CHARLES THE FIRST'S BOOK-FIRES.
Few things now seem more surprising than the sort of fury with
which in the earlier part of the seventeenth century the extreme
rights of monarchs were advocated by large numbers of Englishmen.
Political servitude was then the favourite dream of thousands.
The Church made herself especially prominent on the side of
prerogative; the pulpits resounded with what our ancestors called
Crown Divinity; and in the reign of Charles I. the rival
principles, ultimately fought for on the battlefield, first came
into conflict over sermons, the immediate cause, indeed, of so
many of the greatest political movements of our history.
The first episode in this connection is the important case of Dr.
Roger Manwaring, one of Charles's chaplains, who, at the time
when the King was pressing for a compulsory loan, preached two
sermons before him, advocating the King's right to impose any
loan or tax without consent of Parliament, and, in fact, making a
clean sweep of all the liberties of the subject whatsoever. At
Charles's request, Manwaring published these sermons under the
title of _Religion and Allegiance_ (1627). But the popular party
in Parliament resolved to make an example of him, and a long
speech on the subject by Pym is preserved in Rushworth. The
Commons begged the Lords to pronounce judgment upon him, and a
most severe one they did pronounce. He was to be imprisoned
during the House's pleasure; to be fined L1000 to the King; to
make a written submission at the bars of both Houses; to be
suspended for three years; to be disabled from ever preaching at
Court, or holding any ecclesiastical or secular office; and the
King was to be moved to grant a proclamation for calling in and
burning his book.
On June 23rd, 1628, Manwaring made accordingly a most abject
submission at the bars of both Houses, Heylin says, on his knees
and with tears in his eyes, confessing his sermons to have been
"full of dangerous passages, inferences, and scandalous
aspersions in most parts"; and the next day Charles issued a
proclamation for calling them in, as having incurred "the just
censure and sentence of the High Court of Parliament." The
sentence of suppression presumably in this case carried the
burning; but, if so, there is no mention of any public burning by
the bishops and others, to whom the books were to be delivered by
their owners.
Fuller says that much of Manwaring's sentence was remitted in
consideration of his humble submission; and Charles the very same
year not only pardoned him, but gave him ecclesiastical
preferment, finally making him Bishop of St. David's. Heylin
attests the resentment this indiscreet indulgence roused in the
Commons; but, unfortunately, as Manwaring was doubtless well
aware, to have incurred the anger of Parliament was motive enough
with Charles for the preferment of the offender, and the shortest
road to it.
This is shown by the similar treatment accorded to the Rev.
Richard Montagu, who had made himself conspicuous on the
anti-Puritan side in the time of James. In defence of himself he
had written his _Appello Caesarem_, with James's leave and
encouragement. It was a long book, refuting the charges made
against him of Popery and Arminianism, and full of bitter
invectives against the Puritans. After the matter had been long
under the consideration of Parliament, the House prayed Charles
to punish Montagu, and to suppress and burn his books; and this
Charles did in a remarkable proclamation (January 17th, 1628),
wherein the _Appello Caesarem_ is admitted to have been _the first
cause of those disputes and differences that have since much
troubled the quiet of the Church_, and is therefore called in,
Charles adding, that if others write again on the subject, "we
shall take such order with them and those books that they shall
wish they had never thought upon these needless controversies."
It appears, however, from Rushworth that, in spite of this,
several answers were penned to Montagu, and that they were
suppressed. And what, indeed, would life be but for its "needless
controversies"?
Nothing could be more praiseworthy than Charles's attempt to put
a stop to the idle disputations and bitter recriminations of the
combatants on either side of religious controversy. Could he have
succeeded he might have staved off the Civil War, which we might
almost more fitly call a religious one. But in those days few
men, unfortunately, had the cool wisdom to remain as neutral
between Arminian and Calvinist, Papist and Protestant, as between
the rival Egyptian sects which, in Juvenal's time, fought for the
worship of the ibis or the crocodile. Our comparatively greater
safety in these days is due to the large increase of that neutral
party, which was so sadly insignificant in the time of Charles.
May that party therefore never become less, but constantly grow
larger!
