Calverts Letter unto Digby on the fifth of this present Ianuary That he could have no rest for his young Master for being called on early and late to hasten the dispatch of all Some Messages and dispatches had been brought by Porter out of Spain about three daies before which winged his feet and added Spurs to the design The Journey being thus agreed on was in the very nature of it to be made a secret and therefore not communicable to the Lords of the Council for fear of staying him at home or rendring him obnoxious to the danger of an interception as he past through France which mischief if it had befaln him he must either have submitted unto such conditions or suffered under such restraints as might seem intollerable in themselves but absolutely destructive of his present purpose which may the rather be believed by reason of the like proceedings of that King with the present Prince Elector Palatine who posting disguised through France in hope to get the Command of Duke Bernards Army was stayed in the middle of his Journey by that Kings command and kept so long under Restraint that he lost the opportunity of eâ—fecting that which he desired It is not to be thought but that much danger did appear in the undertaking but Love which facilitates impossibilities overcomes all dangers On the eighteenth day of February accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham Mr. Endimion Porter and Mr. Francis Cottington he took Ship at Dover and landed safe at Boloigne a Port of Picardy Advanced on his way as far as Paris his Curiosity carried him to the Court to see a Masque at which he had a view of that incomparable Princess whom he after married But he was like to have paid dear for this curiosity For no sooner had he left the City but the French King upon Advertisement of his being there dispatcht away many of his Servants in pursuance of him commanding them not only to stay his Journey but to bring him back unto the Court But he rides fast who rides upon the wings of Love and Fear so that the Prince had past Bayonne the last Town of France without being overtaken by them and posting speedily to Madrid he entred the Lord Ambassadors Lodging without being known to any but his Confidents only That Danger being thus escaped he cast himself upon another For having put himself into the Power of the King of Spain it was at the curtesie of that King whither he should ever return or not it being a Maxime among Princes that if any one of them without leave sets foot on the ground of another he makes himself ipso facto to become his Prisoner Richard the First of England passing in disguise through some part of the dominions of the Arch-Duke of Austria was by him took prisoner and put unto so high a Ransome that the Arch-Duke is said to have bought the Earldom of Styria or Styrmark with some part of the money and to have walled Vienna with the rest Nor wanted the Spaniards some Examples of a latter date which might have justified his detention there had they been so minded and those too borrowed from our selves Philip the first of Spain one of the Predecessors of the King then Reigning being cast by tempest on the Coast of England was here detained by King Henry the Seventh till he had delivered up the Earl of Suffolk who had put himself under his protection In like manner Mary Queen of Scots being forced by her Rebellious Subjects to flee into this Realm was presently seized on as a Prisoner and so continued till her lamentable and calamitous death And what could more agree with the rules of Justice and the old known practise of Retaliation then that the English should be punished by the rigour of their own severities Such were the Dangers which the Princes person was exposed to by this unparalell'd adventure not otherwise to be commended in most mens opinions but by the happy success of his Return And yet there were some fears of a greater danger than any could befall his Person by Sea or Land that is to say the danger of his being wrought on to alter his Religion and to make shipwrack of his Faith and this by some uncharitable persons is made the ground of the design to the indelible reproach of those who were supposed to have had a hand in the contrivement of the Plot. Amongst those the Marquiss stands accused by the Earl of Bristol as appears by the first Article of the Charge which was exhibited against him in the Parliament of the year 1626. And our new Bishop stands reproached for another of them by the Author of the book entituled Hidden works of darkness c. But then it cannot be denied but that his Majesty and the Prince must be the Principals in this Fact this Hidden work of darkness as that Author calls it Buckingham and St. Davids being only accessaries and subservient instruments But who can think they durst have undertaken so soul a business which could not be washt off but by their bloud had not the King commanded and the Prince consented Now for the King there is not any thing more certain than the great care he took that no danger should accrue to the Religion here by Law established by the Match with Spain And this appears so clearly by the Instructions which he gave to Digby at the first opening of this Treaty as if it had been written with a beam of the Sun The matter of Religion saith he is to us of most principal consideration for nothing can be to us dearer than the honour and safety of the Religion we profess And therefore seeing that this Marriage and Alliance if it shall take place is to be with a Lady of a different Religion from us it becometh us to be tender as on the one part to give them all satisfaction convenient so on the other to admit nothing that may blemish our Conscience or detract from the Religion here established And to this point he stood to the very last not giving way to any alteration in this or tolleration of that Religion though he was pleased to grant some personal graces to the Recusants of this Kingdom and to abate somewhat of the Rigour of those Capitall Laws which had been formerly enacted against Priests and Jesuites Next for the Prince he had been brought up for some years then last past at the feet of this most learned and wise Gamaliel by whom he was so fortified in the true Protestant Religion established by the Laws of this Realm that he feared not the encounter of the strongest Adversary and of this the King was grown so confident that when Maw and Wren the Princes Chaplains were to receive his Majesties Commands at their going to Spain there to attend upon their Master he advised them not to put themselves upon any unnecessary Disputations but to be only on the defensive part if they should
at the Cross preached by the eloquent and religious Prelate Dr. Iohn King Lord Bishop of London The Sermon being ended the Collation began His Majesty attended with all the Lords and the rest of his Train being entertained by the said Lord Bishop at a sumptuous Banquet with no less honour to himself than content to his Majesty But there was more intended by this Visit than Pomp and Ostentation only For his Majesty having taken a view of the Ruinous Estate in which he beheld that goodly Fabrick issued not long after a Commission for repair thereof and somewhat was done in it both by Bishop King and Bishop Mountain But the carrying one of this work was reserved to another man For a breach following not long after between Spain and England and wars soon following on that breach a stop was made to all proceedings in that work till the year 1631. At what time Laud being Bishop of London obtained a like Commission from the hands oâ— King CHARLES and set his heart so much upon it that in few years he had made a mighty Progress in it of which more hereafter And here it was once feared that this present History might have ended without going further for on the second of April as he past from London towards Oxon he took up his Inn at Wickam upon the Rode where he fell suddenly dead and was not without much diffâ—culty and Gods special favour restored unto his former being But God reserved him to a life more eminent and a death more glorious not suffering him to dye obscurely like a traveller in a Private Inn but more conspicuously like a Martyr on the Publick Theatre for on the 22. of Ianuary he was installed Prebend in the Church of Westminster after no less than ten years expectation of it And on the last of the same Month he sate as Dean of Glocester in the Convâ—cation The Prince Elector Palatine who married the Kings only Daughter in the year 1612. had the last year most inconsiderately took upon him the Crown of Bohemiah not taking with him the Kings Counsel in it as he might have done but giving him an account oâ— it on the Post-Fact only The Emperour exasperated with this Usurpation as by him reputed gave up his Country for a prey assigning the Electoral Dignity with the Upper Palatinate to the Duke of Bavaria and the Lower to the King of Spain who had possest themselves of divers good Towns and pieces in it For the recovery whereof and the Preservation of the rest in which his Daughter and her Children were so much concerned it pleased his Majesty to call a Parliament to begin on the thirtieth day of Ianuary accompanied with a Convocation as the custom is on the morrow after The business of their Conveening being signified unto them by the King the Parliament at their first sitting which ended March 27. bestowed upon his Majesty two Subsidies but they gave no more which rather served to stay his stomach than allay his hunger They had some turns to serve upon him before they would part with any more money if they did it then But the Clergy dealt more freely with him in their Convocation because they had no other ends in it than the expressing of their duty and good affections In testimony whereof they gave him three entire Subsidies of four shillings in the pound at their first sitting and would not have been wanting to his Majesty in a further addition in the second or third if his Majesty had required it of them Incouraged with which supplies and the hopes of greater he sent some Regiments of old English Souldiers for the defence and preservation of the Lower Palatinate under the Command of that Noble Souldier Sir Horatio Vere When the Commons bestowed upon him the said two Subsidies he took them only as a bit to stay his stomach as before was said giving himself some hopes that at the next Session they would entertain him with a better and more costly dinner but then they meant that he should pay the reckoning for it For at their reassembling on the seventeenth of April instead of granting him the supplies he looked for they fell to pick quarrels with his Servants and one of his chief Ministers of State not only questioning Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michael but even the Lord Chancellor Bacon also These men supposing them to have been as criminal as their enemies made them were