Dr. Abbot being thus removed to an higher spheare it seemed not good to Laud to pursue the quarrel but patiently to attend the year of his expectation before the expiring whereof the King bestowed upon him the Deanry of Glocester as before was said At the bestowing of which Deanry his Majesty told him that he had been informed that there was scarce ever a Church in England so ill governed and so much out of order as that was requiring him in the general to reform and set in order what he found amiss Being thus forewarned and withall forearmed he makes hast to Glocester where he found the Church in great decay many things out of order in it the Communion Table standing almost in the middest of the Quire contrary to the posture of it in his Majesties Chappel and of all the Cathedral Churches which he had seen Which being observed he called a Chapter of the Prebends and having acquainted them with his Majesties Instructions easily obtained their consent to two Chapter Acts The one for the speedy Repairing of the Church where it was most necessary The other for transposing the Communion Table to the East end of the Quire and placing it all along the Wall according to the scituation of it in other Cathedral or Mother Churches which Transposition being made he recommended to the Prebendaries the Quire men Choresters and the under-Officers of the Church the making of their humble reverence to Almighty God not only at their first entrance into the Quire but at their approaches toward the holy Table according to the laudible custom of the Primitive times retained still in the sollemnities of the Knights of the Garter at the Act in Oxon. in the Chappels of his Majesty and divers great persons in the Realm His Majesties instructions the Contents of the two Chapter Acts and how he had proceeded on them I find certified under his hand in two Letters The one to his good Friend the Bishop of Lincoln bearing date March 3. 1616. The other unto the Bishop of Glocester who had shewed himself offended at his proceedings bearing date on the twenty seventh of February then next foregoing The Bishop of Glocester at that time was Dr. Miles Smith once of Brazen-Nose Colledge a great Hebrician and one that took as much pains as any in the last Translation of the Bible as a reward for which he received this Bishoprick But then withall he was a man that spared not to shew himself upon all occasions in favour of the Calvinian party and more particularly in countenancing the Lecturers within his Diocess against the lawful Minister of the Parish when ever any complaint of their proceedings was made unto him No sooner had he heard what the new Dean had done about the Communion Table but he expressed his dislike of it and opposed it with all the power he had But finding that he could not prevaile according unto his desires he is said to have protested unto the Dean and some of the Prebends that if the Communion Table were removed or any such Innovations brought into that Cathedral he would never come more within those Walls which Promise or Protestation he is said by some to have made good and not to have come within that Church to his dying day Which if he did forbear upon that occasion he must needs shew himself a man of great pertinacity and one that feared not to give a publick scandall to the Church and the Court to boot This transposition being made in the declining of the year 1616. his Pallace standing near the walls of that Cathedral and he not dying till the year 1624. which was eight years after Seeing how little he prevailed one White his Chaplain takes upon him in a Letter written to the Chancellor of that Diocess to acquaint him with the strange Reports which were come unto them touching the scituation of the Communion Table in the place where the High Altar stood before and that low obeysance were made to it assuring him how much the secret Papists would rejoyce in hope that that which they long looked for was now near at hand In which Letter he also challenged and upbraided the Prebends and other Preachers of that City that they did not offer either by word or deed to resist the Dean in those proceedings admiring that no man should have any spark of Elias Spirit to speak a word in Gods behalf that the Preachers should swallow down such things in silence and that the Prebends should be so faint hearted as to shrink in the first wetting especially having the Law on their side against it It was not long before this Letter was made a Libell Either the Letter it self or a Copy of it being cast into the Pulpit at St. Michaels Church where Prior the Sub-Dean used to preach to the end that he and others of the Prebendaries might take notice of it Found by the Parish Clerk and by him put into the hands of the Curate by them communicated unto others who took Copies of it and in short time divulged over all the City The City at that time much pestered with the Puritan Faction which was grown multitudinous and strong by reason of the small abode which the Dean and Prebendaries made amongst them the dull connivance of their Bishop and the remiss Government of their Metropolitan so that it seemed both safe and easie to some of the Rabble to make an out-cry in all places that Popery was coming in that the translating of the Communion Table into an Altar with the worship and obeysance which were done to it were Popish superstitions and the like Iones one of the Aldermen of the City and a Justice of the Peace withall caused some of the principal dispersers of this Libellous Letter to be brought before him committed some of them to prison and threatned to bind the rest to their good behaviour But fearing lest his own power might not be sufficient to crush that Faction which had begun to gather strength by long connivance he advised that the business might be referred to the High Commissioners as men more able to deal with them Notice hereof being given to the new Dean by some Letters thence bearing date Feb. 21. he addressed this Letter above mentioned to the Bishop of Glocester In which he desired such Favour and Equity at his hands as that his Lordship would joyn to reform such Tongues and Pens as knew not how to submit to any Law but their own that of necessity he was to acquaint his Gracious Majesty not only with the thing it self but with the entertainment which it found among Turbulent Spirits and that he doubted not but that his Majesty would be well pleased to hear how careful his Lordship shewed himself in preserving the Order and Peace of the Church But fearing that the Bishop whose Chaplain was the sole cause of the mischief would not be very forward to redress it he dispatched the other Letter
long experience with his great abilities his constancy courage and dexterity for managing affairs of moment And thereupon entring into speech with him in the beginning of Iune he was pleased to take notice of the long and unrewarded service which he had done him telling him that he looked on the Deanry of Glocester but as a Shell without a Kernel This gave him the first hopes of his growing Fortunes On Sunday the nineteenth of that Month he preached before the King at Wansteed that being the first of those Sermons which are now in Print And on St. Peters day next following there was a general expectation about the Court that he should have been made Dean of Westminster in the place of Williams who having been sworn Privy-Counsellor on the tenth of that Month and nominated to the See of Lincoln was on the tenth of Iuly honoured with the Custody of the great Seal of England upon the Deprivation of the Lord Chancellor St. Albans which before we spake of but Williams so prevailed at Court that when he was made Bishop of Lincoln he retained this Deanry in Commendam together with such other Preferments as he held at that time That is to say A Prebend and Residentiary place in the Cathedral Church at Lincoln and the Rectory of Walgrave in Northampton-shire so that he was a perfect Diocess within himself as being Bishop Dean Prebend Residentiary and Parson and all these at once But though Laud could not get the Deanry yet he lost nothing by the example which he made use of in retaining not only his Prebends place in the same Church of Westminster and his Benefices in the Country that being an ordinary indulgence to such as were preferred to the smaller Bishopsricks but also the Presidentship of his Colledge in Oxon which he valued more than all the Rest. For that his own expectation might not be made as frustrate as was that of the Court his Majesty nominated him the same day to the See of St. Davids in former times the Metropolitan City of the Welsh or Brittish But though he was nominated then he could not receive the Episcopal Character till five Months after the stay was long but the necessity unavoydable by reason of a deplorable misfortune which had befallen Archbishop Abbot and was briefly this The Archbishop had long held a dear and entire Friendship with Edward Lord Zouch a person of an eminent and known Nobility On whom he pleased to bestow a visit in his house at Bramshall invited to see a Deer hunted that he might take the fresh air and revive his Spirits a Cross-bow was put into his hand to shoot one of the Deer but his hand most unhappily swerving or the Keeper as unfortunately coming in his way it so pleased God the Disposer of Humane Affairs that he missed the Beast and shot the Man On which sad accident being utterly uncapable of consolation he retired himself to Guilford the place of his birth there to expect the Issue of his wofull Fortunes in an Hospital of his own Foundation The news of this wretched misadventure as ill news flies far came the same day to the Lord Keeper Williams and he as hastily dispatches this Advertisement of it to the Marquess of Buckingham My most Noble Lord AN unfortunate occasion of my Lords Grace his killing of a man casually as it is here constantly reported is the cause of my seconding of my yesterdays Letter unto your Lordship His Grace upon this Accident is by the Common Law of England to forfeit all his Estate unto his Majesty and by the Canon Law which is in force with us irregular ipso facto and so suspended from all Ecclesiastical Function until he be again restored by his Superiour which I take it is the Kings Majesty in this Rank and Order of Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction If you send for Doctor Lamb he will acquaint your Lordship with the distinct Penalties in this kind I wish withal my heart his Majesty would be as merciful as ever he was in all his life but yet I held it my duty to let his Majesty know by your Lordship that his Majesty is fallen upon a matter of great Advice and Deliberation To add affliction unto the afflicted as no doubt he is in mind is against the Kings Nature To leave virum sanguinum or a man of blood Primate and Patriarch of all his Churches is a thing that sounds very harsh in the old Councils and Canons of the Church The Papists will not spare to descant upon one and the other I leave the knot to his Majesties deep Wisdom to advise and resolve upon A rheum fallen into mine eye c. Which Letter bearing date Iuly 27. 1621. points us directly to the time of this woful Accident Being thus pre-judged and pre-condemned the miserable man must needs have had a hard bout of it if his cause had been referred to an hearing in Chancery But King Iames was as compassionate as just and as regardful of the Church as he was compassionate to the man Advising therefore with his Council and some chief Clergy-men about him though more with his own gracious disposition he after issued a Commission to the Lord Keeper Williams the Bishops of London Winchester St. Davids and Exon as also unto Hubbert and Dodderidge two of the Justices of the Courts at Westminster-hall Martin and Steward Doctors of the Civil Laws men of great Eminence and Abilities in their several Studies to make Inquiry into the Fact And having made Inquiry into the Fact they were to give their Resolution unto His Majesty whether the Archbishop had been made irregular by that sad accident as it was commonly reported In the managing of which great Cause there was much variety of Opinions amongst the Delegates some making him obnoxious to Irregularity and others as much labouring to acquit him of it Amongst these last were Doctor Andrews then Bishop of Winchester and Sir Henry Martin then Dean of the Arches and not long after Judge of the Prerogative Court to whose Authority and Judgment the rest of the Commissioners did in time conform Martin for his part had received his Offices and Preferments from him and therefore in an honest Gratitude thought himself obliged to bend the Law as much as possibly he could to his best Advantage But Andrews had no such impulsives there being between them some disgust which might have rather prevailed with him to have been his Enemy First therefore he was willing not to stand too rigidly upon the strictness of the Canons for fear lest others of the Bishops and himself amongst them either through ignorance or incogitancy might commit some acts which without a fair and mild construction might render them as uncanonical as that poor man was And then he saw that if the Archbishop at that time had been pronounced irregular and the See made void Williams being then Lord Keeper and in great favour with his Majesty and the Marquis too would
their own distaste or smoothing up of those idle fancies which in this blessed time of so long a Peace doth boil in the brains of an unadvised People That many of their Sermons were full of rude and undecent railings not only against the Doctrines but even against the persons of Papists and Puritans And finally that the People never being instructed in the Catechism and fundamental Grounds of Religion for all these aiery novellisms which they received from such Preachers were but like new Table-books ready to be filled up either with the Manuals and Catechisms of the Popish Priests or the Papers and Pamphlets of Anabaptists Brownists and other Puritans His Majesty thereupon taking the Premises into his Princely Consideration which had been represented to him by sundry grave and reverend Prelates of this Church thought it expedient to cause some certain Limitations and Cautions concerning Preachers and Preaching to be carefully digested and drawn up in Writing Which done so done as Laud appears to have a hand in the doing of it and being very well approved by the King he caused them to be directed to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York by them to be communicated to the Bishops of their several Provinces and by those Bishops to be put in execution in their several Diocesses Which Directions bearing date of the fourth of August 1622. being the 20th year of his Majesties Reign I have thought convenient to subjoin and are these that follow viz. I. That no Preacher under the Degree and Calling of a Bishop or Dean of a Cathedral or Collegiate Church and they upon the Kings days only and set Festivals do take occasion by the Expounding of any Text of Scripture whatsoever to fall into any set course or common place otherwise than by opening the coherence and division of his Text which shall not be comprehended and warranted in essence substance effect or natural inference within some one of the Articles of Religion set forth 1562. or in some one of the Homilies set forth by Authority in the Church of England not only for a help of non-preaching but withal as a pattern as it were for the Preaching Ministers and for their further instruction for the performance thereof that they forthwith read over and peruse diligently the said Book of Articles and the two Books of Homilies II. That no Parson Vicar Curate or Lecturer shall Preach any Sermon or Collation hereafter upon Sundays and Holy-days in the Afternoons in any Cathedral or Parish Church throughout this Kingdom but upon some part of the Catechism or some Text taken â—ut of the Creed or Commandments or the Lords Prayer Funeral Sermons only excepted and that those Preachers be most encouraged and approved of who spend their Afternoons Exercise in the Examination of Children in their Catechisms which is the most ancient and laudable Custom of Teaching in the Church of England III. That no Preacher of what Title soever under the degree of a Bishop or Dean at the least do from henceforth presume to Preach in any popular Auditory the deep Points of Predestination Election Reprobation or of the universality efficacity resistibility or irresistibility of Gods Grace but rather leave those Themes to be handled by Learned Men and that modestly and moderately by Vse and Application rather than by way of positive Doctrine as being fitter for Schools and Vniversities than for simple Auditories IV. That no Preacher of what Title or Denomination soever shall presume from henceforth in any Auditory within this Kingdom to declare limit or bound out by way of positive Doctrine in any Lecture or Sermon the Power Prerogative Iurisdiction Authority or Duty of Sovereign Princes or therein meddle with matters of State and reference between Princes and People than as they are instructed in the Homily of Obedience and in the rest of the Homilies and Articles of Religion set forth as before is mentioned by Publick Authority but rather confine themselves wholly to these two Heads of Faith and Good Life which are all the subject of the ancient Sermons and Homilies V. That no Preacher of what Title or Denomination soever shall causelesly and without any invitation from the Text fall into any bitter Invectives and undecent railing Speeches against the Papists or Puritans but wisely and gravely when they are occasioned thereunto by the Text of Scripture free both the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England from the aspersions of either adversary especially when the Auditory is suspected to be tainted with the one or the other infection VI. Lastly That the Archbishops and Bishops of the Kingdom whom his Majesty hath good cause to blame for their former remisseness be more wary and choice in Licencing of Preachers and Verbal Grants made to any Chancellor Officiall or Commissary to pass Licence in this Kingdom And that all the Lecturers throughout the Kingdom a new body severed from the ancient Clergy of England as being neither Parson Vicar or Curate be licensed henceforward in the Court of Faculties only upon recommendation of the party from the Bishop of the Diocess under his hand and seal with a Fiat from the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and a confirmation under the Great Seal of England and that such as transgress any of his directions be suspended by the Bishop of the Diocess or in his default by the Lord Archbishop of that Province Ab officio beneficio for a year and a day untill his Majesty by the advice of the next Convocation prescribe for some further punishment No sooner were these Instructions published but strange it was to hear the several descants and discourses which were made upon them How much they were misreported amongst the People and misinterpreted in themselves those very men who saw no just reason to condemn the Action being howsoever sure to misconstrue the end For though they were so discreetly ordered that no good and godly man could otherwise than acknowledge that they tended very much to Edification Yet such Interpretations were put upon them as neither could consist with his Majesties meaning nor the true sense of the Expressions therein used By some it was given out that those Instructions did tend to the restraint of Preaching at the lest as to some necessary and material points by others that they did abate the number of Sermons by which the People were to be instructed in the Christian Faith by all the Preachers of that Party that they did but open a gap for Ignorance and Superstition to break in by degrees upon the People Which coming to his Majesties Ears it brought him under the necessity of making an Apology for himself and his actions in it And to this end having summed up the reasons which induced him to it he required the Archbishop of Canterbury to communicate them to his Brother of York by both to be imparted to their several Suffragans the inferiour Clergy and to all others whosoever whom it might concern which notwithstanding it
hereof being given to Laud he considered of the sad effects and consequents which might follow on it communicating those his fears to some other Bishops By whom it was thought fit that Mountagues case and not his only but the case of the Church it self should be commended to the care and power of the Duke of of Buckingham According unto which Advice and Resolution three of them framed and signed the ensuing Letter But before this Letter was delivered Mountague had taken so much care of himself as to prepare his way by a Letter of his own bearing date Iuly 29. In which Letter he first laid open the state of his case desiring that by his Majesties Power he might be absolutely freed from those who had neither any Authority over his person as being one of his Majesties Servants nor over his Book as being commanded by his Father and authorized by himself Which being said he makes this resolute declaration That if he could not really and throughly answer whatsoever was or could be imputed to him in any of his Books he would no further desire favour and protection of his Majesty or his Grace but willingly would be left unto the power of his Enemies Which Letter being sent before to prepare the way this of the said three Bishops followed within four daies after May it please your Grace WE are bold to be Suitors to you in the behalf of the Church of England and a poor Member of it Mr. Mountague at this time not a little distressed We are not strangers to his person but it is the Cause which we are bound to be tender of The cause we conceive under correction of better Iudgment concerns the Church of England nearly for that Church when it was reformed from the superstitious opinions broached or maintained by the Church of Rome refused the apparent and dangerous Errors and would not be too busie with every particular School-Point The Cause why she held this mederation was because she could not be able to preserve any unity among Christians if men were forced to subscribe to curious particulars disputed in Schools Now may it please your Grace the opinions which at this time trouble many men in the late Book of Mr. Mountague are some of them such as are expresly the resolved Doctrine of the Church of England and those he is bound to maintain Some of them are such as are fit only for Schools and to be left at more liberty for learned men to abound in their own sense so they keep themselves peaceable and distract not the Church And therefore to make any Man subscribe to School-opinions may justly seem hard in the Church of Christ and was one great fault of the Council of Trent And to affright them from those opinions in which they have as they are bound subscribed to the Church as it is worse in it self so may it be the Mother of greater danger May it please your Grace farther to consider That when the Clergie submitted themselves in the time of Henry the Eighth the submission was so made that if any difference Doctrinal or other fell in the Church the King and the Bishops were to be Iudges of it in the National Synod or Convâ—cation the King first giving leave under his Broad Seal to handle the Points in difference But the Church never submitted to aâ—y other Iudge neither indeed can she though she would And we humbly desire your Grace to consider and then to move his most Gracious Majesty if you shall think fit what dangerous consequences may follow upâ—n it For first if any other Iudge be allowed in matter of Doctrine we shall depart from the Ordinance of Christ and the continual Course and Practice of the Church Secondly If the Church be once brought down beneath her self we cannot but fear what may be the next stroke at it Thirdly It will some way touch the honour of his Majesties dear Father and our most Dread Soveraign of glorious and ever blessed memory King James who saw and approved all the opinions of this Book And he in his rare Wisdom and Iudgment would never have allowed them if they had crossed with truth and the Church of England Fourthly We must be bold to say that we cannot conceive what use there can be of Civil Government in the Commonwealth or of Preaching or External Ministry in the Church if such fatall opinions as some which are opposite and contrary to these delivered by Mr. Mountague are shall be publikely taught and maintained Fifthly We are certain that all or most of the contrary opinions were treated of at Lambeth and ready to be published but then Queen Elizabeth of famous memory upon notice given how little they agreed with the Practice of Piety and obedience to all Government caused them to be suppressed and so they have continued ever since till of late some of them have received countenance at the Synod of Dort Now this was a Synod of that Nation and can be of no Authority in any other National Church till it be received there by publick Authority And our hope is That the Church of England will be well advised and more than once over before she admit a foraign Synod especially of such a Church as condemneth her Discipline and manner of Government to say no more And further we are bold to commend to yâ—ur graces Wisdom this one particular His Majesty as we have been informed hath already taken this business into his own care and most worthily referred it in a right course tâ— Church consideration And we well hoped that without further trouble to the State or breach of unity in the Church it might so have been well and orderly composed as we still pray it may These things considered we have little to say for Mr. Mountagues person only thus much we know He is a very good Scholar and a right honest man A man every way able to do God his Majesty and the Church of England great service We fear he may receive discouragement and which is far worse we have some cause to doubt this may breed a great backwardness in able men to write in defence of the Church of England against either home or foraign Adversaries if they shall see him sink in Fortunes Reputation or health upon occasion of his Book And this we most humbly submit to your Graces Iudgment and care of the Churches peace and welfare So commending your Grace to the Protection of Almighty God We shall ever rest at Your Graces Service Io. Rossens Io. Oxâ—n Guil. Meneven August 2. 1625. After this no more news of Montague in the present Parliament Adjourned by his Majesty on the eleventh of Iuly by reason of the Plague to Oxâ—n there to be reassembled on the first of August Which time being come his Majesty puts them again in mind of his pressing occasions acquaints them with the necessity of setting out the Fleet then ready for Service That the eyes of
supposed it makes exceedingly to the honour and commendation of this our Bishop as well in point of Secrecy as unfeigned Fidelity that his Majesty should pick out him from all other men to be his Pen-man or Chief Secretary in such weighty businesses Then again it is affirmed That he not only corrected and amended the Dukes Answer to the Impeachment which was made against him by the Commons but that he also penned that Speech which the Duke subjoined unto his Answer A Crime of the same nature and proved by the same Mediums as the others was and such as rather might have served for a strong assurance both of his honest Fidelity to his Friend and Patron and the even temper of his own mind in the managing of it For if we may believe the Author of the first History of the Life and Reign of King Charles as I think we may this Answer of the Duke was so in-laid with Modesty and Humility that it became a new Grievance to his Adversaries and was like to have a powerful influence toward the conversion of many who expected a Defence of another and more disdainful Spirit Thus have we brought two Parliaments unto an end but we hear nothing of the Convocations which were summoned with them Nothing indeed of the first Convocation but the passing of a Grant for three Subsidies toward the Advancement of his Majesties Service In the second we find something more though no Subsidies are granted in it On the fifth Sunday in Lent Goodman then Bishop of Glocester preach'd before his Majesty and press'd so hard upon the Point of the Real Presence that he was supposed to trench too neer the borders of Popery which raised a great clamour both in Court and Country The matter of which Sermon was agitated pro and con in the Convocation March 29. without determining any thing on either side But his Majestie out of a desire to satisfie both himself and his Houses of Parliament touching that particular referred the consideration of it to Abbot Archbishop of Canterbury Andrews Bishop of Winchester and Laud Bishop of St. Davids who meeting and considering of it on the twelfth of April returned this Answer to the King That some things in that Sermon had been spoke less warily but nothing falsly That nothing had been innovated by him in the Doctrine of the Church of England But howsoever That they thought very fit that Goodman should be appointed to Preach again before his Majesty for the better explaining of his meaning and shewing how and in what Particulars he had been mistaken by his Auditors Which he accordingly performed But nothing was of such concernment to a Convocation as the cause of Mountague vexed and molested by the Commons in both the Parliaments for supposed Popery and Arminianism matters meerly Doctrinal And possibly it may be admired that they should do nothing in a matter of their own peculiar having his Majesty to Friend for it appears in the Letter of the three Bishops before-mentioned to the Duke of Buckingham That his Majesty had taken that business into his own care and had most worthily referred it in a right course to Church-consideration And it appears also by the Breviate pag. 8. That on Sunday April 22. of this present year his Majesty had commanded all the Bishops to come before him and reprehended such as came being fourteen in number for being silent in Causes which concerned the Church and had not made known unto him what might be profitable or unprofitable for it the Cause whereof he was so ready to promote But then we are to call to mind that Laud not long since had been sent by the Duke of Buckingham to consult with Andrews and learn of him what he thought fitting to be done in the Cause of the Church and more especially in the Five Articles so hotly agitated between the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants in the Belgick Provinces And it appears by the event That Andrews did not hold it fit for any thing to be done in that particular as the case then stood the truth in those Opinions not being so generally entertained amongst the Clergy nor the Archbishop and the greater part of the Prelates so inclinable to them as to venture the determining of those Points to a Convocation But that which was not thought fit in that present Conjuncture for a Convocation his Majesty was pleased to take order in by his Royal Edict Many Books had been written against Mountague by Carleton Bishop of Chichester Sutcliffe Dean of Exeter Yates and Rouse by which the differences were rather increased than diminished Which coming to his Majesties notice it pleased him by the Advice of his Bishops to signifie by his Proclamation of Iune 14. Not only to his own People but to all the World his utter dislike of all those who to shew the subtilty of their Wits or to please their own Humours or vent their own Passions do or shall adventure to stir or move any new Opinions not only contrary but differing from the sound and Orthodoxal Grounds of the true Religion sincerely Professed and happily Established in the Church of England and also to declare his full and constant Resolution That neither in matter of Doctrine nor Discipline of the Church nor in the Government of the State he will admit of the least Innovation but by Gods assistance will so guide the Scepter of these his Kingdoms and Dominions by the Divine Providence put into his hand as shall be for the comfort and assurance of his sober Religious and well-affected Subjects and for the repressing and severe punishing of such as out of any sinister respects or disaffection to his Person or Government shall dare either in Church or State to distract or disquiet the Peace thereof His Majesty thereupon commands all his Subjects the Clergy most especially both in England and Ireland That from thenceforth they should carry themselves so wisely warily and conscionably that neither by Writing Preaching Printing Conferences or otherwise they raise any doubts or publish or maintain any new Inventions or Opinions concerning Religion than such as are clearly grounded and warranted by the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England heretofore published and happily established by Authority Straightly charging all Archbishops and Bishops in their several Diocesses as also all Counsellors of State Judges and Ministers of Justice speedily to reclaim and repress all such Spirits as shall adventure hereafter to break this Rule of Sobriety and due Obedience to his Majesty his Laws and this Religious Duty to the Church of God or in the least degree attempt to violate this bond of Peace adding withal this intimation of his Royal Pleasure That whosoever from thenceforth should take the boldness wilfully to neglect this his Majesties gracious Admonition and either for the satisfying of their unquiet and restless Spirits or for expressing of their rash and undutiful Insolencies should wilfully break that