Montagu, at the time of the proclamation of his book, had been
appointed Bishop of Chichester, having been raised to that see in
spite or because of his quarrel with Parliament. He was
consecrated by Laud in August of the same year, and Heylin admits
that his promotion was more magnanimous than safe on the part of
Charles, being clearly calculated to exasperate the House. Ten
years later (1638) he was preferred to the see of Norwich. All
his life he remained a prominent member of the Romanising party.
These books of Manwaring and Montagu are important as proving
clearly two historical points, viz.:--(1) The early date at which
the Court party alienated even the House of Lords. (2) The fact
that the original exciting cause of all the subsequent discord
between Puritan and Prelatist came from a prominent member of the
Laudian or Romanising faction.
The rising temper of the people, and its justification, is shown
even in these literary disputes. But the popular temper was
destined to be more seriously roused by those atrocious sentences
against the authors of certain books which were passed within a
few years by the Star Chamber and High Commission. The heavy
fines and cruel mutilations imposed by these courts were not new
in the reign of Charles, but they became far more frequent, and
were directed less against wrong conduct than disagreeable
opinions. They are intimately connected with the memory of Laud,
first as Bishop of London, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury,
whose letters show that the severities in question were to him
and Strafford (to use Hallam's expression) "the feebleness of
excessive lenity." To the last Charles was not despotic enough to
please Laud, who complains petulantly in his Diary of a prince
"who knew not how to be, or be made great."
As the first illustration of Laud's method for attaining this end
must be mentioned the case of a book which enjoys the distinction
of having brought its author to a more severe punishment than
any other book in the English language. Our literature has had
many a martyr, but Alexander Leighton is the foremost of the
rank.
He was a Scotch divine; nor can it be denied that his _Syon's
Plea against the Prelacy_ (1628) contained, indeed, some bitter
things against the bishops; he said they were of no use in God's
house, and called them caterpillars, moths, and cankerworms. But
our ancestors habitually indulged in such expressions; and even
Tyndale, the martyr, called church functionaries horse-leeches,
maggots, and caterpillars in a kingdom. Such terms were among the
traditional amenities of all controversy, but especially of
religious controversy. But since the Martin-Marprelate Tracts or
Latimer's sermons the strong anti-Episcopalian feeling of the
country had never expressed itself so vigorously as in this
"decade of grievances" against the hierarchy, presented to
Parliament by a man who was too sensitive of "the ruin of
religion and the sinking of the State."
The Star Chamber fined him L10,000, and then the High Commission
Court deprived him of his ministry, and sentenced him to be
whipped, to be pilloried, to lose his ears, to have his nose
slit, to be branded on his cheeks with "S. S." (Sower of
Sedition), and to be imprisoned for life! Probably with all this,
the burning of his book went without saying; though I have found
no specific mention of its incurring that fate.
The sentence was executed in November 1630, in frost and snow,
making its victim, as he says himself, "a theatre of misery to
men and angels." It was all done in the name of law and order,
like all the other great atrocities of history. After ten years'
imprisonment Leighton was released by the Long Parliament, and a
few years later he wrote an account of his sufferings, and a
report of his trial in the Star Chamber. Therein we learn that
Laud, the Bishop of London, was the moving spirit of the whole
thing. At the end of his speech he apologised for his presence at
the trial, admitting that by the Canon law no ecclesiastic might
be present at a judicature where loss of life or limb was
incurred, but contending that there was no such loss in
ear-cutting, nose-slitting, branding, and whipping. Leighton, of
course, may have been misinformed of what occurred at his trial
(for he himself was not allowed to be present!); and so some
doubt must also attach to the story that when the censure was
delivered "the Prelate off with his cap, and holding up his
hands gave thanks to God who had given him the victory over his
enemies."
Shortly after his release, Leighton was made keeper of Lambeth
Palace, and then he died, "rather insane of mind for the
hardships he had suffered"; but, such is the irony of fate, the
man who had paid so heavily for his antipathy to bishops became
himself the father of an archbishop!
By an unexplained law of our nature the very severity of
punishment seems to invite men to incur it; and Leighton's fate,
like most penal warnings, rather incited to its imitation than
deterred from it. The next to feel the grip of the Star Chamber
was the famous William Prynne, barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and
one of the most erudite as well as most voluminous writers our
country has ever produced.