notwithstanding such as acted under his Commissions and therefore not to have been punished by his own Authority only The giving of them over to the Power of the Parliament not only weakened his own Prerogative but put the House of Commons upon such a Pin that they would let no Parliament pass for the times to come without some such Sacrifice And so foll Bacon Lord Chancellor of England Lord Verulan and Viscount of St. Albans a man of good and bad qualities equally compounded one of a most strong brain and a Chimical head designing his endeavors to the perfecting of the Works of Nature or rather improving Nature to the best advantages of life and the common benefit of mankind Pity it was he was not entertained with some liberal Salary abstracted from all affairs both of Court and Judicature and furnished with sufficiency both of means and helps for the going on in his design which had it been he might have given us such a body of Natural Philosophy and made it so subservient to the publick good that neither Aristotle nor Theophrastus amongst the Ancients nor Paracelsus or the rest of our later Chimists would have been considerable In these Agitations held the Parliament till the fourth of Iune without doing any thing in order to his Majesties Service who thereupon adjourned them till the fourteenth of November following before which time we find Laud mounted one step higher and ready to take place amongst the Bisâ—ops in the House of Peers And therefore here we will conclude the first Part of our present History THE LIFE OF The most Reverend FATHER in GOD WILLIAM Lord Archbishop of Canterbury LIB II. Extending from his being made Bishop of St. Davids till his coming to the See of Bath and Wells IT is an observation no less old than true that Patience and Perseverance overcome all difficulties And so it hapned unto Laud. He had with most incredible patience endured the baffles and affronts which were put upon him by the power and practises of his enemies Nor did he shew less patience in his so long and chargeable attendance at the Court for which he had so small regard that he was rather looked upon as the Bishop of Durhams Servant than the Kings But notwithstanding these cross winds he was resolved to ride it out neither to shift his sails nor to tack about but still to keep his way and to stem the current till he had gained the Port he aimed at His Majesty had been made acquainted by
That there was no design in the King or Prince or in any of the Court or Court-Bishops of what name soever to alter the Religion here by Law established or that the Prince was posted into Spain of purpose that he might be perverted or debauched from it But the best is that he which gave the Wound hath made the Plaister and such a Plaister as may assuredly heal the Sore without troubling any other Chyrurgeon It is affirmed by him who published the Breviate of our Bishops Life That he was not only privy to this Journey of the Prince and Buckingham into Spain but that the Journey was purposely plotted to pervert him in his Religion and reconcile him to Rome And this he makes apparent by the following Prayer found amongst others in the Bishops Manual of Devotions than which there can be nothing more repugnant to the Propositions â—or proof of which it is so luckily produced Now the said Prayer 〈◊〉 thus verbatim viz. O Most merciful God and gracious Father the Prince hath put himself to a great Adventure I humbly beseech thee make clear the way before him give thine Angels charge over him be with him thy self in Mercy Power and Protection in every step of his Iourney in every moment of his Time in every Consultation and Address for Action till thou bring him back with Safety Honour and Contentment to do thee service in this place Bless his most truly and faithful Servant the Lord Duke of Buckingham that he may be diligent in Service provident in Business wise and happy in Counsel for the honour of thy Name the good of the Church the preservation of the Prince the contentment of the King the satisfaction of the State Preserve him I humbly beseech thee from all Envy that attends him and bless him that his eyes may see the Prince safely delivered to the King and State and after it to live long in happiness to do thee and them service through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen And with this Prayer so plainly destructive of the purpose for which it was published I shut up the Transactions of this present year We will begin the next with the dismission of the Archbishop of Spalato a man defamed by the Italians at his coming hither and as much reproached by the English at his going hence His name was Marcus Antonius de Dominis Archbishop of Spalato in Fact and Primate of Dalmatia in Title Such anciently and of right those Archbishops were till the Bishop of Venice being made a Patriarch by Pope Eugenius the Fourth Anno 1450. assumed that Title to himself together with a Superintendency over all the Churches of that Country as subordinate to him He had been long conversant with the Fathers and Ancient Councils By this Light he discerned the Darkness of the Church of Rome and the blind Title which the Popes had for their Supremacy Inclining to the Protestant Religion he began to fear that his own Country would prove too hot for him at the last and therefore after he had sate in the See of Spalato about fourteen years he quitted his Preferments there and betook himself for Sanctuary to the Church of England Anno 1616. Extremely honoured at his first coming by all sorts of people entertained in both Universities with solemn Speeches presented complemented feasted by the great Lords about the Court the Bishops and some principal Persons about the City Happy was he that could be honoured with his Company and satisfied with beholding his comely presence though they understood not his Discourses Commended by King Iames at first for a constant Sojourner and Guest to Archbishop Abbot in whose Chappel at Lambeth he assisted at the Consecration of some English Bishops Made afterwards by the King the Master of the Savoy and Dean of Windsor and by himself made Rector of West-Illesby in the County of Berks A Revenue not so great as to bring him under the suspicion of coming hither out of Covetousness for the sake of filthy Lucre nor so contemptible but that he might have lived plentifully and contentedly on it During his stay here he published his learned and elaborate Book entituled De Republica Ecclesiastica never yet answered by the Papists and perhaps unanswerable He had given great trouble to the Pope by his defection from that Church and no small countenance to the Doctrine of the Protestant Churches by his coming over unto ours The foundring of so great a Pillar seemed to prognosticate that the Fabrick of that Church was not like to stand And yet he gave greater blows to them by his Pen than by the defection of his person the wound so given being conceived to be incurable In these respects those of that Church bestirred themselves to disgrace his person devising many other causes by which he might be moved or forced to forsake those parts wherein he durst no longer tarry but finding little credit given to their libellous Pamphlets they began to work upon him by more secret practises insinuating That he had neither that Respect nor those Advancements which might encourage him to stay That the new Pope Gregory the Fifteenth was his special Friend That he might chuse his own Preferments and make his own Conditions if he would return And on the other side they cunningly wrought him out of credit with King Iames by the Arts of Gundamore Embassadour at that time from the King of Spain and lessened his esteem amongst the Clergy by some other Artifices So that the poor man being in a manner lost on both sides was forced to a necessity of swallowing that accursed bait by which he was hooked over to his own destruction For having sollicited King Iames by several Letters the last of them bearing date on the third of February to licence his departure home he was by the King disdainfully turned over to the High-Commission or rather to a special Commission directed to Archbishop Abbot the Lord Keeper Lincoln the Bishops of London Durham and Winchester with certain of the Lords of the Privy Council These Lords assembling at Lambeth on the 30th of March and having first heard all his Excuses and Defences commanded him to depart the Realm within twenty days or otherwise to expect such punishment as by the Laws of the Land might be laid upon him for holding Intelligence by Letters Messages c. with the Popes of Rome To this Sentence he sorrowfully submitted protesting openly That he would never speak reproachfully of the Church of England the Articles whereof he acknowledged to be sound and profitable and none of them to be Heretical as appears by a Book entituled SPALATO's Shiftings in Religion published as it was conceived by Laud's especial Friend the Lord Bishop of Durham How well or rather how ill he performed this promise and what became of him after his return to Rome is not now my business The man is banished out of England and my History leads me next into Spain not Italy The
discontentments which appeared in the people for the Princes Journey into Spain the sad consequents which were feared to ensue upon it in reference to his Person and the true Religion that the blame of all was by the People laid on the Duke and that it was safest for his Majecty to let it rest where they had laid it But nothing could be thought more strange unto him than that the Lord Keeper Williams and the Lord Treasurer Cranfield should be of Counsel in the Plot both of them being of his raising and both in the stile of Court his Creatures Of all which practises and proceedings Laud gives intelligence to the Duke and receives back again Directions in his actings for him Pity it is that none of these reciprocal Letters have been found to make up the Cabala and to enrich the treasures in the Scrinea Sacra From hence proceeded the constancy of affection which the Duke carried to him for ever after the Animosity between Laud and Williams the fall of Cranfield first and of Williams afterwards Laud by his diligence and fidelity overtopping all The news of these practices in the Court made the Duke think of leaving Spain where he began to sink in his Estimation and hasting his return to England for fear of sinking lower here than he did in Spain Some clashings there had been betwixt him and the Conde d' Olivarez the Principal Favorite of that King and some Caresses were made to him by the Queen of Bohemia inviting him to be a God-father to one of her Children In these disquiets and distractions he puts the Prince in mind of the other Game he had to play namely the Restitution of the Palatinate which the Spaniard would not suffer to be brought under the Treaty of the Match reserving it as they pretended