alter any Articles Rubrick Canon Doctrinal or Disciplinary whatsoever without his Majesties leave first had and obtained 14. That no man should cover his Head in time of Divine Service except with a Cap or Night-coife in case of infirmity and that all Persons should reverently kneel when the Confession and other Prayers were read and should stand up at the saying of the Creed 15. That no Presbyter or Reader be permitted to conceive Prayers ex tempoâ—e or use any other form in the Publick Liturgie or Service than is prescribed under the pain of Deprivation from his Benefice or Cure 16. That by this Prohibition the Presbyters seemed to be dâ—barred from using their own Prayers before their Sermons by reason that in c. 3. num 13. it is required That all Presbyters and Preachers should move the People to join with them in Prayer using some few and convenient words and should always conclude with the Lords Prayer which in effect was to bind them to the form of bidding Prayer prescribed in the 55 th Canon of the Church of England 17. That no man should Teach either in Publick School or Private House but such as shall be allowed by the Archbishop of the Province or Bishop of the Diocess under their Hand and Seal and those to Licence none but such as were of good Religion and obedient to the Orders of the Church 18. That none should be admitted to read in any Colledge or School except they take first the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy 19. That nothing â—e hereafter Imprinted except the same be seen and allowed by the Visitors appointed to that purpose the Penalty thereof as in all like Cases in which no Penalty is expressed being left to the discretion of the Bishops 20. That no Publick Fast should be appointed upon Sundays as had been formerly accustomed but on the Week-days only and them to be appointed by none but His Majesty 21. That for the Ministring of the Sacrament of Baptism a Font should be prepared and placed somewhat near the entry of the Church as anciently it used to be with a Cloth of fine Linnen which shall likewise be kept all neatly 22. That a comely and decent Table for Celebrating the Holy Communion should be provided and placed at the upper end of the Chancel or Church to be covered at the times of Divine Service with a Carpet of decent Stuff and at the time of Ministration with a white Linnen Cloth And that Basons Cups or Chalices of some pure Metal shall be provided to be set upon the Communion Table and reserved to that only use 23. That such Bishops and Presbyters as shall depart this life having no Children shall leave their Goods or a great part of them to the Church and Holy Vses and that notwithstanding their having Children they should leave some Testimony of their love to the Church and advancement of Religion 24. That no Sentence of Excommunication should be pronounc'd or Absolution given by any Presbyter without the leave and approbation of the Bishop And no Presbyter should reveal or make known what had been opened to him in Confession at any time or to any Person whatsoever except the Crime be such as by the Laws of the Realm his own Life may be called in question for concealing the same 25. And finally That no Person should be received into Holy Orders nor suffered to Preach Catechise Minister the Sacraments or any other Ecclesiastical Function unless he first subscribe to be obedient to these present Canons Ratified and Approved by his Majesties Royal Warrant and Ordained to be observed by the Clergy and all others whom they concern These were the matters chiefly quarrelled in this Book of Canons visibly tending as they would make the World believe to subject that Kirk unto the Power of the King the Clergy to the command of their Bishops the whole Nation to the Discipline of a Foreign Church and all together by degrees to the Idolatries and Tyrannies of the Pope of Rome But juster cause they seemed to have for disclaiming the said Book of Canons because not made nor imposed upon them by their own approbation and consent contrary to the usage of the Church in all Times and Ages Had his Majesty imposed these Orders on them by the name of Injunctions according to the example of King Henry viii Anno 1536. of King Edward vi Anno 1547. and of Queen Elizabeth Anno 1559. he might perhaps have justified himself by that Supremacy which had been vested in him by the Laws of that Kingdom which seems to have been the Judgment of King Iames in this very case At his last being in Scotland Anno 1617. he had prepared an Article to be passed in Parliament to this effect viz. That whatsoever his Majesty should determine in the External Government of the Church with the advice of the Archbishop Bishops and a competent number of the Ministry should have the strength of a Law But understanding that a Protestation was prepared against it by some of the most Rigid Presbyterians he commanded Hay the Clerk or Register to pass by that Article as a thing no way necessary the Prerogative of his Crown giving him more Authority than was declared or desired by it But as for Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical if they concerned the whole Church they were to be advised and framed by Bishops and other Learned men assembled in a General Council and testified by the Subscription of such Bishops as were then assembled Or if they did relate only unto National Churches or particular Provinces they were to be concluded and agreed upon by the Bishops and Clergy that is to say so many of the Clergy as are chosen and impowered by all the rest for that end and purpose assembled in a National or Provincial Synod No Canons nor Constitutions Ecclesiastical to be otherwise made or if made otherwise not to bind without a voluntary and free submission of all Parties to them And though it could not be denied but that all Christian Emperours Kings and Princes reserved a Power unto themselves of Ratifying and Confirming all such Constitutions as by the Bishops and Clergy were agreed on yet still the said Canons and Constitutions were first agreed on by the Bishops and Clergy before they were tendred to the Sovereign Prince for his Ratification The Scottish Presbyters had formerly disclaimed the Kings Authority either in calling their Assemblies or confirming the Results and Acts thereof which they conceived to be good and valid of themselves without any additional power of his to add strength unto them And therefore now they must needs think themselves reduced to a very great vassalage in having a body of Canons so imposed upon them to the making whereof they were never called and to the passing whereof they had never voted But as they had broke the Rules of the Primitive Church in acting Soveraignty of themselves without requiring the Kings approbation and
Church of St. Matthews in Friday Street took for his Text those words in the Proverbs viz. My Son fear thâ—n the Lord and the King and meddle not with them that are given to change Chap. 24.22 In this Sermon if I may wrong the Word so far as to give it to so lewd a Libel he railes most bitterly against the Bishops accuseth them of Innovating both in Doctrine and Worship impeacheth them of exercising a Jurisdiction contrary to the Laws of the Land 1 Edw. 6. c. 2. and for falsifying the Records of the Church by adding the first clause to the twentieth Article arraigneth them for oppressing the Kings Liege people contrary unto Law and Justice exciting the people to rise up against them magnifying those disobedient Spirits who hitherto have stood out in defiance of them and seems content in case the Bishops lives might be called in question to run the hazard of his own For this being taken and imprisoned by a warrant from the High Commission he makes his appeal unto the King justifies it by an Apology and seconds that by an Address to the Nobility In which last he requires all sorts of people Noblemen Judges Courtiers and those of the inferiour sort to stand up stoutly for the Gospel against the Bishops And finally Prints all together with an Epistle Dedicatory to the King himself to the end that if his Majesty should vouchsafe the reading of it he might be brought into an ill opinion of the Bishops and their proceedings in the Church Whose actions tend only as he telleth us to corrupt the Kings good peoples hearts by casting into them fears and jealousies and sinister opinions toward the King as if he were the prime cause of all those Grievances which in his name they oppress the Kings good Subjects withall Thus also in another place These Factors of Antichrist saith he practice to divide Kings from their Subjects and Subjects from their Kings that so between both they may fairly erect Antichrists Throne again For that indeed that is to say the new building of Bable the setting up again of the throne of Antichrist the bringing in of Popery to subvert the Gospell is made to be the chief design of the Prelates and Prelatical party to which all innovations usurpations and more dangerous practices which are unjustly charged upon them served only as preparatives and subservient helps Such being the matter in the Libell let us next look upon the Ornaments and dressings thereof consisting most especially in those infamous Attributes which he ascribes unto the Bishops For Fathers he calls them Step-fathers for Pillars Caterpillars their houses haunted and their Episcopal Chairs poysoned by the Spirit that bears rule in the air They are saith he the Limbs of the Beast even of Antichrist taking his very courses to bear and beat down the hearing of the Word of God whereby men might be saved p. 12. Their fear is more toward an Altar of their own invention towards an Image or Crucifix toward the sound and syllables of Iesus then toward the Lord Christ p. 15. He gives then the reproachful Titles of Miscreants p. 28. The trains and wiles of the Dragons doglike flattering taile p. 30. New Babel builders p. 32. Blind Watchmen dumb dogs thieves and robbers of Souls False Prophets ravening Wolves p. 48. Factors for Antichrist p. 75. Antichristian Mushrumps And that it might be known what they chiefly aimed at we shall hear him say that they cannot be quiet till res novas moliendo they set up Popery again in her full Equipage p. 95. Tooth and naile for setting up Popery again p. 96. Trampling under feet Christs Kingdom that they may set up Antichrists Throne again p. 99. According to the Spirit of Rome which breaths in them by which they are so strongly biassed to wheel about to their Roman Mistress p. 108. The Prelates consederate with the Priests and Jesuites for rearing up of that Religion p. 140. Calling them upon that account in his Apology Iesuited Polipragmaticks and Sons of Belial Having thus lustily laid about him against all in general he descends to some particulars of most note and eminence Reviling White of Ely with railing and perverting in fighting against the truth which he makes to be his principal quality p. 127. and Mountague of Chichester for a tried Champion of Rome and the devoted Votary to his Queen of Heaven p. 126. And so proceeding to the Archbishop for of Wren he had spoke enough before he tells us of him That he used to set his foot on the Kings Laws as the Pope did on the Emperors neck p. 54. That with his right hand he was able to sweep down the third part of the Stars in heaven p. 121. And that he had a Papal infallibility of Spirit whereby as by a divine Oracle all Questions in Religion are finally determined p. 132. These are the principal flowers of Rhetorick which grew in the Garden of H. B. sufficient questionless to shew how sweet a Champion he was like to prove of the Church and Gospel And yet this was not all the mischief which the Church suffered at that time for presently on the neck of these came out another entituled The holy Table name and thing intended purposely for an Answer to the Coal from the Altar but cunningly pretended by him to be written long ago by a Minister in Lincolnshire against Dr. Coale a judicious Divine in Queen Maries daies Printed for the Diocess of Lincoln by the Bishop whereof under the name of Iohn Lincoln Dean of Westminster it was authorized for the Press In managing whereof the point in Controversie was principally about the placing of the Holy Table according to the practice of the Primitive Church and the received Rules of the Church of England at the first Reformation of it In prosecution of which point he makes himself an Adversary of his he know not whom and then he useth him he cares not how mangling the Authors words whom we would confute that so he might be sure of the easier conquest and practising on those Authors whom he was to use that they may serve his turn the better to procure the victory Of the composure of the whole we may take this Character from him who made the Answer to it viz. That he that conjectured of the house by the trim or dress would think it very richly furnished the Walls whereof that is the Margin richly set out with Antick hangings and whatsoever costly workmanship all nations of these times may be thought to brag of and every part adorned with flourishes and pretty pastimes the gay devices of the Painter Nor is there any want at all of Ornaments or Vtensils to set out the same such especially as may serve for ostentation though of little use many a fine and subtle Carpet not a few idle couches for the credulous Reader and every where a pillow for a Puritans elbow all very pleasing to the eye
himself was fain to call both Houses before him within two daies after there to Explain or rather to Retract so harsh a Title calling them afterwards by the name of his Subjects of Scotland as he used to do which gave the Commons such a sense of their Power and of his Compliance that they resolved to husband both to their best advantage and not so easily to part with their Friends of Scotland as his Majesty first hoped they would The differences might have been agreed at York or Rippon if the Commissioners of the Scots had been as forward as the English but the Scots so delayed them as his Majesty noted in that Speech that it was not possible to end it there The Scots had other work to do besides their own and must be kept in pay at the charge of the English till they had brought his Majesty into such a condition that it was not safe for him to deny them any thing which they had the confidence to require Such a beginning had this long and unhappy Parliament unhappy to the King and to all that loved his Power or Person most men who looked on his Affairs with the eye of Judgment presaging that this thrifâ—y omission of the Publick Pomp in the present Conjunctures would prove as inauspicious to him as the like neglect had done at his Coronation and that this Parliament which began without solemnity would prove a Parliament of sorrows unto him and his With little better Fortune did the Convocation take beginning at S. Pauls Church on the morrow after handselled at their first meeting by the sad news of the Decease of Dr. Neile Archbishop of York which had been brought unto the Town the day before A man he was who had past through all Degrees and Orders in the Church of England and thereby made acquainted with the conveniencies or distresses incident to all conditions He had served the Church as Schoolmaster Curate Vicar Parson Master of the Savoy Dean of Westminster Clerk of the Closet to both Kings successively Bishop of Rochester Lichfield Lincoln Durham and Winchester and finally Archbishop of York in which place he died Many good Offices he had done to the Church and Church-men in his attendance at the Court crossing the Scots in most of their suits their Ecclesiastical Preferments which greedily and ambitiously they hunted after and thereby drawing on himself the general hatred not only of the Scots but Scotizing English But of this Prelate we have spoke so much upon other occasions that we may save the labour of any further addition than that he died as full of years as he was of honours an affectionate Subject to his Prince an indulgent Father to his Clergy a bountiful Patron to his Chaplains and a true friend to all which relied upon him more fortunate in the time of his death than the course of his life in being prevented by that blessed opportunity from seeing those calamities which afterwards fell upon the King the Church and all that wish well to either of them which must have been more grievous to him than a thousand deaths But this bad news retarded not the Convocation from proceeding forwards the Prelates and Clergy attending the Archbishop from the Chapter-house into the Choire where they heard the Sermon Preached at that time by Bargrave then Dean of Canterbury which done the Clergy settled to the choice of a Prolocutor electing the same man who had before discharged the Place with so much dexterity Adjourned to Westminster and Protestation made by the Sub-Dean and Prebends according to the usual custome the Prolocutor was presented to the Archbishop and Bishops in the Chappel of King Henry vii at what time the Archbishop in an eloquent but sad Oration bemoaned the infelicities which he saw hanging over the Church advising every one there present to perform their Duties and not to be wanting to themselves or the cause of Religion as far forth as they were concerned in their several places Nothing more done of any moment in this Convocation but that a motion was made by Warmistre one of the Clerks for the Diocess of Worcester to this effect viz. That they should endeavour according to the Levitical Laws to cover the Pit which they had opened and to prevent their Adversaries intention by condemning such offensive Canons as were made in the last Convocation He had before offered at many things in that Convocation but such was his ill-luck that the Vote was for the most part passed before he spake nor had he better fortune in his motion now than his offers then the Members of that House not being willing to condemn themselves till they were accused So that not having any other way to obtain his purpose he caused a long Speech which he had made upon this occasion to be put in Print bitter enough against some Canons and Proceedings in the former Session but such as could not save him from a Sequestration when the rest of the Clergy were brought under the same condition Whilst these things were acting on the Stage of Westminster the Earl of Strafford was not Idle in acting his part at York amongst the Souldiers whose affections he had gained so far that he was generally beheld with esteem and veneration He had before sufficient proof how strongly the Scots aimed at his destruction expressed in their Remonstrance and the Intentions of their Army as they called the Pamphlet but more especially by the refusal of the Scots Commissioners to hold the Treaty at York and the reasons given for their refusal for in a Paper of theirs presented on October 8. They had insisted on the danger apprehended by them in going to York and casting themselves and others who might be joyned with them into the hands of an Army commanded by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland against whom as a chief Incendiary according to their demands which was the subject of the Treaty it self they resolved to proceed They complained also in that Paper That in the Parliament of Ireland he had proceeded against them as Traitors and Rebels That he honoured them in his common talk with no better Titles That his Commission was to destroy them And that by all means and by all occasions he had hindred all Propositions tending to a Pacification for fear himself might be excluded from the benefit of it He was not without a strong presumption that the Scots were animated unto these Demands and incouraged to invade the Kingdom by some of those which were of greatest Prevalency in both Houses of Parliament And lying so near the Scots in the head of his Army he had not only gained assurance as he conceived in many particulars to confirm it but that there was a Confederacy made between the Heads of the Covenanters and some of the leading Members of both Houses his most Capital Enemies to subject the Government of the Church and innovate in that of the Civil State which Intelligence being digested
understood no otherwise then as it is before laid down appears by this Gloss of Bishop Hooper on that Text of St. Iohn viz. No man cometh to me except my Father draw him chap. 6.44 Many saith he understand the words in a wrong sense as if God required no more in a reasonable man than in a dead post and marke not the words which follow Every man that heareth and learneth of my Father cometh to me God draweth with his word and the Holy Ghost but mans duty is to hear and learn that is to say to receive the grace offered consent to the promise and not repugn the God that calleth The like occurs in Bishop Latimers Sermon on the Sunday commonly called Septuagesima in which we find That seeing the preaching of the Gospel is universal it appeareth that God would have all mankinde saved and that the fault is not in him if they be damned for it is written thus Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri God would have all men be saved but we are so wicked of our selves that we refuse the same and will not take notice when it is offered to us It cannot be denyed but that the same Doctrine is maintained by the Arminians as they call them and that it is the very same with that of the Church of Rome as appears by the Council of Trent cap. De fructu justificationis merito bonorum operum Can. 3.4 But then it must be granted also that it is the Doctrine of the Melanctonian Divines or Moderate Lutherans as was confessed by Andreas vega one of the chief sticklers in the Council of Trent who on the agitating of the point did confess ingenuously that there was no difference betwixt the Lutherans and that Church touching that particular And then it must be granted also that it was the Doctrine of St. Augustine according to that divine saying of his Sine gratia Dei praeveniente ut volimus subsequente ne frustra volimus ad pietatis opera nil valemus so that if the Church of England must be Arminian and the Arminians must be Papist because they agree together in this particular the Melanctonian Divines among the Protestants yea and St. Augustine himself must be Papist also 37. Such being the freedom of the will in laying or not laying hold upon those means which are offered by Almighty God for our Salvation 〈◊〉 cannot be denyed but that there is a freedom also of the will in standing unto Grace received or departing from it Certain I am that it is so resolved by the Church of England in the 16th Article for Confession in which it is declared That after we have received the Holy Ghost we may depart from Grace given and fall into sin and by the grace of God we may arise again and amend our lives which is the very same with that of the 14th Article in King Edward's Book of the year 1557. where plainly the Church teacheth a possibility of falling or departing from the grace of the Holy Ghost which is given unto us and that our rising again and the amending of our lives upon such a rising is a matter of contingency only and no way necessary on Gods part to assure us of Conform to which we finde Bishop Hooper thus discoursing in the said Preface to his exposition of the Ten Commandments The cause of Rejection or Damnation saith he is sin in man which will not hear neither receive the promise of the Gospel or else after he hath received it by accustomed doing of ill falleth either into a contempt of the Gospel and will not study to live thereafter or else hateth the Gospel because it condemneth his ungodly life And we finde Bishop Latimer discoursing thus in his eighth Sermon in Lincolnshire Those persons saith he that be not come yet to Christ or if they were come to Christ be fallen again from him and so lost their Iustification as there be many of us when we fall willingly into sin against Conscience we lose the favour of God our Salvation and finally the Holy Ghost And before c. 6. thus But you will say saith he How shall I know that I am in the Book of Life How shall I try my self to be the Elect of God to everlasting life I answer First We may know that we may be one time in the Book and another time come out again as it appeareth by David who was written in the Book of Life but when he sinned he at that time was out of the Book of the favour of God until he repented and was sorry for his faults so that we may be in the Book one time and afterwards when we forget God and his Word and do wickedly we come out of the Book that is out of Christ who is the Book Which makes the point so clear and evident on the Churches part that when it was moved by Doctor Reynolds at Hampton-Court that the words Nec tolaliter nec finaliter might be added into the Clause of that Article the motion was generally rejected and the Article left standing in the same terms in which it then stood By which we may the better judge of some strange expressions amongst the most Rigid sort of the Contra-Remonstrants especially of that of Roger Dontelock by whom it is affirmed that if it were possible for any one man to commit all the sins over again which have been acted in the world it would neither frustrate his Election nor alienate him from the love and favour of Almighty God for which consult the Appendix to the Presseor Declaratio Sententiae Remonstrantium Printed at Leyden Anno 1616. 38. Such is the Doctrine of this Church and such the Judgement of those Reverend Bishops and right godly Martyrs in the Predestinarian Controversies before remembred And though I have insisted on those two alone yet in theirs I include the Judgement of Cranmer Ridley and the rest of those learned men who laboured in the great work of the Reformation Some difference there had been betwixt Cranmer and Ridley on the one side and Hooper only on the other in matter of Ceremony in which Hooper at the last submitted to the other two But in all the Doctrinal truths of their Religion there was a full consent between them which appears plainly in this passage of a Letter sent from Ridley to Hooper when they were both prisoners for the same cause though in several places But now my dear Brother saith he for as much as I understand by your works which I have but superâ—icially seen that we throughly agree and wholly consent together in those things which are the grounds and substantial points of our Religion against which the world so rageth in these our dayes Howsoever in times past in certain by-matters and circumstances of Religion your Wisdom and my simplicity I grant have a little jarred each of us following the aboundance of his own sense and Iudgement Now I say be you