He was only thirty-three when in 1633 he published his
_Histriomastix; or, the Player's Scourge_. His labour had taken
him seven years, nor was it the first work of his that had
attracted the notice of authority. In a thousand closely printed
pages, he argued, by an appeal to fifty-five councils,
seventy-one fathers and Christian writers, one hundred and fifty
Protestant and Catholic authors, and forty heathen philosophers
into the bargain, that stage-plays, besides being sinful and
heathenish, were "intolerable mischiefs to churches, to
republics, to the manners, minds, and souls of men." Little as we
think so now, this opinion, which was afterwards also Defoe's,
was not without justification in those days. But Prynne's crusade
did not stop at theatres; and Heylin's account reveals the
feeling of contemporaries: "Neither the hospitality of the gentry
in the time of Christmas, nor the music in cathedrals and the
chapels royal, nor the pomps and gallantries of the Court, nor
the Queen's harmless recreations, nor the King's solacing himself
sometimes in masques and dances could escape the venom of his
pen." "He seemed to breathe nothing but disgrace to the nation,
infamy to the Church, reproaches to the Court, dishonour to the
Queen." For his remarks against female actors were thought to be
aimed at Henrietta Maria, though the pastoral in which she took
part was posterior by six weeks to the publication of the
book![78:1] The four legal societies "presented their Majesties
with a pompous and magnificent masque, to let them see that
Prynne's leaven had not soured them all, and that they were not
poisoned with the same infection."[79:1]
This surely might have been enough; but by the time the matter
had come before the Star Chamber, Laud had succeeded Abbot (with
whom Prynne was on friendly terms) as Archbishop of Canterbury
(August 1633); and Laud was in favour of rigorous measures. So
was Lord Dorset, and Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, whose judgment is of importance as showing that this
was really the first occasion when the hangman's services were
called in aid for the suppression of books:--
"I do in the first place begin censure with his book. I condemn
it to be burnt in the most public manner that can be. The manner
in other countries is (where such books are) to be burnt by the
hangman, though not used in England (yet I wish it may, in
respect of the strangeness and heinousness of the matter
contained in it) to have a strange manner of burning; therefore I
shall desire it may be so burnt by the hand of the hangman. If
it may agree with the Court, I do adjudge Mr. Prynne to be put
from the Bar, and to be for ever uncapable of his profession. I
do adjudge him, my Lords, that the Society of Lincoln's Inn do
put him out of the Society; and because he had his offspring from
Oxford" (now with a low voice said the Archbishop of Canterbury,
"I am sorry that ever Oxford bred such an evil member") "there to
be degraded. And I do condemn Mr. Prynne to stand in the pillory
in two places, in Westminster and Cheapside, and that he shall
lose both his ears, one in each place; and with a paper on his
head declaring how foul an offence it is, viz. that it is for an
infamous libel against both their Majesties, State and
Government. And lastly (nay, not lastly) I do condemn him in
L5,000 fine to the King. And lastly, perpetual
imprisonment."[80:1]
In this spirit the highest in the land understood justice in
those golden monarchical days, little recking of the retribution
that their cruelty was laying in store for them. A few years
later history presents us with another graphic picture of the
same sort, showing us the facetious as well as the ferocious
aspect of the Star Chamber. Again Prynne stands before his
judges, a full court (and theoretically the Star Chamber was
co-extensive with the House of Lords), but this time in company
with Bastwick, the physician, and Burton, the divine. Sir J.
Finch, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, says: "I had thought
Mr. Prynne had had no ears, but methinks he hath ears." Thereupon
many Lords look more closely at him, and the usher of the court
is ordered to turn up his hair and show his ears. Their Lordships
are displeased that no more had been cut off on the previous
occasion, and "cast out some disgraceful words of him." To whom
Prynne replies: "My Lords, there is never a one of your Honours
but would be sorry to have your ears as mine are." The
Lord-Keeper says: "In good truth he is somewhat saucy." "I hope,"
says Prynne, "your Honours will not be offended. I pray God give
you ears to hear."
