No More Learning

The line which bounded their authority over
trade had, as usual, been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual,
encroached on the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature.
The encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became serious.
But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly
by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not
feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse
naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch,
yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices.
The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain
that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of
the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the
discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voice
of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown was
surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, and
exclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to touch the old
liberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be some danger that
the long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and
disastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper,
declined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming party,
redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified
language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to
herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable
example of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal with public
movements which he has not the means of resisting.

In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many accounts,
one of the most important epochs in our history. It was then that both
Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with England. Both
Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets;
but neither country had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with
heroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert
Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern
part of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded her
national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second,
been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against
them long and fiercely. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
the English power in that island was constantly declining, and in the
days of Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominions
of that prince consisted only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of
some parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along
the coast. A large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into
counties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns,
partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their
origin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the
sixteenth century, the English power had made great progress. The half
savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one after
another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few weeks before
the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had been begun more than
four hundred years before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy.
Scarcely had James the First mounted the English throne when the last
O'Donnel and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed
his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges held
assizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded the
customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal tribes.

In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and were
together nearly equal to England, but were much less thickly
peopled than England, and were very far behind England in wealth and
civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her soil;
and, in the midst of light, the thick darkness of the middle ages still
rested on Ireland.

The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes
which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainous
parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the population
of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest
English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differed
from each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the
exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and
still kept the Celtic speech and manners.

In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now became
connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in selfcommand, in
forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the
Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were
distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather
than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved
to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of
northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural
turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the
Mediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable
superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom,
it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured
countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as
those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more than
the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have
added to the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or
Napier. The genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely
endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged as
they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion of
the pure gold of poetry.

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her
dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood the
English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the most
honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained
her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained
entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at
Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for
no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with
the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be
scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland
by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is
connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater
resources. Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more
than a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject province.

Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Her
rude national institutions had perished. The English colonists submitted
to the dictation of the mother country, without whose support they could
not exist, and indemnified themselves by trampling on the people among
whom they had settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no
law which had not been previously approved by the English Privy Council.
The authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. The
executive administration was entrusted to men taken either from England
or from the English pale, and, in either case, regarded as foreigners,
and even as enemies, by the Celtic population.

But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland to
differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was Protestant. In
no part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the Roman
Catholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had vanquished,
deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous sovereign. They would not
endure even such a compromise as had been effected in England. They had
established the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they
made little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and
the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whom
she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by
the pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him the
privileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical
polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his
effeminate nature to hate anything, and had no sooner mounted the
English throne than he began to show an intolerant zeal for the
government and ritual of the English Church.

The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had remained true
to the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed to the circumstance
that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. But
other causes had cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as well
as a moral revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of the laity
against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the
great German race against an alien domination. It is a most significant
circumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not Teutonic
has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from
that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day
prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction.
The object of their animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had
especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the
chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During
the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained
against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became
inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud
of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt.
The English conquerors meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of
conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation with
instructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation of
the Bible was put forth in the Irish language. The government contented
itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops,
bishops, and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were
paid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body
of the people.

There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which might
well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet,
however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the first time
all the British isles were peaceably united under one sceptre.

It should seem that the weight of England among European nations ought,
from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory which her new
King governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth had
inherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and the most
secure from attack that was to be found in the world. The Plantagenets
and Tudors had been repeatedly under the necessity of defending
themselves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental war.
The long conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on
their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns had
been highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore, not
unreasonably be expected that England, Scotland, and Ireland combined
would form a state second to none that then existed.

All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of the
accession of James the First, England descended from the rank which she
had hitherto held, and began to be regarded as a power hardly of the
second order. During many years the great British monarchy, under four
successive princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more important
member of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland had
previously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James the
First, as of John, it may be said that, if his administration had been
able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country,
and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom and
courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at a critical
moment. The time was fast approaching when either the King must
become absolute, or the parliament must control the whole executive
administration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of
Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler,
had he put himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had
he gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned
Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish
cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's,
and had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fifty
thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his
person, the English Parliament would soon have been nothing more than
a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He began his
administration by putting an end to the war which had raged during
many years between England and Spain; and from that time he shunned
hostilities with a caution which was proof against the insults of his
neighbours and the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of
his life could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament,
and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in
defence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those whom he
governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect of
his pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed,
and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed with
mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided to the
militia.