and perhaps really intended to be bestowed by the Infanta after the Marriage the better to ingratiate her self with the English Nation Which being a point of too great moment to depend upon no other assurance than a Court-Complement only it was concluded by the Prince That since he could not prevail in the one he would not proceed to the Consummation of the other But then it did concern him so to provide for his own saâ—ety that no intimation might be made of the intended Rupture till he had unwinded himself out of that Labyrinth into which he was cast For which cause having desired of his Father that some Ships might be sent to bring him some he shewed himself a more passionate Lover than ever formerly bestowed upon the Lady Infanta many rich Jewels of most inestimable value and made a Proxie to the Catholick King and Don Charles his Brother in his name to Espouse tâ—e Lady Which Proxie being made and executed in due form of Law on the Fourth of August 1623. was put into the Hands of Digby on the Fifteenth of September after made Earl of Bristol by him to be delivered to the King of Spain within ten days after the coming of the Dispensation from the new Pope Vrban which was then every day expected But no sooner had he took his leave and was out of danger but he dispatch'd a Post unto him commanding him not to deliver up the Proxie until further Order And having so done he hoised Sails for England Arriving at Portsmouth on Sunday the fifth of October he rides Post the next day to London and after Dinner on the same day to the Court at Royston his welcom home being celebrated in all Places with Bells and Bonfires and other accustomed Expressions of a Publick Joy Being come unto the Court they acquaint his Majesty with all that hapned informing him that no assurance of regaining the Palatinate could be had in Spain though the Match went forwards His Majesty thereupon dispatches Letters to the Earl of Bristol on the eighth of October requiring him not to deliver up the Proxie and so not to proceed to the Espousals till the Christmas Holy-days and in the mean time to press that King to a positive Answer touching the Palatinate The expectation whereof not being answered by success a Parliament is summoned to begin on the 17th of February then next following to the end that all things might be governed in this Great Affair by the publick Counsel of the Kingdom Not long after the beginning whereof the Duke declaâ—ed before both Houses more to the disadvantage of the Spaniard than there was just ground for how unhandsomly they had dealt with the Prince when he was in Spain how they had fed him with delays what indignities they had put upon him and finally had sent him back not only without the Palatinate but without a Wife leaving it to their prudent consideration what course to follow It was thereupon Voted by both Houses That his Majesty should be desired to break off all Treaties with the King of Spain and to engage himself in a War against him for the recovery of the Palatinate not otherwise to be obtained And that they might come the better to the end they aimed at they addressed themselves unto the Prince whom they assured That they would stand to him in that War to the very last expence of their Lives and Fortunes and he accordingly being further set on by the Duke became their instrument to perswade his Father to hearken to the Common Votes and Desires of his Subjects which the King press'd by their continual Importunities did at the last but with great unwillingness assent to Such was the conduct of this business on the part of the English Look we next what was done in Spain and we shall find in Letters from the Earl of Bristol That as soon as news was come to Spain that King Iames had sworn the Articles of the Treaty which was done on the 26th of Iuly the Lady Infanta by all the Court with the Approbation of that King and her own good-liking was called La Princessa d' Inglaterra That as such she gave her self the liberty of going publickly to such Comedies as were presented in the Court which before was not allowable in her That as such also not only he himself as the Kings Embassadour was commanded to serve her but the Duke and all the English were admitted to kiss her hands as her Servants and Vassals That after the Princes departure there was no thought of any thing but of providing Presents for the King and him the setling of the Princesses Family and making Preparations for the Journey on the first of March That the Princess also had begun to draw the Letters which she intended to have written the day of her disposories to the Prince her Husband and the King her Father in Law That besides such assurances as were given by the Count of Olivarez and other Ministers of that King the Princess had made the business of the Palatinate to be her own and had therein most expresly moved the King her Brother and written to the Conde
were weekly Fasts appointed to be kept by the Laws of the Land which if they did observe as they ought to do there would be no need of Solemn Fasts to begin their Parliaments The blame of which Answer in the Parliament immediately foregoing this was by the Puritan Faction cast upon the Bishops who at the same time had opposed some Proposition tending to some Restraints on the Lords day not imposed before as men whose Pride hindred all such Religious Humiliations and whose Profaneness made them Enemies to all Piety But the King having now cast himself into the arms of his People had brought himself to a necessity of yielding to their desire and thereby left a fair President both for them to crave and his Successor to grant the like So that from this time forward till the last of King Charles we shall see no Parliament nor Session of Parliament to begin without them though that King checked some times at the importunity So far his Majesty had gone along with them in yielding unto their desires but he must go a little further And therefore secondly They thought it not enough that his Majesty had made a Publick Declaration for the real and utter Dissolution of the said Treaties but it must be declared also by Act of Parliament That the said two Treaties were by his Majesty Dissolved Which gave them some colour of Pretence in the following Parliament to claim a share in managing the War which the Dissolving of these Treaties had occasioned and of being made acquainted with the Enterprize which was then in hand But for this time they were contented to have engaged the King for the future War toward the carrying on of which and more particularly as the Act expresseth for the Defence of this Realm of England the Securing of the Kingdom of Ireland the Assistance of his Majesties Neighbours the States of the Vnited Provinces and other his Majesties Friends and Allies and for the setting forth of his Royal Navy they granted to him three Subsidies together with three Fifteenths and Tenths to be paid before the tâ—nth of May which should be in the year 1625. Which though it be affirmed in the said Act to be the greatest Aid which ever was granted in Parliament to be levied in so short a time yet neither was the time so short as it was pretended there being almost fifteen Months between the dissolving of the Treaties and the last payment of the Monies Nor did the King get any thing by it how great soever the said Aid was supposed to be For thirdly before the King could obtain this Act he was fain to gratifie them with some others amongst which that entituled An Act for the general quiet of the Subject against all pretext of Concealments whatsoever was the most considerable An Act of such a grand Concernment to the Peace and Happiness of the Subject and of such Disprofit to the King in his Gifts and Graces to his Servants that it was affirmed by Justice Dodderidge at the Oxon. Assises next ensuing That his Majesty had bought those Fifteenths and Subsidies at ten years purchase Nor fourthly did one penny of this Money so dearly paid for accrew unto his Majesties particular use or was to come into his Coffers it being ordered in the Act aforesaid That the said Monies and every part and parcel of them should be paid to certain Commissioners therein nominated and that the said Commissioners should issue and dispose the same according as they should be warranted by George Lord Carew Foulk Lord Brooke and certain other Commissioners to the number of ten nominated and appointed for a Council of War by them to be expended in the Publick Service And albeit the Grant of the said Fifteenths Tenths and Subsidies might possibly be the greatest Aid which had been given in Parliament for so short a time yet did this greatness consist rather in tale than weight the Subsidy-Books being grown so low for those of the Fifteenths and Tenths do never vary that two entire Subsidies in the time of Queen Elizabeth came to more than all More nobly dealt the Clergy with him in their Convocation because it came into his own Coâ—lers and without Conditions For taking into consideration amongst other motives the great Expences at which his Majesty was then and was like to be hereafter as well for the support of his Royal Estate as for the necessary Defence of this Realm of England and other his Dominions whereby was like to grow the safety of Religion both at whom and abroad they granted to him four entire Subsidies after the rate of 4 s. in every Pound which was indeed the greatest Aid that was ever given by Convocation in so short a time the Subsidies of the Clergy being fixed and certain those of the Laity diminishing and decreasing daily A Burden which must needs fall exceeding heavy on many poor Vicars in the Country whose Benefices are for the most part of small yearly value and yet rated very high in the Kings Books according unto which they are to be Taxed Insomuch as I knew several Vicaridges not worth above 80 l. per Annum which were charged higher than the best Gentlemen in the Parish whose yearly Revenues have amounted unto many Hundreds Laud who had sometimes been Vicar of Stamford in Northamptonshire as before is said was very compassionate of the case of these poor men for whose case he devised a course in this present Session which being digested into form he communicated to the Duke of Buckingham who very readily promised to prepare both the King and Prince for the passing of it This done he imparted it also to the Lord Keeper Williams and the Bishop of Durham who look'd upon it as the best service which had been done for the Church many years before and advised him to acquaint the Archbishop with it But Abbot either disliking the Design for the Authors sake or being an enemy to all Counsels which had any Author but himself instead of favours returned him frowns asking him What he had to do to make any suit for the Church And telling him withall That never any Bishop attempted the like at any time and that no body would have done it but himself That he had given the Church such a wound in speaking to any Lord of the Layty about it as he could never make whole again And finally That if the Lord Duke did fully understand what he had done he would never endure him to come near him again St Davids replies very mildly That he thought he had done a very good office for the Church and so did his betters too That if his Grace thought otherwise he was sorry that he had offended But hoped that he had done it out of a good mind and for the support of many poor Vicars abroad in the Country who must needs sink under the payment of so many Subsidies and therefore that his error might be pardonable if