The whole of this interesting trial is best read in the fourth
volume of the _Harleian Miscellany_. Prynne's main offence on
this occasion was his _News from Ipswich_, written in prison, and
his sentence was preceded by a speech from Laud, which the King
made him afterwards publish, and which, after a denial of the
Puritan charge of making innovations in religion, ended with the
words: "Because the business hath some reflection upon myself I
shall forbear to censure them, and leave them to God's mercy and
the King's justice." Yet Laud in the very previous sentence had
thanked his colleagues for the "just and honourable censure" they
had passed; and when he spoke in this Pharisaical way of God's
mercy and the King's justice, he knew that the said justice had
condemned Prynne to be fined another L5,000, to be deprived of
the remainder of his ears in the pillory, to be branded on both
cheeks with "S. L." (Schismatical Libeller), and to be imprisoned
for life in Carnarvon Castle.[82:1] Apart from that, Laud's
defence seems conclusive on many of the points brought against
him.
Bastwick and Burton were at the same time, for their books,
condemned to a fine of L5,000 each, to be pilloried, to lose
their ears, and to be imprisoned, one at Launceston Castle, in
Cornwall, and the other in Lancaster Castle. It does not appear
that the burning of their books was on this occasion included in
the sentence; but as the order for seizing libellous books was
sometimes a separate matter from the sentence itself (Laud's
_Hist._, 252), or could be ordered by the Archbishop alone, one
may feel fairly sure that it followed.
The execution of this sentence (June 30th, 1637) marks a
turning-point in our history. The people strewed the way from the
prison to the pillory with sweet herbs. From the pillory the
prisoners severally addressed the sympathetic crowd, Bastwick,
for instance, saying, "Had I as much blood as would swell the
Thames, I would shed it every drop in this cause." Prynne,
returning to prison by boat, actually made two Latin verses on
the letters branded on his cheeks, with a pun upon Laud's name.
As probably no one ever made verses on such an occasion before or
since, they are deserving of quotation:--
"Stigmata maxillis referens insignia Laudis,
Exultans remeo, victima grata Deo."
Their journey to their several prisons was a triumphal procession
all the way; the people, as Heylin reluctantly writes, "either
foolishly or factiously resorting to them as they passed, and
seeming to bemoan their sufferings as unjustly rigorous. And such
a haunt there was to the several castles to which they were
condemned . . . that the State found it necessary to remove them
further," Prynne to Jersey, Burton to Guernsey, and Bastwick to
Scilly. The alarm of the Government at the resentment they had
aroused by their cruelties is as conspicuous as that resentment
itself. No English Government has ever with impunity incurred the
charge of cruelty; nor is anything clearer than that as these
atrocious sentences justified the coming Revolution, so they were
among its most immediate causes.
The _Letany_, for which Bastwick was punished on this occasion,
was not the first work of his that had brought him to trouble.
His first work, the _Elenchus Papisticae Religionis_ (1627),
against the Jesuits, was brought before the High Commission at
the same time with his _Flagellum Pontificis_ (1635), a work
which, ostensibly directed against the Pope's temporal power,
aimed, in Laud's eyes, at English Episcopacy and the Church of
England. The sting occurs near the end, where the author contends
that the essentials of a bishop, namely, his election by his
flock and the proper discharge of episcopal duties, are wanting
in the bishops of his time. "Where is the ministering of doctrine
and of the Word, and of the Sacraments? Where is the care of
discipline and morals? Where is the consolation of the poor?
where the rebuke of the wicked? Alas for the fall of Rome! Alas
for the ruin of a flourishing Church! The bishops are neither
chosen nor called; but by canvassing, and by money, and by wicked
arts they are thrust upon their government." This was the
beginning of trouble. The Court of High Commission condemned both
his books to be burnt,[85:1] and their author to be fined L1,000,
to be excommunicated, to be debarred from his profession, and to
be imprisoned in the Gatehouse till he recanted; which, wrote
Bastwick, would not be till Doomsday, in the afternoon.