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to form one,
it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict with his people.
But such was his indiscretion that, while he altogether neglected the
means which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly put
forward, in the most offensive form, claims of which none of his
predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strange
theories which Filmer afterwards formed into a system and which became
the badge of the most violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first
emerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being
regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,
with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of
primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and
even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that
of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it
extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his
rights, that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always
despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries,
the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions
which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume;
and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was
merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of
which the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this theory,
though intended to strengthen the foundations of government, altogether
unsettles them. Does the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit
females, or exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of
Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, and
liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine that
kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives no
countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read
that the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and
that they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiance
from him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the notion that
succession in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, would
rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the especial
protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob
of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David
Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from those
passages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance
of God: for the government under which the writers of the New Testament
lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republican
magistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule by
right of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded
that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to
obey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers.
In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would
have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible with
the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown
to the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion
had strongly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission to
constituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary
end elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed
most of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have
regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William
Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the
Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had
all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave
doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was
impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been
lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in
the realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from
considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable
institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth
obtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by
will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family
of Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a
similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.
Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and
unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy
the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that
whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the
assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should
suffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was widely
different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and
in popularity, regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from
the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was
yet the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had,
therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitions notion
that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. It
was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soon
found many advocates among those who aspired to his favour, and made
rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church.

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest
itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of the
monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudest
and most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne.

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and
yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly opposed
to all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed. The policy
of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popular
forms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon established absolute
monarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens
invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct
reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantly
telling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasure
and that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfully
do than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them,
abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them
to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations.
Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by
his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless
minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and
rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his
childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent,
made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments
there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of
his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throng had long
been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred
years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of
Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of
princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary
level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the decisive
struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be
exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears,
trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a
buffoon and of a pedagogue.

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the days of
Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had become
more formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the first
generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when
compared with the interval which separated the third generation of
Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's
cruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic party
still inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and
aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had
a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity
which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with
the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and
Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme
severity against the Papists. But when more than half a century of
undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church,
when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when
England was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger that
Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last
confessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took
place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the
Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated.
Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The
controversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party
took such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new controversies
of still greater importance were added to the old subjects of dispute.

The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an
ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity, but had not
declared that form of church government to be of divine institution. We
have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the office
of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and
other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what
the state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the
state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they never
denied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure
Church. [6] On the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the
Continent as of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmen
in England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop,
as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of
the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman,
nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed without
scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad the ambassadors
of Elizabeth and James went in state to the very worship which Elizabeth
and James persecuted at home, and carefully abstained from decorating
their private chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should
be given to weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the
Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister,
ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by the
Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments in
any part of the province of Canterbury. [7] In the year 1603, the
Convocation solemnly recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church in
which episcopal control and episcopal ordination were then unknown, as a
branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. [8] It was even held that
Presbyterian ministers were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical
councils. When the States General of the United Provinces convoked at
Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and
an English Dean, commissioned by the head of the English Church, sate
with those doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on the gravest
questions of theology. [9] Nay, many English benefices were held by
divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form
used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such cases
then thought necessary, or even lawful. [10]

But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church of England.
In their view the episcopal office was essential to the welfare of a
Christian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances of
religion. To that office belonged certain high and sacred privileges,
which no human power could give or take away. A church might as well be
without the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation,
as without the apostolical orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in the
midst of all her corruptions, had retained the apostolical orders,
was nearer to primitive purity than those reformed societies which had
rashly set up, in opposition to the divine model, a system invented by
men.

In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders of the
Anglican ritual had generally contented themselves with saying that it
might be used without sin, and that, therefore, none but a perverse and
undutiful subject would refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by the
magistrate. Now, however, that rising party which claimed for the polity
of the Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a new
dignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the established worship
had any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the Reformers
had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient
ceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days and
places were again held in mysterious veneration. Some practices which
had long been disused, and which were commonly regarded as superstitious
mummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had escaped the
fury of the first generation of Protestants, became the objects of a
respect such as to many seemed idolatrous.

No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the
Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine
of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the apostle
Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes and
scandals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation.
Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing
a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by
fire during the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however,
it began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared
in the Church of England; that there was in high quarters a prejudice
against married priests; that even laymen, who called themselves
Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost amounted
to vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set up a
nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a company of
virgins dedicated to God. [11]

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of the
Anglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had differed
little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The
controversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy had
related almost exclusively to Church government and to ceremonies. There
had been no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points of
metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy
touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and election,
were those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close of
Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop Whitgift, drew
up, in concert with the Bishop of London and other theologians, the
celebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that
instrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed
with a distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are reputed
Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshly
of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the University of
Cambridge, and escaped punishment only by expressing his firm belief in
the tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow for
the offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the great
French reformer. The school of divinity of which Hooker was the chief
occupies a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of
Laud; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians
as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superior
in wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to whom
thousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth, but who was
himself indebted to God alone. When the Arminian controversy arose
in Holland, the English government and the English Church lent strong
support to the Calvinistic party; nor is the English name altogether
free from the stain which has been left on that party by the
imprisonment of Grocius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.