it were an error Thus soundly ratled he departs and acquaints the Duke with the success for fear some ill offices might be otherwise done him to the King and Prince So miserable was the case of the poorer Clergy in living under such an High Priest who though he was subject to the same infirmity was altogether insensible of those heavy pressures which were laid upon them It being his Felicity but their unhappiness that he was never Parson Vicar nor Curate and therefore the less careful or compassionate of their hard condition Before the rising of this Parliament which was on the twenty ninth of May came out a book of Dr. Whites entituled A Reply to Iesuite Fishers Answer to certain Questions propounded by his most Gracious Majesty King IAMES The occasion this His Majesty being present at the second Conference betwixt White and Fisher beforementioned observed in his deep Judgment how cunning and subtle the Jesuite was in eluding such Arguments as were brought against him and of how little strength in particular questions he was when he came to the confirmation of his own Tenets And thereupon it pleased him to have nine Questions of Controversie propounded to the Jesuite that he might in writing manifest the Grounds and Arguments whereupon the Popish Faith in those Points were builded Now the nine Points were these that follow 1. Praying to Images 2. Prayings and Oblations to the blessed Virgin Mary 3. Worshipping and Invocation of Saints and Angels 4. The Lyturgie and private Prayers for the Ignorant in an unknown tongue 5. Repetition of Pater-nosters Aves and Creeds especially affixing a kind of merit to the number of them 6. The Doctrine of Transubstantiation 7. Communion under one kind and the abetting of it by Concomitancy 8. Works of Supererogation especially with reference to the treasure of the Church 9. The opinion of Deposing Kings and giving away their Kingdoms by Papal power whether directly or indirectly To these nine Questions the Jesuite returned a close and well-wrought Answer the unraveling whereof was by the King committed to this Dr. White for his encouragement and reward made one of his Majesties Chaplains in Ordinary and Dean of Carlile This book being finished at the Press about the beginning of April and forthwith published to others was very welcom to most moderate and learned men the rather in regard that the third of those Conferences which was that between Laud and Fisher was subjoyned to it Concerning which the Reader may please to call to mind that this Conference had been digested and read over to the King in the Christmas Holidaies as before is said But why it staid so long before it was published why published in the name of R. B. Mr. Richard Bayly afterwards President of St. Iohn Colledgs and Dean of Sarisbury being at that time one of his Chaplains and not in his own and finally why it came not out not as a distinct book of it self but as an Appendix unto Whites himself is better able to tell us than any other and he tells it thus The cause saith he why the discourse upon this Conference staid so long before it could endure to be pressed It was neither my Idleness nor my unwillingness to right both my self and the cause against the Iesuite which occasioned this delay For I had then most Honourable Witnesses and have some yet living that this discourse was finished long before I could perswade my self to let it come into publick view And this was caused partly by reason there was about the same time three Conferences held with Fisher of which this was the third and could not therefore conveniently come abroad into the world till the two former were ready to lead the way which till now they were not And this is in part the reason also why this Tract crept into the end of a larger work For since that work contained in a manner the substance of all that passed in the two former Conferences and that this third in divers points concurred with them and depended on them I could not think it Substantive enough to stand alone But besides this affinity between the Conferences I was willing to have it pass as silently as it might at the end of another work and so perhaps little to be looked after because I could not hold it worthy nor can I yet of that great duty and service which I owe to my dear mother tâ—â— Church of England As for the Reasons why it was published iâ— the name of R. B. Chaplain to the Bishop rather than his own it neither was his own desire though the Breviate telleth us that it was nor for fear of being ingaged thereby against his friends the Papists as is there affirmed His Reasons whatever they were were proposed by others and approved by Authority by which it was thought fit that it should be set out in his Chaplains name and not his own To which he readily submitted But of this Conference we shall speak further when we come to the defence and engagements of it Anno 1637. The seasonable publishing of these two Books did much conduce to the advancement of his Majesties Service The Commons at that time had been hammering a sharp Remonstrance against the Papists as if there were no enemies of the Religion here established to be feared but they In the Preface to which Petition they took notice of so many dangers threatned both to the Church and State by the power and practises of the Papist as if the King had took no care to preserve the one or suppress the other Which Petition being brought to the House of Lords was there so abbreviated that the Preamble was quite left out and the many branches of it reduced to two particulars First That all Laws and Statutes formerly made against Jesuites Seminary Priests and other Popish Recusants might from thenceforth be put into execution Secondly That he would engage himself by his Royal Word that upon no occasion of Marriage or Treaty or other request in that behalf c. he would slaken the execution of the Laws against them Which Petition being presented to his Majesty by a Committee of both Houses on the tenth of April after some deliberation he returned this Answer to it viz. That the Laws against Iesuites and Popish Recusants should be put into due execution from thenceforth c. And it appeared by the coming out of these said two Books within few daies after that as his Majesty had granted them their desires in causing the said Laws against Priests and Jesuites to be duly executed so he had taken special care not only to preserve Religion in her Purity by confuting the most material Doctrines of the Church of Rome but to preserve his people also from being seduced by the practises of the Priests and Jesuites Which notwithstanding the Commons remaining still unsatisfied betook themselves to the framing of another Petition in which it was desired that all such
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
Queries raised about him that is to say First Whether the King had not lost the Regality of the Narrow Seas since the Duke became Admiral Secondly Whether his not going as Admirall in this last Fleet was not the cause of the ill success Thirdly Whether the Kings Revenue hath not been impaired through his immense liberality Fourthly Whether he hath not ingrossed all Offices and preferred his Kindred to unfit places Fifthly Whether he hath not made sale of places of Judicature Sixthly Whether the Recusants have not dependance on his Mother and Father in Law For this days work Coke was severely reprehended by his Father who could not be perswaded to look upon him for a long while after But Turner having none whom he stood in fear of escaped not only without a private reprehension but without any publick Censure His Majesty thereupon complained by Weston to the House of Commons who were so far from censuring the offence that they seemed rather willing to protect the Offendors And yet this was not all the affront they had done him neither For seeming well satisfied with his Majesties gracious Answer to their Petition against Recusants which they received from him at Oxon in the former Parliament they now resolved to see what execution had been done upon it And to that end they appoint a Committee for Religion and that Committee substitutes a Sub-Committee which Sub-Committee were impowered to search the Signet Office concerning such indulgencies as had been granted to the Papists since the end of that Parliament and to examine the Letters of the Secretaries of State leaving his Majesty nothing free from their discovery as to that particular A point which never was presumed on in preceding times And which seemed worst of all in the present conjuncture they had voted him three Subsidies and three fifteens but voted them with such a clog that they should not pass into a Bill till their Grievances were both heard and answered Which Grievances what they were both in weight and number as it was not known unto themselves so did his Majesty look upon it not only as a thing dilatory in it self but as a baffle put on him and his proceedings These indignities coming thus upon the neck of one another he caused the Lords and Commons to come before him at White Hall March 29. 