dies though his Munificence survive him It was then Midlent-Sunday and the Court-Sermon at Whitehall according to the ancient Custom in the after-noon At what time the sad News passing through London began to be rumored in the Court as Laud was going into the Pulpit to preach before the Lords of the Council the Officers of the Houshold and the rest of that great Concourse of all sorts of People which usually repaired thither at those Solemn Sermons Before he was come to the middle of it the certainty of the Kings death more generally known amongst them the confusion which he saw in the faces of all the Company his own griefs and the dolorous complaints made by the Duke of Buckingham occasioned him to leave the Pulpit and to bestow his pains and comforts where there was more need He did not think as I believe few wise men do that the carrying on of one particular Sermon was such a necessary part of Gods business as is not to be intermitted upon any occasion nor was this ever charged upon him amongst his crimes The sense of this great loss being somewhat abated he was requested by the Duke to draw up some Remembrances of the Life Reign and Government of the King Deceased which he accordingly performed and presented to him But they are but Remembrances or Memorials only like the first lines of a design or Picture which being polished and perfected by a skilâ—ul Workman might have presented us with the true and lively Pourtraiture of that gracious Prince But who will undertake to finish what Laud began I must therefore leave the deceased King to those Memorials and those Memorials to be found in his Breviate p. 5. But there was another Pourtraiture provided for that King before his Funeral His Body being brought from Theobalds unto Sommerset-house where a Royal and Magnificent Hearse was erected for him visited and resorted to by infinite multitudes of people for some Weeks together From Sommerset-house his Body was carried in great State on Saturday the seventh of May to St. Peters Church in Westminster where it was solemnly interred The Funeral Sermon preached by the Lord Keeper Williams and printed not long after by the name of Great Britains Solomon which afterwards administred the occasion of some discourse which otherwise might have been spared Thus is Iames dead and buried but the King survives his only Son Prince Charles being immediately proclaimed King of Great Britain France and Ireland first at the Court Gates by Sir Edward Zouch Knight Marshal most solemnly the next day at London and afterwards by degrees in all the Cities and Market Towns of the Kingdom At his first entrance on the Crown he found himself ingaged in a war with the K. of Spain the mightiest Monarch of the West for which he was to raise great Forces both by Sea and Land He was also at the Point of Marriage with the Daughter of France and some proportionable preparations must be made for that Nor was King Iames to be interred without a solemn and magnificent Funeral answerable in the full height to so great a Prince All which must needs exact great Sums of money and money was not to be had without the help of a Parliament which he therefore gave order to be called in the usual manner But in the middest of these many and great preparations he forgets not the great business of the Church He had observed the multitudinousness of his Fathers Chaplains and the disorder of their waitings which puts him on a Resolution of reducing them to a lesser number and limiting them to a more certain time of attendance than before they were He knew well also what an influence the Court had alwaies on the Country by consequence how much it did concern him in his future Government that his Officers and Servants should be rightly principled according to the Doctrine Government and Forms of Worship established in the Church of England And therefore that he might be served with Orthodox and Regular men Laud is commanded to prepare a Catalogue of the most eminent Divines and to distinguish them by the two Letters of O and P. according to their several perswasions and affections And that being done he is directed by the Duke and the Kings appointment to have recourse to the most learned Bishop Andrews to know of him what he thought fitting to be done in the Cause of Religion Especially in reference to the five Articles condemned not long since in the Synod at Dort and to report his answer with convenient speed A Convocation was of course to accompany the ensuing Parliament And it was fit not only that the Prelates should resolve before-hand what Points they meant to treat on when they were assembled but that his Majesty also might have time to consider of them These seasonable cares being thus passed over he hastens both his own marriage and his Fathers Funeral The first he sollemnized by Proxie in the Church of Nostre Dame in Paris on Sunday the first of May according to the Style of England The news whereof being brought to the Court on the Wednesday following was celebrated in the Streets of London the Liberties and out-parts of it with more than ordinary Expressions of Joy and Gladness The Proxie made to Claud. de Lorain Duke of Chevereux one of the younger Sons of the Duke of Guise from which House his Majesty derived himself by his great Grand-Mother Mary of Lorain Wife of Iames the Fifth The Funeral he attended in his own Person as the principal Mourner Which though it were contrary to the Custome of his Predecessors yet he chose rather to express his Piety in attending the dead Body of his Father to the Funeral Pile than to stand upon any such old niceties and points of State This was the third Funeral which he had attended as the principal Mourner which gave some occasion to presage that he would prove a man of sorrows and that his end would carry some proportion to those mournful beginnings The Intervall before the coming of his Queen he spent in looking to his Navy and drawing his Land Forces together for that Summers service But hearing that his Queen was advancing toward him he went to Canterbury and rested there on Trinity Sunday the twelfth of Iune That night he heard the news of her safe arrival at the Port of Dover whom he welcomed the next morning into England with the most chearful signs of a true aâ—fection From thence he brought her unto Canterbury and from thence by easie Stages to Gravesend where entring in their Royal Barge attended by infinite companies of all sorts of People and entertained by a continual peal of Ordnance all the way they passed he brought her safely and contentedly unto his Palace at Westminster The Lords and Ladies of the Court having presented to her the acknowledgement of their humble duties such Bishops as were about the Town as most of them were in regard of
on the Kings wants flattered themselves with the hope of a Toleration for it But old Sir Iohn Savill of Yorkshire who had been lately taken into his Majesties Council had found out a plot worth two of that conceiving that a Commission to proceed against Recusants for their thirds due to his Majesty by Law would bring in double the Sum which they had offered To this the King readily condescended granting him and some others a Commission for that purpose for the Parts beyond Trent as unto certain Lords and Gentlemen for all other Counties in the Kingdom By which means and some moneys raised upon the Loane there was such a present stock advanced that with some other helps which his Majesty had he was enabled to set forth a powerfull Fleet and a considerable Land Army for the relief of the Rochellers whose quarrel he had undertaken upon this occasion The Queen at her first coming into England had brought with her a complâ—at Family of French to attend her here according to the Capitulations between the Commissioners of both Kings before the Marriage But the French Priests and some of the rest of her Domesticks were grown so insolent and had put so many affronts upon his Majesty that he was forced to send them home within few daies after he had dissolved the foregoing Parliament In which he had done no more than what the French King had done before him in sending back all the Spanish Courtiers which his Queen brought with her But the French King not looking on his own Example and knowing on what ill terms the King stood both at home and abroad first seized on all the Merchants Ships which lay on the River of Burdeaux and then brake out into open war So that the King was necessitated to make use of those Forces against the French which were designed to have been used against the Spaniard and to comply with the desires of the Rochellers who humbly sued for his protection and defence But the Fleet not going out till after Michaelmas found greater opposition at Sea than they feared from the Land being encountred with strong Tempests and thereby necessitated to return without doing any thing but only shewing the Kings good will and readiness toward their assistance But the next Fleet and the Land-Army before mentioned being in a readiness the Duke of Buckingham appeared Commander general for that Service who hoped thereby to make himself of some consideration in the eyes of the People On the twenty seventh of Iune he hoised Sailes for the Isle of Rhe which lay before the Port of Rochel and embarred their trade the taking whereof was the matter aimed at And he had strength enough both for Sea and Land to have done the work if he had not followed it more like a Courtier than a Souldier For having neglected those advantages which the victory at his Landing gave him he first suffered himself to be complemented out of the taking of their chief Fort when it was almost at his mercy and after stood unseasonably upon point of Honour in facing those Forces which were sent from the French King to raise the Siege when he might have made a safe retreat unto his Ships without loss or danger So that well beaten by the French and with great loss of Reputation among the English he came back with the remainder of his broken Forces in November following as dearly welcom to the King as if he had returned with success and triumphs During the preparations for this unfortunate attempt on Sunday the twenty ninth of April it pleased his Majesty to admâ—t the Bishop of Bath and Wells for one of the Lords of his most honourable Privy Council An honour which he would not have accepted with so great chearfulness if his dear Friend the Lord Bishop of Durham had not been sworn at or about the same time also So mutually did these two Prelates contribute their assistances to one another that as Neile gave Laud his helping hand to bring him first into the Court and plant him in King Iames his favour So Laud made use of all advantages in behalf of Neile to keep him in favour with King Charles and advance him higher The Fleet and Forces before mentioned being in a readiness and the Duke provided for the Voyaye it was not thought either safe or fit that the Duke himself should be so long absent without leaving some assured Friend about his Majesty by whom all practises against him might be either prevented or suppressed and by whose means the Kings affections might be alwaies inflamed towards him To which end Laud is first desired to attend his Majesty to Portsmouth before which the Navy lay at Anchor and afterwards to wait the whole Progress also the Inconveniencies of which journeys he was as willing to undergo as the Duke was willing to desire it The Church besides was at that time in an heavy condition and opportunities must be watcht for keeping her from falling from bad to worse No better her condition now in the Realm of England than anciently in the Eastern Churches when Nectarius sate as Supâ—â—me Pastor in the Chair of Constantinople of which thus Nazianze writes unto him The Arians saith he were grown so insolent that they make open profession of their Heresie as if they had been authorized and licenced to it The Macedonians so presumptuous that they were formed into a Sect and had a Titular Bishop of their own The Apollinarians held their Conventicles with as much safety and esteem as the Orthodox Christians And for Eunomius the bosome-mischief of those times he thought so poorly of a general connivence that at last nothing would content him but a toleration The cause of which disorders he ascribeth to Nectarius only A man as the Historian saith of him of an exceeding fair and plausible demeanour and very gracious with the people one that chose rather as it seems to give free way to all mens fancies and suffer every mans proceedings than draw upon himself the envy of a stubborn Clergy and a factious Multitude Never was Church more like to Church Bishop to Bishop time to time the names of the Sects and Heresies being only changed than those of Constantinople then and of England now A pregnant evidence that possibly there could not be a greater mischief in a Church of God than a Popular Prelate This though his Majesty might not know yet the Bishops which were about him did who therefore had but ill discharged their duty both to God and man if they had not made his Majesty acquainted with it he could not chuse but see by the practises and proceedings of the former Parliaments to what a prevalency the Puritans were grown in all parts of the Kingdom and how incompatible that humour was with the Regal interest There was no need to tell him from what fountain the mischief came how much the Popularity and remiss Government of Abbot did contribute
towards it Him therefore he sequestreth from his Metropolitical Jurisdiction confines him to his house at Ford in Kent and by his Commission bearing date the ninth day of October 1627. transfers the exercise of that Jurisdiction to Mountaine Bishop of London Neile Bishop of Durham Buckeridge Bishop of Rochester Houson Bishop of Oxon and Laud Bishop of Bath and Wells To whom or any two or more of them he gives authority to execute and perform all and every those Acts matters and things any way touching or concerning the Power Jurisdiction or Authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury in causes or matters Ecclesiastical as amply fully and effectually to all intents and purposes as the said Archbishop himself might have done And this his Majesty did to this end and purpose that the Archiepiscopal Jurisdiction being committed to such hands as were no favourers of that Faction there might some stop be given to that violent current which then began to bear all before it Nor did his Majesty fail of the end desired For though Abbot on good reasons of State was restored unto his Jurisdiction toward the latter end of the year next following Yet by this breathing time as short as it was the Church recovered strength again And the disgrace put upon the man did so disanimate and deject the opposite Party that the Ballance began visibly to turn on the Churches side During the time that this Commission was in force some Beneficed persons in the Country who in themselves were well affected to ancient orders and now in more assurance of Protections than before they were adventured on removing the Communion Table from the middle of the Church or Chancel and setting it according to the pattern of the Mother Churches where the Altar formerly had stood Amongst the rest one Titly Vicar of Grantham a â—oted Town upon the Road in the County of Lincoln having observed the situation of the holy Table as well in his Diocesans Chappel as in the Cathedral mother Church transposed the Table from the middest of the Chancel in his Parish Church and placed it Altar-wise at the East end of it Complaint hereof being made by some of that Town to the Bishop of Lincoln he presently takes hold of the opportunity to discourage the work not because he disliked it in point of judgment for then his judgment and his practice must have crost each other but because Titly had Relation to the Bishop of Durham And for the Bishop of Durham he had no good thoughts partly because he kept his stand in the Court out of which himself had been ejected and partly by reason of the intimacy betwixt him and Laud whom he looked on as his open and professed enemy And then how was it possible that he should approve of Titly or his action either conceiving that it might be done by their or one of their appointments or at the least in hope of better preferment from them Hereupon he betakes himself unto his Books and frames a Popular Discourse against placing the Communion Table Altar-wise digests it in the Form of a Letter to the Vicar of Grantham but sends it unto some Divines of the Lecture there by them to be dispersed and scattered over all the Country But of this Letter more hereafter when we shall find it taken up for a Buckler against Authority and laid in Bar against the proceedings of the Church and the Rules of it when such transposing of the Table became more general not alone practised but prescribed But the noise of this Letter not flying very far at the first hindred not the removing of the Table in the Parish Church of St. Nicholas in the Burrough of Abingdon the occasion this One Blucknall dwelling in that Parish bestowed upon it amongst other Legacies an annual Pension to be paid unto the Curate thereof for reading duly prayer in the said Church according to the Form prescribed in the English Liturgie For the establishing of which Gifts and Legacies to the proper use and uses intended by him a Commission was issued out of the High Court of Chancery according to the Statute 43 Eliz. Directed amongst others to Sir Ed. Clark Knight Sam. Fell Doctor in Divinity George Purefez and Richard Organ Esquires who by their joynt consent made this Order following viz. And that the Table given by Mr. Blucknall should not by the multitude of People coming to Service or otherwise by sitting or writing upon it or by any other unreverent usage be prophaned spoyled or hurt We do order and decree that the said Table shall continually stand at the upper end of the Chancell upon which a Carpet by him given should be laid where it shall continually stand close to the upper Skreen there being of old within that Skreen a kind of Vestry for keeping the Plate Books and Vestments which belong to the Church and there to be covered with the Carpet aforesaid and in no place else Which Order together with many others for settling and disposing the said Gifts and Legacies were made at Abingdon on the twenty fifth of April 1628. and afterwards confirmed under the Great Seal of England This being the only Table as I conceive whose posture in that place is ratified by Decree in Chancery Now as some private Beneficed persons during the Suspension of the said Archbishop did thus adventure on the one side so divers Commissaries Officials Surrogates and other Ecclesiastical Officers began to carry a more hard hand on the Puritan Party their great Friend and Patron being thus discountenanced than they had done formerly Amongst these none more active than Lamb Sibthorp Allen and Burden according to their Power and Places the three last having some relation to Lamb as Lamb had to the Episcopal Court at Peterborough and thereby a neer neighbourhood to the Bishop of Lincoln then keeping in his House at Buckden in the County of Huntingdon at whose Table being entertained as they had been many times before they found there Morison Chancellor to that Bishop and Prigeion one of the Officers of the Court at Lincoln Their Discourse growing hot against the Puritans the Bishop advised them to take off their heavy hand from them informing them That his Majesty hereafter intended to use them with more mildness as a considerable Party having great influence on the Parliament without whose concurrence the King could not comfortably supply his Necessities To which he added That his Majesty had communicated this unto him by his own mouth with his Resolutions hereafter of more gentleness to men of that Opinion Which words though unadvisedly spoken yet were not thought when first spoken by him to be of such a dangerous and malignant nature as to create to him all that charge and trouble which afterwards beâ—el him upon that occasion For some years after a breach being made betwixt him and Lamb about the Officials place of Leicester which the Bishop had designed to another person Lamb complains of him to some
reject the sense of the Iesuites Arminians and all others wherein they differ from us Which Declaration of the Commons as it gave great animation to those of the Calvinian Party who entertained it with the like ardency of affection as those of Ephesus did the Image of DIANA which fell down from heaven so gave it great matter of discourse to most knowing men The Points were intricate and weighty such as in all Ages of the Church had exercised the wits of the greatest Scholars Those which had taken on them to declare for truth that which they took to be the sense and meaning of the Articles in those intricate Points were at the best no other than a company of Lay Persons met together on another occasion who though they might probably be supposed for the wisest men could not in reason be relied on as the greatest Clerks And therefore it must needs be looked on as a kind of Prodigie that men unqualified and no way authorized for any such purpose should take upon them to determine in such weighty matters as were more proper for a National or Provincial Council But being it proceeded from the House of Commons whose power began to grow more formidable every day than other no body durst adventure a Reply unto it till Laud himselâ— by whose procurement his Majesties Declaration had been published laying aside the Dignity of his Place and Person thought fit to make some Scholia's or short notes upon it Which not being published at that time in Print for ought I have either heard or seen but found in the rifling of his Study amongst the rest of his Papers I shall present unto the Reader in these following words And first saith he the Publick Acts of the Church in matters of Doctrine are Canons and Acts of Councils as well for expounding as determining The Acts of the High Commission are not in this sense Publick Acts of the Church nor the meeting of a few or more Bishops Extra Concilium unless they be by lawful Authority called to that work and their decision approved by the Church Secondly The currant Exposition of Writers is a strong probable argument De sensu Canonis Ecclesiae vel Articuli yet but probable The currant Exposition of the Fathers themselves have sometimes missed Sensum Ecclesiae Thirdly Will you reject all sense of Jesuite or Arminian May not some be true May not some be agreeable to our Writers and yet in a way that is stronger than ours to confirm the Article Fourthly Is there by this Act any Interpretation made or declared of the Articles or not If none to what end the Act If a sense or interpretation be declared what Authority have Lay-men to make it For interpretation of an Article belongs to them only that have power to make it Fifthly It is manifest there is a sense declared by the House of Commons the Act saies it We avow the Article and in that sense and all other that agree not with us in the aforesaid sense we reject these and these go about misinterpretation of a sense Ergo there is a Declaration of a sense yea but it is not a new sense declared by them but they avow the old sense declared by the Church the publick Authentick Acts of the Churcâ— c. yea but if there be no such publick Authentick Acts of the Church then here is a sense of their own declared under the pretexts of it Sixthly It seems against the Kings Declaration 1. That say We shall take the general meaning of the Articles This Act restrains them to consent of Writers 2. That says The Articles shall not be drawn aside any way but that we shall take it in the literal and Grammatical sense This Act ties us to consent of Writers which may and perhaps do go against the literal sense for here is no exception so we shall be perplexed and our consent required to things contrary Seventhly All consent in all Ages as far as I have observed to an Article or Canon is to it self as it is laid down in the body of it and if it bear more senses then one it is lawful for any man to chuse what sense his judgment directs him to so that it be a sense secundum Analogiam fidei and that he hold it peaceably without distracting the Church and this till the Church that made the Article determine a sense And the wisdom of the Church hath been in all Ages or in most to require consent to Articles in General as much as may be because that is the way of unity and the Church in high points requiring assent to particulars hath been rent as De Transubstantiatione c. It is reported of Alphonso King of Castile Sirnamed the Wise that he used many times to say never the worse for so saying That if he had stood at God Almighties Elbow when he made the world he would have put him in mind of some things which had been forgotten or otherwise might have been better ordered than they were And give me leave to say with as little wisdom though with no such blasphemy that if I had stood at his Lordships Elbow when he made these Scholia's I would have put him in mind of returning an answer to that Clause of the said Declaration in which it is affirmed That the Articles of Religion were established in Parliament in the thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth But I would fain know of them whether the Parliament they speak of or any other since or before that time did take upon them to confirm Articles of Religion agreed on by the Clergy in their Convocations or that they appointed any Committee for Religion to examine the Orthodoxie of those Articles and make report unto the House All which was done in that Parliament was this and on this occasion Some Ministers of the Church so stifly wedded to their old Mumsimus of the Mass and some as furiously prosecuting their new Sumpsimus of inconformity it was thought fit that between those contending parties the Doctrine of the Church should be kept inviolate And thereupon it was Enacted That every person under the degree of a Bishop which did or should pretend to be a Priest or Minister of Gods holy Word and Sacraments in the Church of England should before Christmass next following in the presence of his Diocesan Bishop testifie his assent and subscribe to the said Articles of the year 1562. Secondly That after such subscribing before the Bishop he should on some Sunday in the Forenoon in the Church or Chappel where he served in time of Divine Service read openly the said Articles on pain of being deprived of all his Ecclesiastical Promotions as if he were then naturally dead Thirdly That if any Ecclesiastical person should maintain any Doctrine contrary to any of the said Articles and being Convented before his Bishop c. and should persist therein it should be just cause to deprive such person of his Ecclesiastical
Cure so soon as the same shall be fairely procured for him VI. That the Bishops do incourage and countenance the grave and Orthodox Divines of their Clergy and that they use all means by some of their Clergy or others that they have knowledge how both Lecturers and Preachers within their Diocesses behave themselves in their Sermons that so they may take order for any abuse accordingly VII That the Bishop suffer none under Noblemen and men qualified by the Law to have any private Chaplain in his house VIII That they take especial care that Divine Service be diligently frequented as well for the Prayers and Catechism as Sermons and take particular notice of all such as absent themselves as Recusants or otherwise IX That every Bishop who by Our Grace and Favour and good opinion of his Service shall be nominated by Vs to another Bishoprick shall not from that day of nomination presume to make any Lease for three Lives or one and twenty years or Concurrent Lease or any way renew any Estate or cut any wood or timber but meerly to receive the Rents due and so quit the place For we think it a hateful thing that any mans leaving the Bishoprick should almost undo his Successor And if any man shall presume to break this Order We will refuse him at Our Royal Assent and keep him at the place which he hath so abused X. And lastly We command you to give Vs an account every year on the second of January of the performance of these Our Commands The Reader may think strange that in the second of these Instructions we should find any Bishop under a supposition of having no Episcopal house for his habitation concerning which he is to know that the Bishops of Oxon at that time had no house left belonging to their Episcopal See either in the City or in the Country but dwelt at their Parsonage houses which they held in commendam as before Dr. Bridges who had no commendam within the Diocess did for the most part in hired houses For though at the foundation of the Bishoprick of Oxon in the Abbey of Oseney the King appointed Glocester Hall for the Bishops Palace yet when that foundation was dissolved and the Bishops See removed to Christ Church the Grant of Glocester Hall was dissolved also The Bishops thereupon retired to some Country house within the Diocess which appertained unto them in the right of their See as long as any of their Mannours Land and Houses were left unsould But they being finally made a prey to the Lust and Sacriledge of some great persons they have since lived for the most part in hired houses or on their Commendams if they had any such within their Diocesses till the year 1632. when Dr. Iohn Bancroft was made Bishop of Oxon who having at or about that time obtained of the King that the Vicaridge oâ— Cudsden about five miles from Oxon being of his own proper Patronage and Donation might be annexed for ever unto his Episcopal See built there at the perswasion of our Bishop of London a very fair and convenient house with a decent Chappel thereunto to be the ordinary dwelling place of himself and his Successors But the house proved almost as short lived as the Founder being burned down by Collonel Leg during the short time that he was Governour of Oxon for fear it might be made a Garrison by the Parliament Forces though with as much reason and more piety he might have garrisoned it for the King and preserved the house But to proceed No sooner were these Instructions come to the hands of Archbishop Abbot but they were presently dispersed and communicated to the Suâ—raâ—an Bishops In this he acted only Ministerially and durst do no otherwise but when he came to act Authoritatively in his own capacity he betrayed the cause he neither liked the third Instruction for observing his Majesties Declaration before the Articles that being looked on as an Artifice to bring in Arminianism Nor was he pleased with any of the Limitations concerning Lecturers to whom as the chief sticklers in the Puritan Cause he was alwaies favourable which last affection he was so unable to conceal that when the Dean and Archdeacon of Canterbury had suspended Palmer and Vdnay two of the Lecturers in that Diocess whom they found obstinately inconformable to the Kings Directions He restored them not long after to their several Lectures inhibiting the Archdeacon from his Jurisdiction and exposing all that Acted in it to contempt and scorn And if an Archbishop could be so unsatisfied for putting these Instructions into execution as his place required there is no question to be made but various descants and reports would be raised upon them by most sorts of People The Country Gentlemen took it ill to be deprived of the liberty of keeping Chaplains in their houses from which they had not been debarred by the Laws of the Land The Laws indeed had taken order that no persons under the Degree of a Baron some Judges and great Offices excepted only should qualifie any of their Chaplaines for a dispensation to hold more than one Benefice with Cure of Soules or to be dispensed with for not residing on such Cures as they were preferred to And they had taken order how many Chaplains every such person according to his Rank and Degree in the Scale of Nobility should be enabled to qualifie to those ends and purposes but otherwise all persons had been left at liberty to keep as many as they would and as long as they pleased without any comptroll Nor were the Chaplains better pleased than their Masters were For having lived upon hard commons and perhaps under some smart Discipline also in their Halls and Colledâ—es they thought that they had spent their studies to good purpose by finding ease and a full belly in these Gentlemens houses from whom there was some possibility of preferment also which better Scholars then themselves might have otherwise hoped for Such of the Bishops as were possessed of the poorer Bishopricks were as much troubled as the other and thought it the worst kind of banishments to be confined unto the Country complaining privately that now the Court-Bishops had served their own turns upon the King they cared not what miseries their poor brethren were exposed unto who if they were constrained to live in their Episcopal houses or in any other place within their Diocesses must be constrained also to keep up such a Port and maintain such open Hospitality as their Revenues could not bear Nor was it thought a less injury to them that they could not make the best of their time but were required to be good husbands for another man who was to enjoy the place which they were to leave when they were fain to take it as it came to their hands without any prevention going before or satisfaction following after But greater were the clamours of the Puritan Faction reviving all whâ—ch had been made
