Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

This dictation of Laud extended over the whole kingdom, into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Charles was urged to issue proclamation after proclamation interfering in things entirely beyond the range of his episcopal jurisdiction, such as regulating the price of poultry and the retailing of tobacco. In Ireland, Wentworth, now made Lord Deputy, went hand-in-hand with him. That he might the better interfere in all kinds of matters Laud was appointed in 1634 Chief of the Board of Commissioners of the Exchequer, and—on the death of Weston, Lord Portland—the Lord High Treasurer. He then got his friend Juxon made Bishop of London, and in about a year surrendered to him the Treasurership, to the surprise and murmuring of many, for Juxon, till the primate brought him forward, was a man of no mark whatever. Lord Chancellor Cottington, who had been a fast friend of Laud's, and calculated on the white staff of the Treasurer, now fell away from Laud, and many noblemen who had had an eye to it began to prophesy what the end of his career would be. But the University of Oxford, going the whole way with him in his advances towards Popery, styled him "His Holiness Summus Pontifex, Spiritu Sancto effusissime plenus, Archangelus et nequid minus!" And Laud accepted all this base adulation, and declared that these revolting titles were quite proper, because they had been applied to the popes and fathers of the Romish Church. In fact, he desired to be the pope of England.

And in this great Papal authority he was fain to stretch his coercing hand over the churches wherever they were. He procured an order in Council to shut the English factories in Holland, and compel the troops serving there to conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Most of the merchants and many of these soldiers had gone thither expressly to enjoy their own forms of religion; but no matter, they must conform. And says Heylin, "The like course was prescribed for our factories in Hamburg, and those farther off, that is to say in Turkey, in the Mogul's dominions, the Indian islands, the plantations in Virginia, the Barbadoes, and all other places where the English had any standing residence in the way of trade." This order was to be carried into the houses and establishments of all ambassadors and consuls abroad.

William Prynne was a young graduate of Oxford, originally from Painswick, near Bath, but now an outer barrister of Lincoln's Inn. He was a thorough Puritan, grave, stern in his ideas, and rigid in his morals, a man who was ready to sacrifice reputation, life, and everything, for his high ideal of religious truth. He was persuaded that much of the dissoluteness of the young men around him arose from the debasing effect of frequenting the theatres; and in that he was probably correct, for the theatres were not in that age, nor for long after, fitting schools for youth. He therefore wrote (1632) a volume of a thousand pages against the stage, called "Histriomastix." He stated that forty thousand copies of plays had been exposed for sale within two years, and were eagerly bought up; that the theatres were the chapels of Satan, the players his ministers, and their frequenters were rushing headlong into hell. Dancing was, in his opinion, an equally diabolical amusement, and every pace was a step nearer to Tophet. Dancing made the ladies of England "frizzled madams," polluted their modesty, and would destroy them as it had done Nero, and led three Romans to assassinate Gallienus. He went on to attack everything that Laud had been supporting—Maypoles, public festivals, church-ales, music, and Christmas carols: the cringings and duckings at the altar which Laud had so much fostered, and all the silk and satin divines, their pluralities, and their bellowing chants in the Church.

Laud had made two vain attempts to lay hold on this pestilent satirist, but the lawyers had defeated him by injunctions from Westminster Hall. But the third time, by accusing him more exclusively of reflecting on the king and queen by his strictures on dancing, he obtained an order for the Attorney-General Noye to indict him in the Star Chamber. There he was condemned to be excluded from the bar and from Lincoln's Inn, to be deprived of his University degree, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, to have his book burnt before his face by the hangman, to stand in the pillory at Westminster and in Cheapside, at each place to lose an ear, and afterwards to be imprisoned for life. This most detestable sentence was carried into effect in May, 1634, with brutal ferocity, although the queen interceded earnestly in his favour, and the nation denounced the barbarity in no equivocal language.