1626. where first he signified unto them by the mouth of the Lord Keeper how sensible he was of those affronts which were put upon him touching upon every one of them in particular and aggravating each of them in their several kinds letting them also know That as he loved his people so he regarded his honour and that if he were sensible of his Subjects Grievances of his own he was sensible much more The Keeper also had Command to tell them in his Majesties Name That the Duke had acted nothing of Publick Employment without his Majesties Special Warrant That he had discharged his Trust with abundant both Care and Fidelity That since his Return from Spain he had been sedulous in promoting the Service and Contentment of the Commons House And therefore That it was his express Command That they desist from such Vnparliamentary Proceedings and resign the Reformation of what was amiss to his Majesties Care Wisdom and Iustice. Which Speech being ended his Majesty saith as followeth I must withal put you in mind of Times past you may remember my Father moved by your Counsel and won by your Perswasions brake the Treaties In these Perswasions I was your Instrument towards him and I was glad to be instrumental in any thing which might please the whole Body of this Realm Nor was there any in greater favour with you than this man whom you so traduce And now when you find me so sure intangled in War as I have no honourable and safe Retreat you make my Necessity your Priviledge and set what rate you please upon your Supplies A Practise not very obliging unto Kings Mr. Coke told you It was better to die by a Foreign Enemy than to be destroyed at home Indeed I think it more honourable for a King to be invaded and almost destroyed by a Foreign Enemy than to be despised at home But all this did not edifie with the House of Commons So little were they moved with the Eloquence of the one and the smart Expressions of the other that both their own Members remained uncensured and the Prosecution of the Duke was followed with more violence then before it was But for all this his Majesty and the Duke might thank themselves His Majesty had power in his own hands to have righted himself according to the practice of Queen Elizabeth and others of his Majesties Royal Predecessors in the times foregoing But by complaining in this manner to the House of Commons he chose rather to follow the Example of King Iames who in like manner had complained of one Piggot for some seditious words by him spoken in the House of Commons Anno 1607. and with like success He that divests himself of a natural and original Power to right the injuries which are done him in hope to find redress from others especially from such as are parcel guilty of the Wrong may put up all his gettings in a Seamstress Thimble and yet never fill it All that which both Kings effected by it was but the weakning of their own Power and the increasing of the others who had now put themselves upon this Resolution not to suffer any one of their Members to be questioned till themselves had considered of his Crimes By which means they kept themselves close together and emboldened one another to stand it out against the King to the very last And of this Maxime as they made use in this present Parliament in the Case of Coke Turner Diggs and Eliot which 2 last had been imprisoned by the Kings Command so was it more violently and pertinaciously insisted on in the Case of the Five Members impeach'd of High Treason by the Kings Atturney Ianuary 14. 1641. the miserable effects whereof we finde two sensibly And as for their prosecuting of the Duke the Commons might very well pretend that they had and should do nothing in it for which as well his Majesty as the Duke himself had not given encouragement They had both joined together against Cranfeild the late Lord Treasurer and to revenge themselves on him had turned him over to the power and malice of his Enemies in the House of Commons The Commons had served their turns on Cranfeild and will now serve their own turns on the Duke himself let the King do the best he could to preserve him from them So unsafe a thing it is for Princes to deliver any of their Servants into the hands of their People and putting a Power out of themselves which they cannot call back again when it most concerns them At the same time the Earl of Bristol being charged with Treason by the Duke exhibited
the Ministers there might by degrees prepare the People to such impressions of Conformity as his Majesty by the Council and Consent of the rest of the Bishops should graciously be pleased to imprint upon them But such ill luck his Majesty had with that stubborn Nation that this was look'd upon also as a general Grievance and must be thought to aim at no other end than Tyranny and Popery and what else they pleased We have almost done our work in Scotland and yet hear nothing all this while of the Bishop of London not that he did not go the Journey but that there was little to be done at his being there but to see and be seen And yet it was a Journey which brought him some access of Honour and gave him opportunity of making himself known to those of best Quality of that Kingdom He had been in Scotland with King Iames but then he waited only as a private Chaplain He is now looked upon as the third Bishop of England in Place and the greatest in Power a Counsellor of State and the Kings great Favorite He entred Scotland as a Privy-Counsellor of England only but returned thence as a Counsellor for that Kingdom also to which Office he was sworn on the fifteenth of Iune Nor did he shew himself less able in that Church than in the Council-Chamber being appointed by his Majesty to Preach before him on the last of that Month in which some question may be made how he pleased the Scots although it be out of question that he pleased the King The greatest part of the following Iuly was spent in visiting the Country and taking a view of the chief Cities and most remarkable Parts and Places of it Which having seen he made a Posting Journey to the Queen at Greenwich whither he came on Saturday the twentieth of Iuly crossing the Water at Blackwall and looking towards London from no nearer distance But in this Act he laid aside the Majesty of his Predecessors especially of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory of whom it was observed That she did very seldom end any of her Summer Progresses but she would wheel about to some end of London to make her passage to Whitehall thorow some part of the City not only requiring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their Scarlet Robes and Chains of Gold to come forth to meet her but the several Companies of the City to attend solemnly in their Formalities as she went along By means whereof she did not only preserve that Majesty which did belong to a Queen of England but kept the Citizens and consequently all the Subjects in a reverent Estimation and Opinion of her She used the like Arts also in keeping up the Majesty of the Crown and Service of the City in the Reception and bringing in of Foreign Embassadors who if they came to London by Water were met at Gravesend by the Lord Mayor the Aldermen and Companies in their several Barges and in that Solemn manner conducted unto such Stairs by the Water side as were nearest to the Lodgings provided for them But if they were to come by Land they were met in the like sort at Shooters-Hill by the Mayor and Aldermen and thence conducted to their Lodgings the Companies waiting in the Streets in their several Habits The like she used also in celebrating the Obsequies of all Christian Kings whether Popish or Protestant with whom she was in Correspondence performed in such a Solemn and Magnificent manner that it preserved her in the estimation of all Foreign Princes though differing in Religion from her besides the great contentment which the People took in those Royal Pomps Some other Arts she had of preserving Majesty and keeping distance with her People yet was so popular withal when she saw her time that never Majesty and Popularity were so matched together But these being laid aside by King Iames who brooked neither of them and not resumed by King Charles who loved them not much more than his Father did there followed first a neglect of their Persons which Majesty would have made more Sacred and afterwards a mislike of their Government which a little Popularity would have made more grateful Laud having no such cause of hastning homewards returned not to his House at Fulham till the twenty sixth of the same Month But he came time enough to hear the news of Abbot's Sickness and within few days after of his Death which hapned on Sunday morning the fourth of August and was presently signified to the King being â—hen at Greenwich A man he was that had tasted both of good and ill Fortune in extremes affirmed by the Church Historian for I shall only speak him in the words of others to be a grave man in his Conversation and unblameable in his Life but said withal to have been carried with non amavit gentem nostram forsaking the Birds of his own feather to fly with others and generally favouring the Laity above the Clergie in all Cases which were brought before him Conceived by one of our State Historians to be too facil and yielding in the exercising of his Function by whom it also affirmed That his extraordinary remisness in not exacting strict Conformity to the prescribed Orders of the Church in point of Ceremony seemed to resolve those legal Determinations to their first Principle of Indifferency and to lead in such an habit of Inconformity as the future reduction of those tender-conscienc'd men to long discontinued Obedience was interpreted an Innovation By the first Character we find what made him acceptable amongst the Gentry by the last what made him grateful to the Puritan in favour of which men he took so little care of the great Trust committed to him and gave them so many opportunities of increasing both in Power and Numbers that to stop tâ—em in their full career it was found necessary to suspend him from his Metropolitical Jurisdiction as before was noted It is reported That as Prince Henry his Majesty then Duke of Yorke Archbishop Abbot with many of the Nobility were waiting in the Privy Chamber for the coming out of King Iames the Prince to put a jest on the Duke his Brother took the Archbishops Square Cap out of his hands and put it on his Brothers head telling him that if he continued a good Boy and followed his Book he would one day make him Archbishop of Canterbury Which the Child took in such disdain that he threw the Cap upon the ground and trampled it under his feet not being without much difficulty and some force taken off from that eagerness This though first it was not otherwise beheld than as an Act of Childish Passion yet when his Brother Prince Henry died and that he was Heir apparent to the Crown it was taken up by many zealous Church-men for some ill presage unto the Hierarchy of Bishops the overthrow whereof by his Act and Power did seem to be fore-signified by it But as
