The King’s best advisers were in prison or under restraint, except good Bishop Juxon, who bravely told him he ought not, upon any considerations in the world, to do anything against his conscience; and Bishop Williams, who hated Strafford and Laud alike, sent by the Commons to induce the King to sign the death-warrant, had a fatal success.

Bishop Wren came to Windsor after this to marry Princess Mary, the King’s eldest daughter, to William, eldest son of Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange, whom he succeeded in six years. The alliance was one which gratified the Parliament, being so Protestant a connection. Little, however, could they have guessed how deadly an enemy Princess Mary’s son would prove to the house of Stuart. Ten days after this wedding came May 12, when ‘the wisest head in England was severed from the shoulders of Lord Strafford.’ So writes John Evelyn. To the Archbishop, his friend’s death must have been a terrible blow. He was just able to bestow a parting blessing through his prison window, and to hear Lord Strafford say, ‘Farewell, my lord. God protect your innocency.’ The Princess’s marriage was the last occasion on which Bishop Wren was to officiate as Dean of the Chapels Royal.

The Commons had been industriously at work against him since the first attack in December, and as Archbishop Laud said of Prynne, ‘by this time their malice had hammered out somewhat.’ The committee sent in a report, charging the Bishop with ‘excommunicating fifty painful ministers, practising superstition in his own person, placing “the table” altarwise, elevation of the elements, the “eastward position,” as it is now called, at the Eucharist, bowing to the Altar, causing all seats to be placed so that the people faced east, employing his authority to restrain “powerful preaching,” and ordering catechising in the words of the Church Catechism only, permitting no prayer before the sermon but the bidding prayer (canon 5), publishing a book of articles, to which the churchwardens were sworn, containing 187 questions.’

BISHOP WREN’S RESIGNATION.

Upon this report a debate ensued, ending in a vote that it was the opinion of the House that Matthew Wren was unworthy and unfit to hold or exercise any office or dignity in the Church, and voting that a message be sent to the House of Lords to desire them to join the Commons in petitioning his Majesty to remove Bishop Wren from his person and service. Evelyn’s expression, ‘to such an exorbitancy had the times grown,’ aptly describes the state of matters when, for details such as these of the government of a diocese, and for practices which, if they had been proved, were both legal and reasonable, an assembly of laymen presumed to pronounce a bishop unfit for his office in the Church. Whether the petition ever came before the King does not appear, but Wren thought it best to take the initiative; for he writes in his diary five days after the debate: ‘I hardly obtained leave from the King to resign the deanery of the Chapels Royal.’

CHAPTER III.
1641–1647.

BISHOP WREN ACCUSED—WESTMINSTER ABBEY ATTACKED—IMPRISONMENT OF THE BISHOPS—BISHOP WREN’S DEFENCE—‘UTTERLY DENIETH ALL POPISH AFFECTIONS;’—THE GARTER JEWELS—ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED—CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD—PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS.

For though outnumber’d, overthrown,

And by the fate of war run down,