"Let not the World devide those whom Christ hath joined."
A burst of caricature heralded the coming triumph of the Puritans in 1640, the year of the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. Many of the pictures recorded both the sufferings and the joyful deliverance of the Puritan clergymen. Thus we have in one of them a glowing account of the return of the three gentlemen whose ears furnished a repast for the Archbishop of Canterbury. They had been imprisoned for many years in the Channel Islands, from which they were conveyed to Dartmouth, and thence to London, hailed with acclamations of delight and welcome in every village through which they passed. All the expenses of their long journey were paid for them, and presents of value were thrust upon them as they rode by. Within a few miles of London they were met by such a concourse of vehicles, horsemen, and people that it was with great difficulty they could travel a mile in an hour. But when at length, in the evening, they reached the city, masses of enthusiastic people blocked the streets, crying, "Welcome home! welcome home!" and strewing flowers and rosemary before them. Thousands of the people carried torches, which rendered the streets lighter than the day. They were three hours in making their way through the crowd from Charing Cross to their lodgings in the city, a distance of a mile.
It was during the exaltation of the years preceding the civil war that such pictures appeared as the one here given, urging a union between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland against the foe of both. This is copied from an original impression in the collection of the New York Historical Society.
The caricaturists pursued Laud and Strafford even to the scaffold. The archbishop was the author of a work entitled "Canons and Institutions Ecclesiastical," in which he gave expression to his extreme High-church opinions. In 1640 the victorious House of Commons canceled the canons adopted from this work, and fined the clergy who had sat in the Convocation. A caricature quickly appeared, called "Archbishop Laud firing a Cannon," in which the cannon is represented as bursting, and its fragments endangering the clergymen standing near. Laud's committal to the Tower was the occasion of many broadsheets, one of which exhibits him fastened to a staple in a wall, with a long string of taunting stanzas below:
"Reader, I know thou canst not choose but smile
To see a Bishop tide thus to a ring!
Yea, such a princely prelate, that ere while
Could three at once in Limbo patrum fling;
Suspend by hundreds where his worship pleased,
And them that preached too oft by silence eas'd;
"Made Laws and Canons, like a King (at least);
Devis'd new oaths; forc'd men to sweare to lies!
Advanc'd his lordly power 'bove all the rest.
And then our Lazie Priests began to rise;
But painfull ministers, which plide their place
With diligence, went downe the wind apace.
"Our honest Round heads too then went to racke;
The holy sisters into corners fled;
Cobblers and Weavers preacht in Tubs for lacke
Of better Pulpits; with a sacke instead
Of Pulpit-cloth, hung round in decent wise,
All which the spirit did for their good devise.
"Barnes, Cellers, Cole-holes, were their meeting-places,
So sorely were these babes of Christ abus'd,
Where he that most Church-government disgraces
Is most esteem'd, and with most reverence us'd.
It being their sole intent religiously
To rattle against the Bishops' dignity.
"Brother, saies one, what doe you thinke, I pray,
Of these proud Prelates, which so lofty are?
Truly, saies he, meere Antichrists are they.
Thus as they parle, before they be aware,
Perhaps a Pursuivant slips in behind,
And makes 'em run like hares before the wind.