persons as were either Papists or suspected to be Papists or had not received the Communion within the space of one whole year or whose Wives or any of their Servants were Recusants or suspected to be so might be removed from all Commissions of charge and trust from being Justices of the Peace or bearing any Office in the Common Wealth But this Petition was not made ready for the Lords till the twentieth of May next following and being then reported to them by the Archbishop of Canterbury they did proceed no further in it The Commons in the mean time had been wholly busied in the Prosecution of the Lord Treasurer Cranfield whom at last they brought unto his Sentence A Gentleman he was by birth but had his breeding in the City from whence by his own wit and industry he preferred himself into the Court where he was first made Master of the Wardrobe afterward Master of the Wards and finally advanced by the power and favour of the Duke one of whose Kinswomen he had married to the office of Lord Treasurer and the honour of being made the first Earl of Middlesex In this Office he had disobliged the Prince when he was in Spain by disswading and diverting those Large Supplies which were required for the maintaining of his Port in a Forraign Kingdom And he had disobliged the Duke by joyning in some secret practises to make him grow less and less in his Majesties Favour They had both served the turn of the Commons in drawing the King by their continual importunities to dissolve the Treatie And the Commons must now serve their turn in prosecuting this man to his final destruction Which they pursued so effectually that in the end he was sentenced in the House of Lords to be deprived of the Office of Lord High Treasurer of England to be fined fifty thousand Pounds and remain a Prisoner in the Tower during his Majesties will and pleasure It was moved also to degrade him from all Titles of honour but in that the Bishops stood his Friends and dasht the motion So Cranfield sell and Williams did not stand long after Laud was now brought into an higher degree of credit with the Duke of Buckingham than he was before by means whereof he came to be of great power and authority with him Insomuch that when the Duke fell sick of an Ague in the beginning of May he was extreme impatient in his Fits till Laud came to visit him by whom he was so charmed and sweetned that at first he endured his Fits with patience and by that patience did so break their heats and violences that at last they left him From this time forwards he was not used only as a Confessor but a Counsellor also imployed by him in considering and advising whether the great endowments belonging to the Hospitals founded in the dissolved house of Carthusian Monks commonly but corruptly called the Charter-House might not be inverted to the maintenance of an Army for the present Wars as well for his Majesties advantage as the case of the Subject And to this Proposition as it seems he returned a Negative for I find not that the business advanced any further He liked not any inversions or alienations of that nature lest being drawn into example the Lands of Colledges or Cathedral Churches might in like manner be imployed unto secular uses Besides he could not choose but know that a project had been set on foot about ten years before for the Entituling of the King to all Sutton's Lands which probably might have succeeded if Coke then being Lord Chief Justice and one of the Trustees for erecting the Hospital had not stood stoutly to his trust By which though he got the Kings displeasure yet amongst others he preserved the reputation of an honest man And Laud might very well conclude that he who durst oppose the King when he was in his favour would be found more intractable at this time when he was in disgrace which rendred him the less sollicitous to appear in a business not otherwise approved of by him But in another point which was more to his liking and lay within the spheare of his activity he gave him as much satisfaction as he had desired This was the giving him the heads of Doctrinal Puritanism that is to say the Heads of such Doctrines as were maintained by those of the Puritan Faction though not maintained by them as Puritans but as Calvinists only The Duke had a desire to know them and he served him in it I must needs say the name of Doctrinal Puritanism is not very ancient but whether first taken up by the Archbishop of Spalato at his being here I am not able to say Nor am I of opinion that Puritan and Calvinian are terms convertible For though all Puritans are Calvinians both in doctrine and practise yet all Calvinians are not to be counted as Puritans also whose practises many of them abhor and whose inconformities they detest though by the errour of their Education or ill direction in the Course of their Studies they may and do agree with them in some points of Doctrine But I must take the word as it stands in the Breviate and so let it go These Doctrinal heads being ten in number related to the indispâ—nsible morality of the Lords-day-Sabbath the indiscrimination of Bishops and Presbyters the Power of Soveraign Princes in Ecclesiastical matters the Doctrine of Confession and Sacerdotal Absolution and the five Points so much disputed about Predestination and the Concomitants thereof Which last Points having been hotly agitated for twenty years last past in the Belgick Churches did now begin to exercise the Church of England upon this occasion The Priests and Jesuites having been very busie of late in gaining Proselites and sowing their erronious Doctrines had got a haunt in a Village of the County of Essex called Stanford-Rivers The Rector of that Church was Richard Montague Batchelor of Divinity Prebend of Windsor and one of the Fellows of Eaton Colledge a man exceedingly well versed in all the Learning of Greeks and Romans and as well studied in the Fathers Councils and all other ancient Monuments of the Christian Church Desirous to free his Parish from this haunt he left some Propositions at the house of one of his Neighbours which had been frequently visited with these Night-Spirits with this Declaration thereunto that if any of those which ranged that walk could convince him in any of the same he would immediately subscribe and be a Papist After long expectation instead of answering to his queries one of them leaves a short Pamphlet for him entituled A new Gag for the Old Gospell in which it was pretended that the Doctrine of the Protestants should be confuted out of the very words of their own English Bibles This book he was required to answer and found it no such knotty piece but that it might be cleft in sunder without Beetle or Wedges But in perusing of that
The Books which had been written on both sides being purposely dispersed abroad to encourage and encrease their several Parties cross'd over the Seas into England also where being diligently studied either out of curiosity or desire of Knowledge they awaked many out of that dead sleep in which they were to look with better eyes into the true and native Doctrines of this Church than before they did Amongst the first which publikly appeared that way at Oxon. after the coming out of the said Books were Laud and Houson whom Abbot then Doctor of the Chair and Vice-chancellor also exposed to as much disgrace as by his Place and Power he could lay upon them Amongst the first at Cambridge were Tompson a Dutchman by original if I be not mistaken in tâ—e man and Richardson the Master of Trinity Colledge The first of these had writ a Book touching Falling away from Grace entituled De Intercisione Gratiae Iustificationis to which Abbot of Oxon. above-mentioned returned an Answer The other being a corpulent man was publickly reproach'd in S. Maries Pulpit in his own University by the name of a Fat-bellied Arminian By that name they were called in Holland which adhered not unto Calvin's Doctrine though many had formerly maintained these Opinions in those Churches before van Harmine came to the Chair of Leyden And by that name they must be called in England also though the same Doctrines had been here publickly Authorised and Taught before he was born So that the entitling of these Doctrines to the name of Arminius seems to be like the nominating of the great Western Continent by the name of America of which first Christopher Columbus and afterwards the two Cabots Father and Son had made many great and notable Discoveries before Americus Vestputius ever saw those Shores Howsoever these Doctrines must be called by the name of Arminianism and by that name Mountague stands accused by the two Informers though he protests in his Appeal That he had never seen any of the Writings of Arminius and that he did no otherwise maintain those Doctrines than as they were commended to him by the Church of England and justified by the unanimous Consent of the Ancient Fathers But of this man and the pursuance of these Quarrels we shall hear more shortly These matters being thus laid together let us look back on some former Passages which preceded Mountagues Disputes The Commons had obtained their ends in dissolving all Treaties with the King of Spain but lost their hopes of Marrying the Prince to a Lady of their own Religion His Majesty would not look beneath a Crown to finde a Marriage for his Son and no Crown could afford him a better Wife for his Son than a Daughter of France The Prince had seen the Lady at the Court in Paris and the King as much desired to see her in the Court of England Upon this ground the Earl of Holland is dispatch'd privately into France to see how the Queen-Mother and her Ministers who then Governed the Affairs of that King would approve the Match to which at first they seemed so chearâ—ully inclined that they did not seem to stand upon any Conditions But no sooner had they found that the Breach between his Majesty and the King of Spain was grown irreparable and that both sides prepared for War but they knew how to make their best advantage of it They thought themselves to be every way as considerable as the Spaniards were and would abate nothing of those Terms which had been obtained by the Spaniards in reference either to the Princess her self or in favour of the English Catholicks And to these Terms when they saw no better could be gotten his Majesty and the Prince consented But such a Spirit of Infatuation was at that time upon the People that they who on the 23d of February before had celebrated the Dissolving of the Treaties with Spain with Bâ—lls and Bonfires on the 21st of November following did celebrate with like Solemnities and Expressions the like Match with France And in this Match Laud is accused to have a hand or at the least to have shew'd his good affections to promote it An heavy Crime and proved by as infallible proofs that is to say his writing to and receiving Letters from the Duke at such time as the Duke was sent to the Court of France to attend the new Queen into England And what else could this Match and those Letters aim at but to carry on the same design to bring in Popery and by that means to stand their ground and retain all those Priviledges and Immunities which the Popish Party had procured by the former Treaties To such absurdities are men sway'd when Prejudice and Prepossessions over-rule the Balance We must begin the next year with the Death of King Iames and therefore think it not amiss to take a brief view of the Condition of the Church and State at the time of his departing from us He had spent all his life in Peace but died in the beginning of a War A War which had been drawn upon him by dissolving the Treaties to which he was as it were constrained by the continual importunity of the Prince and the Duke of Buckingham The Duke knew well that he could not do a more popular act than to gratifie the Commons in that business and had easily possess'd the Prince with this opinion That as his future Greatness must be built on the Love of his People so nothing could oblige them more than to be instrumental in dissolving the present Treaties But herein they consulted rather their own private Passions than the publick Interest of the Crown and they shall both pay dear enough for it in a very short space For there is nothing more unsafe for a King of England than to cast himself upon the necessity of calling Parliaments and depending on the Purse of the Subject by means whereof he makes himself obnoxious to the humour of any prevailing Member in the House of Commons and becomes less in Reputation both at home and abroad The Church he left beleaguer'd by two great Enemies assaulted openly by the Papist on the one side undermined by the Puritans on the other Of the audaciousness of the Papists we have spoke already abated somewhat by the Fall at Black-friers more by the dissolving the two Treaties about four Months after For though they made some use of the French by this new Alliance yet they resolved to fasten no dependance upon that Crown insomuch that many of those who greedily embraced such Favours as were obtained for them by the Treaties with the King of Spain would not accept the same when they were procured by the Match with France for which being asked the Reason they returned this Answer That they would not change an old Friend for a new of the continuance of whose Favours they could have no certainty and who by suffering Hereticks in his own Dominions declared