the Resisters of Authority and that the rest of the Houses erected or employed there or elsewhere to the use of Superstitious Societies be converted to Houses of Correction and to set the People on work or to other Publick uses for the Advancement of Justice good Arts or Trade Which Order of the Council-Table bears date 31 Ianuary 1629. That part of the Remonstrance of the House of Commons which related to the Affairs of Ireland first alarm'd Laud to take the Business of that Church into consideration And that he might be the better informed in all Particulars which concerned it he took order with Doctor William Beadle designed unto the Bishoprick of Killmore to give him an exact Account of the Estate of that Church as soon as he could make any perfect Discovery of it This Order of the Council-Table reinforced that case and quickned the dispatch of Beadle for his satisfaction from whom he received a Letter dated April the first Anno 1630. In which he signified That he had not been unmindful of his Lordships commands which he was now the better able to perform because saith he I have been about my Diocess and can set down out of my knowledge and view what I shall relate and shortly to speak much ill matter in few words Which said he lets his Lordship know That the Estate of his Church was very miserable That the Cathedral Church of Ardagh united to the See of Killmore one of the most ancient in Ireland and said to be built by St. Patrick together with the Bishops House there was down to the ground That the Church at Killmore had been built but without Bell or Steeple Font or Chalice That the Parish-Churches were all in a manner ruined or unroofed and unrepaired That the People saving a few British Planters here and there which are not the tenth part of the Remnant were obstinate Recusants That there was a Popish Clergy more numerous by far than the English Clergy That they were in full Exercise of all Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical by their Vicars-general and Officials who were so confident as to Excommunicate those that come to the Courts of the Protestant Bishops That the Popish Primate for Ireland lived within two miles of his House and the Bishops in another part of his Diocess further off That every Parish had their Priest and some two or three apiece and so their Massing-houses also and that Masses are sometimes said in their Churches That there were Friars in divers places who went about though not in their Habit who by their importunate begging did impoverish the People That Poverty was much increased as well by their paying double Tythes both to their own Clergy and the English as by the dearth of Corn and the death of their Cattel That the Oppressions of the Courts Ecclesiastical which was reckoned for another cause of the common poverty were not indeed to be excused which for his part he had a purpose to reform That in each Diocess there were some seven or eight Ministers of good sufficiency but being English they neither understood the Tongue of the People nor could perform any Divine Offices nor converse with them as they ought and consequently could give no stop to the growth and increase oâ— Popery That most of the said Ministers held two three four or more Vicaridges apiece and that sometimes one man was Clerk of three or four Parishes which were ordinarily bought sold and let to Farm And finally That by those and such other means his majesty was King as to the Hearts and Consciences of that People but so that it remained wholly at the Popes Discretion Here was sufficient work for a Reformation and we shall see Laud taking care of it in convenient time But first we must look back to England where we shall find a new Honour attending on him On Saturday being the tenth of April William Lord Herbert Earl of Pembroke Lord Steward of his Majesties Houshold and Chancellor of the University of Oxon. died suddenly at his House called Baynards-Castle having then made up the â—iâ—tieth year of his life beyond which it had been foresignified by some Learned Mathematicians that he should not live This News being brought to Oxon. the same night or else betimes on Sunday morning Laâ—d's friends not only in St. Iohns but in other Colledges so bestirred themselves that before noon there was a Party strong enough to confer that honourable Office on him Frewen of Magdalen Colledge being then Vice-Chancellor was at that time as far as Andover in a Colledge-Progress where hearing accidentally of the Earls decease he made such haste back again to Oxon. that he came thither before the end of Evening Prayer and finding his own Colledge in so good a posture advised with some other Heads of Houses whom he knew to have the same Inclinations to make sure work of it by whom it was agreed That a Convocation should be called the next day to speed the business before any other Competitor should appear against him Nor did they make more haste than good speed in it some Agents coming thither before night in behalf of Philip Earl of Montgomery Brother to the Earl deceased and they so well discharged their Trust that those of the Welch Nation generally Prideaux and some other Heads of Houses who were of the Calvinian Party and the four Colledges belonging to the Visitation of the Bishop of Lincoln that is to say Baliol Orial Lincoln and Brazen-nose were wholly in a manner for him that Bishop stickling in the Cause not so much out of love to him as hate to Laud. But all their diligence could not carry it as they desired the Election passing clear for the Bishop of London of which he was presently advertised by the University On his receiving of which Message he presently addressed himself unto the King acquainted him with what had hapned and humbly submitted the Place unto his disposal To which his Majesty most graciously returned this Answer That he knew none more worthy of it than himself and that he should rathâ—r study how to add further Honours to him than take any from him On which incouragement he appointed Wednesday the twenty eighth of the same Month for the Solemnity of his Investiture in that Oâ—fice which was performed in a frequent Convocation of that University held at London-House to the great contentment oâ— both Parties To add a further Honour to him it pleased his Majesty to send him the joyful news under his Royal Signature of the Princes Birth born at his Majesties House of St. Iames's on Saturday May the twenty ninth about one of the Clock in the afternoon He had the happiness of seeing the Royal Infant in the first hour of his Birth and the honour afterwards to Baptize him By ancient Priviledge belonging to the See of Canterbury those Archbishops are Ordinaries of the Court his Majesties Houshold wheresoever the same shall be being reckoned to
conjure down these unruly Spirits which otherwise would not be confined within their Circle Mady the Lecturer of Christ-Church near Newgate must needs fly out upon the Point of Election and the motives to it For this contempt he is called before the Bishop of London and on some further misbehaviour prohibited from preaching any more within that Diocess Burges who afterwards pulled down the Cross in St. Pauls Church-yard must needs add scorn to his contempt telling his Auditors that if their Minister preached Popery or Arminianism they might change their dwellings and not trouble the peace and order of their Church For which about the same time he is questioned also White and some others in that Diocess suspended by this Bishop on the same occasion From the City pass we to the Court Where toward the end of the same Month we find Davenant Bishop of Sarum preaching a Lent Sermon before the King and therein falling upon some of those prohibited points even before his face for which the King being much offended as he had good reason he caused him to be called before the Lords of his Council The cause is managed against him by Archbishop Harsnet Laud all the while walking by in silence who gravely laid before him as well the Kings Piety in setting forth the said Declaration as the greatness of his the said Davenants offence in making so little reckoning of it Davenant at first endeavoureth many defences to make good his Action but at last wisely casts himself upon this submission he tells the Lords in answer to one of Harsnets objections That he was sorry he did no sooner understand his Majesties intention which if he had done before he would have taken some other matter to treat of which might have given none offence and that for the time to come he would conform himself as readily as any other to his Majesties Command Arundel Earl Marshal bids him hold to that as his safest plea and that he should proceed to no further defence a bad cause not being made the better by two much handling To this counsel he conforms himself And being afterwards admitted to the kiss of his Majesties hand which his attendance might deserve though his Sermon did not his Majesty declared to him his Resolution That he would not have this high Point meddled withal or debated either the one way or the other because it was too high for the Peoples understanding and that other Points which concerned Reformation and Newness of life were more needful and profitable I hope the lower Clergy will not say hereafter as some did of old That Laws are like the Spiders Cobwebs which suffer the great flies to break through and lay hold only upon those of the smaller size From the Court let us go to Oxon. where we find the next year beginning in a manner with a Sermon preached at St. Maries Church by one Hill of Heart-hall May 24. point blank enough against his Majesties Declaration and more than bitter enough against those of different perswasion from him whom he charged with handling Scriptures worse than poor Christians were by the Turk at Tunis enforcing them to the vassallage of the foulest errours not without some reflection on the Higher Powers by whom they were mischieved into honour For which indiscretion being convented before the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses but not without the Chancellors privity he confessed his fault and craved pardon for the same which he obtained on his submission made in the Convocation the sixteenth of Iuly following But worse it fared not long after with Ford of Magdalen Hall Hodges of Exeter Colledge and Thorne of Baliol who in their several Sermons had not only committed the like error but charged their Renovation of some ancient order in the Church to be no other than plain Innovation Questioned for this by Smith then Warden of Wadham Colledge and Vice-Chancellor of that University they appeal from him to the Convocation The Proctors having unadvisedly received the Appeal were at the point to have named Delegates when Smith appealed to the King But they took their aim amiss when they shot this bolt For both his Majesty and the Chancellor were alike concerned in it the King to justifie his Declaration the other to preserve his own power and dignity neither of which could have been done but by defending Smith in his lawful acting On the twenty third of August all Parties interessed in the Cause appeared before the King at Woodstock who after a full hearing of both sides it was ordered thus That the three Delinquents should be expelled the University Doughty and Bruch the two Proctors should be deprived of their places Prideaux and Wilkinson this last then Principle of Magdalen Hall being checked for stickling so much in it and glad they were that they escaped without further censure But they shewed not the same mercy which they found for Rainsford of Wadham Colledge preached at St. Maries in August following in defence of Vniversal Grace and Mans Election unto life from Faith foreseen No man more forward than Prideaux to appeach him of it on whose complaint and prosecution he was sentenced to a publick acknowledgment of his offence in a form prescribed which was as much as had been done in the case of Hill So that the Rigid Calvinians can pretend no just ground for that so great Calumnie that none but they were censured from preaching those prohibited Doctrines those of the Arminian Party as they commonly called them going off unpunished From Oxon. cross we into Ireland where we shall see Lauds care as great for preserving the Kings Authority and the Churches peace as it was in England Vsher the Lord Primate of that Church had published a Book this same year in the Latine Tongue called The History of Gotteschalchus for which he was after much extolled by Twist of Newbury as professed a Calvinian as himself in a Letter of his dated May 29. 1640. For having first commended him for his great learning and various reading manifested in his Book De Primodiis Britannicarum Ecclesiarum he magnifies next his singular wisdom for taking an occasion to insert therein the History of the Pelagian Heresie coming so opportunely in his way and then he addeth that his History of Gotteschalchus was a piece of the like nature and came forth most seasonable so much the more because it seemed to give some check to a Book written by Vossius a right Learned man which had been much cried up by the Remonstrants Downham then Bishop of Derry had somewhat before that published a Discourse about Perseverance wherein some Passages were found directly thwarting his Majesties most pious purpose in the said Declaration But Vshâ—r's Book being writ in Latin gave the less offence Nor seemed it fit to put any publick disgrace on a man to whom the Government of the whole National Church had been committed by King Iames of most Blessed Memory By questioning
about it Maxwell applying himself to Laud then Bishop of London from whom he received this positive Answer That if his Majesty would have a Liturgie setled there different from what they had already it was best to take the English Liturgie without any variation from it that so the same Service-Book might pass through all his Majesties Dominions Maxwell replying That the Scottish Bishops would be better pleased to have a Liturgie of their own but such as should come near the English both in Form and Matter the Cause was brought before the King who on a serious consideration of all Particulars concurred in Judgment for the English And on these terms it stood till this present year Laud standing hard for admitting the English Liturgie without alteration the Scottish Bishops pleading on the other side That a Liturgie made by themselves and in some things different from the English Service would best please their Countrymen whom they found very jealous of the least dependence on the Church of England But because Letters writtten in the time of Action are commonly conceived to carry more truth in them than Relations made upon the post-fact for particular ends take here this short Remembrance in one of his Letters to the Earl of Traquaire dated September 11. 1637. where we find this Passage And since saith he I hear from others That some exception is taken because there is more in that Liturgie in some few particulars than is in the Liturgie of England Why did they not admit the Liturgie of England without more ado But by their refusal of that and the dislike of this 't is more than manifest they would have neither and perhaps none at all were they left to themselves But besides this there was another Invitation which wrought much upon him in order to the present Journey At his first coming to the Crown the great Engagements then upon him want of Supply from England and small help from Scotland forced him to have recourse to such other ways of assistances as were offered to him of which this was one In the Minority of King Iames the Lands of all Cathedral Churches and Religious Houses which had been setled on the Crown by Act of Parliament were shared amongst the Lords and great men of that Kingdom by the connivence of the Earl of Murrey and some other of the Regents to make them sure unto that side And they being thus possessed of the same Lands with the Regalities and Tythes belonging to those Ecclesiastical Corporations Lorded it with Pride and Insolence enough in their several Territories holding the Clergy to small Stipends and the poor Peasant under a miserable Vassalage and subjection to them not suffering them to carry away their nine parts till the Lord had carried off his Tenth which many times was neglected out of pride and malice those Tyrants not caring to lose their Tythe so that the poor mans Crop might be left unto spoil and hazard King Iames had once a purpose to revoke those Grants but growing into years and troubles he left the following of that Project to his Son and Successor Having but little help from thence to maintain his Wars by the Advice of some of the Council of that Kingdom he was put upon a course of resuming those Lands Tythes and Regalities into his own hand to which the present Occupants could pretend no other Title than the unjust Usurpation of their Predecessors This to effect he resolves upon an Act of Revocation Commissionating for that purpose the Earl of Annandale and the Lord Maxwell afterwards Earl of Niddisdale to hold a Parliament in Scotland for Contribution of Money and Ships against the Duynkirkers and arming Maxwell also with some secret Instructions for passing the said Act of Revocation if he found it feasible Being on the way as far as Barwick Maxwell was there informed That his chief errand being made known had put all at Edenborough into Tumult That a rich Coach which he had sent before to Dalkeith was cut in pieces the poor Horses killed the People seeming only sorry that they could not do so much to the Lord himself Things being brought unto this stand the King was put to a necessity of some second Counsels amongst which none seemed more plausible and expedient to him than that of Mr. Archibald Achison who from a puisne Judge in Ireland was made his Majesties Procurator or Solicitor-General in the Kingdom of Scotland who having told his Majesty That such as were Estated in the Lands in question had served themselves so well by the bare naming of an Act of Revocation as to possess the People whom they found apt to be inflamed on such Suggestions That the true intendment of that Act was to revoke all former Laws for suppressing of Popery and settling the Reformed Religion in the Kirk of Scotland And therefore That it would be unsafe for his Majesty to proceed that way Next he advised That instead of such a General Revocation as the Act imported a Commission should be issued out under the Great Seal of that Kingdom for taking the Surrendries of all such Superiorities and Tythes within the Kingdom at his Majesties Pleasure And that such as should refuse to submit unto it should be Impleaded one by one to begin first with those whom he thought least able to stand out or else most willing to conform to his Majesties Pleasure Assuring him That having the Laws upon his side the Courts of Iustice must and would pass Iudgment for him The King resolved upon this course sends home the Gentleman not only with Thanks and Knighthood which he had most worthily deserved but with Instructions and Power to proceed therein and he proceeded in it so effectually to the Kings Advantage that some of the impleaded Parties being cast in the Suit and the rest seeing that though they could raise the People against the King they could not raise them against the LaWs it was thought the best and safest way to compound the business Hereupon in the year 1630. Commissioners are sent to the Court of England and amongst others the Learned and right Noble Lord of Marcheston from whose mouth I had this whole Relation who after a long Treaty with the King did at last agree That the said Commission should proceed as formerly and That all such Superiorities and Tythes as had been or should be surrendred should be re-granted by the King on these Conditions First That all such as held Hereditary Sheriffdoms or had the Power of Life and Death over such as lived within their Iurisdiction should quit those Royalties to the King Secondly That they should make unto their Tenants in their several Lands some permanent Estates either for their Lives or one and twenty years or some such like Term that so the Tenants might be encouraged to Build and Plant and improve the Patrimony of that Kingdom Thirdly That some Provisions should be made for augmenting the Stipends of the
Minister of the Parish should be prest to the publishing of it But then withall they should consider that the Bishops were commanded to take order for the publishing of it in their several Parishes and whom could they require to publish it in the Parish Churches but the Ministers only Bound to them by an Oath of Canonical obedience at their admission to their Cures So that the Bishops did no more than they were commanded in laying the publication of this Declaration on the back of the Ministers and the Ministers by doing less than they were commanded infringed the Oath which they had taken rendring themselves thereby obnoxious to all such Ecclesiastical Censures as the Bishops should inflict upon them It was alledged secondly That the publishing of this Declaration was a work more proper for the Constable or Tything-man or the Church-wardens at the least than it was for the Ministers But then it was to be considered that the Constable or Tything-man were Lay-officers meerly bound by the Law to execute the Warrants of the Judges and Justices but not the Mandates of the Bishops so far from being Proper Instruments in such a business that none of the Judges thought it fit to command their Service in publishing their Orders against Ales and Revels And though the Church-wardens had some relation to Church-matters and consequently to the Bishop in the way of Presentments yet was he not bound to execute any such Commands because not tyed by an Oath of Canonical obedience as the Ministers were Or were it otherwise yet doth it happen many times in Country Villages that the Church-wardens cannot read and therefore not to be imployed in publishing such Declarations which require a more knowing man than a silly Villager And last of all it was alledged that the Ministers of all others were most unfit to hold the Candle for lighting and letting in such a course of licenciousness as was indulged on the Lords day by the said Declaration But then it was to have been proved that any of the Sports allowed of in it might have been brought within the compass of such Licentiousness which neither the Word of God nor the Canons of the Christian Church nor any Statutes of the Realm had before forbidden Or had it been as they pretended that the Command was contrary to the Law of God and could not be obeyed with a saâ—e conscience yet this was only a pretenâ—â— their reading of the Book being no more an argument of their approbation of any thing therein contained than when a common Crier reads a Proclamation the Contents whereof perhaps he likes not The Business being at this stand it was thought fit that the Bishops should first deal with the Refusers in a Fatherly and gentle way but adding menaces sometimes to their perswasions if they saw cause for it and that in the mean season some discourses should be writ and published to bring them to a right understanding of the truth and their several duties which burden being held of too great weight for any one to undergo and the necessity of the work requiring a quick dispatch it was held fit to divide the imployment betwixt two The Argumentative and Scholasticall part referred to the right learned Dr. White then Bishop of Ely who had given good proof of his ability in Polemical matters in several Books and Disputations against the Papists The Practical and Historical by Heylyn of Westminster who had gained some reputation for his Studies in the ancient Writers by Asserting the History of S. George maliciously impugned by those of the Calvinian Party upon all occasions Both of them being enjoyned their tasks were required to be ready for the Press against Michaelmas Term at the end whereof both books came out The Bishops under the Title of A Treatise of the Sabbath day containing a defence of the Orthodoxal Doctrine of the Church of England against Sabbatarian Novelty The other called The History of the Sabbath was divided into two Books or Parts The first whereof began with the Creation of the World and carried on the Story till the destruction of the Temple The second beginning with our Saviour Christ and his Apostles was drawn down to the year 1633. when the publishing of this Declaration was required But going different waies to work they did not both encounter the like success The Bishops Book had not been extant very long when an Answer was returned unto it by Byfield of Surrey which Answer occasioned a Reply and that Reply begat a Rejoynder To Heylyns Book there was no Answer made at all whether because unanswerable or not worth the Answering is to me unknown And though it is not to be doubted but that the Arguments of the one and the Authorities of the other prevailed with some to lay aside their former obstinacy and averseness yet did there still remain too many who stopp'd their ears like the deaf Adder in the Psalmist and would not hear the voice of the Charmers charmed they never so sweetly By which it did appear too plainly That there was some Association had and made amongst them to stand it out to the last and put some baffle or affront upon their Superiors by whose Command the reading of the Book was imposed upon them And thereupon it was resolved That the Bishops in their several Diocesses should go to work more roundly with them and either bring them to Conformity if it might be done or otherwise to proceed against them by Ecclesiastical Censures But whilst these things were acting on the Stage of England the Bishops of Scotland were as active in drawing of a Book of Canons and framing a Publick Liturgie for the use of that Church Both Undertakings warranted by the Act of a General Assembly held at Aberdeen Anno 1616. and the one brought to a good forwardness before the death of King Iames But being discontinued by the Accidents and Debates before-remembred it pleased his Majesty at the last to yield unto the importunity of the Scottish Bishops in having a Liturgie of their own differing in some things from that of the Church of England to shew the independency and self-subsistence of their Kirk but agreeing with it in the main to testifie the Conformity between the Churches Which being thus condescended to they were ordered to proceed with all speed and diligence which they did accordingly But the Canons being the shorter work were first brought to an end for the compiling whereof his Majesty gives these Reasons in his large Declaration First That he held it but exceeding necessary that there should be some Book extant to contain the Rules of the Ecclesiastical Government so that as well the Clergy as the Laity might have one certain standing Rule to regulate the Power of the one the Obedience and Practise of the other Secondly That the Acts of General Assemblies were Written only and not Printed and therefore could not come to the knowledge of many So large and voluminous that
