Puritans in England were terror-stricken. Fasts were held, and young people were worn out by abstinence and prayer. Amidst a crowded congregation, near Bradford, where all were groaning and weeping, there came a man, who cried, "Friends, we are all as good as dead men, for the Irish rebels are coming; they are come as far as Rochdale, and Littleborough, and the Batings, and will be at Halifax and Bradford shortly."[273] Upon hearing this, the congregation fell into utter confusion, and began to run for their lives,—screaming about the bloody Papists, and expecting every moment to meet the cut-throats. Not only were ignorant multitudes thus panic-stricken, but Richard Baxter believed that the Irish had threatened to come over, and, he remarks, that such threats, "with the name of 200,000 murdered, and the recital of the monstrous cruelties of those cannibals, made many thousands in England think that nothing could be more necessary than for the Parliament to put the country into an armed posture for their own defence."[274]
Irish Rebellion.
Not only did aversion to Popery proper increase through what had happened in Ireland, but that aversion regarded much which bore but a very partial resemblance to Popery. It was not easy then, with cool discrimination, to distinguish between things which differed; and some things, it must be remembered, were more alike then than they are at present. What would be folly in one age may be something like wisdom in another; what would be groundless fear now might be caution then; that which all would pronounce insanity in a Protestant of the nineteenth century was probably only a reasonable apprehension in a Puritan of the seventeenth. At that time there not only rose a stronger determination to resist the power of Rome, but also a stronger determination to put an end to the power at Lambeth. The tiara became more hateful than ever, and not less so the mitre: images of the Virgin were pronounced intolerable, so were all superstitious ornaments in churches. The Popish rebellion helped on the measure for removing Bishops from amongst the rulers of the country, and imparted a fresh impulse to the desire for abolishing Episcopacy.
1641, October.
The actual plot in Ireland gave countenance to the belief of imaginary plots in England. One day in November, John Hampden went up to the Lords to let them know that a man had come to the door of the House of Commons, and sent in word how he had matters of a high nature to reveal concerning certain noble Peers and honourable Commons. They had therefore sent the man to their Lordships' House, for examination. Upon this, one Thomas Beal, a tailor of Whitecross Street, appeared, who told a long rambling story to the effect, that on that very day, at twelve o'clock, as he went into the fields near the Pest House, and was walking on a private bank, he heard some people talking warily. Going nearer, he heard somebody say, "it was a wicked thing that the last plot did not take," but that one now was going on which would be the making of them all. A hundred and eight conspirators were to kill one hundred and eight members of Parliament—all Puritans—and the sacrament was to be administered to the murderers. Beal was commanded to withdraw, and an order followed to arrest certain Jesuits on suspicion. This conspiracy, as might be expected from the man's story, turned out to be mere smoke.[275] Yet we relate the circumstance as an illustration of the excitement of the period; and to exemplify how men, like the inhabitants of the Hartz mountains looking at the clouds, saw their own fears reflected in gigantic shadows, which they mistook for most awful and threatening realities.
CHAPTER X.
The cause of English Episcopacy sank into a hopeless condition. Whatever streaks of light had just before been flickering on its horizon had now totally vanished; not that the removal of the prelates' bench from the House of Peers sealed its fate, for, apart from legislative authority and political position, Episcopal office and influence might have been retained. But the policy of Laud and Montague had been such as to estrange from the Order the affections of the Puritans, then the most active and influential part of the religious population of the country. The complicity of Church rulers in the unpopular proceedings of the High Commission and Star Chamber Courts, and their sympathy in Strafford's scheme of arbitrary rule, had torn away from them the last ties of attachment on the part of the middle classes, which, in modern England, form the only trustworthy stays of power in Church or State. The effect of the protest of Archbishop Williams and his associates had confirmed the mean opinion in which all the bishops were held, and had now rendered a case before very doubtful, wholly desperate. Charles, who from the beginning had been ready to stake the crown in his struggle for the Episcopal Church, had by his arrest of the five members exasperated to the utmost the supporters of the Constitution, and placed himself in a false position towards the House of Commons; so that, while imperilling his own prerogatives, he also injured the Church, with which he identified the interests of his throne.