The Court so constituted extended its range, and increased its activity, and pressed beyond the boundaries of statute law, so as to become, in the reign of Charles the First, a means of arbitrary government intolerable to the country.
Records of the Court are still preserved in the State Paper Office,[31] shewing the modes of proceeding, the charges of which the Commissioners took cognizance, and the punishments they pronounced upon the convicted. Counsel for office—counsel for defendants—appearance and oath to answer articles—appearance, and delivering in of certificate—orders for defendants to give in answers—motion for permission to put in additional articles—commissions decreed for taking answers and examining witnesses—commissions brought in and depositions of witnesses published—and orders for taxation of costs—are forms of expression and notices of proceeding very frequent in these old Books. Some of them conveyed, no doubt, terrible meanings to the parties accused. We meet also with "suppressions of motion," "agreements for subduction of articles," petitions to be admitted in "formâ pauperis," and reference of causes to the Dean of Arches. Collecting together heads of accusation, we find the following in the list—holding heretical opinions, contempt of ecclesiastical laws, seditious preaching, scandalous matter in sermons, using invective speeches unfit for the pulpit, nonconformity, publishing fanatical pamphlets, profane speeches, schism, blasphemy, raising new doctrines, preaching after deposition, and simoniacal contracts. Descending to minute particulars, we discover such items as these:—"locking the church door, and impounding the archdeacons, officials, and clergy," in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; wearing hats in church; counting money on the communion-table; saying, "A ploughman was as good as a priest," and asking, "What good do bishops in Ireland?;" profane acts endangering parish edifices; praying that young Prince Charles might not be brought up in popery; and submission performed in a slight and contemptuous manner.[32] Entries of fines and imprisonment frequently occur.
It should be stated that occasionally other religious offences are noticed in these volumes, such as possessing a Romish breviary, and refusing the oath of allegiance. Enquiries also appear, as to persons who secreted young ladies "going to the nunneries beyond seas." There are, too, monitions "to bring to the office popish stuff and books."[33] But such instances are few compared with those relating to Puritans. Also now and then occur cases of flagrant clerical immorality, acts of violence, and of criminal behaviour.[34] But it was the persecution, the intolerance, the irritating control over so many persons and things, and the harsh treatment, and severe sentences of this absorbing jurisdiction, emulating as it did the worst ecclesiastical tribunals of the middle ages, and of Roman Catholic countries, that so roused the wrath of our forefathers against it.
It is very curious, after inspecting the records of the High Commission, to open Dr. Featley's Clavis, and there to find sermons, preached by him at Lambeth before the Commissioners, on such subjects as "The bruised reed and smoking flax," and "The still small voice,"—sermons filled with the mildest and gentlest sentiments. More curious, to light on other discourses in the same volume, bearing the very appropriate titles of "Pandora's box," and "The lamb turned into a lion." But for the knowledge we have of the preacher and of the contents of his discourses, we should suppose the former titles were ironical hits, and the latter outspoken truths. They are neither; but are chosen, it is plain, with perfect simplicity.[35]
The Star Chamber is commonly associated in the minds of Englishmen with the High Commission Court. Unfettered by the verdict of juries, not guided by statute law, and irresponsible to other tribunals, it claimed an indefinable jurisdiction over all sorts of misdemeanours—"holding for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited." Though not a constituted ecclesiastical court, like the High Commission, bishops as privy councillors sat amongst its judges, and it took cognizance of religious publications. Whilst the High Commission confined its penalties to deprivation, imprisonment, and fines, the favourite punishments of the Star Chamber were whipping, branding, cutting ears, and slitting noses. The barbarous treatment of Leighton, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, will shortly be noticed.
These two arbitrary courts, which, in spite of their difference, were almost invariably linked together in the thoughts of our countrymen, concentrated on themselves an amount of public indignation equal to the fury of the French against the Bastile; and at last, like that prison, they fell amidst the execrations of a people whose patience had been exhausted by such prolonged iniquities.[36]
Nor was it only the intolerance of the Church which exasperated the people, its secular intermeddling did so likewise. Before the Reformation Churchmen had held the highest offices in the State, indeed, had controlled all civil affairs; and Laud was now imitating the Cardinals of an earlier age. But the English Reformation had shaken off from itself the civil power of the Church; laymen, not the clergy, now claimed to guide the helm. The Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and the civil war which grew out of it, were practical protests against the attempts of Charles, Strafford, and Laud to revive what the Reformation in this country had destroyed. The modern spirit of civilization was seen rebelling against the intrusion of the spiritual on the secular power. It was a stage in the great European conflict which ended in the French Revolution; it was an assault upon a system which has now expired everywhere except in the city of Rome.
As was only consistent, the party supporting ecclesiastical intolerance also supported civil despotism. Never since the English Constitution had grown up were the liberties of the people so threatened as during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. The two checks on the tyranny of the Crown, the aristocracy and the Church, had long been enfeebled—the aristocracy by the wars of the Roses; the Church by the loss of independence at the Reformation. The nobles of England had wasted their strength in the fifteenth century; the Church of England had prostrated herself before the throne in the sixteenth. Neither of them had now the power, any more than they had now the will, to defend popular freedom against the invasions of regal prerogative. It is true, that the same causes, which weakened them as the possible friends of the people, weakened them also as actual friends of the Sovereign. What they did for the Crown in the Civil Wars, was far less than they might have done at an earlier period: even as what remained in their power to accomplish on behalf of popular rights was far less. But the malign aspect of the Church, then the chief power next the throne, towards the nation at large, and the Commons in particular, was most manifest and most alarming at the epoch under consideration. Old English liberties indeed had never been extinguished. The spirit of English self-government asserted under the house of Lancaster, though seemingly held in abeyance in the times of the Tudors, so far from expiring, had come out with renewed youth in the days of the Stuarts, through the parliamentary career of those eminent statesmen who formed the vanguard of the Commonwealth army. But against the illustrious Sir John Eliot, with his noble compeers, High Church contemporaries stood in defiant hostility. That kings are the fountains of all power; that they reign "by the grace of God," in the sense of divine right; that they are feudal lords—the soil their property, and the people their slaves—were doctrines upheld by sycophants of the Court, and endorsed and defended by doctors of the Church. Dr. Sibthorpe, a notorious zealot for passive obedience and non-resistance, monstrously declared, "If princes command anything, which subjects may not perform, because it is against the laws of God, or of nature, or impossible; yet subjects are bound to undergo the punishment, without either resisting, or railing, or reviling; and so to yield a passive obedience where they cannot exhibit an active one. I know no other case, but one of those three wherein a subject may excuse himself with passive obedience, but in all other he is bound to active obedience."[37] Another preacher of the same class, Dr. Manwaring, was brought before Parliament for maintaining, "That his Majesty is not bound to keep and observe the good laws and customs of this realm; and that his royal will and command in imposing loans, taxes, and other aids upon his people, without common consent in Parliament, doth so far bind the consciences of the subjects of this kingdom, that they cannot refuse the same without peril of eternal damnation."[38]
The Church of the middle ages had commonly thrown its shield over subjects against the oppression of rulers: but in contrast with this, the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Stuart times stood in closest league with Government for purposes the most despotic. The tyranny of Buckingham in 1624, with his forced loans, became insupportable, and the obloquy of it all—alas for the Church of England!—fell largely upon its dignitaries, because favour had been strongly shown to the policy of that arrogant minister by such men as Sibthorpe and Manwaring. Strafford went beyond Charles in imperious despotism; and Strafford found in Archbishop Laud not only a helper in his "thorough" policy, but an example of even more violent measures, and a counsellor instigating him to still greater lengths.[39]