Amongst the class at first favourable to extensive ecclesiastical reforms was also that mercurial royalist, Lord Digby, who represented Dorsetshire, and afterwards became Earl of Bristol. He soon diverged very far from his early compatriots, and played a part which must always affix dishonour to his name, whatever opinion may be formed of the cause he espoused.
1640, November.
All the persons now mentioned acted together in ecclesiastical affairs, more or less intimately, at the opening of Parliament. Those who came nearest to one another in opinion had meetings for conference. Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, and Vane the younger, with some liberal noblemen of the Upper House, were wont to assemble at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire, the seat of Lord Say, Fiennes' father, and at Tawsley, in Northamptonshire, the mansion of Sir Richard Knightley, father-in-law to Hampden. A story is related—not a very likely one—that in certain old stone-walled and casemated rooms, shown in the castle, the worthies[89] used to meet lest they should be detected; and, which is more probable, that a printing-press, established in the mansion by Sir Richard's father, was applied to their purposes. Perhaps about the same time, meetings of a similar kind were also held at Kensington, in the noble mansion of Lord Holland, one of the statesmen who took part in these conferences. There were gatherings in Gray's Inn Lane, too, whither reports came up from the country, and whence intelligence was distributed amongst the city patriots. After the opening of Parliament, Pym's lodgings at Westminster became a place of rendezvous, at least for a select few. But though these consultations so far obtained amongst certain chiefs, it must not be supposed that there existed a large organized party, resembling the phalanx which till of late years used compactly to follow some great leader. The two parties into which the House of Commons fell did by no means distinctly divide at first. How, on ecclesiastical questions they formed, and took up their position, will be seen as we proceed.
Members of the Long Parliament.
Certainly there can be traced nothing like an organized party for defending the Church. The King and the bishops, with many of the nobility and a number of the people, were sincerely attached to the Establishment, and were prepared to admit only slight changes in its constitution. In the House of Commons, however, where its battle had to be fought, and its fate decided, there did not appear any strong alliance, or any distinct advocacy in its favour. It is surprising that in the early debates, when so many voices fiercely proclaimed its corruptions, so few made themselves heard in its defence. No chivalrous spirit stepped forward to resist the band of assailants. The tide flowed in. Not one strong man attempted to build a breakwater.
Edward Hyde, who did so much for the Church of England at the Restoration, did little for it in this crisis of its fate. It is true he was a young man, and without great influence, but he shewed no heroism on its behalf; indeed, heroism was foreign to his nature. What he attempted he himself describes, and that the reader will discover to be paltry enough.
In the Upper House were the bishops, who might naturally be esteemed as guardians and defenders of the Church in the hour of need. But there were none of them possessed of that statesman-like ability, without which it would have been impossible to preserve the Episcopal Establishment in the shock of revolution. Laud, no doubt, had great talents and abundant courage, but the blunders he had made in driving the ship on to the rocks, gave no hope that he would have skill enough to pilot the ship off, even if granted the opportunity. But he had not even the opportunity. Hardly did the Long Parliament open when his indignant enemies thrust him from the helm. The conduct of other bishops had only served to strip them of the last chance of saving their order. The best on the bench shared in the obloquy brought on all by the intolerance and corruption of the worst, while none of them possessed the mental and moral calibre necessary for dealing with those huge difficulties amidst which the Church of England had now been dashed.
1640, November.
Puritans too, it should be remembered, sat in the Upper as well as in the Lower House. Amongst them may be numbered Devereux, Earl of Essex; Seymour, Earl of Hertford; Rich, Earl of Warwick; Rich, Earl of Holland; Viscount Say and Sele, Viscount Mandeville, Baron Wharton, Greville, Lord Brook, and others. Some of these will appear in the following pages, and of them in general we may observe that they did not lack astuteness, courage, and power. Anglicanism might be stronger in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons; but Puritanism, on the whole, appeared stronger than Anglicanism even there.