against him certain Articles in the House of Peers in which he accused him of the like Crime in reference to his Actings in the Spanish business This made good sport amongst the Commons for a time but at last sâ—aring either the Weakness of Bristol's Charge or the insufficiency of his Proofs they resolved to follow their own way and to that end a large Impeachment was drawn up against him and presented to the Lords on the eighth of May managed by six of the ablest Lawyers in the House that is to say Glanvile Herbert Selden Pym Wansford and Sherland the Prologue made by Sir Dudly Diggs and the Epilogue by Sir Iohn Eliot The principal Branches of this Impeachment related to his engrossing of Offices his buying the Places of Lord Admiral and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports His not guarding the Seas His stay of a Ship called the St. Peter of Newhaven and of the East-India Fleet Lending his Majesties Ship called the Vantgard to the French King which the French King employed against Rochel His selling of Honours and Offices procuring Honours for his Kindred His diminishing the Revenues of the Crown and his applying Physick to King Iames in the time of his Sickness To every one of these there was returned in Writing a particular Answer by the Duke himself And then addressing his Discourse unto the Peers he humbly referred it to their Judgment how full of danger and prejudice it was to give too ready an ear and too easie a belief unto a Report or Testimony without Oath which are not of weight enough to condemn any With like humility he acknowledged how easie a thing it was for him in his younger years and unexperienced to fall into thousands of Errors in thâ—se ten years wherein he had the honour to serve so great and so open-hearted a Sovereign Master But still he hoped the fear of God his sincerity in the true Religion established in the Church of England though accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections which he is not ashamed humbly and heartily to confess his carefulness not willingly to offend so good and gracious a Master and his love and duty to his Country had restrained and preserved him from running into any hainous misdemeanours and crimes Which said and having craved the benefit of two several Pardons the one granted in the last Parliament of King Iames the other at the Coronation of King Charles he added That he could not chuse but hope so much in their Lordships Justice and Honour that they would acquit him of and from those Misdemeanours Offences Misprisions and Crimes wherewith he had bee charged and for his own part he both hoped and would daily pray That for the future he might so watch over all his Actions both publick and private as not to give cause of just offence to any person Of these Proceedings his Majesty was exceeding sensible He saw himself wounded through the Dukes sides That his Fathers Favours and his own were the greatest Crimes of which the Duke had been impeached and That their Regal Authority in bestowing Offices and Honours on whom they pleased was not only questioned but controlled With which disturbances being very much perplex'd and troubled he receives a Letter written to him from an unknown Person in which he first met with a Recital of the several Interests and Affections which were united in this Prosecution against the Duke and after that this Application to himself and his own Concernments viz. These men saith the Writer of the Letter either cannot or will not remember That never any noble man in favour with his Sovereign was questioned in Parliament except by the King himself in case of Treason or unless it were in the nonage and tumultuary times of Richard the Second Henry vi or Edward vi which hapned to the destruction both of King and Kingdom And that not to exceed our own and Fathers Memory in King Henry viii his time Wolseys exorbitant Power and Pride and Cromwels contempt of the Nobility and the Laws were not yet permitted to be discussed in Parliament though they were most odious and grievous to all the Kingdom And that Leicesters undeserved Favour and Faults Hattons insufficiency and Releighs Insolencies far exceed what yet hath been objected against the Duke yet no Lawyer durst abet nor any man else begin any Invectives against them in Parliament And then he adds some other Passages intervening That it behoves his Majesty to uphold the Duke against them who if he be but discourted it will be the Corner stone on which the demolishing of his Monarchy will be builded For if they prevail with this they have hatched a thousand other Demands to pull the Feathers of the Royalty they will appoint him Counsellors Servants Alliances Limits of his Expences Accounts of his Revenue chiefly if they can as they mainly desire they will now dazle him in the beginning of his Reign How true a Prophet this man proved the event hath shewed and the King saw it well enough and therefore since he could not divert them from that pursuit on the 15th of Iune he dissolved the Parliament I have been the more punctual and particular in relating these Proceedings of the Commons against the Duke by reason of that Influence which Laud either had or is reported to have had in managing his Cause against them For first it is affirmed by the Publisher of this Bishops Breviate That the Copy of the Kings Speech made in behalf of the Duke March 29. was of Lauds enditing and That the Original Copy thereof under his own hand was given in evidence against him at the time of Trial. Secondly That he likewise penned the Kings Speech to the House of Peers touching the Duke and the Commitment of the Earl of Arundel May the 11th In which he spake concerning the preservation of the Honour of Noblemen against the vile and detestable Calumnies of those of the Lower House by whom the Duke had been accused as before was said Most grievous Crimes indeed if they had been true for a Subject to assist his Prince and a Servant to be aiding to his Master in penning a short Speech or two when either the pressure of Affairs or perplexities of minde might require it of him But for the truth of this there is no proof offered but that the Copies of both Speeches the Original Copies as he calls them were found in the Archbishops Study as probably they might have been in the Studies of many other men if they had been searched For who can rationally suppose That his Majesty who was the Master of such a pure and elegant Style as he declared himself to be in his Discourse with Henderson at Newcastle and his Divine Essays made in Prison when he could have no other helps but what he found in himself should stand in need of the Expressions of another man in matters of so great concernment Or if it be to be
consent of their several Churches they prepared these several Answers To the first it was answered That they had that Liturgie which all the Churches of the French Tongue both in France and in the United Provinces of the States have had since the blessed Reformation and which their Churches refuged here have had this sixty or seventy years or more That the English Liturgie was Translated into French but that they used it not and that they knew not whether it were Translated in Dutch or not To the second it was answered That the greatest part of the Heads of the Families were not born here but about a third part because that the greatest part of the old ones were Strangers born and many others are newly come since a few years But to the third they desired to be excused from making any Answer at all foreseeing as it was pretended a dissipation of their Churches in reference to the maintainance of their Ministry and relief of their poor if such Conformity should be pressed which they endeavoured to avoid by all means imaginable But before these Answers were returned it was thought fit to consult with the Coetus as they style it of the French and Dutch Churches in London who were concerned as much as they and who by reason of their wealth and number governed all the rest by whom they were advised to suppress those Answers and to present their Declinator fixing themselves upon their Priviledges and challenging the Exemption granted them by King Edward vi confirmed by several Acts of Council in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and his Sacred Majesty This Declinator no way satisfied his Grace of Canterbury He knew none better That Acts of Council were not like the Laws of the Medes and Persians but might be changed and varied as occasion served That the Letters Patents granted by King Edward vi to the first Congregation of Strangers under Iohn A Lasco by which they were Licenced to use their own Forms both of Worship and Government without any disturbance were vacated by the departure of the said Congregation in the time of Queen Mary and that the French and Dutch Churches now in England could pretend no succession unto that in the time of King Edward vi And therefore as soon as Brent returned from his Visitation of which we shall hear more anon and had a while reposed himself after that long Journey he was dispatched to Canterbury with these Injunctions viz. 1. That all the Natives of the Dutch and Walloon Congregations in his Graces Diocess are to repair to their several Parish Churches where they inhabite to hear Divine Service and Sermons and perform all Duties and Payments required in that behalf And 2. That all the