[280] There is a pamphlet which records a strange fact. “News from Powles: or the new Reformation of the army, with a true Relation of a Colt that was foaled in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, in London, and how it was publiquely baptised, and the name (because a bald colt) was called Baal-Rex!” 1649. The water they sprinkled from the soldier’s helmet on this occasion is described. The same occurred elsewhere. See Foulis’s History of the Plots, &c., of our pretended Saints. These men, who baptized horses and pigs in the name of the Trinity, sang psalms when they marched. One cannot easily comprehend the nature of fanaticism, except when we learn that they refused to pay rents!
[281] That curious compilation by Bruno Ryves, published in 1646, with the title “Mercurius Rusticus, or the countrie’s complaint of the barbarous outrages committed by the sectaries of this late flourishing kingdom,” furnishes a fearful detail of “sacrileges, profanations, and plunderings committed in the cathedrall churches.”
[282] The festival of Corpus Christi, held on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was the period chosen in old times for the performances of miracle-plays by the clergy, or the guilds of various towns; for an account of them see vol. i. p. 352-362.
[283] There is a little “Treatise of Humilitie, published by E.D.—Parson, sequestered”—1654; in which, while enforcing the virtue which his book defends, he with much naïveté gives a strong opinion of his oppressors. “We acknowledge the justice and mercy of the Lord in punishing us, so we take notice of his wisdom in choosing such instruments to punish us, men of mean and low rank, and of common parts and abilities. By these he doth admonish all the honourable, valiant, learned, and wise men of this nation; and as it were write our sin, in the character of our punishment; and in the low condition of these instruments of his anger and displeasure, the rod of his wrath, he would abate and punish our great pride.”
BUCKINGHAM’S POLITICAL COQUETRY WITH THE PURITANS.
Buckingham, observes Hume, “in order to fortify himself against the resentment of James”—on the conduct of the duke in the Spanish match, when James was latterly hearing every day Buckingham against Bristol, and Bristol against Buckingham—“had affected popularity, and entered into the cabals of the puritans; but afterwards, being secure of the confidence of Charles, he had since abandoned this party; and on that account was the more exposed to their hatred and resentment.”
The political coquetry of a minister coalescing with an opposition party, when he was on the point of being disgraced, would doubtless open an involved scene of intrigue; and what one exacted, and the other was content to yield, towards the mutual accommodation, might add one more example to the large chapter of political infirmity. Both workmen attempting to convert each other into tools, by first trying their respective malleability on the anvil, are liable to be disconcerted by even a slight accident, whenever that proves, to perfect conviction, how little they can depend on each other, and that each party comes to cheat, and not to be cheated!
This piece of secret history is in part recoverable from good authority. The two great actors were the Duke of Buckingham and Dr. Preston, the master of Emmanual College, and the head of the puritan party.
Dr. Preston was an eminent character, who from his youth was not without ambition. His scholastic learning, the subtilty of his genius, and his more elegant accomplishments, had attracted the notice of James, at whose table he was perhaps more than once honoured as a guest; a suspicion of his puritanic principles was perhaps the only obstacle to his court preferment; yet Preston unquestionably designed to play a political part. He retained the favour of James by the king’s hope of withdrawing the doctor from the opposition party, and commanded the favour of Buckingham by the fears of that minister; when, to employ the quaint style of Hacket, the duke foresaw that “he might come to be tried in the furnace of the next sessions of parliament, and he had need to make the refiners his friends:” most of these “refiners” were the puritanic or opposition party. Appointed one of the chaplains of Prince Charles, Dr. Preston had the advantage of being in frequent attendance; and as Hacket tells us, “this politic man felt the pulse of the court, and wanted not the intelligence of all dark mysteries through the Scotch in his highness’s bed-chamber.” A close communication took place between the duke and Preston, who, as Hacket describes, was “a good crow to smell carrion.” He obtained an easy admission to the duke’s closet at least thrice a week, and their notable conferences Buckingham appears to have communicated to his confidential friends. Preston, intent on carrying all his points, skilfully commenced with the smaller ones. He winded the duke circuitously,—he worked at him subterraneously. This wary politician was too sagacious to propose what he had at heart—the extirpation of the hierarchy! The thunder of James’s voice, “No bishop! no king!” in the conference at Hampton Court, still echoed in the ear of the puritan. He assured the duke that the love of the people was his only anchor, which could only be secured by the most popular measures. A new sort of reformation was easy to execute. Cathedrals and collegiate churches maintained by vast wealth, and the lands of the chapter, only fed “fat, lazy, and unprofitable drones.” The dissolution of the foundations of deans and chapters would open an ample source to pay the king’s debts, and scatter the streams of patronage. “You would then become the darling of the commonwealth;” I give the words as I find them in Hacket. “If a crumb stick in the throat of any considerable man that attempts an opposition, it will be easy to wash it down with manors, woods, royalties, tythes, &c.” It would be furnishing the wants of a number of gentlemen; and he quoted a Greek proverb, “that when a great oak falls, every neighbour may scuffle for a faggot.”