In the Gatehouse Bastwick penned his _Apologeticus ad Praesules
Anglicanos_, and his _Letany_, the books for which he suffered,
as above described, at the hands of the Star Chamber. The first
was an attack on the High Commission, the second on the bishops,
the Real Presence, and the Church Prayer Book. The language of
the _Letany_ is in many passages extremely coarse, and it is only
possible to quote such milder expressions as since the time of
Tyndale had been traditional in the Puritan party. "As many
prelates in England, so many vipers in the bowels of Church and
State." They were "the very polecats, stoats, weasels, and
minivers in the warren of Church and State." They were
"Antichrist's little toes." To judge from these expressions
merely one might be disposed to agree with Heylin, who says of
the _Letany_ that it was "so silly and contemptible that nothing
but the sin and malice which appeared in every line of it could
have possibly preserved it from being ridiculous." But the
_Letany_ is really a most important contribution to the history
of the period. Nothing is more graphic than Bastwick's account of
the almost regal reverence claimed for the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the traffic of the streets interrupted when he issued
from Lambeth, the overturning of the stalls; the author's
description of the excessive power of the bishops, of the
extortions of the ecclesiastical courts, is corroborated by
abundant correlative testimony; and he appeals for the truth of
his charges of immorality against the clergy of that time to the
actual cases that came before the High Commission.
Lord Clarendon speaks of Bastwick as "a half-witted,
crack-brained fellow," unknown to either University or the
College of Physicians; perhaps it was because he was unknown to
either University that he acquired that splendid Latin style to
which even Lord Clarendon does justice. The Latin preface to the
second edition of the _Flagellum_, in which Bastwick returns
thanks to the Long Parliament for his release from prison, is
unsurpassed by the Latin writing of the best English scholars,
and bespeaks anything but a half-witted brain. Cicero himself
could hardly have done it better.
Burton's book, however, was considered worse than Prynne's or
Bastwick's, for Heylin calls it "the great masterpiece of
mischief." It consists of two sermons, republished with an appeal
to the King, under the title of _For God and King_. Like
Bastwick, he writes in the interest of the King against the
encroachments of the bishops; and complains bitterly of the
ecclesiastical innovations then in vogue. His accusation is no
less forcible, though less well known, than Laud's Defence in his
Star Chamber speech; and if he did call the bishops "limbs of the
Beast," "ravening wolves," and so forth, the language of Laud's
party against the Puritans was not one whit more refined. So
convinced was Burton of the justice of his cause, that he
declared that all the time he stood in the pillory he thought
himself "in heaven, and in a state of glory and triumph if any
such state can possibly be on earth."
It is in connection with Bastwick's _Letany_ and Prynne's _News
from Ipswich_ that Lilburne, of subsequent revolutionary fame,
first appears on the stage of history, as responsible for their
printing in Holland and dispersion in England. At all events he
was punished for that offence, being whipped with great severity,
by order of the Star Chamber, all the way from the Fleet Prison
to Westminster, where he stood for some hours in the pillory. He
was then only twenty. Laud had the second instalment of the books
seized upon landing, and then burnt.
In this matter of book-burning the Archbishop seems at that time
to have had sole authority, and doubtless many more books met
with a fiery fate than are specifically mentioned. Laud himself
refers in a letter to an order he issued for the seizure and
public burning in Smithfield of as many copies as could be found
of an English translation of St. Francis de Sales' _Praxis
Spiritualis; or, The Introduction to a Devout Life_, which, after
having been licensed by his chaplain, had been tampered with, in
the Roman Catholic interest, in its passage through the press. Of
this curious book some twelve hundred copies were burnt, but a
few hundred copies had been dispersed before the seizure.
The Archbishop's duties, as general superintendent of literature
and the press, constituted, indeed, no sinecure. For ever since
the year 1585, the Star Chamber regulations, passed at Archbishop
Whitgift's instigation, had been in force; and, with unimportant
exceptions, no book could be printed without being first seen,
perused, and allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of
London. Rome herself had no more potent device for the
maintenance of intellectual tyranny. The task of perusal was
generally deputed to the Archbishop's chaplain, who, as in the
case of Prynne's _Histriomastix_, ran the risk of a fine and the
pillory if he suffered a book to be licensed without a careful
study of its contents.