it was not easie to Transcribe them insomuch that few of the Presbyters themselves could tell which of them were authentical which not So unsafely and uncertainly kept that they knew not where to address themselves for consulting with them That by reducing those numerous Act and those not known unto themselves to such a paucity of Canons published and exposed to the publick view no man should be insnared by ignorance or have just reason to complain of their multiplicity And finally That not one in all that Kingdom did either live under the Obedience of the Acts of those General Assemblies or did know what they were or where to find them Upon which grounds the Book of Canons being drawn up and presented to him he gave a Warrant under his Hand to the Archbishop of Canterbury requiring him together with the Bishop of London to peruse the same to see that they were well fitted to the Church-Government and as near as conveniently might be to the Canons of the Church oâ— England giving them and either of them full power to alter any thing in the said Canons as they found most fitting Which being done as he commanded and the Book made ready for the Press he pass'd his Royal Confirmation of it under the Great Seal oâ— the Kingdom in this manner following CHARLES REX WE 〈◊〉 of Our Royal Care for the Maintenance of the present Estate and Government of the Church of Scotland have diligently and with great content considered all the Canons and Constitutions after following and finding the same such as We are perswaded will be profitable not only to our whole Clergy but to the whole Church of that our Kingdom if so they be well observed Have for Vs Our Heirs and Lawful Successors of Our especial Grace certain Knowledâ—â— â—nd meer â—otion given and by these presents do give Our 〈◊〉 Assâ—â—t â—nto all the said Canons Orders and Constitutions 〈◊〉 all and every thing in them contained as they are afterwards set 〈◊〉 And further We do not only by Our Prerogative Royal and Supreme 〈◊〉 in Causes Ecclesiastical Ratifie and Confirm by these Our Letters Patâ—nts the said Canons Orders and Constitutions â—nd all â—nd every thing in them contained But likewise We command by 〈◊〉 â—uthority Royal and by these Letters Patents the same to be diligently observed and executed by all Our Loving Subjects of that Our Kingdom both within the Province of St. Andrews and â—lascow in all points wherein they do or may concern every or any of them according to this Our Will and Pleasure hereby expressed and declared And for the better observation of them We straightly Charge and Command all Our Archbishops Bishops and all others thaâ— exercise any Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction within that Our Realm to see the same Canons Orders and Constitutions to be in all points duly observed not sparing to execute the Penalties in them severally mentioned upon any that shall willingly break or neglect to observe the same as they tender the Honour of God the Peace of the Church the Tranquility of the Kingdom and their Service and Duty to Vs their King and Sovereign Given at Our Mannor of Greenwich 23 May 1635. These Canons when they came abroad were presently quarrelled and disclaimed by the Scottish Presbyters Quarrelled in reference to the subject matter comprehended in them Disclaimed because imposed upon them without their own approbation and consent The points most quarrelled at were these 1. That whosoever should affirm That the Kings Majesty had not the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical that the Godly Kings had among the Jews or the Christian Emperors in the Primitive Church or impugn in any part his Royal Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical was to incur the Censure of Excommunication 2. The like Censure to be inflicted on those who should affirm That the Worship contained in the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments though at the making of these Canons there was no such Book of Common Prayer recommended to them or That the Government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops or the form of Making and Consecrating Archbishops and Bishops c. did contain any thing repugnant to the Scriptures or was corrupt superstitious or unlawful in the Service and Worship of God 3. That the Ordinations were restrained to four times in the year that is the first Weeks of March June September and December 4. That every Ecclesiastical Person at his Admission should take the Oath of Supremacy according to the form required by Parliament and the like Oath for avoiding Symonie required in the Book of Consecration 5. That every Presbyter shall either by himself or by another Person lawfully called read or cause Divine Service to be done according to the form of the Book of that Common Prayer before all Sermons and that he should Officiate by the said Book of Common Prayer in all the Offices Parts and Rubricks of it when as yet none of them had seen the said Book or Liturgie 6. That no Preacher should impugn the Doctrine delivered by another in the same Church or any neer adjoining to it without leave from the Bishop which they conceived to be the way to pin their whole Religion on the Bishops Sleeves 7. That no Presbyter should hereafter become Surety or Cautioner for any Person whosoever in Civil Bonds and Contracts under pain of Suspension 8. That whatsoever remained of the Bread and Wine prepared for the Communion should be distributed to the poorer sort which receive that day to be eaten and drunken of them before they go out of the Church 9. That Presbyters are enjoined to Minister the Sacrament of Baptism in private Houses and upon every day alike in case of infirmity and that the People were required not to receive the Sacrament of the Lords Supper but upon their knees 10. That in all Sentences of Separation a Thoro Mensa there shall be a Caution inserted and given accordingly That the Persons so separated should live continently and chastly and not contract Marriage with any Person during each others life which seemed to put the innocent Party into as bad a condition as the guilty contrary to the Judgment of the Reformed Churches 11. That no private Meeting be kept by Presbyters or any other Persons whatsoever for expounding Scripture or for consulting upon matters Ecclesiastical Such matters to be handled only in the Lawful Synods held by Bishops 12. That under pain of Excommunication no Presbyter or Layman jointly or severally make Rules Orders or Constitutions in Causes Ecclesiastical or to add or detract from any Rubricks or Articles or other things now established without the Authority of the King or his Successors 13. That National or General Assemblies were to be called only by the Kings Authority That the Decrees thereof should bind as well the Absent as the Present in Matters Ecclesiastical and That it should not be lawful for the Bishops themselves in such Assemblies or otherwise to
after his being named to a Bishoprick or a better Deanry to renew any Lease either into lives or years His Majesty having well observed that at such times of remove many men care not what or how they let their Estates to the prejudice of the Church and their Successors Which Letters bear date at Greenwich in the twelfth year of his Reign Iune 27. Nor was he less careful to preserve the Parochial Clergy from being oppressed by their neighbours in rates and taxes than he had been in maintaining the Estates of Capitular bodies for the greater honour of those bodies at the present time and the benefit of Succession for the time to come During the Remiss Government of King Iames his Majesties late embroylments with France and Spain and his entanglements at home the Hollanders had invaded the Regality of the Narrow Seas and questioned the property of his Dominion in the same not only growing to such an height of insolency as to dispute their striking Sail in passing by any of his Majesties Ships but publishing a Discourse in Latine called Mare Liberum in defence thereof These affronts occasioned Noy the Atturney Generall to put his Majesty in mind of setting out a strong power of Ships for the recovery of his Rights against all pretenders And the better to enable him for it adviseth him to set on foot the old Naval Aide required of the Subject by his Predecessors He was a man extremely well versed in old Records with which consulting frequently in the course of his studies he had excerpted and laid by many notes and precedents for the Kings levying of such Navil Aide upon the Subjects by his own Authority whensoever the preservation and safety of the Kingdom did require it of them which Notes and Precedents he had taken as they came in his way in small pieces of Paper most of them no bigger than ones hand he kept in the Coffin of a Pye which had been sent him by his Mother and kept there till the mouldiness and corruptibleness of it had perished many of his Papers And by these Notes it did appear that many times in the same years wherein the Kings had received Subsidies by way of Parliament they levied this Naval Aide by their own sole power For if as he discoursed it to me at his house near Brentford the King wanted money either to support his own expences or for the enlarging of his Dominions in Foreign Conquests or otherwise to advance his honour in the eye of the World good reason he should be beholden for it to the love of his People But if the Kingdom was in danger and that the safety of the Subject was concerned in the business he might and did raise such sums of money as he thought expedient for the preventing of the danger and providing for the publick safety of him and his Subjects According to which precedents he prepares a Writ by which his Majesty commandeth the Maritime Counties to provide a certain number of Ships for defence of the Kingdom prescribing to each Ship its several burden the number of Mariners and great Pieces of Ordnance with Victuals Arms and Ammunition thereunto proportioned The Subject not daring at the first to dispute the Command collected money for the Service according to the several rates imposed on them in their several Counties but dealt so unmercifully with the Clergy in the levying of it that they laid upon them generally the fifth or sixth part of the sum imposed The Ice thus broken and his Majesty finding that provision not sufficient to effect his purpose issued out his Writs in the next year after anno 1635. into all the Counties of the Kingdom for preparing of a Royal Fleet to be in readiness against the beginning of this year in which the Clergy were as like to suffer as before they did By the best was that they had not only a gracious Patron but a very powerful Mediatour Upon whose humble desire his Majesty was pleased to direct his Letters to all the Sheriffs in England respectively requiring them that no Tax should be laid upon any Clergy-man possest of a Parsonage above the tenth part of the Land-rate of their several Parishes and that consideration should be had of the poor Vicars in their several Parishes according to their small revenue compared with the Abilities of the Parishioners amongst whom they lived The whole Sum levied by this Tax amounted to 236000 li. or there abouts which comes not to 20000 li. a month and being instead of all other payments seemed to be no such heavy burthen as it was generally made by the Popular Party many of which quarrelled and and refused it But his Majesty was two just a Prince to exact any thing by power when he had neither Law nor Reason to make it good And therefore as he had the opinion of all his Judges subscribed by their hands for justifying the Legality of this Naval Tax amongst the Subjects so he thought fit to publish some defence of his Dominion Right and Soveraignty in the Narrow Seas for the satisfaction of his Neighbours Iohn Selden of the Inner Temple a name that stands in need of no titles of honour had written a Discourse in the time of King Iames which in answer to that of Grotius called Mare Liberum 〈◊〉 intituled by the name of Mare Clausum But stomacking the submission and acknowledgment which he was forced to make in the High Commission for publishing his book of Tythes and sensible of the smart which he had found from the Pens of Tillesly Montague and Nettles in their Answers to him he did not only suppress the â—ook which he had written in the Kings defence but carried an evil eye to the Court and Church for a long time after But being a man of great parts and eminent in the retired walks of Learning he was worth the gaining which Canterbury takes upon him and at last efâ—ecteth By his perswasion he not only perfected but published that laborious piece which he dedicated to his Majesty whose cause he pleaded By whom it was so well approved that he sent it by Sir William Beecher one of the Clerks of his Council to the Barons of the Exchequer in open Court by them to be laid up as a most inestimable Jewel amongst the choice Records which concerned the Crowns In this book which came out this year he first asserts the Soveraignty or Dominion of the Brittish Seas to the Crown of England And that being cleared he proved by constant and continual practice that the Kings of England used to levy money from the Subjects without help of Parliament for the providing of Ships and other necessaries to maintain the Soveraignty which did of right belong unto them This he brought down unto the times of King Henry the Second and might have brought it nearer to his own times had he been so pleased and thereby paved a plain way to the payment of Ship-money as
the holy Table being appointed to be placed where the Altar stood by the Queens Injunctions Anno 1559. and that position justified by an order of Dr. Davenant Bishop of Sarum of which we have already spoken whom the Libellers themselves were not like to accuse for a man that purposed the ushering in or advancing of Popery The setting of a Raile before it or about it howsoever placed was only for avoiding of Prophanation and for that cause justifiable As for the reading of the Second or Communion Service at the holy Table it was no more than what had formerly been used in many places to his own remembrance first altered in those Churches where the Emissaries of that Faction came to preach and therefore the Innovation to be laid on them Secondly That it is not only fit and proper for that part of the Divine Service to be read at the Communion Table but that it is required so to be by the Rules and Rubricks of the Church It being said in the first Rubrick after the Communion that on the Holy Daies if there be no Communion all shall be read which is appointed at the Communion and in the last Rubrick before the Communion that the Minister standing at the North side of the holy Table shall say the Lords Prayer with that which follows And finally as to that of bowing towards it at their first entrance in the Church or approaches to it it is answered that it was agreeable to the Practice of Moses David Hezekiah recorded in the holy Scriptures and that Venite Adoremus O come let us worship and fall down c. was used constantly in the beginning of the Ancient Liturgies and preserved in the beginning of ours in England and therefore that the people may as well refuse to come as at their coming not to Worship he added that by the Statutes of the noble Order of St. George called the Garter the Knights whereof were bound to do their Reverence versus Altare toward the Altar that it had so continued ever since the time of King Henry the fifth that if there were any Idolatry in it neither Queen Elizabeth who drove out Popery nor King Iames who kept out Popery would have suffered it to remain in Practice and in a word that if it were Gods Worship and not Idolatry he ought to do it as well as they but if it were Idolatry and no Worship of God they ought to do it no more than he But the fourteenth and last charge which most concerned him and the rest of the Bishops to make answer to was the forging of a new Article of Religion brought from Rome to justifie their proceedings and Innovations and foysting it to the beginning of the twentieth Article The Clause pretended to be added is That the Church hath power to decree Rites and Ceremonies and Authority in Controversies of â—aith because not found say they in the Latine or English Articles of King Edward the sixth or Queen Elizabeth ratified by Parliament adding that if to forge a Will or Writing be censurable in the Star-Chamber though it be but a wrong to a Private man how much more should the forgery of an Article of Religion be censured there which is a wrong to the whole Church And unto this he answered that the Articles made in the time oâ— King Edward the sixth were not now in force and therefore not material whether that Clause be in or out that in the Articles as they passed in Queen Elizabeths time this Clause was to be found in the English Edition of the year 1612. of the year 1605. of the year 1593. and in Latine in the year 1563. being one of the first Printed Copies after the Articles had been agreed on in the Convocation that it was to be found in the same terms in the Records of Convocation Anno 1562. as he proved by a Certificate under the hand of a publick Notary and therefore finally that no such forgery in adding that Clause unto that Article had been committed by the Prelates to serve their own turns by gaining any power to the Church but that the said Clause had been razed out by some of those men or some of that Faction to weaken the just power of the Church and to serve their own These Innovations thus passed over and discharged he signifies unto their Lordships That some other Charges were remaining in matter of Doctrine that they should presently be answered justo volumine to satisfie all well-minded people and that when Burtons Book was answered his Book he said but not his raylings none of the rest should be answered either by him or by his care leaving that Court to find a way for stopping the mouths of such Libellers or else for him they should raile on as long as they listed And thus beginning to draw toward an end he declares himself to be in the same case with St. Cyprian then Bishop of Carthage bitterly railed upon by a pack of Schismaticks and yet conceiving himself bound which he made his own Resolution also not to answer them with the like Levities or Revilings but to write and speak only as becomes a Priest of God that by Gods grace the Reproaches of such men should not make him faint or start aside either from the right way in matter of Practice or à certa Regula from the certain Rule of Faith Which said and craving pardon of their Lordships for his necessary length he thanks them for their just and honourable censure of those men in their unanimous dislike of them and defence of the Church Makes his excuse from passing any censure of them in regard the business had some reflection on himself and so leaves them to Gods mercy and the Kings Justice Thus have I acted Phocion's part in cutting short the long and well-studied Speech of this grave and Eloquent Demosthenes which I have been the more willing to reduce to so brief an Abstract that the Reader may perceive without the least loss of time and labour on what weak grounds the Puritan Faction raised their outcry against Innovations and what poor trifles many of those Innovations were against which they clamoured and cried out But for the Speech in its full length as it gave great satisfaction unto all that heard it so by his Majesties Command it was afterwards Printed for giving the like satisfaction to all those who should please to read it In obedience unto which Command he caused the said Speech to be Printed and Published although he was not ignorant as he declares in his Epistle to the King that many things while they are spoken and pass by the ears but once give great content which when they come to the eyes of men and their open scanning may lie open to some exceptions And so it proved in the event for though the Speech was highly magnified as it came from his mouth yet it had not been long published in Print when it was encountred with
This being a matter easily to be proved they were required to make up their number according to their first Foundation by King Henry vi But against this the Fellows pleaded That out of an hatred to their Founder a great part of their Lands had been taken from them by King Edward iv conferred by him upon the Abby of Westminster and the Church of Windsor and by them enjoyed until this day and that they hoped his Grace would not tye them to maintain the whole number of their Fellows with little more than half their Lands To which so reasonable a desire upon full proof made of the Suggestion his Grace did readily consent and left them in the same state in which he found them The noise of these Proceedings in England in the Iune and Iuly of this year being quickly posted to the Scots became a principal Incentive of those Combustions which not long after inflamed that Kingdom For it could be no hard matter for the Presbyterians there to possess the People with the sense of the like smart Sufferings by the Pride and Tyranny of their Bishops if they permitted them to grow great and powerful and did not cast about in time to prevent the mischief And to exasperate them the more the Superstitions of the Liturgie now at the point of being put in execution were presented to them which if once settled amongst them as was then intended would in short time reduce them under the Obedience of the Church of Rome They could not but confess That many things which were found fault with in the English Liturgie were in this altered unto the better the name of Priest so odious unto them of the Puritan Faction changed to that of Presbyter no fewer than sixty Chapters or thereabouts taken out of the Apocrypha appointed to be read by the Church in the English Book reduced to two and those two to be read only on the Feast of All-Saints The new Translation Authorised by King Iames being used in the Psalms Epistles Gospels Hymns and Sentences instead of the old Translation so much complained of in their Books and Conferences But what was this compared with those Superstitions those horrible Corruptions and Idolatries now ready to be thrust upon them in which this Liturgy as much exceeded that of England as that of England had departed from the simplicity and purity of the holier Churches Now therefore somewhat must be done to oppose the entrance of the Popish superstitious Service-Book either now or never But the Presbyterian Ministers who had gone thus far did not alone bring fewel to feed this flame to which some men of all degrees and qualities did contribute with them The Lords and Gentry of the Realm who feared nothing so much as the Commission of surrendries above mentioned laid hold on this occasion also and they being seconded by some male-contented Spirits of that Nation who had not found the King to be as prodigal of his bounties to them as his Father had been before endeavoured to possess them with Fears and Jealousies that Scotland was to be reduced to the Form of a Province and governed by a Deputy or Lord Lieutenant as Ireland was The like done also by some Lords of secret Counsel who before had governed as they listed and thought their power diminished and their persons under some neglect by the placing of a Lord President over them to direct in Chief So that the People generally being fooled into this opinion that both their Christian and Civil Liberty was in no small danger became capable of any impression which the Presbyterian Faction could imprint upon them nor did they want incouragements from the Faction in England to whom the Publication of the Book for Sports the transposing of the holy Table the suppressing of so many Lecturers and Afternoon Sermons and the inhibiting of Preaching Writing Printing in defence of Calvinism were as distasteful and offensive as the new Liturgie with all the supposed superstitions of it was to those of Scotland This Combination made and the ground thus laid it is no wonder if the people brake out into those distempers which soon after followed Sunday the 23 of Iuly was the day appointed for the first reading of the New Liturgy in all the Churches of that Kingdom and how it sped at Edenborough which was to be exemplary to all the rest shall be told by another who hath done it to my hand already Iuly 23. being Sunday the Dean of Edenborough began to read the Book in St. Giles his Church the chief of that City but he had no sooner entred on it than the inferiour multitude began in a tumultuous manner to fill the Church with uprore whereupon the Bishop of Edenborough stept into the Pulpit and hoping to appease them by minding them of the Sanctity of the place they were the more enraged throwing at him Cudgels Stools and what was in the way of Fury unto the very endangering of his life Upon this the Archbishop of St. Andrews Lord Chancellor was enforced to call down from the Gallery the Provost Bailiffs and other Magistrates of the City to their assistance who with much ado at length thrust the unruly Rabble out of the Church and made fast the doors This done the Dean proceeded in reading the Book the multitude in the mean while rapping at the doors pelting the Windows with stones and endeavouring what in them lay to disturb the Sacred Exercise but notwithstanding all this clamour the Service was ended but not the peoples rage who waiting the Bishops retiring to his Lodging so assaulted him as had he not been rescued by a strong hand he had probably perisht by their violence Nor was S. Giles his Church thus only pestered and profaned but in other Churches also though not in so high a measure the peoples disorders were agreeable The Morning thus past the Lord Chancellor and Council assembled to prevent the like darings in the Afternoon which they so effected as the Liturgy was read without any disturbance Only the Bishop of Edenborough was in his return to his Lodging rudely treated by the people the Earl of Roxboroughs Coach in which he passed serving for no protection to him though Roxborough himself was highly favoured of the People and not without some cause suspected to have had a hand in the Commotions of that day The business having thus miscarried in Edenborough stood at a stand in all other Churches of that Kingdom and therefore it will not be amiss to enquire in this place into the causes and occasions of it it seeming very strange to all knowing and discerning men that the Child that had so long lain in the Womb perfectly formed and now made ready for the birth should not have strength enough to be delivered Amongst which causes if disposed into ranke and order that which appears first is the confidence which Canterbury had in the Earl of Traquaire whom he had raised from the condition of a
private Laird to be a Peer of that Realm made him first Treasurer Depute Chancellor of the Exchequer we should call him in England afterwards Lord Treasurer and Privy Counsellor of that Kingdom This man he wrought himself so far into Lauds good liking when he was Bishop of London only that he looked upon him as the fittest Minister to promote the Service of that Church taking him into his nearest thoughts communicating to him all his Counsels committed to his care the conduct of the whole Affair and giving order to the Archbishops and Bishops of Scotland not to do any thing without his privity and direction But being an Hamiltonian Scot either originally such or brought over at last he treacherously betrayed the cause communicated his Instructions to the opposite Faction from one time to another and conscious of the plot for the next daies tumult withdrew himself to the Earl of Mortons house of Dalkeith to expect the issue And possible it is that by his advice the executing of the Liturgy was put off from Easter at what time the reading of it was designed by his Majesty as appears by the Proclamation of December 20. which confirmed the Book By which improvident delay he gave the Presbyterian Faction the longer time to confederate themselves against it and to possess the people with Fears and Jealousies that by admitting of that book they should lose the Purity of their Religion and be brought back unto the Superstitions and Idolatries of the Church of Rome And by this means the People were inflamed into that Sedition which probably might have been prevented by a quicker prosecution of the Cause at the time appointed there being nothing more destructive of all publick Counsels than to let them take wind amongst the People cooled by delaies and finally blown up like a strong Fortress undermined by some subtle practice And there were some miscarriages also amongst the Prelates of the Kirk in not communicating the design with the Lords of the Council and other great men of the Realm whose Countenance both in Court and Country might have sped the business Canterbury had directed the contrary in his Letters to them when the first draughts of the Liturgy were in preparation and seems not well pleased in another of his to the Archbishop of St. Andrews bearing date September 4. that his advice in it was not followed nor the whole body of the Council made acquainted with their Resolutions or their advice taken or their power called in for their assistance till it was too late It was complained of also by some of the Bishops that they were made strangers to the business who in all Reason ought to have been trusted with the knowledge of that intention which could not otherwise than by their diligence and endeavours amongst their Clergy be brought to a happy execution Nor was there any care taken to adulce the Ministers to gain them to the Cause by fair hopes and promises and thereby to take off the edge of such Leading men as had an influence on the rest as if the work were able to carry on it self or have so much Divine assistance as countervailed the want of all helps from man And which perhaps conduced as much to the destruction of the Service as all the rest a publick intimation must be made in all their Churches on the Sunday before that the Liturgie should be read on the Lords day following of purpose as it were to unite all such as were not well affected to it to disturb the same And there were some miscarriages also which may be looked on as Accessories after the Fact by which the mischief grew remediless and the malady almost incurable For first the Archbishops and Bishops most concerned in it when they saw what hapned consulted by themselves apart and sent up to the King without calling a Council or joyning the Lay Lords with them whereas all had been little enough in a business of that nature and so much opposed by such Factious persons as gathered themselves on purpose together at Edenborough to disturb the Service A particular in which the Lay Lords could not be engaged too far if they had been treated as they ought But having run upon this error they committed a worse in leaving Edenborough to it self and retiring every one to his own Diocess except those of Galloway and Dumblaine For certainly they must needs think as Canterbury writes in one of his Letters to Traquaire that the Adverse party would make use of the present time to put further difficulties upon the work and therefore that they should have been as careful to uphold it the Bishop of Ross especially whose hand had been as much in it as the most But possibly the Bishops might conceive the place to be unsecure and therefore could not stay with safety neither the Lords of the Council nor the Magistrates of the City having taken any course to bring the chief Ringleaders of the Tumult to the Bar of Justice which must needs animate all disaffected and seditious persons and almost break the hearts of those who were well enclined And such indeed was the neglect of the Civil Magistrate that we hear of no man punished scarce so much as questioned for so great a Riot as was not to be expiated but by the death or some proportionable punishment of the chief offenders Which had it been inflicted on some three or four for a terror to others it might have kept that City quiet and the whole Kingdom in obedience for the time to come to the saving of the lives of many thousands some hundreds of thousands at the least in all the three Kingdoms most miserably lost in those long and cruel Wars which ensued upon it But the Lords of Scotland were so far from looking before them that they took care only for the present and instead of executing Justice on the Malefactors suspended the Liturgie it self as the cause of the Tumult conceiving it a safer way to calm the differences than to encrease the storm by a more rigorous and strict proceeding All that they did in order to his Majesties Service or the Churches peace was the calling in of a scandalous Pamphlet entituled A dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies obtruded on the Kirk of Scotland which not being done till October 20 following rather declared their willingness to suffer the said Book to be first dispersed and set abroad then to be called in and suppressed Nor seemed the business to be much taken to heart in the Court of England from whom the Scots expected to receive Directions Nor Order given them for unsheathing the Sword of Justice to cut off such unsound and putrified Members which might have saved the whole Body from a Gangreen the drawing of some Blood in the Body Politick by the punishment of Malefactors being like letting Blood in the Body Natural which in some strong Distempers doth preserve the whole Or granting that the Tumult
