates in that age were made to serve various purposes, and
were frequently altered and redated, it is not certain that any of them
were circulated in England during Cromwell's life-time. English
draughtsmen produced a few pictures in which the Protector was favorably
depicted dissolving the Long Parliament, but their efforts were not
remarkable either with pen or pencil. The Protector may have relished,
and Bunyan may have written, the verses that accompanied some of them:
"Full twelve years and more these Rooks they have sat
to gull and to cozen all true-hearted People;
Our Gold and our Silver has made them so fat
that they lookt more big and mighty than Paul's Steeple."
The Puritans handled the sword more skillfully than the pen, and the
royalists were not disposed to satire during the rule of the Ironside
chief. The only great writer of the Puritan age on the Puritan side was
Milton, and he was one of the two or three great writers who have shown
little sense of humor.