Ministers and all other of the same Walloon or French Congregations which are Aliens born shall have and use the Liturgie used in the English Churches as the same is or may be faithfully Translated into French or Dutch These two Injunctions being given on the nineteenth of December with time for conforming thereunto till the first of March were presently communicated by the Kentish to the London Churches and by those of London to the rest in the Province of Canterbury requiring them to send their Deputies to consult together with them in this Common Danger There were at that time ten Churches of Strangers in this Province that is to say two in London two in Norwich and one apiece in Canterbury Sandwich Maidstone Southampton Colchester and Yarmouth who were to send their sufficient Deputies consisting of Ministers and Lay-Elders to make this Synod But because the time might be elapsed before these Deputies from so many Places could meet together and resolve upon any Conclusion it was determined by the Coetus that those of Kent whom it most immediately concerned should address themselves to the Archbishop and desire his favour for the enjoying of their Priviledges as in former times whose Propositions being heard and their Reasons pondered he answered That it was his purpose to make a General Visitation of all his Province and that he would begin at home That he did nothing but what had been communicated to the King and resolved by the Council That neither the Letters Patents of King Edward vi nor any Reasons by them alledged should hinder him from proceeding in the said Injunctions That their Churches were nests and occasions of Schism which he would prevent in Kent as well as he could That it were better there were no Foreign Churches nor Strangers in England than to have them thereby to give occasion of prejudice or danger to the Church-Government of it That they endeavoured to make themselves a State in a State and had vaunted That they feared not his Injunctions but That he hoped the King would maintain him in it as long as he Governed by the Canons That the dissipation of their Churches and maintenance of two or three Ministers was not to be laid in the same Balance with the Peace and Happiness of the Church of England That their ignorance in the English Tongue ought not to be used for a pretence for their not going to their Parish Churches considering that it was an affected Ignorance and they might avoid it when they would And finally That he was resolved to have his Injunctions put in execution and that they should conform to them at their peril by the time appointed Finding no hope of Good this way they expect the Sitting of the Synod on the fifth of February to which the Deputies made a Report of their ill Successes and thereupon it was resolved That a Petition in the name of all the Foreign Churches should be presented unto the King which way they found as unsuccessful as the other was For his Majesty having read the Petition delivered it to the Earl of Pembroke commanding him to give it to one of the Secretaries And though Pembroke either out of love to the Cause or hate to the Archbishops Person chose rather to deliver it to Cooke than Windebank yet neither Cooke himself nor Weckerly his chief Clerk a Walloon by birth who had very much espoused the Quarrel could do any thing in it The next course was to back that Petition with a Remonstrance containing the chief Reasons which they had to urge in their own behalf and that Remonstrance to be put into his Majesties hands by the Duke of Soubize a Prince of great Descent in France and a chief stickler in the Wars of the Hugonots against their King In which Reasons when they came to be examined more particularly there was nothing found material but what had formerly been observed and answered except it were the fear of a Persecution to be raised in France when it should there be known how much the French Churches in this Kingdom had been discountenanced and distressed And this they after aggravated by some fresh Intelligence which they had from thence by which they were advertised of some words of
positively defined by the Church of England and therefore he conceived it as unsafe as the other that such a doubtful controversie as that of the Popes being Antichrist should be determined Positively by Letters Patents under the Great Seal of England of which there was great difference even amongst the Learned and not resolved on in the Schools With these objections against that passage he acquaints his Majesty who thereupon gave order that the said Letters Patents should be cancelled and new ones to be drawn in which that clause should be corrected or expunged and that being done the said Letters Patents to be new sealed and the said Collection to proceed according to the Archbishops first desires and proposition made in that behalf But before this Collection was finished and the money returned Charles Lodowick Prince Elector Palatine eldest surviving Son of the Queen of Bohemia comes into England to bestow a visit on his Uncle and to desire his aid and counsel for the recovery of the Electoral Dignity and Estate which did of right belong unto him On the twenty second of November this present year 1635. he comes to Whitehall graciously welcomed by the King who assigned him for his quarters in the Court the Lodgings properly belonging to the Prince his Son where he continued whilst he made his abode in England except such times as he attended his Majesty in his Summers Progress Knowing how forward the Archbishop had expressed himself in doing all ready Services for the Queen his Mother and the good offices which he had done for her sake to the distressed Ministers of his Dominions on the 30 day of the same Month he crost over to Lambeth and was present with the Archbishop at the Evening Prayer then very solemnly performed and upon that day fortnight came unexpectedly upon him and did him the honour to dine with him And that he might the better endear himself to the English Nation by shewing his conformity and approbation of the Rites and Ceremonies here by Law established he did not only diligently frequent the Morning and Evening Service in his Majesties Closet but upon Christmass day received the Communion also in the Chappel Royal of Whitehall For whose accommodation at the receiving of it there was a Stool placed within the Traverse on the left hand of his Majesty on which he sate while the Remainder of the Anthem was sung and at the Reading of the Epistle with a lower Stool and a Velvet Cushion to kneel upon both in the preparatory Prayers and the Act of Receiving which he most reverently performed to the great content of all beholders During his being in the Court he published two Books in Print by the advice of the King and Council not only to declare his Wrongs but assert his Rights The first he called by the name of a PROTESTATION against all the unlawful and violent proceedings and actions against him and his Electoral Family The second called the MANIFEST concerning the right of his Succession in the Lands Dignities and Honours of which his Father had been unjustly dispossessed by the Emperour Ferdinand the Second After which Preparatory writings which served to no other effect than to justifie his own and the Kings proceedings in the eye of the world he was put upon a course for being furnished both with men and money to try his fortune in the Wars in which he wanted not the best assistance which the Archbishop could afford him by his Power and Counsels But as he laboured to advance his interess in the recovery of his Patrimony and Estates in Germany so he no less laboured to preserve the Interess of the Church of England against all dangers and disturbances which might come from thence And therefore when some busie heads at the time of the Princes being here had published the Book entituled A Declaration of the Faith and Ceremonies of the Palsgraves Churches A course was took to call it in for the same cause and on the same prudential grounds on which the Letters Patents before mentioned had been stopt and altered The Prince was welcome but the Book might better have stayed at home brought hither in Dutch and here translated into English Printed and exposed to the publick view to let the vulgar Reader see how much we wanted of the Purity and simplicity of the Palatine Churches But we must now look back on some former Counsels in bringing such refractory Ministers to a just conformity in publishing his Majesties Declaration about lawful Sports as neither arguments and perswasions could pâ—evaâ—l upon And that the Suffragan Bishops might receive the more countenance in it the Archbishop means not to look on but to act somewhat in his own Diocess which might be exemplaâ—y to the rest some troublesome persons there were in it who publickly opposed all establisht orders neither conforming to his Majesties Instructions nor the Canons of the Church nor the Rubricks in the publick Liturgy Culmer and Player two men of the same aâ—â—â—ctions and such as had declared their inconformity in â—ormer times were prest unto the publishing of this Declaration Brent acting in it as Commissary to the Bishop of the Diocess not Vicar General to the Archbishop of the Province of Canterbury On their refusal so to do they were called into the Consistory and by him suspended Petitioning the Archbishop for a release from that suspension they were answered by him That if they knew not how to obey he knew as little how to grant He understood them to be men of Factious spirits and was resolved to bring them to a better temper or else to keep them from disturbing the publick peace And they resolving on the other side not to yield obedience continued under this suspension till the coming in of the Scottish Army not long before the beginning of the Long Parliament Anno 1640. which wanted little of four years before they could get to be released Wilson another of the same Crew was suspended about the same time also and afterwards severely sentenced in the High Commission the profits of his Living sequestred as the others were and liberal assignments made out of it for supplying the Cure In which condition he remained for the space of four years and was then released on a motion made by Dering in the House of Commons at the very opening in manner of the Long Parliament that being the occasion which was taken by them to bring the Archbishop on the Stage as they after did And though he suspended or gave order rather for suspending of no more than these yet being they were leading-men and the chief sticklers of the Faction in all his Diocess it made as much noise as the great Persecution did in Norfolk and Suffolk By one of which first County we are told in general That being promoted to this dignity he thought he was now Plenipotentiary enough and in full capacity to domineer as he listed and to let his profest enemies