on all such Books which they found to be Schismatical and Offensive and bring them to the said Archbishop or Bishop or to the High-Commission Office And finally That no Merchant Bookseller c. should Print or cause to be Printed beyond the Seas any Book or Books which either totally or for the greatest part were written in the English Tongue whether the said Books have been here formerly Printed or not nor shall willingly or knowingly Import any such Books into this Kingdom upon pain of being proceeded against in either of the said two Courts respectively as before is said By means of which Decree he had so provided both at home and abroad That neither the Patience of the State should be exercised as in former times with continual Libels nor the Church troubled by unwarrantable and Out-landish Doctrines But good Laws are of no effect without execution and if he took no care for that he had lost his labour King Iames had manifested his dislike of the Genevian Bibles and the Notes upon them some of which did not only teach Disobedience to Kings and Princes but the murthering of them also if they proved Idolaters and others did not only teach the Lawfulness of breaking Faith and Promise when the keeping of it might conduce to the hurt of the Gospel but ranked Archbishops Bishops and all men in Holy Orders or Academical Degrees amongst those Locusts in the Revelation which came out of the Pit That King gave Order thereupon That the Bible of the New Translation should be printed with no Notes at all which course he also recommended to the Synod of Dort to be observed in the new Translation of the Bible into the Dutch or German Tongue which was then intended Upon this ground the Printing of those Bibles with Notes upon them had been forbidden in this Kingdom but were Printed in Holland notwithstanding and brought over hither the better to keep up the Faction and aâ—â—ront Authority Some of them had before been seised in Holland by the care of Boswel the Resident at the Hague And in the beginning of this year he received Advertisement of a new Impression of the same designed for England if the terrour of this Decree did not stop their coming Because Holland and the rest of the Provinces under the Government of the States was made the Receptacle of many of our English Malecontents who there and from thence vented their own Passions and the Discourses of their Party in this Kingdom to the disturbance of the Church it concerned him to keep a careful watch over them and their Actions Of these he had Advertisement from time to time by one Iohn Le Maire and thereupon by the means of Boswell his right trusty Friend he dealt so effectually with the States-General of those Provinces that they made a Proclamation against the Printers and Spreaders of Libellous and Seditious Books against the Church and Prelates of England and tooke Order with the Magistrates of Amsterdam and Rotterdam two great Towns in Holland for apprehending and punishing of such Englishmen as had Printed any of the said Lawless and Unlicenced Pamphlets There was a time when Queen Elizabeth beheld the Pope as her greatest Enemy in reference to her Mothers Marriage her own Birth and consequently her Title to the Crown of England and many of the Books which were Printed in and about that time were full of bitterness and revilings against the Church of Rome it self and all the Divine Offices Ceremonies and Performances of it There was a time also when the Calvinian Doctrines were embraced by many for the Genuine Doctrines of this Church to the great countenancing of the Genevian Discipline and Forms of Administration And not a few of the Books then Printed and such as after were Licenced in Abbot's Time aimed principally at the Maintenance of those Opinions which the latter Times found inconsistent with the Churches Doctrines With equal diligence he endeavoured by this Decree to hinder the Reprinting of the one and the other that so the Church might rest in quiet without any trouble or molestation in her self or giving offence to any other As little Trouble could be feared from Lecturers as they now were Regulated The greatest part of those who had been Superinducted into other Mens Cures like a Doctor added to the Pastor in Calvin's Plat-form had deserted their Stations because they would not read the Common-Prayers in their Hoods and Surplices according to the Kings Instructions before remembred such as remained being either founded on a constant or certain Maintenance or seeing how little was to be gotten by a fiery and ungoverned Zeal became more pliant and conformable to the Rules of the Church Not a Lecturer of this kind found to stand out in some great Diocesses to keep up the Spirits of the Faction and create disturbances And as for Combination-Lecturers named for the most part by the Bishops and to them accountable they also were required in some places to read the second Service at the Communion-Table to go into the Pulpit at the end of the Nicene Creed to use no other form of Prayer than that of the 55th Canon after the Sermon ended to go back to the Table and there read the Service All which being to be done in their Hoods and Surplices kept off the greatest part of the rigid Calvinists from exercising their Gifts as formerly in great Market-Towns And as for the position of the Communion-Table it was no longer left to private Instructions as it was at the first when the Inquiry went no further than Whether the Lords Table was so conveniently placed that the Minister might best be seen and heard of the Congregation The more particular disposing of it being left to Inference Conjecture or some private Directions It now began to be more openly avowed in the Visitation-Articles of several Bishops and Archdeacons some of which we shall here produce as a light to the rest For thus we find it in the Articles for the Archdeaconry of Buckingham Anno 1637. Art 5. Have you a decent Table or a Frame for the Holy Communion placed at the East end of the Chancel Is it Railed in or Enclosed so as Men or Boys cannot sit upon it or throw their Hats upon it Is the said Rail and Inclosure so made with Settles and kneeling-Benches at the foot or bottom thereof as the Communicants may fitly kneel there at the Receiving of the Holy Communion The like for the Diocess of Norwich in the year before where we find it thus viz. Have you in your Church a Communion Table a Carpet of Silk c. And is the same placed conveniently so as the Minister may best be heard in his Administration and the greatest number may reverently Communicate To that end Doth it ordinarily stand up at the East end of the Chancel where the Altar in former times stood the ends thereof being placed North and South And in another Article it is
same Month he gives Order for a General Assembly to be held at Glasco on November 21. next following in which he could not but be sure that after so many previous Condescensions on his part they would be able to do whatsoever they listed in defiance of him For before the Assembly was Indicted the Covenanters had so laid the Plot that none but those of their own Party should have Suffrage in it as afterwards by several Orders from their Tables they directed that no Chaplain nor Chapter-man nor any who have not subscribed the Covenant should be chosen to it not suffering the Archbishops or Bishops to sit as Moderators in their Presbyteries where the Elections were to pass and citing them to appear as Criminal Persons at the said Assembly by means of which Exclusions and Prelimitations the greatest part of the Assembly did consist of such as either were irregularly chosen by the over-ruling Voices of Lay-Elders which were thrust upon them or else not capable of being Elected some of them being under the Censures of the Kirk of Scotland others under the Censures of the Church of Ireland and some not having taken the Oath of Supremacy required by the Laws of the Land Upon which just and weighty Reasons as also the Admission of the Schismatical Clergy to sit as Judges over their Bishops the intrusion of so many Lay-Elders contrary to the Constitution of former General Assemblies the countenancing of a scandalous Libel against their Function and Persons and the prejudging of their Cause in their several Presbyteries by excluding them from having any Vote in the said Assembly when they were not present to interpose or speak any thing in their own behalf the Archbishops and Bishops in the name of themselves and all which did adhere unto them prepared their Declinator or Protestation against the said General Assembly and all the Acts and Conclusions of it as being void and null in Law to all intents and purposes whatsoever The day being come Hamilton marcheth to the place appointed for the Session in the equipage of a High-Commissioner the Sword and Seal being carried before him the Lords of the Council and all the Officers of State attending on him like a King indeed The reading of his Commission the putting in and rejecting of the Declinator the chusing of Henderson to be Moderator of the Assembly the constituting of the Members of it and some Debates touching the Votes and Suffrages challenged by Hamilton for such as were Assessors to him took up all the time between their first Meeting and their Dissolution which was by Proclamation solemnly declared on the twenty ninth of the same Month having â—ate only eight days by the Kings Authority For notwithstanding the said Dissolution the Members of the said Assembly continued and kept their Session and therein passed many Acts for the utter overthrow of the Polity and Government of the Church the infringing of his Majesties Prerogative Royal and violating the Authority of Parliaments For they not only Excommunicated the Bishops and their Adherents but condemned the very Function it self to be Antichristian and utterly to be abolished out of the Church notwithstanding that several Parliaments had confirmed the same The like Censure they also past on the Service Book and Canons with the five Articles of Perth though the two first received the Stamp of Royal Authority and the five last were confirmed in Parliament also They condemned in one breath all the Arminian Tenents in case of Predestination without examining the Arguments on which they were built and declared all men subject to Excommunication and other Censures of the Church who should refuse to yield obedience to all their unlawful Actings and Determinations And though his Majesty by the same Proclamation had commanded all his faithful Subjects not to yield any obedience to their Acts and Ordinances and bound himself in the Word of a King to defend them in it yet those of the Assembly were resolved to maintain their Authority For notwithstanding his Majesties late Declaration and Commands not only the Bishops and Clergy but also as many of the Layty as had refused to subscribe to the Acts thereof were deprived of their Offices and Preferments banished their Country and forced to fly into England oâ— other places the King not being able to protect them from the power and malice of their Adversaries For having lost the opportunity of suppressing them in their first Insurrection in the year precedent aâ—d afterwards of reducing them by force of Arms in the year next following he was forced to shuffle up such a Pacification in the Parliaments of both Kingdoms Anno 1641. as left his Party dâ—â—â—â—tute of all protection but what they found in England by his Majesties Favour in providing the Clergy of some small Benefices for their present subsistance which possibly might amount to more than formerly they enjoyed in their own Country And yet the Covenanters did not play all parts in this Assembly the King and his Commissioner had one part to act which was the presenting of a Declaration containing the sum and substance of all his Majesties gracious Condescensions exprest in the several Proclamations before remembred and a Command to have it registred in the Acts and Records thereof But upon what considerations and reasons of State his Majesty might be moved to commit that Paper to be registred amongst the Acts of Assembly is beyond my reach 〈◊〉 â—â—ough many times the wisest Princes have sent out Proclamations of Grace for redress of Grievances and pardoning of fore-past o 〈…〉 yet were those Proclamations and Acts of Grace beheld no otherwise than as temporary and occasional Remedies for the present mischiefs not to be drawn into Example and much less put upon Record for the times cusuing his Majesties Condescensions had been large enough and too much to the prejudice of his Crown and Dignity without this Enrolment Nor wants it somewhat of a â—iddle that at such time as Hamilton tendred the Paper of his Majâ—stiâ—s â—racious Concessions for discharging of the Service Book c. to be enrolled amongst the Acts of the Assembly he both declared and protested that his so doing should be no acknowledgment of the lawfulness and validity of that Convention which was instantly to be dissolved or that his Majestie should give order to have those Acts of Grace and Favour enrolled in the Records of the Assembly to stand full and sure to all his good Subjects for their assurance of and in the true Religion which Assembly at the same time â—e declared to be illegal and all the Acts thereof to be null and void I must confess I am not Oedipus enough for so dark a Sphinx and must therefore leave this depth of State-craft to more able heads Only I cannot chuse but note how little his Majesty got by those Condescensions the stubborn and rebellious Scots being so far unsatisfied with these Acts of Grace that they not only forced all
to whom they had written in like manner his Majesty might be pleased to hear them at large and grant such things as they had desired which they conceived to tend to his Majesties great Glory to put an end to all the present Questions to their mutual rejoycing and to make the blessed Instruments of so good a work to be thankfully remembred to Posterity In their letter to the Earl of Holland of the seventh of Iune they express more confidence as being more assured of him then of any other not only justifying themselves in their former proceedings but requesting his assistance to promote their desires in a petition tendred to his Majesty hands descending by degrees to this particular That by a meeting in some convenient place and of some prime and well affected men to the Reformed Religion and the Common Peace all matters might be so well amended and with such expedition that their evils through further delays might not prove incurable These preparations being made they found an easier business of it then they had any reason to expect or hope to bring his Majesty to meet them in the middle way who was so tender of their case that he was more ready to accept their supplication then they were to offer it It was not his intent to fight them as I have heard from a person of great trust and honour but only by the terrour of so great an Army to draw the Scots to do him reason And this I am the more apt to credit because when a Noble and well experienced Commander offered him then being in Camp near Berwick that with two thousand horse which the King might very well have spared he would so waste and spoil their Countrey that the Scots should creep upon their bellies to implore his mercy he would by no means hearken to the proposition And having no purpose of out-going Muster and Ostentation it is no wonder if he did not only willingly give way to the presenting of their Petition and cheerfully embraced all Overtures tending to a Pacification but make choice also of such persons to Negotiate in it who were more like to take such terms as they could get then to fight it out Commissioners being on both sides appointed they came at last to this conclusion on the seventeenth of Iune viz. First That his Majesty should confirm whatsoever his Commissioner have already granted in his Majesties name and that from thenceforth all matters Ecclesiastical should be determined by the Assemblies of the Kirk and all matters Civil by the Parliament and to that end a General Assembly to be Indicted on the sixth of August and a Parliament on the twentieth of the same Moneth in which Parliament an Act of Oblivion was to pass for the common peace and satisfaction of all parties that the Scots upon the publication of the accord should within fourty eight hours disband all their Forces discharge all pretended Tables and Conventicles restore unto the King all his Castles Forts and Ammunition of all sorts the like Restitution to be made to all his good Subjects of their Liberties Lands Houses Goods and Means whatsoever taken and detained from them since the late pretended General Assembly held at Glasco that thereupon his Majesty should presently recal his Fleet and retire his Land Forces and cause Restitution to be made of all persons of their Ships and Goods Detained and Arrested since the first of February But as for the proceedings of the Assembly of Glasco as his Majesty could not allow them with Honour on the one side so neither do I find that they were condemned or that the Scots were bound to abandon the conclusions of it so that it seems to have been left in the same condition as to all the Acts Determinations and Results there in which it stood before his Majesties taking Arms Which as it was the chief ground of the Quarrel so the King doing nothing in Order to the Abrogating of it and the conclusions therein made when he was in the head of a powerful Army he could not give himself much hopes that the Scots could yield to any such Abrogation when he had no such Army to compel obedience And this appeared immediately on his Majesties signing the Agreement and the discharging of his Forces upon the same For the Declaration of this accord was no sooner published but the Covenanters produced a Protestation First of adhering to their late General Assembly at Glasco as a full and free Assembly of their Kirk and to all the proceedings there especially the sentences of Deprivation and Excommunication of the sometimes pretended Bishops of that Kingdom And secondly of adhering to their Solemn Covenant and Declaration of the Assembly whereby the office of Bishop is abjured Thirdly that the pretended Archbishops and Bishops that usurp the title and office abjured by the Kirk and be contemners of the sentences of Kirk have been malicious Incendiaries of his Majesty against this Kingdom by their wicked calamnies and that if they return to this Kingdom they be esteemed and used as accursed and they delivered up to the Devil and cast off from Christ his body as Ethnicks and Publicans And fourthly that all the entertainers of the Excommucated Bishops should be orderly proceeded against with Excommunication conform to the Acts and Constitutions of this Kirk And this they did as well to justifie their proceeding in the said Assembly as to terrifie and affright the Bishops from presenting themselves as members of Assembly and Parliament at the next Conventions Which done they dispersed abroad a scandalous Paper pretending to contain the heads of the late Agreement but drawn so advantageously for themselves so disagreeably to the true intention of his Majesty that he could do no less in honour then call it in and cause it to be publickly burnt by the hand of the Hangman And being conscious to themselves how much his Majesty must be incensed with these Indignities they continued their meetings and Consultations as before they did maintained their Fortifications at Leith the Port Town to Edenborough disquieted molested and frighted all of different inclinations and kept their Officers and Commanders in continual pay to have them in a Readiness on the next occasion With which disorders his Majesty being made acquainted he sent for some of the Chiefs of them to come to him to Berwick but was refused in his Commands under pretence that there was some intention to entrap them at their coming thither and that his Majesty might be staved off from being present at the next Assembly in Edenborough as he had both promised and resolved they commit a riotous assault on the Earls of Kinnoul and Traquaire Chief Justice Elphinsten and Sir Iames Hamilton all Privy Counsellors of that Kingdom These they pulled violently out of their Coach on a suspicion that some Bishops were disguised amongst them but really that the King might have some cause to suspect that there could be no safety
answered by my own hand and so you have it And since you are pleased so worthily and brother-like to acquaint me with the whole plot of your intended work and to yield it up to my censure and better advice so you are pleased to write I do not only thank you heartily for it but shall in the same brotherly way and with equal freedom put some few Animadversions such as occur on the sudden to your further consideration aiming at nothing but what you do the perfection of the work in which so much is concerned And first for Mr. George Graham whom Hall had signified to have renounced his Episcopal Function I leave you free to work upon his business and his ignorance as you please assuring my self that you will not depart from the gravity of your self or the cause therein Next you say in the first head That Episcopacy is an ancient holy and divine Institution It must needs be ancient and holy if divine Would it not be mâ—re full went it thus So ancient as that it is of Divine Institution Next you define Episcopacy by being joyned with imparity and superiority of Iurisdiction but this seems short for every Archpâ—esbyters or Archdeacons place is so yea and so was Mr. Henderson in his Chair at Glasco unless you will define it by a distinction of Order I draw the superiority not from the Iurisdiction which is attributed to Bishops jure positivo in their Audience of Ecclesiastical matters but from that which is intrinsical and original in the power of Excommunication Again you say in the first point That where Episcopacy hath obtained it cannot be abdicated without violation of Gods Ordinance This Proposition I conceive is inter minus habentes for never was there any Church yet where it hath not obtained The Christian Faith was neâ—er yet planted any where but the very first feature of a Church was by or with Episcopacy and wheresoever now Episcopacy is not suffered to be it is by such an Abdication for certainly there it was à Principio In your second head you grant that the Presbyterian government may be of use where Episcopacy may not be had First I pray you consider whither this conversion be not needless here and in it self of a dangerous consequence Next I conceive there is no place where Episcopacy may not be had if there be a Church more then in Title only Thirdly since they challenge their Presbyterian Fiction to be Christs Kingdom and Ordinance as your self expresseth and cast out Episcopacy as opposite to it we must not use any mincing terms but unmask them plainly nor shall I ever give way to hamper our selves for fear of speaking plain truth though it be against Amsterdam or Geneva and this must be sadly thought on Concerning your Postulata I shall pray you to allow me the like freedom amongst which the two first are true but as exprest two restrictive For Episcopacy is not so to be asserted unto Apostolical Institution as to bar it from looking higher and from fetching it materially and originally in the ground and Intention of it from Christ himself though perhaps the Apostles formalized it And here give me leave a little to enlarge The adversaries of Episcopacy are not only the furious Arian Hereticks out of which are now raised Prynne Bastwick and our Scottish Masters but some also of a milder and subtler allâ—y both in the Genevian and Roman Faction And it will become the Church of England so to vindicate it against the furious Puritans as that we may not lay it open to be wounded by either of the other two more cunning and more learned adversaries Not to the Roman faction for that will be content it shall be Juris Divini mediati by far from and under the Pope that so the Government of the Church may be Monarchical in him but not Immediati which makes the Church Aristocratical in the Bishops This is the Italian Rock not the Genevan for that will not deny Episcopacy to be Juris Divini so you will take it ut suadentis vel approbantis but not imperantis for then they may take and leave as they will which is that they would be at Nay if I much forget not Beza himself is said to have acknowledged Episcopacy to be Juris Divini Imperantis so you will not take it as universaliter imperantis For then Geneva might escape citra considerationem durantis for then though they had it before yet now upon wiser thoughts they may be without it which Scotland says now and who will may say it after if this be good Divinity and then all in that time shall be Democratical I am bold to add because in your second Postulatum I find that Episcopacy is directly commanded but you go not so far as to meet with this subtilty of Beza which is the great Rock in the Lake of Geneva In your nine Postulatum that the Accession of Honourable Titles or Priviledges makes no difference in the substance of the calling You mean the titles of Archbishops Primates Metropolitans Patriarcks c. 'T is well And I presume you do so But then in any case take heed you assert it so as that the Faction lay not hold of it as if the Bishops were but the Title of Honour and the same calling with a Priest For that they all aim at c. The eleventh Postulatum is larger and I shall not Repeat it because I am sure you retein a Copy of what you write to me being the Ribbs of the work nor shall I say more to it then that it must be warily handled for fear of a saucy Answer which is more ready with them a great deal then a Learned one I presume I am pardoned already for this freedom by your submission of all to me And now I heartily pray you to send me up keeping a Copy to your self against the accidents of Carriage not the whole work together but each particular head or Postulatum as you finish it that so we here may be the better able to consider of it and the work come on faster So to Gods blessed Protection c. Such was the freedom which he used in declaring his judgement in the case and such the Authority which his reasons carried along wâ—th them that the Bishop of Exon found good cause to correct the oblâ—quity of his opinion according to the Rules of these Animadversions agreeably unto which the book was writ and published not long after under the name of Episcopacy by Divine Right c. Such care being taken to prevent all inconveniencies which might come from Scotland he casts his eye toward the Execution of his former Orders for Regulating the French and Dutch Churches here in England It had been to no purpose in him to endeavour a Conformity amongst the Scots as long as such examples of separation did continue amongst the English If the post-nati in those Churches born and bred in England
