But, though such arbitrary enactments were dictated in part by the peculiar political spirit of the government, and were, in many cases, intended as devices of wringing money from the subject, they had some justification in preceding English practice, and in the notions then entertained everywhere of true political economy. More emphatically characteristic, therefore, of Laud's system of “ Thorough ” were the persecutions directed against individuals who had given the government cause of offence, and the remorseless use made of the Star-chamber as a means of depriving such offenders of the benefits of ordinary law, and bringing them and their acts and opinions under the direct heel of the executive. There had been nothing in the two preceding reigns comparable, for tyrannic contempt of law and reason, or even for heartlessness and brutality, to the series of Star-chamber sentences passed on individuals between 1632 and 1638. A few instances, usually selected now by historians as most conspicuous, serve but as specimens of a host that are buried in the contemporary records. Prynne, prosecuted by Attorney-General Noy for the alleged libel on the queen and on royalty, in his Histriomastix, was sentenced (May, 1634) to pay a fine of £5,000, to be expelled from his profession as a barrister and from the University of Oxford, to stand twice in the pillory, and have his books burnt before him, to have his ears cut off, and to be imprisoned for life. The sentence — the most cruel which had been passed since that on Leighton in 1630 — was executed in every particular; Prynne having one ear cut off in Westminster, and the other in Cheapside, and being nearly suffocated besides by the burning of his books “under his nose. About the same time, one Bowyer, for slandering Laud, was pilloried three times with the loss of his ears, and was sentenced to a fine of £3,000 and perpetual imprisonment. Sir David Fowlis, a member of the council of the north, for words spoken in Yorkshire against Wentworth's conduct in that government, was fined £5,000 to the king, and £3,000 to Wentworth, and otherwise punished.

Necessarily, however, it was in the Church that Laud's system was carried out most rigorously and perseveringly. Laud was the prime agent in this department of affairs, but the king went eagerly along with him.

In the first place, the crown-patronage of the Church was exercised with a view to the predominance, in all its parts, of Laud's men and Laud's principles. The following list of the changes in the episcopal body, taken along with our previous list of the bishops in 1629, when Charles began his system of absolute rule (pp. 278–80), and our subsequent list of episcopal changes and promotions between March, 1629, and July, 1632 (p. 293), completes the history of the sees for the present volume.

I. PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY.

THE ARCHBISHOPRIC. Promotion of Laud himself, on Abbot's death, Aug.

1633. Bishopric of Bangor. Edmund Griffiths, D. D., an Oxford man, appointed

on the death of Dolben (1633); and William Roberts, D. D., a Cam

bridge man, on Griffiths' death (1637). Bishopric of Bath and Wells. William Pierce, translated from Peterborough,

on the translation of Walter Curle to Winchester (1632). Bishopric of Bristol. Dr. Robert Skinner, an Oxford man, and chaplain to

the king, — distinguished for some years as a Puritan preacher in London, but believed to have been drawn off by Laud and the chaplaincy,

— appointed on the translation of Coke to Hereford (1636). Bishopric of Chichester. Dr. Brian Duppa, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford,

and tutor to the prince, appointed on the translation of Montague to

Norwich (May 1638). Bishopric of St. David's. The notorious Roger Mainwaring, promoted to this

see on the translation of Dr. Field to Hereford (Dec. 1635). Bishopric of Ely. Dr. Matthew Wren, translated hither from Norwich on

the death of Francis White (1638), having previously been promoted from the Mastership of Peterhouse, Cambridge, to the Deanery of Wind

sor, and the Bishoprics of Hereford and Norwich. Bishopric of Hereford. Dr. William Juxon succeeded the Church-historian

Godwin, but held the see only a few months, when he was transferred to London. He was succeeded, in 1633, by Dr. Augustine Lindsell, translated from Peterborough; and on Lindsell's death in 1634, the see was given to Matthew Wren; on whose translation to Norwich (1635) it was given to Theophilus Field; on whose death (1636) it was given

to Coke. Bishopric of London. Juxon, appointed on Laud's elevation to the Primacy

(1633). Bishopric of Norwich. Wren succeeded on Corbet's death (1635), and was

succeeded (1638) by Montague. Bishopric of Peterborough. Dr. Francis Dee succeeded Lindsell (1634), and

was succeeded by Dr. John Towers (1638). Bishopric of Rochester. Dr. John Warner, an Oxford divine, appointed on

the death of Bowle (1637). Bishopric of Winchester. Dr. Walter Curle succeeded Neile (1632).

II. PROVINCE OF YORK.

Bishopric of Man. Dr. Wm. Foster succeeded Phillips (1633), and was suc

ceeded by Dr. Richard Parr (1635). Some of these appointments were good, as regarded the learning of the men appointed; for indifference to learning was not one of Laud's faults; but to the country at large it seemed that by such appointments the government of the Church was not only being concentrated more and more in the hands of conspicuous Arminians and Prelatists, but was also, in some cases, receiving men of as avowedly weak Protestantism as Laud himself.