But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the
Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic Church
government and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to regard with
dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling was very naturally
strengthened by the gross injustice, insolence, and cruelty of the party
which was prevalent at Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine less
austerely logical than that of the early Reformers, but more agreeable
to the popular notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spread
fast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which
at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed
without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best
title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple
country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth
as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the
position which they had originally occupied, the majority of the
Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from the
principles and practices of their fathers. The persecution which the
separatists had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not
severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but
baited into savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressed
sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety,
encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition to
brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into
hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies
of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when
perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance
the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained
the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and
ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many
things which, if done without his special command, would have been
atrocious crimes.
In such a history it was not difficult for fierce
and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their
wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old
Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow
even to themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and
habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused
to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul
have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of
Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance
of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they
turned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive
times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath.
They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for
precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges
and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which were
assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet who
hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood of
a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and
of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the
fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under
the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering
under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were
subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue
was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the
studies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles
not unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and
broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a
winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a
friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to
wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals,
to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have
appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and
contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw
over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by
which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which
they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, were
regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with
aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar,
because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The
fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was
superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques was dissolute.
Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half
indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his
gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the
upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and
above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the
imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the
English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry
of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of
English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant,
which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists and
libertines.

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in the
sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism
were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were
in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The violent
Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent
Puritans who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament,
regarded each other with animosity more intense than that which, in the
preceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.

While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a peace
of many years, at length engaged in a war which required strenuous
exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutional
crisis. It was necessary that the King should have a large military
force. He could not have such a force without money. He could not
legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It followed,
therefore, that he either must administer the government in conformity
with the sense of the House of Commons, or must venture on such a
violation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during
several centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true,
occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a benevolence or
a forced loan: but these expedients were always of a temporary nature.
To meet the regular charge of a long war by regular taxation, imposed
without the consent of the Estates of the realm, was a course which
Henry the Eighth himself would not have dared to take. It seemed,
therefore, that the decisive hour was approaching, and that the English
Parliament would soon either share the fate of the senates of the
Continent, or obtain supreme ascendency in the state.

Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded to the
throne. He had received from nature a far better understanding, a far
stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's.
He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much more
disposed than his father to carry them into practice. He was, like his
father, a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had
never been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist
much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles had
some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote
and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but
after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His taste
in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though not
gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief
cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in
truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways.
It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little
moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached
him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was
perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also on
principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most
esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the
nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divest
himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he
made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken
in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge.

And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the destinies of
the English people. It was played on the side of the House of Commons
with keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness, and perseverance.
Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far before them were at
the head of that assembly. They were resolved to place the King in such
a situation that he must either conduct the administration in conformity
with the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on the
most sacred principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled out
supplies to him very sparingly. He found that he must govern either in
harmony with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choice
was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes by
his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and found it more
intractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient of
dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, and
threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison At the same time a new
grievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation
made insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to
be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and alarm. Companies
of soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in some
places, substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm.

The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the
opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a
change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the
demands of the Commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions,
agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would
have averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted
an ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that
celebrated law, which is known by the name of the Petition of Right,
and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England. By
ratifying that law he bound himself never again to raise money without
the consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, except
in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to the
jurisdiction of courts martial.

The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnly
given to this great Act, was a day of joy and hope. The Commons,
who crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth into loud
acclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form of
words by which our princes have, during many ages, signified their
assent to the wishes of the Estates of the realm. Those acclamations
were reechoed by the voice of the capital and of the nation; but
within three weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention of
observing the compact into which he had entered. The supply given by the
representatives of the nation was collected. The promise by which that
supply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed. The
Parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure. Some of
the most distinguished members were imprisoned; and one of them, Sir
John Eliot, after years of suffering, died in confinement.

Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own authority,
taxes sufficient for carrying on war. He accordingly hastened to make
peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave his whole mind to
British politics.

Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had occasionally committed
unconstitutional acts: but none had ever systematically attempted to
make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such
was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March
1629 to April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history
had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and
Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that
length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who represent
Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets
and Tudors.

It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters,
that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of the Petition of
Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and on
system; that a large part of the revenue was raised without any legal
authority; and that persons obnoxious to the government languished for
years in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before any
tribunal.

For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible.
From the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister.
Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited to
his purposes, were at the head of different departments of the
administration.

Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of
Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of a
cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political
and military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished members
of the opposition, and felt towards those whom he had deserted that
peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of
apostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the
policy of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed a
vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the
able tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been
directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gave
the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all,
and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France; to make Charles a
monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and the
personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to
deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary
questions of civil right between man and man; and to punish with
merciless rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who
applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for
relief against those acts. [12]

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this
end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a
clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing
an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly
entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument,
and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried
into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of
such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind.
In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing
a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also
over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island,
the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be. [13]

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, principally
directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelates
of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles
of the Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more
remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the
Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays,
vigils, and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage
of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal
with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the
laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even
if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his
ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world
had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his
own dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone
to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish
and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction
every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute
inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out and
broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the
vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire that the
deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, was
generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve
of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of several
extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single
dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction. [14]

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil
and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common
law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were
scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less
ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of
courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two
centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among
these courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High
Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition.
Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamber
had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. The
power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles
had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when
compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violent
spirit of the primate, and free from the control of Parliament, they
displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been
unknown to any former age. The government was able through their
instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without
restraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the presidency
of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of
prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All
these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster Hall,
and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished Royalists have
warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly
a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the
harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commission
had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom,
and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a
dead letter on the north of the Trent.

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as
that of France. But that one point was all important. There was still no
standing army. There was therefore, no security that the whole fabric
of tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and, if taxes were
imposed by the royal authority for the support of an army, it was
probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion.
This was the difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth.
The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were employed
by the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted.
The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of the
counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the defence of
the border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish
ships for the defence of the coast. In the room of ships money had
sometimes been accepted. This old practice it was now determined, after
a long interval, not only to revive but to extend. Former princes had
raised shipmoney only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of
profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, had
raised shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the
inland shires. Former princes had raised shipmoney only for the maritime
defence of the country: It was now exacted, by the admission of the
Royalists themselves. With the object, not of maintaining a navy, but
of furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased at
his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for any
purpose.

The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and
well born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his own
neighbourhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom generally, had the
courage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government,
and take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative
to which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the judges
in the Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the arguments against the
pretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were,
the majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there was
a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one great
and productive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth
justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judgment
except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had not
ventured to draw. If money might legally be raised without the consent
of Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that
money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the
support of an army.

The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. A
century earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a general
rising. But discontent did not now so readily as in an earlier age take
the form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in
wealth and in civilisation. Since the great northern Earls took up arms
against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventy
years there had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existence
of the English nation, had so long a period passed without intestine
hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful
industry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drew
the sword.

This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in
the greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair of
the destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wilderness
as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual
freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their
religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of
uncivilised life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks
of more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forests, villages
which are now great and opulent cities, but which have, through
every change, retained some trace of the character derived from their
founders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion,
and attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not
prevent the population of New England from being largely recruited by
stouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old England.
And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few years
might probably suffice for the execution of his great design. If
strict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers were
carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there
would be funds available for the support of a large military force; and
that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole
face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a
cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in the
South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the
greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might
become a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as he
had encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh.
The Parliament of his northern kingdom was a very different body from
that which bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it was
little considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint on
any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house. The
commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the
great nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been approved by
the Lords of Articles, a committee which was really, though not in
form, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament was
obsequious, the Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent and
ungovernable. They had butchered their first James in his bedchamber:
they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the
Second; they had slain James the Third on the field of battle: their
disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposed
and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was
still as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. All
along the southern border, and all along the line between the highlands
and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of the
country men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand.
Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled
during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mind
was divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil
and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had often
impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and preachers
who had inherited the republican opinions and the unconquerable spirit
of Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the population
had been wounded. All orders of men complained that their country, that
country which had, with so much glory, defended her independence against
the ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality of
her native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province
of England. In no part of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine and
discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church of Rome
was regarded by the great body of the people with a hatred which might
justly be called ferocious; and the Church of England, which seemed
to be every day becoming more and more like the Church of Rome, was an
object of scarcely less aversion.

The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the
whole island, and had already, with this view, made several changes
highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, the
most hazardous of all, because it was directly cognisable by the senses
of the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worship
of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now,
however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English
liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of
England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the
worse.

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal
ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, our country owes
her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced
a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism,
fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was
in arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some years later,
sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English people
sympathised with the religious feelings of the insurgents; and many
Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars
and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which
seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and to
make the calling of a Parliament necessary.

For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworth
is not responsible. [15] It had, in fact, thrown all his plans into
confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. An
attempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword: but the
King's military means and military talents were unequal to the task.
To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law, would, at this
conjuncture, have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament;
and in the spring of 1640 a Parliament was convoked.

The nation had been put into good humour by the prospect of seeing
constitutional government restored, and grievances redressed. The new
House of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the throne
than any which had sate since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation
of this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distinguished
Royalists and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment
to the chiefs of the opposition: but it was the uniform practice of
Charles, a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous, to refuse all
compliance with the desires of his people, till those desires
were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed a
disposition to take into consideration the grievances under which
the country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the
Parliament with every mark of displeasure.

Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the meeting
of that ever memorable body known by the name of the Long Parliament,
intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down more
severely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up
more angrily than ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons
were questioned by the Privy Council touching their parliamentary
conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Shipmoney was
levied with increased rigour. The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London
were threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the
payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was
exacted from their counties.