supply but in the grant thereof blasted his Majesties Expedition against the Scots whose Cause they resolved to make their own and received thanks from them for that favour in their next Remonstrance Which coming to his Majesties ears on Munday the fourth of May he called his Council together on the next Morning betimes by whose unanimous consent he dissolved the Parliament On Tuesday April 14 the Convocation assembled in the Chapter-house of the Church of St. Paul from whence they waited on his Grace and the rest of the Bishops to hear the Sermon in the Quire The Sermon preacht by Turner Residentiary of the Church His Text was taken out of Mat. 10.16 Behold I send you forth as Sheep in the midst of Wolves which he followed home unto the Purpose In the close of the Sermon he had a passage in these words or to this effect that all the Bishops held not the Reins of Church Discipline with an even hand but that some of them were too easie and remiss in the ordering thereof Whereby though they sought to gain to themselves the popular plause of meekness and mildness they occasionally cast on other Bishops more severe than themselves the unjust imputation of Rigour and Tyranny and therefore he advised them withall with equal strictness to urge an universal Conformity The Sermon ended the Clergy fell to the electing of their Prolocutor as before commanded pitching unanimously on Dr. Richard Steward Clerk of his Majesties Closet and Dean of Chichester to be presented the next day to the Archbishop and the rest of the Prelates in the Chappel of King Henry vii at Westminster to which the Synod was adjourned The next day being come after a Protestation made in writing by the Sub-Dean and Prebendaries of that Church for not acknowledging the Archbishop of Canterbury or the rest of the Bishops to have any Jurisdiction in that place and the admitting of the same for good and valid they were permitted to proceed in their Convocation The business of that day was the presenting of the Prolocutor by Sheldon Warden of All-souls his Admission by the Archbishop and Stewards unwilling readiness to discharge the Office each of them delivering their conceptions in Elegant Latine Speeches as the custome is but the Archbishops longer than both the rest Which Ceremonies being performed his Grace produced a Commission under the Great Seal by which they were enabled according to the said Statute of King Henry viii to propose treat consult and agree upon the Exposition or Alteration of any Canon then in force and upon such new Canons Orders and Constitutions as the said Bishops and Clergy of which the Lord Archbishop to be alwaies one should think â—it necessary and convenient for the honour and service of Almighty God the good and quiet of the Church and the better Government thereof to be performed and kept by the said Archbishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy in their several places as also by the Dean of the Arches and by all others having Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in the Province of Canterbury and by all other persons within this Realm so far as being Members of this Church they may be concerned Provided alwaies that no such Canons Orders or Constitutions so to be considered on as aforesaid be contrary or repugnant to the Liturgy established or the Rubricks in it or the 39 Articles or any Doctrinal Orders and Ceremonies of the Church of England already established as also that nothing should be done in execution of the same till being exhibited to his Majesty in writing to be allowed approved confirmed and ratified or otherwise disallowed annihilated and made void as he should think fit requisite and convenient and then to be allowed approved and confirmed by Letters Patents under the Great Seal of England Also the said Commission to continue and remain in force during the present Session of Parliament and to expire together with it For the procuring of this Commission as the Archbishop had good reason as well for countenancing and confirming his former Actings as for rectifying many other things which required reformation so had his Majesty as good reasons for the granting of it the grounds whereof contained in his Commission of Iune 13. for confirming all the Acts of this Convocation are to this effect He had been given to understand that many of his Subjects being misled against the Rites and Ceremonies then used in the Church of England had taken offence at the same upon an unjust supposal That they were not only contrary to Law but also introductive unto Popish Superstitions whereas it well appeared unto him upon mature deliberation that the said Rites and Ceremonies which were then so much quarrelled at were not only approved of and used by those godly and learned Divines to whom at the time of the Reformation under King Edward vi the compiling of the Book of Common-Prayer was committed divers of which suffered Martyrdom in Queen Maries daies but also again taken up by this whole Church under Queen Elizabeth Which Rites so taken up had been so duly and ordinarily practiced for a great part of her Reign within the memory of divers living as that it could not then be imagined that there would need any Rule or Law for the observation of the same nor that they could be thought to savour of Popery He found too plainly that since those times for want of an express Rule therein and by the subtle practices of some men the said Rites and Ceremonies began to fall into disuse and in place thereof other Foreign and unfitting usages by little and little to creep in But being he found withal that in the Royal Chappels and in many other Churches most of them had been ever constantly used and observed his Majesty could not but be very sensible of the inconvenience And he had cause also to conceive that the Authors and Fomenters of those Jealousies though they coloured the same with a pretence of zeal and did seem to strike only at some supposed iniquity in the said Ceremonies yet aimed at his Royal Person and would have his good Subjects think that he himself was perverted and did worship God in a superstitious way and that he did intend to bring in some alteration in the Religion here established From which how far he was and how utterly he detested the very thought thereof he had by his many Declarations and upon sundry other occasions given such assurance to the World that no man of wisdom and discretion could ever be so beguiled as to give any serious entertainment to such brainsick Jealousies And as for the weaker sort who were prone to be misled by crafty seducers he alwaies assured himself that as many of them as had loyal or but charitable hearts would from thenceforth utterly banish all such causeless fears and surmises upon those his Sacred Professions so often made as a Defender of the Christian Faith their King and Sovereign He
perceived in the next place That the Ring-leaders of many well-minded people did make the more advantage for the nourishing of such distempers amongst them because the aforesaid Rites and Ceremonies or some of them were now insisted upon but only in some Diocesses and were not generally received in all places nor constantly nor uniformly practiced throughout all the Churches in the Kingdom and thereupon have been liable to be quarrelled and opposed by them who use them not In imitation therefore of the pious Examples of King Edward vi Queen Elizabeth and King Iames of Blessed Memories he thought it most agreeable to his own Honour and the good of his People to Licence the Archbishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergie in their several Convocations to make such further Orders Ordinances and Constitutions as should be found necessary for the Advancing of Gods Glory the Edifying of the Holy Church and the due Reverence of his Blessed Mysteries and Sacraments And this he did to this end and purpose That as he had been ever careful and ready to cut off Superstition with the one hand so he might also expell Profaneness and Irreverence with the other By means whereof it might please Almighty God to bless him and this Church committed to his Government that it might at once return to the true former splendour of Uniformity Devotion and holy Order the last whereof for many years last past had been much obscured by the devices of some ill affected to it where it had long stood from the very beginning of the Reformation and through inadvertency of some in Authority in the Church under him Such were the Motives which induced his Majesty to grant this Commission which was exceeding acceptable to the greatest and best affected part of the whole Assembly as being an evident demonstration of the Trust and Confidence which his Majesty had reposed in them In a grateful acknowledgment whereof for the support of his Majesties Royal Estate and the effectual furtherance of his most Royal and Extraordinary Designs abroad they gave him six Subsidies after the rate of four shillings in the pound to be paid in the six years then next following by two equal parts or moyeties in every year appointing a Committee to put the Grant into form and make it ready for a Confirmation by Act of Parliament But the first thing in which they acted by this Commission was the tendring of a Canon to them by the Archbishop of Canterbury For suppressing the further growth of Popery and reducing Papists to the Church with Order to the Prolocutor and inferiour Clergy to enlarge and perfect it as to them seemed most conducible to the end desired But afterward considering how much it might redound to his estimation that the said Canon should proceed intirely from himself alone he recalled the Paper into his own hands and after some time of deliberation returned it back unto the Clergy in the very same words in which it passed By which so framed and enlarged it was Ordained That all and every Person or Persons of what Rank soever having and exercising any Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as also all Persons entrusted with Cure of Souls should use respectively all possible care and diligence by open Conferences with the Parties and by Censures of the Church in inferiour and higher Courts as also by Complâ—ints unto the Secular Power to reduce all such to the Church of England who were misled into Popish Superstition Those publick Conferences to be managed by the Bishop in person if his Occasion will permit it or by some one or more Learned Men of his especial appointment The time and place of such Conferences with the Names of the Persons to be admitted to the same to be of the Bishops nomination Such Papists as refuse to appear at any of the said Coâ—ferences to be counted obstinate and such Ministers as should refuse to act therein without a reasonable Cause approved by the Bishop to be Suspended for six Months Provided That the place appointed for the said Conferences be not distant above ten miles from their dwelling Houses That in case such Conferences produce not the effect desired all Ecclesiastical Persons shall then be careful to inform themselves of all Recusants above the age of 12 years in their several Parishes as well concerning their not coming to the Church as their resorting to other places to hear Mass of all such as be active in seducing the Subjects from coming to Church and disswading them from taking the Oath of Allegiance the Names of all such to be presented that being cited and found obstinate they might be publickly Excommunicated as well in the Cathedral as their Parish Churches The like course to be also taken by the Diocesans in places of exempt Jurisdiction and the Offenders to be turned over to the High-Commission That the Names of all such as are presented in any Inferiour Jurisdiction be transmitted within six Months to the Diocesans by them to be returned toâ—ether with the Names of such as have been presented in their own Visitations to his Majesties Justices of Assize in their several Circuits And the same course to be also taken in returning the Names of all such persons as have been either Married or Buried or have â—ave had their Children Christned in any other form than according to the Rules of the Church of England to the intent they may be punished according to the Statutes in that behalf That Information be given by all Churchwardens upon their Oaths what persons are imployed as Schoolmasters in Recusants Houses to the end that if they have not or will not subscribe they may be forbidden and discharged from teaching Children any longer And the Names of all Persons which entertain such Schoolmasters to be certified at the next Assizes Such Schoolmasters to incur the publick Censure of the Church as do not carefully instruct the Children committed to them in the publick Catechism and the Names of such Parents as either thereupon shall take away their said Children or otherwise send them to be educated beyond the Seas to be presented upon Oath at the Visitations and certified also to the said Justices as before is said that the said Parents may be punished according to Law The said Certificate to be presented to the Judges by the Bishops Registers immediately on the Reading of the Commission or at the end of the Charge upon pain of Suspension for three Months from their several Offices The said Judges and Justices being entreated and exhorted not to fail of putting the said Laws in execution and not to admit of any vexatious Suit or Suits against any Churchwardens or other sworn Officers for doing their duty in this kind That a Significavit be made in Chancery by all the several Bishops of the Names of all such persons as have stood Excommunicated beyond the time limited by the Laws desiring that the Writ De Excommunicato capiendo may be issued against them
Commissary or if the Bishops occasions will not permit then by his Chancellor or Commissary and two grave dignified or beneficed Ministers of the Diocess to be assigned by the Bishop under his Episcopal Seal who shall hear and censure the said cause in that Consistory By the third it was ordained That no Excommunications or Absolutions should be good or valid in Law except they be pronounced either by the Bishop in person or by some other in holy Orders having Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction or by some grave Minister beneficed in the Diocess being a Master of Arts at least and appointed by the Bishop the name of the said Priest or Minister being expressed in the Instrument under the Seal of the Court And that no such Minister should pronounce any such Sentence but in open Consistory or at least in some Church or Chappel the Penitent humbly craving and taking Absolution upon his knees By the fourth it was provided That no Chancellor c. should have power to commute any Penance in whole or in part but either together with the Bishop in person or with his privity in writing That if he do it by himself he should give up a full and just account of such Commutations once every year at Michaelmas to the Bishop under pain of being suspended from his Jurisdiction for the space of a year the said Commutations to be disposed of by the Bishop and Chancellor in such charitable and pious uses as the Law requires and that Commutation to be signified to the place from whence the complaint proceeded in case the crime were publickly complained of and approved notorious For preventing those vexations and inconveniencies which formerly had been occasioned by concurrent Jurisdictions It was decreed by the fift Canon under the several penalties therein contained That no Register or Clerk should give nor Apparitor execute a Citation upon any Executor to appear in any Court or Office till ten daies after the Death of the Testator And that nevertheless it might be lawful for any Executor to prove such Wills when they think good within the said ten daies before any Ecclesiastical Judge respectively to whose Jurisdiction the same might or did appertain By the sixth it was ordained for the better preventing of any further invasions to be made on the Prerogative of the See of Canterbury and of many other inconveniencies which did thence arise no Licence of Marriage should be granted from any Ordinary in whose Jurisdiction one of the parties hath not been Commorant for the space of a month immediately before the same shall â—e desired under pain of such Censure as the Archbishop should think fit to inflict And that the said Parties being commorant in the said Jurisdiction as before is said shall be made one of the Conditions of the Bond accustomably given for securing that Office And for preventing of vexatious Citations for the time to come it was required by the last Canon That no Citation should from thenceforth be issued out of any Ecclesiastical Court except it be upon Presentment but such as should be sent forth under the Hand and Seal of the Chancellor within thirty days after the fault committed the Return thereof to be made on the first or second Court-day after the serving of the same And that the Party so cited not being convinced by two Witnessâ—s on his denial of the Fact by his corporal Oath should be forthwith dismissed without any payment of Fees Provided Tâ—at this Decree extend not to any grievous Crime as Schism Incontinence Misbehaviour at the Church in the time of Divine Service obstinate Inconformity or the like Finally For preventing all unnecessary Tautologies and Repetitions of the same thing it was declared once for all That whatsoever had been declared in the former Canons concerning the Jurisdiction of the Bâ—shâ—ps their Chancellors or Commissaries should be in force as far as by Law it was appliable concerning all Deans Deans and Chapters Collegiate Churches Archdeacons and all in Holy Orders having exempt or peculiar Jurisdiction and their several Officers respectively To the Proceedings of this Committee in digesting these Canons the interposing of another business gave no stop at all though it seemed to be of more weight than all the rest His Majesty on the twentieth of May directed his Letters sealed with his Royal Signet and attested by his Signe Manual to the Bishops and Clergy assembled in Convocation Requiring and thereby Authorising them to proceed in making Synodical Constitutions for Levying the six Subsidies formerly Granted This the most easie Task of all The Grant of the six Subsidies had been drawn before and there was nothing now to be altered in it but the changing of the name of Subsidy into that of Benevolence according to the Advice of the Council-Learned by whom it was resolved That no Moneys could be raised in the name of a Subsidy but by Act of Parliament And for the Synodicalâ— Acts or Constitutions for the Levying of it they were made to their hands So that there was nothing left for them to do but to follow the Precedent which was laid before them out of the Record of Convocation Anno 1585. and to transcribe the same the Names and Sums being only changed without further trouble So that it was dispatched by the Committee Voted by the Clergie and sent up to the Bishops before the end of the next day Nor did the framing or compiling of the Book of Articles give any stop at all to him to wâ—om tâ—e digesting of them was committed from attending the Service of the Committee and the House upon all occasions though for the better Authorising of them he had placed in the Margin before every Article the Canon Rubrick Law Injunction or other Authentick Evidence upon which it was grounded Which being finiâ—hed in good time was by him openly read in the House and by the House approved and passed without alteration but that an Exegetical or Explanatory Clause in the fourth Article of the fourth Chapter touching the Reading of the Second or Communion-Service at the Lords Table was desired by some to be omitted which was done accordingly Which Articles being too many and too long to be here inserted the Reader may consult in the Printed Book first published for the Visitation of the Bishop of London and by him fitted in some points for the use of that Diocess The said Clerk brought a Canon also with him For enjoyning the said Book to be only used in all Parochial Visitations for the better settling of an Uniformity in the outward Government and Administration of the Church and for the preventing of such just Grievances which might be laid upon Churcâ—wardens and other sworn men by any impertinent inconvenient or illegal Inquiries in the Articles for Ecclesiastical Visitations The same to be deposited in the Records of the Archbishop of Canterbury To which a Clause was added in the House of Bishops giving a Latitude to themselves for adding
Observation of all Rites and Ceremonies then established or from thenceforth to be established by the Kings Authority saying that he would prosecute all Repugners of them to the very Blood The Rest of the Articles relating unto Civil matters I omit of purpose as neither being pertinent or proper to my Present History observing only in this place that for the better carrying on of their charge against him they had gained two points more necessary to be craved than fit to be granted The first was which they carried in the House of Lords by a Major Vote that no Bishop should be of that Committee for the Preparatory Examinations in the present case under colour that they were excluded from acting in it by some Ancient Canons as in Causa sangiums or the cause of blood concerning which a brief discourse entituled De jure Paritatis Episcoporum was presented to his Grace of Canterbury and some other Bishops for asserting all their Rights of Peerage and this of being of that Committe amongst the rest which either by Law or Ancient Custom did belong unto them The second was that the Lords of the Council should be examined upon Oath for anything which was said or done by the Earl of Strafford at the Council Table Which being yielded by the King though tending visibly to the Derogation of his Power and the discouragement of all such as either were or should be of his Privy Council the Archbishop was accordingly Examined on December 4th being the next day after the said Condescention Nor was it long before the like Oath was required and obtained by them against the Archbishop himself being the next man whom the Scots and their Confederates in both houses had an eye upon He knew there was some danger coming toward him by the said combination but thought not at the first it would reach so far as to touch his Life The most he looked for as he told the Author of these Collections on the second or third day after the beginning of the Parliament was to be sequestred from his Majesties Councils and confin'd to his Diocess to which he profest himself as willing as any of his Enemies were desirous of it And as it seems his Enemies at the first had no further thoughts For it appeareth by a passage in his Diary that on Thursday Decemb. 24th four Earls of Great Power in the Upper House declared unto a Parliament man that they were resolved to Sequester him only from the Kings Council and deprive him of the Archiepiscopal dignity and no more then so which though it were too much and savoured of too little Justice to be so resolved before any particular charge was brought against him yet I consider it as an Argument of their first intentions that they aimed not at his Life but at his removal In Order whereunto it was thought expedient that his Majesty should be moved to release the Bishop of Lincoln from his long imprisonment and to restore him to his place in the house of â—â—â—rs knowing full well how Active an Instrument they were sure to find him by reason of some former grudges not only against the Archbishop but the Earl of Stafford Which motion being made and granted he was conducted into the Abby Church by six of the Bishops and there officiated it being a day of Humiliation as Dean of Westminster more honoured at the first by the Lords and Commons then ever any of his Order his person looked upon as Sacred his words deemed as Oracles And be contiâ—â—â—d in tâ—is height tâ—ll having served their turn against the Archâ—isâ—op and the Lord Lieutenant he began sensibly to decline and grew at last to be generally the most hated man of all the Hierarchy Orders are also made by the House of Commons for releasing such as were Imprisoned by the Star-Chamber Council-Table or High-Commission and more particularly for the remanding of Bastwick Prynne and Burton from the several Islands to which they were before confined Upon which general Goal-delivery Burton and Prynne had so contrived it as to come together met on their way as far as Brainford by some thousands of the Puritan Faction out of London and South-wark and by them silently conducted with Bays and Rosemary in their hands to their several Houses to the intolerable affront of the Courts of Justice and his Majesties Government his Majestie conniving at the insolency or not daring to punish it Not well reposed after the toil and trouble of so long a journey Prynne joyns himself with Bagshaw before remembred and both together are admitted to a private conference with the Bishop of Lincoln in the beginning of December which boded no great good to the Church or State or any who had formerly appeared in defence of either These preparations being made the Project was carried on a main For on the 16 â—h of that month the Canons made in the late Convocation were condemned in the House of Commons as being against the Kings Prerogative the Fundamental Laws of the Realm the Liberty and Property of the Subject and containing divers other things tending to Sedition and of dangerous Consequence A Vote was also past for making Canterbury the Principal Author of the said Canons for a Committee to be nominated to enquire into all his former Actions and for preparing a Bill against all those of the said Convocation by whom these Canons were subscribed but the sorrows of that day did not end there neither For on the same a charge was laid against him in the house of Peers by the Scots Commissioners that being the day in which they had accused the Earl of Strafford for doing ill offices and being an Incendiary between the Nations And in pursuance of the plot on Fryday the 18 â—h of the same Moneth he was Impeacht by Hollis in the name of all the Commons of England of no less then Treason and thereupon without any particular charge against him he was committed to the custody of the Gentleman Usher leave only being granted him to repair to his house at Lambeth for the Collecting of such Papers as were necessary for his Justification At Maxwells house for so was the Usher of the Black-Rod called he remained ten weeks before so much as any General charge against him was brought up to the Lords During which time he gained so much on the good opinion of the Gentle-woman of the House that she reported him to some of her Gossips to be one of the goodest mâ—n and most Pious Souls but with all one of the sillest fellows to hold talk with a Lady that ever she met with in all her life On the 26 â—h of February This charge was brought up to the Lords â—y â—ane the younger consisting of fourteen General Articles which Generals he craved time to prove in particular and thereupon a Vote was passed for transmitting the Prisoner to the Tower with leave however to remain at Maxwell's till the Munday following Which day being
Lords as double in number to the Bishops But whatsoever his fears were they were soon removed that Meeting being scattered about the middle of May upon the bringing in of a Bill against Deans and Chapters which so divided the Convenors both in their persons and affections that they never after met together Concerning which we are to know that not only most of the Lords of the Lower House and many Lower-House Lords in the Upper House resolving to pull up Episcopacy by the very roots thought it convenient to begin with lopping the Branches as laying no pretence to Divine Institution The voting of which Bill exceedingly amazed all those of the Prelatical Clergy as knowing at what Root it struck though none seemed presently concerned in it but such as had some benefit or subsistance in those foundations To still the great noise which was raised about it the Commons seemed not unwilling that some of the Cathedral Clergy should advocate for the continuance of those Capitular Bodies and others of the contrary Party to present their Reasons for their Dissolution The time appointed being come Hacket Archdeacon of Bedford and one of the Prebends of St. Pauls pleaded both learnedly and stoutly in behalf of those Churches and Burges of Watford who not long before brought down his Myrmidons to cry for Justice against Strafford to the Parliament doors was all for down with them down with them to the very ground But though they differed in their Doctrine yet they agreed well enough in their applications Burges declaring it unlawful as well as Hacket that the Revenues of those Churches should otherwise be imployed than to pious uses This seemed to put the business to a stand for the present time but Canterbury knowing with what case it might be resumed advised the drawing of a Petition to both Houses of Parliament in the name of the University of Oxon. which had a great stock going in the Ship of the Church not only for the preservation of the Episcopal Government but of those Foundations as being both the Encouragements and Rewards of Learning In which Petâ—tion having spoken in few words of the Antiquity and Succession of Bishops from the Apostles themselves they insist more at large upon such Suggestions as might best justifie and endear the cause of Cathedral Churches which being the most material of all those motives which were laid before them to that purpose we shall â—â—re subjoyn And we become further suiters saith that Vniversity for the continuance of the Pious Foundations of Cathedral Churches with their Lands and Revenues As Dedicate to the Service and Honour of God soon after the Plantation of Christianity in the English Nation As thought fit and usefully to be preserved for that end when the Nursâ—â—â—â— of Superstition were demolished and so continued in the last and 〈◊〉 times since the Blessed Reformation under King Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and King James Princes Renowned through the world for their Piety and Wisdom As approved and confirmed by the Law◠〈◊〉 this Land Ancient and Modern As the Principal and outwâ—rd 〈◊〉 and encouragements of all Students especially in Diviâ—â—â—â— and the fâ—ttest Reward of some deep and Eminent Scholars As 〈…〉 in all Ages many Godly and Learned men 〈…〉 strongly asserted the truth of the Religion we Profess 〈◊〉 the many fierce oppositions of our Adversaries of Rome As 〈…〉 a competent Portion in an Ingenious way to many younger brothers of good Parentage who devote themselves to the Ministery of the Gospel As the only means of subsistance to a multitude of Officers and other Ministers who with their families depend upon them and are wholly maintained by them As the main Authors or upholders of 〈…〉 Schools Hospitals High-ways Bridges and other Pious works 〈◊〉 special causes of much Profit and advantages to those Cities where 〈◊〉 are situate Not only by Relieving the Poor and keeping conve 〈◊〉 Hâ—â—pitality but by occasioning a frequent Resort of strangers 〈◊〉 other parts to the great benefit of all trades-men and inhabi 〈◊〉 in those places As the goodly Monuments of our Predecessors 〈◊〉 and present Honour of this Kingdom in the Eye of Foreign Na 〈◊〉 As the Chief support of many thousand families of the Layety who enjoy fair Estates under them in a free way As yielding a con 〈◊〉 and ample Revenue to the Crown And as by which many of the 〈…〉 Proâ—essors in our Vniversities are maintained The subver 〈…〉 whereof must as we conceive not only be attended 〈…〉 consequences as will redound to the Scandal of many well 〈…〉 our Religion but open the mouths of our Adversaries and if 〈…〉 against us and as likely in time to draw after it harder condi 〈…〉 in a considerable part of the Layety and Vniversal cheapness 〈…〉 upon the Clergy a lamentable drooping and defection of 〈…〉 knowledge in the Vniversities which is easie to firesee but will be hard to Remedy The like petition came from Cambridge as much concerned in this â—â—mmon cause as their sister of Oxon. But neither of them could 〈◊〉 so far as take off the edge of the ax which had been thus 〈◊〉 at the Root of the tree though it did blunt it at the present 〈◊〉 they which had the managing of the Design finding that the 〈◊〉 Churches were two strongly Cemented to be demolished at an Instant considered seasonably for themselves that the furthest way about did many times prove the nearest way to the journeys end A Bill was therefore passed in the House of Commons and sent up to the Lords by which it was to be Enacted if their Vote had carried it First that the Bishops should have no Voices in Parliament Secondly that they should not be Commissioners for the Peace or Judges in any Temporal Courts And that they should not fit in the Star-chamber nor be Privy Counsellors Which Bill being Voted part by part The two last parts were passed by a general consent not above one or two dissenting But the first branch was carried in the Negative by such an Unison consent in the Lords then present that if the Bishops had not Voted in defence of themselves the Temporal Lords alone who appeared for them had carried it by sixteen Voices The point being still upon debate those Lords which had shewed themselves against the Bishops resolved to put it to the Fortune of another day protesting that the Former manner of Voting the said Bill by Branches was both Vnparliamentary and Illegal and therefore that the Bill was either wholly to be passed or ejected wholly which being condescended to the whole Bill was utterly cast out of the House by so many voices that the Bishops might have spared their own till another time And though according to the Rules of all former Parliaments that a Bill which had been once cast out of the House should never be prest again the same Session yet this Bill found a way to it within few moneths after and almost
