A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. III

by François Guizot

In forsaking the national party, to which he belonged, for hatred to Buckingham rather than from personal or fixed principles, Wentworth had embraced the royal cause with all his heart. "With an intellect too great to confine itself to domestic intrigues, and a pride too passionate to bow to the proprieties of the palace, he gave himself up enthusiastically to business, braving all rivalries as he shattered all resistance, ardent in extending and strengthening the royal authority, which had become his own, but assiduous at the same time in re-establishing order, in repressing abuses, in subjugating private interests which he deemed illegitimate, in serving the general interests which he did not fear." A friend of Wentworth, Laud, who was soon nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, had, with less worldly passions and with sincere piety, carried to the Council the same dispositions and the same designs. He had less understanding than his colleague, and "pursued incessantly with an activity, indefatigable but narrow, violent, and harsh, whatever fixed idea dominated him, with all the transport of passion and the authority of duty."

Such counsels would necessarily enter before long into contention with the court. Strafford (we give him the title under which he is known in history, although he did not yet bear it) went to Ireland, where he re-established order in the country and in the finances, so that kingdom, but lately a source of great expenditure, furnished revenues to the king. Laud was commissioner of the treasury, and endeavored to apply the same rules to the resources of the royal treasury in England; but the prodigality of the queen, the somewhat disdainful generosity of the king, who easily granted pensions, and the sumptuous life of the court, exhausted the resources of the arbitrary but regular government of the two ministers. The central power was weak and impotent, foreign politics were ill-directed, and the king was little regarded upon the Continent. Barbary Corsairs ventured into the British Channel, and as far as St. George's Channel, landing, pillaging the houses, and making prisoners. The merchant navy in vain asked for protection; the royal fleet was unarmed and ill equipped. Everywhere money was wanted; recourse was had to ever-increasing exactions. Strafford convoked the Irish Parliament, and contrived to chain it to his feet like a docile slave. The king forbade him to assemble it again, for both he and the queen dreaded the mere name of Parliament. There, as elsewhere, the able, skillful, and foreseeing minister suffered under the yoke of feeble incompetence. Monopolies reappeared, affecting trade in all commodities: justice was sold, and everything furnished matter for litigation, out of which there was no escape but by payment of money. Absolute government continued without power, while its mean tyranny and administrative abuses weighed upon all classes of the nation. The country gentlemen especially were incessantly a mark for the rigors of authority, and saw grow up beside them, in every village, a new power. Laud enrolled the Anglican Church in the service of his king. He thus brought him a faithful and numerous militia. Charles, sincerely pious and Protestant, notwithstanding the weaknesses charged against him with regard to the Catholics, ardently confided himself to this army which came to his assistance. The alliance between the king and the Church soon became close and irrevocable.

It was the Puritans, as the dissenting sects were then called, who bore the burden of this alliance. Laud insisted upon establishing everywhere an absolute conformity in the rites and ceremonies which he modified without scruple in the Roman Catholic spirit. Everywhere where the conscience of the Anglican ministers was opposed to these innovations, they were dismissed from their livings. The churches which they went forth to found in France, Holland, and Germany, did not even secure to them the liberty of their faith. Laud claimed to extend his jurisdiction upon the Continent, and pursued them with his tyranny upon the foreign soil on which they sought to establish themselves.

The numerous refugees who were driven from their country by religious persecution, and who had obtained charters for the free exercise of their national worship in England, found these charters abolished. Absolute conformity with the Anglican rite was required by the Archbishop, supported by the royal power. Imprisonment and exile overtook the delinquents on all hands.

The anger and terror of the English people were becoming great. The Reformation had been, in England, of a double nature. Interested and worldly on the part of the king and the great noblemen, it had been earnest, sincere, profound, among the nation properly so called, and it had always leaned to the side of the Puritans. The novelties introduced by Laud into the worship agitated minds and consciences alike. The Catholics rejoiced, and the Pope thought himself in a position to cause a Cardinal's hat to be offered to the Archbishop; but the latter only wished to secure the supremacy of the Anglican Church and of the bishops in the Anglican Church. When he caused the office of high treasurer to be given to Juxon, Bishop of London, Laud exclaimed in excess of his joy, "Now that the Church subsists and supports itself unassisted, all is consummated; I can no more."

He had done enough, for he had brought the Anglican Church to the brink of the abyss, and had prepared for it grievous trials.

For some time disaffection had been increased among all classes of society. The weakness and incapacity of the government in general, notwithstanding the efforts of Strafford and Laud, the pecuniary exactions and religious tyranny attacked and exasperated all citizens; numerous emigrations had begun; men passionately attached to their faith went to seek upon the Continent, and even in America, the liberty of worship which was refused to them in their own country. Obscure and unknown sectaries had been the first to adopt the refuge of exile; by degrees men of greater consideration followed their example. When an order of the royal council forbade emigration, a ship anchored in the Thames already bore the future heroes of the revolution of England, ready to expatriate themselves in order to escape an odious government. It was the hand of the king himself which retained in England Pym, Haslerig, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell.

The wrath of the people did not yet burst forth, but it began to be heard in suppressed tones; the assemblages of nonconformists increased everywhere under different names. The Independents or Brownists were the most numerous of those who separated themselves openly from the Anglican Church, and all the vigilance of Laud did not suffice to disperse the faithful, nor his severity to punish them. Numerous pamphlets circulated among the people of an insolent and vigorous kind. They were bought eagerly, and the rigors of the star chamber did not succeed in arresting the smugglers who brought them from Holland, and the pedlars who spread them throughout the country. It was resolved to make a great example; a lawyer, a theologian, and a physician, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, were arrested at the same time, and, after an iniquitous trial, were condemned to the pillory, to lose their ears, and to pay an enormous fine. Their imprisonment was to be for life.