As primate of all England, Laud had ample means of developing his theory of Anglicanism, and of working even the most reserved portions of it into the practice of the Church without the éclat of new enactments. There are but three cases of any importance, in which, during the first five years of his Archiepiscopate, he had recourse to actual legislation. (1.) One of these was the case of the Sabbatarian Controversy. This controversy, not originally connected with the Reformation, but of subsequent origin, had been long gaining ground in the Church; and men had divided themselves upon it into the three parties whom Fuller names respectively the Sabbatarians, the moderate men, and the Anti-Sabbatarians. By the operation of affinities, both logical and historical, the Puritans, as a body, had embraced the more rigorous views of the obligations of the Sabbath; while, on the contrary, Laud and his school were strongly Anti-Sabbatarian, and regarded the very word“ Sabbath,” when used instead of “Sunday,” as a wrong done to the Church, and a “secret magazine of Judaism.” Sabbatarianism, in short, was a form or sign of Puritanism, worthy, in Laud's view, of compulsory suppression. He found an opportunity for a demonstration on the subject. In Somersetshire, as in other counties, there had long been a custom of revels and merry-makings in all the parishes on Sundays, under the name of wakes, church-ales, clerk-ales, and the like; and, these meetings having become offensive, in many cases, not only to Sabbatarian feeling, but also to public decency, Chief Justice Richardson and Baron Denham, on their circuit through the county, as judges, had been prevailed upon, by the county justices and others, to issue an order for their abolition. Laud and the government, hearing of the prohibition, not only caused it to be rescinded, but made it the occasion for expressing his majesty's displeasure with “those humorists, Puritans and precise people,” and for republishing the Book of Sports, issued by King James in 1618, for the express purpose

of making bowling, archery, dancing, and other games after divine service, a stated Sunday institution in all the parishes of the kingdom. All ministers were required to read from their pulpits the king's Declaration accompanying the republication, - an order exceedingly grievous to the Puritans, and which gave rise to the suspension of many ministers, and also to curious scenes of mockcompliance. Thenceforth, obstinate Sabbatarianism became a ground of prosecution of clergymen both by their Diocesans and in the High Commission Court. (2.) Another legislative innovation of Laud consisted of injunctions issued by him in his Archiepiscopal capacity, and ratified by the king (1635), having for their effect the breaking up of the Dutch and Walloon congregations throughout England. There were about ten such congregations in all, numbering about five thousand persons, and consisting of Dutch and French manufacturers and their descendants. To such members of the congregations as had themselves been born abroad and had only settled in England, Laud was willing to continue the privilege of their separate worship and Liturgy, guaranteed them by former stipulations; but he required that all the English-born children or other descendants of such immigrants should conform to the Church of England, and attend the ordinary parish churches. There were vehement reclamations against these orders, both from the congregations, and from the localities where they were settled and which they benefited by their wealth and industry; but Laud was inflexible. The result was, that many of the immigrants removed from England, and that several flourishing manufacturing colonies in Kent, Norfolk, and other counties, were totally destroyed. (3.) It was in the Altar Controversy, however, that Laud made his greatest experiment in the possibility of forcing, by orders issuing from himself, a general and simultaneous change in the practice of the Church. Backed by a preliminary decision of the king and council in one particular case, he issued orders through his Vicar-General, for fixing the communion-table altarwise at the east end of the chancel, and with the ends north and south, in all the churches and chapels of his province, and for railing it in, and otherwise distinguishing it as a true altar. The effect of these orders was a general ferment throughout the kingdom. In many parishes the change was resisted by the church wardens and the parishioners, both on the ground of expense and on the ground of conscience; the Puritan ministers, of course, abetted such resistance; and, in some cases where the change was made, communicants refused to receive the sacrament at the railed altar. Among the bishops themselves, the summary decision of what had hitherto been an open question in the Church, caused differences of conduct.

While pushing into the system of the Church new items of discipline derived from his own theory of Anglicanism, Laud did not the less avail himself of whatever means he had or could make for en. forcing the conformity which he was rendering more difficult. In

1 Rushworth, II. 272-3; Neal's Puritans, III. 257-9; and documents in the State Paper Office.

Abbot's last report to the king of the state of his province (1632), he had returned a clean bill of health for the whole Church of England. “There is not in the Church of England left," he had said, “a single inconformable minister which appeareth.” The statement had necessarily been interpreted with a good deal of latitude; and where Abbot had reported health, Laud soon found disease.

His first care had been to strengthen his hands and the hands of the other prelates by enlarging the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He had hardly assumed the primacy when (1634) he caused to be addressed to himself in the king's name a warrant for fresh zeal, in the shape of a new edition of the royal instructions of 1629, containing, in addition to the former regulations respecting the residence of bishops, their vigilance over the lecturers in their diocese, etc. (see pp. 287–8), certain new articles, enjoining every bishop to give in an annual report of his diocese to his metropolitan, so that the report of the metropolitan to the king might be more exact. The effect of this order and of Laud's archiepiscopal visitations in stirring up the bishops, is visible in the series of his own reports of his province to the king, for the seven years from 1633 to 1639 inclusive. In the report for 1633 he mentions having received accounts, and these rather meagre, from but ten of the twenty-one dioceses of his province; but, in his reports for the remaining years, not more than three or four bishops are mentioned as defaulters. The laziest in reporting were the Romish Goodman of Gloucester, and Wright of Lichfield and Coventry; next in the order of reluctance seem to have been Thornborough of Worcester, and the Calvinistic Davenant of Salisbury; Williams always reports for Lincoln, but in terms which Laud evidently distrusts; and the bishops who coöperate with Laud most heartily are Juxon of London, Wren of Norwich, Curle of Winchester, Pierce of Bath and Wells, White of Ely, and Montague of Chichester. In the province of York, Archbishop Neile seems to have been more zealous of imitating Laud than any of his bishops. In both provinces the means by which the more zealous bishops carried out the instructions of their archbishops were somewhat novel. Not only did they hold courts in their own name for the citation, examination and censure of offenders; but, in order that they might have each parish individually under control, they introduced what were called Articles of Visitation, or lists of topics on which they required exact information, and also Churchwardens' Oaths, binding the church wardens, as the official informers in every parish, to take these articles as the directories of their inquiries. The church wardens' oath (a totally illegal imposition, and resisted as such by many