and Dangers in the Premises Lastly Whereas these fears are not built upon Conceits but upon such Grounds and Objects as may well terrifie Men of Resolution and much Constancy they do in all Humility and Duty Protest before Your Majesty and the Peers of the Most Honourable House of Parliament against all Laws Orders Votes Resolutions and Determinations as of themselves Null and of None Effect which in their Absence since the 27th of this Instant Moneth of December 1641. have already passed As likewise that all such as shall hereafter Pass in the Most Honourable House during the time of this their Forced and Violent Absence from the said Most Honourable House not denying but if their absenting of themselves were Wilful and Voluntary that Most Honourable House might Proceed in all their Premises their Absence or this Protestation Notwithstanding And humbly beseeching Your Most Excellent Majesty to Command the Clerk of the House of Peers to Enter this their Petition and Protestation among his Records They will ever Pray God to bless c. This Petition being presented to his Majesty was by him deliâ—vered to the Lord Keeper Littleton to be Communicated the next day being the 30th of Decemb. to the House of Peers But the Lord Keeper contrary to his Majesties directions did first impâ—rt iâ— to some of the Preaching party in both Houses of Parliament and after as the plot was laid to the Peers in general Upon the â—eading whereof a conference was desired with the House oâ— Câ—mmons to whom the Lord Keeper whom they had under the Laâ—â— was pleased to signifie that this Petition and Protestation of the twelâ—e Bishops contained matters of high and dangerous consequence extending to the deep intrenching upon the Fundamental Priviledges and Being of Parliament Whereupon the said twelve Bishops were Impeached by the Commons of high Treason The Usher called Black-Rod Commanded to find them out and to bring them to the Bar in the House of Peers which by reason of their scattered and divided Lodgings could not be effected till eight of the Clock at night at what time being brought together their offence was signified unto them and an Order presently made for their commitment to the Tower whither they were all carried the next day Except the Bishops of Durham and Lichfield who found the favour the one by reason of his Eminent Learning and both of them in regard of their age and Infirmities to stand committed to the custody of the Gentleman Usher Our Archbishop had now more Neighbours then â—e desired but not more company then before it being prudently Ordered amongst themselves that none of them should bestow any visits on him for fear of giving some advantage to their common enemy as if they had been hatching some conspiracy against the Publick But they refrained not on either side from sending meâ—â—ages of Love and consolation unto one another those mutual civilities being almost every day performed betwixt the two Archbishops also though very much differing both in their Counsels and Affections in the times foregoing The Archbishop of York was now so much declined in favour tâ—at he stood in as bad terms with the Common People as the other did His picture cut in Brass attired in his Episcopal Robes with his square Cap upon his head and Bandileers about his Neck shouldering a Musket upon one of his shoulders in one hand and a Rest in the other either presaging that which followed or else relating unto that which had passed in defence of the Abbey Together with which a book was Printed in which he was Resembled to the Decoy-Duck alluding to the Decâ—yes in Lincolnshire where he had been Bishop restored to Liberty on design that he might bring more company with him at his coming back and a device Ingraven for the Front of the Book which represented the conceit and that not unhappily Certain I am that our Archbishop in the midst of those sorrows seemed much pleased with the Fancy whither out of his great Love to wit oâ— some other self-satisfaction which he found therein is beyond my knowledge These Bishops bâ—ing thus secured and no body left in a manner to solicite the Common Cause but the Bishop of Rochester the Bill against their Votes passed currantly in the House of Peers on February 6. the Citizens who before had feasted the King with such signs oâ— Affection now celebrating the Concurrence of the House against his Interest with Bâ—lls and Bonfires Nor was it long before the â—ing gave over the Cause for which he had so long contended For either terrified with the Apprehension of his own Dangers or wrought on by the importunity of some about him he signed the Bill at Canterbury on February 14. to which place he had accompanied the Queen in her way toward Holland And by that Bill it was desired to be Enacted That no Archbishop Bishop or any other Person in Holy Orders from February 15. then next following should have any Seat or Place Suffrage or Voice use or execute any Power or Authority in the Parliaments of this Realm nor should be of the Privy-Council of his Majesty his Heirs or Successors or Justices of the Peace of Oyer and Terminer or Gaol-delivery or execute any Temporal Authority by vertue of any Commission but should be wholly disabled or be uncapable to have receive use or execute any of the said Offices Places Powers Authorities and Things aforesaid The passing of which Act what specious Pretences soever were given out for it redounded little to his Majesties Benefit and far less to his Comfort For by cutting off so many of his Friends at a blow he lost his Power in the House of Peers and not long after was deprived of his Negative Voice when the great Business of the Militia came to be disputed And though he pleased himself sometimes with this perswasion of their contentedness in suffering a present diminution of their Rights and Honours for his sake and the Commonwealths yet was it no small trouble to his Conscience at other times that he had added this to the former injury in consenting to the taking away of the Coercive Power of their Jurisdiction for this we find to be one of those three things which lay heaviest on him in the time of his Solitude and Sufferings as appears by this passage in one of his Prayers viz. Was it through ignorance that I suffered innocent Blood to be spilt by a false pretended Iustice Or that I permitted a wrong way of Worship to be set up in Scotlan Or injured the Bishops in England By which we see that the Injury done unto the Bishops of England is put into the same scale with his permitting a wrong way of Worship to be set up in Scotland and the shedding of the innocent Blood of the Earl of Strafford And if this Act proved so unpleasing to the King it must needs be grievous to the Bishops themselves to none more than the
Archbishop of Canterbury who had sâ—t so great a part of his affections on the preserving of this Church in her Power and Glory Whose sense hereof is thus express'd by one who for the time was his greatest Adversary That it struck proud Canterbury to the heart and undermined all his Prelatical Designs to advance the Bishops Pomp and Power whether with greater bitterness or truth is hard to say Their great hâ—pe was though it was such a hope as that of â—â—â—aham which the Scripture calls a hope against hope that havinâ— pâ—red the Jurisdiction of the Bishops and impaired their Power tâ—â—y would have suffered them to enjoy their Function with Peace and quiet as the only remaining Ornament and Honour of the Church oâ— England Conform therein unto the gallantry of the Ancient Romans who when they had brought the Carthaginians unto that condition as to compel them to deliver up their Ships Arms and Elephants and to make neither War nor Peace without their permission esteemed it an especial honour to their Commonwealth to preserve the City which was no longer to be feared though formerly it had contended for the Superiority But the Bishops Crimes were still unpunished And as the old Roman Citizen cried out upon his fine Country-house and pleasant Gardens when he found his name posted up amongst the Proscripts in the time of Sylla so might these Holy men complain of those fair Houses and goodly Manors which belonged to their Episcopal Sees as the only mâ—ans of the Subverâ—â—on of their Sacred Calling This had been formerly resolved oâ— but was not to be done at once as before was noâ—ed nor to be followed now but on some such colour as was pretended â—or depriving them of their Jurisdiction and Place in Parliament It was pretended for suppressing the Court of High-Commissiâ—n and the coercive Power of Jurisdiction That the Prelates had abused them both to the insufferable wrong and oppression of his Majesties Subjects And for the taking away of their Votes in Parliament with all other Civil Power in Church-men That it was found to be an occasion of great mischief both to Church and State â—he Office of the Ministry being of such great importance as to take up the whole Man And now to make way for the Abolition of the Calling it self it was given out amongst the People to have been made of no use to the Church by the Bishops themselves against whom these Objections were put in every mans mouth That they had laid aside the use of Confirming Children though required by Law whereby they had deprived themselves of that dependence which People of all sorts formerly had fastned on them That they had altogether neglected the duty of Preaching under the colour of attending their several Governments That in their several Governments they stood only as Cyphers transmitting their whole Jurisdiction to their Chancellors and under-Officers That none of them used to sit in their Consistories for hearing Grievances and Administring Justice to the Subject whether Clergy or Laity leaving them for a prey to Registers Proctors and Apparitors who most unconscionably extorted from them what they pleased That few or none of them held their Visitations in person whereby the face of the Bishop was unknown to the greatest part of the Clergy and the greatest part of the Clergy was unknown to him to the discouragement oâ— the Godly and painful Ministers and the encouragement of vicious and irregular Parsons That few of them lived in their Episcopal Cities and some there were who had never seen them whereby the Poor which commonly abound most in populous places wanted that Relief and those of the better sort that Hospitality which they had reason to expect the Divine Service in the mean time performed irreverently and perfunctorily in the Cathedrals of those Cities for want of the Bishops Residence and Superinspection That they had transferred the solemn giving of Orders from the said Cathedrals to the Chappels of their private Houses or some obscure Churches in the Country not having nor requiring the Assistance of their Deans and Chapters as they ought to do That they engrossed a sole or solitary Power to themselves alone in the Sentence of Deprivation and Degradation without the Presences and Consents of their said Deans and Chapters or any Members of the same contrary to the Canons in that behalf by which last Acts they had rendred those Capitular Bodies as useless to the Church as they were themselves And finally That seeing they did nothing which belonged unto the place of a Bishop but the receiving of their Rents living in ease and worldly pomp and domineering over the rest of their Brethren it was expedient to remove the Function out of the Church and turn their Lands and Houses unto better uses This I remember to have been the substance of those Objections made by some of the Gentry and put into the mouths of the Common People in which if any thing were true as I hope there was not such Bishops as offended in the Premises or in any of them have the less reason to complain of their own misfortunes and the more cause to be complained of for giving such Advantages to the Enemies of their Power and Function Nor was the alienating of their Lands and Houses the Total Sum of the Design though a great part of it As long as the Episcopal Jurisdiction stood much Grist was carried from the Mills in Westminster-Hall Toll whereof was taken by the Bishops Officers Therefore those Courts to be suppressed which could not be more easily done than in abolishing the Bishops whose Courts they were that so the managing of all Causes both Ecclesiastical and Civil might be brought into the hands of those who thought they could not thrive sufficiently by their own Common Law as long as any other Law was Common besides their own By means whereof all Offices and Preferments in the Admiral Archiepiscopal and Diocesan Courts being taken from the Civil Lawyers nothing can follow thereupon but the discouragement and discontinuance of those Noble Studies which formerly were found so advantagious to the State and Nation It is not to be thought that such a general Concussion should befal the Church so many Practices entertained against it and so many Endeavours used for the Ruine of it and that no man should lend a helping hand to support the Fabrick or to uphold the Sacred Ark when he saw it tottering Some well-affected in both Houses appeared stoutly for it amongst which none more cordially than the Lord George Digby in a Speech made upon occasion of the City-Petition and Sir Lucius Cary Viscount Faulkland both Members of the House of Commons Which last though he expressed much bitterness against the Bishops in one of his Speeches made in the first heats and agitation of business yet afterwards in another of them he shewed himself an especial Advocate in behalf of the Episcopal Order In which Speech of his
depriving the Bishops of their Vote and the Churches Birth-right And this was it which helped them in that time of need And yet not thinking this Device sufficient to fright their Lordships to a present compliance Stroud was sent up with a Message from the House of Commons to let them know That the Londoners would shortly bring a Petition with 20000 Hands to obtain that Ordinance By which stale and common Stratagem they wrought so far on some weak Spirits the rest withdrawing themselves as formerly in the case of the Earl of Strafford that in a thin and slender House not above six or seven in number it was pass'd at last The day before they pass'd the Ordinance for establishing their new Directory which in effect was nothing but a total abolition of the Common-Prayer-Book and thereby shewed unto the World how little hopes they had of settling their new Form of Worship if the foundation of it were not laid in the blood of this famous Prelate who had so stoutly stood up for it against all Novellism and Faction in the whole course of his Life â—e was certified by some Letters to Oxon. and so reported in the Mercurius Aulicus of the following week That the Lord Bruce 〈◊〉 better known by the name of the Earl of Elgin was one of the number of those few Lords which had Voted to the Sentence of his Condâ—mnation The others which concurred in that fatal Sentence being the Earls of Kent Pembroke Salisbury and Bullingbrook together with the Lord North and the Lord Gray of Wark But whatsoever may be said of the other six I have been advertised lately from a very good hand That the said Lord Bruce hath frequently disclaimed that Action and solemnly professed his detestation of the whole Proceedings as most abhorrent from his nature and contrary to his known aâ—fections as well unto his Majesties Service as the Peace and Preservation of the Church of England This Ordinance was no sooner passed but it revived many of those Discourses which had before been made on the like occasion in the Business of the Earl of Strafford For hereupon it was observed That as the predominant Party in the Vnited Provinces to bring about their ends in the death of Barnevelt subverted all those Fundamental Laws of the Belgick Liberty for maintenance whereof they took up Arms against Philip ii So the Contrivers of this Mischief had violated all the Fundamental Laws of the English Government for maintenance whereof they had pretended to take up Arms against the King It was said they a Fundamental Law of the English Government and the first Article in the Magna Charta That the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Priviledges inviolable Yet to make way unto the Condemnation of this Innocent Man the Bishops must be Voted out of their Place in Parliament which most of them have held far longer in their Predecessors than any of our Noble Families in their Progenitors and if the Lords refuse to give way unto it as at first they did the People must come down to the House in multitudes and cry No Bishops no Bishâ—ps at the Parliament doors till by the terrour of their Tumults 〈◊〉 extort it from them It is a Fundamental Law of the English 〈◊〉 That no Free-man shall be taken or imprisoned without cause 〈◊〉 or be detained without being brought unto his Answer in due form of Law Yet here we see a Freeman imprisoned ten whole weeks together before any Charge was brought against him and kept in Prison three whole years more before his General Accusation was by them reduced unto Particulars and for a year almost detained close Prisoner without being brought unto his Answer as the Law requires It is a Fundamental Law of the English Government 〈…〉 be disserzâ—â— of his Freehold or Liberties but by the known Laws of the Land Yet here we see a man disseized of his Rents and Lands spoiled of his Goods deprived of his Iurisdiction devested of his Right of Patronage and all this done when he was so far from being convicted by the Laws of the Land that no particular Charge was so much as thought of It is a Fundamental Law of the English Liberty That no man shall be condemned or put to death bâ—â— by the Lawful Iudgment of his Peers or by the Law of the Land that is in the ordinary way of Legal Tryal And sure an Ordinance of both Houses without the Royal Assent is no part of the Law of England nor held an ordinary way of Tryal for the English Subject or ever reckoned to be such in former times And finally It is a Fundamental Law in the English Government That if any other cause than those recited in the Statute of King Edward iii. which is supposed to be Treason do happen before any of his Majesties Juâ—tices the Justices shall tarry without giving Iudgment till the Cause be shâ—wn and declared before the King and his Parliament whether it ought to be judged Treason or not Yet here we have a new found Treason never known before nor declared such by any of his Majesties Iustices nor ever brought to be considered of by the King and his Parliament but only Voted to be such by some of those Members which â—are at Westminster who were resolved to have it so for their private Ends. The first Example of this kind the first thaâ— ever suffered death by the shot of an Ordinance as himself very well observed in his dying Speech upon the Scaffold though purposely omitted in Hind's Printed Copy to which now he hasteneth For the passing of the Ordinance being signified to him by the then Lieutenant of the Tower he neither entertained the news with a Stâ—ical Apathy nor waâ—led his fate with weak and womanish Lamentations to which Extremes most men are carried in this case but 〈◊〉 it with so even and so smooth a Temper as shewed he neither was ashamed to live nor afraid to die The time between the Sentence and Execution he spent in Prayers and Applications to the Lord his God having obtained though not without some diâ—lâ—â—nâ—ty a Chaplain of his own to attend upon him and to assist him in the Work of his Preparation though little Preparation â—â—â—ded to receive that blow which could not but be welcome because long expected For so well was he studied in the Art of Dying especially in the last and strictest part of his Imprisonment that by continual Fastings Watchings Prayers and such like Acts of Christiaâ— Humiliation his Flesh was rarified into Spirit and the whole maâ— so fitted for Eternal Glories that he was more than half in Heaven before Death brought his bloody but Triumphant 〈◊〉 to convey him thither He that had so long been a Confessâ—â—â—ould â—ould not but think it a Release of Miseries to be made a 〈◊〉 It is Recorded of Alexander the Great That the night before his last and
in Visitations those of the Bishop many times tâ—â—â—â—tning the Archdeacons one Bishops differing from anothers the Successors from his Predecessors and the same person not consistâ—nt to the same Articles which himself had published By means whereof the people were much disturbed the Rules of the Church contemned for their multiplicity unknown by reason of their uncertainty and despised for the inconstancy of them that made them Of all which he desired the Convocation to provide a remedy by setting out one Uniform Book of Articles to be the standing Rule oâ— all Visitations for the time to come The motion pleased the Prolocutor and the rest of the Clergy who thereupon desired him in pursuit of his own project to undertake the compiling of the said Book of Articles and to present it to the House with convenient speed Which notwithstanding there wanted not some secret practices to illude the motion and frustrate the design approved of by the general Voâ—e Some who observed the moderation of the Articles which had been drawn for the Metropolitical Visitation and finding them to leave a greater liberty about placing the Communion Table and the order of officiating the Divine Service than the new Articles might allow of addrest themselves unto his Grace desiring that those Articles might be commended to the Convocation to be a standing Rule for all Visitations in the times succeeding which Proposition was thought to relish well enough with him at the first proposal though afterwards on further consideration he suffered the business to proceed in the former course It was not long before another Canon was tendred to the Prolocutor for advancing a more general Conformity than that which was contained in the Declaration And it was tendred by the same hand which had before presented that against Sectaries in reference to whom it passed without opposition or alteration It was enjoyned by that Canon under pain of suspension that all Preachers as well beneficed men as others should positively and plainly preach and instruct the People in their publick Sermons that the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were lawful and commendable and that the People ought not only to conform themselves to those Rites and Ceremonies but chearfully to submit themselves unto the Government of the Church as it was then established under his Majesty Another was brought in but by whom I know not Concerning the Conversation of the Clergie by which it was desired in compliance to the ancient Canons of the Church and in particular to Canon 74 75. of the year 1603. That all Clergy men in this Church setting before their eyes the glory of God the holiness of their Calling and the edification of the People committed to them should carefully avoid all excess and disorders that by their Christian and Religious Conversation they might shine forth as lights unto others in all godliness and honesty and that all those to whom the Government of the Church was committed should set themselves to countenance and encourage Godliness Gravity Sobriety and all unblameable Conversation in the Ministers of it and diligently labour by the due execution of the Canons aforesaid and all other Ecclesiastical Provisions made for that end to reform all offensive and scandalous persons which were in the Ministry Which Canon was so well approved of that it past without any stop or resistance All matters going thus calmly on the Clergy began to take into consideration the great excesâ—es and abuses which were complained of in many Offices of Ecclesiastical Courts They found the Exorbitancies of the Chancellors to be grown so great that they contemned the lower Clergy and thought themselves independent of the Bishops under whom they served They found that many abuses had been committed in the Sentences of Excommunication and Absolution the slovenly executing whereof had been very offensive as also in Commutations of Penance and conniving at unlawful Marriages out of which some Officers in those Courts raised no small advantage Complaint was also made of some oppressions which had been laid upon the Subject by concurrent Jurisdictions partly and partly by vexatious Citations in which nothing was more aimed at than the Officers Fees which must be paid though nothing could be proved against the Party when he came before them The consideration and redress of all which grievances being referred to the Committee of twenty six the said Committee was desired by the Prolocutor to hold their meetings in his house situate under the North-side of the Abbey-Church and therefore most convenient both for himself and them The Grievances were great and yet not greater than the Clamour which was raised about them which made the Committee very intent upon the stilling of the noise by providing better for themselves their Brethren and the rest of the Subjects but not without all due respect to the Professors in that honourable Faculty of the Civil Laws Lamb Dean of the Arches and Heath Judge of the Audience being both Members of the Convocation were taken into that Committee not only to assist their Consultations in point of Law but to moderate the â—ervor of their Proceedings by the Fan of Reason The whole Reformation brought within the compass of these seven Canons 1. Concerning Chancellors Patents 2. Chancellors not alone to censure any of the Clergy in sundry cases 3. Excommunication and Absolution not to be pronounced but by a PRIEST 4. Concerning Commutations and the disposing of them 5. Touching current Iurisdictions 6. Concerning Licences to marry 7. Against vexatious Citations In the first of the seven it was required That no Bishop should grant any Patent to any Chancellor Commissary or Official for any longer time than the life of the Grantee only That in all such Patents the Bishops should reserve to themselves and their Successors the power of giving institution to Benefices of giving Licences to teach School or Preach as also of exercising their Jurisdiction either alone or with the Chancellor at his own discretion all the accustomed Fees to be reserved unto the Chancellor c. as in former times That no Dean and Chapter should confirm any Patent to any Chancellor c. wherein the said conditions were not exprest under pain of Suspension to be inflicted on them severally by their Metropolitan And finally That under the heaviest Censures no reward should be taken for any of the Offices and Places abovementioned In the composure of which Canon as the first branch was made to cut off Reversions so was the â—â—st added to prevent corruptions For he most commonly sells Justice that hath bought his Office In the second it was ordered That no Chancellor Commissary or Official unless he be in holy Orders should proceed to Suspension or any higher Censure against any of the Clergy in any criminal cause other than neglect of appearance upon legal Citing but tâ—at all such cases should be heard by the Bishop in person with the assistance of his Chancellor or