[50] Laud's power extended even to America. In a special commission for the colonies, "the Archbishop of Canterbury and those who were associated with him, received full power over the American plantations, to establish the government and dictate the laws, to regulate the Church, to inflict even the heaviest punishments, and to revoke any charter, which had been surreptitiously obtained, or which conceded liberties prejudicial to the Royal prerogative."—Bancroft's United States, i. 407.
[51] Letter in State Paper Office, Dec. 19, 1633. Most of Laud's letters found amongst the State records are printed in the last volume of the Oxford edition of his works.
[52] Indications of his wonderful activity are to be seen in his numerous letters, collected in the Oxford edition of his works, to which my references apply. (Vols. vi. and vii.) Laud's enemies have not done justice to his abilities. His diary reveals his mental weaknesses, but his correspondence and theological writings exhibit his mind under a different aspect. Many persons are too prejudiced against Laud to think of looking into his Conference with Fisher the Jesuit; but whoever will take the trouble of doing so, whatever he may think of Laud's line of argument at times, must admit the learning and ability displayed in the discussion. No book more clearly shows both the resemblance and the difference between Anglo-Catholicism and Popery.
[53] We are here reminded of what Dunstan's biographer said of him—"Nec quisquam in toto regno Anglorum esset qui absque ejus imperio manum vel pedem moveret."—Angl. Sac., ii. 108. Dunstan, too, like Laud, descended to the notice and regulation of trivial matters. There can be little doubt that Laud, as an ecclesiastical and political statesman, was inferior to Dunstan. A man who grasps at such extensive influence is sure to be unpopular in England. Sir John Eliot accused Buckingham of this ambition, and in the memorable peroration to his speech in that nobleman's impeachment, when he instituted a parallel between him and the Bishop of Ely, in Richard II.'s reign, Eliot included this point—"No man's business could be done without his help."—See Speech in Rushworth, and Parliamentary History, and from his own MS. in Forster's Life of Eliot, i. 551.
[54] Diary, Tuesday, April 5, 1625.—Laud's Works, iii. 159.
[55] Strafford's Papers, i. 365.
[56] Halliwell's Letters of the Kings of England, ii. 180.
[57] Coleridge ranks Jackson with Cudworth, More, and Smith as Plotinist rather than Platonist divines.—See Note, Literary Remains, iii. 415.
[58] Life of Southey, v. 283.
[59] See remarks on this in Bancroft's United States, i. 284.