Prynne, undaunted, nay, exasperated to greater daring by this cruelty, resumed the subject in his prison, whence he issued a tract (1637) styled "News from Ipswich," in which he charged the prelates with being the bishops of Lucifer, devouring wolves, and execrable traitors, who had overthrown the simplicity of the Gospel to introduce the superstitions of Popery. He had found in prison a congenial soul, Dr. Bastwick, a physician, who had written a treatise against the bishops, called "Elenchus papismi et flagellum episcoporum Latialium," for which he had been condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds to the king, to be imprisoned two years, and to make recantation. He now, that is in 1636, wrote a fresh tract: "Apologeticus ad præsules Anglicanos," and (in 1637) the "Litanie of John Bastwick, doctor of physic, lying in Limbo patrum," in which he attacked both the bishops' and Laud's service books.

A third person was Henry Burton, who had been chaplain to Charles when on his journey to Spain; but being now incumbent of St. Matthew's, in London, he had preached against the bishops as "blind watchmen, dumb dogs, ravening wolves, anti-Christian mushrooms, robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of antichrist."

These zealous religionists, whom the cruelties and follies of Laud and his bishops had driven almost beside themselves, were condemned in the Star Chamber to be each fined five thousand pounds, to stand two hours in the pillory, where they were to have their ears cut off, to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S.L., for "seditious libeller," and then imprisoned for life.

This sentence, than which the Spanish Inquisition has nothing worse to show, was fully executed in Old Palace Yard, on the 30th of June, 1637. Prynne from the pillory defied all Lambeth, with the Pope at its back, to prove to him that such doings were according to the law of England; and if he failed to prove them violators of that law and the law of God, they were at liberty to hang him at the door of the Gate House prison. On hearing this the people gave a great shout; but the executioner, as if incited to more cruelty, cut off their ears as barbarously as possible, rather sawing than cutting them. Prynne, who is said to have had his ears sewed on again on the former occasion, had them now gouged out, as it were; yet as the hangman sawed at them he cried out, "Cut me, tear me, I fear thee not. I fear the fire of hell, but not thee!" Burton, too, harangued the people for a long time most eloquently; but the sun blazing hotly in their faces all the time, he was near fainting, when he was carried into a house in King Street, saying, "It is too hot! Too hot, indeed!"

This most disgraceful exhibition made a terrible impression on the spectators, of whom the king was informed that there were one hundred thousand; whilst the executioner sawed at the ears of the prisoners they assailed him with curses, hisses, and groans. Both Charles and Laud were unpleasantly surprised at the effect produced; and to remove the sufferers from public sympathy, they determined to send them to distant and solitary prisons, far separate from each other—to Launceston, Carnarvon, and Lancaster. But the king and his high priest were still more amazed and alarmed when they found on the removal of the prisoners the crowds were equally immense, and that they went along from place to place in a kind of triumph. To attend Burton from Smithfield to two miles beyond Highgate, there were again at least one hundred thousand people, who testified their deep sympathy, and threw money into the coach to his wife as she drove along. Money and presents were also offered to Prynne, but he refused them. Gentlemen of wealth and station pressed to see and condole with the prisoners, whom they honoured and applauded as martyrs. When Prynne reached Chester, on his way to Carnarvon, one of the sheriffs, attended by a number of gentle men, met him, invited him to a good dinner, discharged the cost, and gave him some hangings to furnish his dungeon with in Carnarvon Castle.

This popular demonstration still more startled Laud, who summoned the sheriff, as well as the other gentlemen, before the High Commission Court at York, where they were fined in sums varying from two hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds, and condemned to acknowledge their offence before the congregation in the cathedral and the Corporation in the town hall of Chester. The prisoners themselves were ordered to be removed farther still, and accordingly Bastwick was sent to the Isle of Scilly, Burton to the Castle of Cornet in Guernsey, and Prynne to that of Mount Orgueil in Jersey. But the king and archbishop had now roused a spirit, by their cutting off of ears, which would be satisfied ere long with nothing less than their whole heads.