But the powers of the Archbishop over the press were not yet
enough for Laud, and in July 1637 the Star Chamber passed a
decree, with a view to prevent English books from being printed
abroad, that in addition to the compulsory licensing of all
English books by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London,
or the University Chancellors, no books should be imported from
abroad for sale without a catalogue of them being first sent to
the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London, who, by their
chaplains or others, were to superintend the unlading of such
packages of books. The only merit of this decree is that it led
Milton to write his _Areopagitica_. The Puritan belief that Laud
aimed at the restoration of Popery has long since been proved
erroneous. One of his bad dreams recorded in his Diary is that of
his reconciliation with the Church of Rome; but there is abundant
proof that he and his faction aimed at a spiritual and
intellectual tyranny which would in no wise have been preferable
to that of Rome. And of all Laud's dreams, surely that of the
Archbishop of Canterbury exercising a perpetual dictatorship over
English literature is not the least absurd and grotesque.
Moreover, in August of this very same year Laud made another move
in the direction of ecclesiastical tyranny. Bastwick and his
party had contended, not only that Episcopacy was not of Divine
institution, or _jure divino_ (as, indeed, Williams, Bishop of
Lincoln, had argued before the King)[91:1]; but that the issuing
of processes in the names and with the seals of the bishops in
the ecclesiastical courts was a trespass on the Royal
Prerogative. What happened proves that it was. The statute of
Edward VI. (1 Ed. VI., c. 2) had enacted that all the proceedings
of the ecclesiastical courts should "be made in the name and the
style of the King," and that no other seal of jurisdiction should
be used but with the Royal arms engraven, under penalty of
imprisonment. Mary repealed this Act, nor did Elizabeth replace
it. But a clause in a statute of James (1 Jac. I., c. 25)
repealed the repealing Act of Mary, so that the Act of Edward
came back into force; and Bastwick was perfectly right. The
judges, nevertheless, in May 1637, decided that Mary's repeal Act
was still in force; and Charles, at Laud's instigation, issued a
proclamation, in August 1637, to the effect that the proceedings
of the High Commission and other ecclesiastical courts were
agreeable to the laws and statutes of the realm.[91:2] In this
manner did the judges, the bishops, and the King conspire to
subject Englishmen to the tyranny of the Church!
The consequences belong to general history. Never was scheme of
ecclesiastical ambition more completely shattered than Laud's;
never was historical retribution more condign. Among the first
acts of the Long Parliament (November 1640) was the release of
Prynne and Bastwick and Burton; who were brought into the City,
says Clarendon, by a crowd of some ten thousand persons, with
boughs and flowers in their hands. Compensation was subsequently
voted to them for the iniquitous fines imposed on them by the
Star Chamber, and Prynne before long was one of the chief
instruments in bringing Laud to trial and the block. But this was
not before that ambitious prelate had seen the bishops deprived
of their seats in the House of Lords, and the Root and Branch
Bill for their abolition introduced, as well as the Star Chamber
and High Commission Courts abolished. This should have been
enough; and it is to be regretted that his punishment went beyond
this total failure of the schemes of his life.
Of the heroes of the books whose condemnation contributed so much
to bring about the Revolution, only Prynne continued to figure
as an object of interest in the subsequent stormy times. As a
member of Parliament his political activity was only exceeded by
his extraordinary literary productiveness; his legacy to the
Library of Lincoln's Inn of his forty volumes of various works is
probably the largest monument of literary labour ever produced by
one man. His spirit of independence caused him to be constant to
no political party, and after taking part against Cromwell he was
made by the Government of the Restoration Keeper of the Records
in the Tower, in which congenial post he finished his eventful
career.
FOOTNOTES:
[78:1] Whitelock's _Memorials of Charles I._, 1822. Laud is
represented as mainly instrumental in the conduct of the whole of
this nefarious proceeding, especially in procuring the sentence
in the Star Chamber.
[79:1] _Life of Laud_, 294.
[80:1] From the account in the _State Trials_, III. 576.
[82:1] In his defence he says that he always voted last or last
but one. In that case he must always have heard the sentence
passed by those who spoke before him, and not dissented from it.
His sole excuse is, that he was no worse than his colleagues; to
which the answer is, he ought to have been better.
[85:1] Prynne, _New Discovery_, 132.
[91:1] Laud's _Diary_ (Newman's edition), 87.
[91:2] Heylin's _Laud_, 321, 322.