These are but a few phrases from Sir Thomas’s speech; he used no argument, adduced no proof, but contented himself simply with clamour and reviling, and these were amply sufficient. In the Long Parliament it was enough to accuse anyone, especially a bishop, of Popery, superstition and ‘innovation’—which was a term invented by Bishop Williams, then as now commonly applied to the oldest dogmas and practices of the Church—to insure his imprisonment, or at the least a heavy fine. In Wren’s Diary opposite the day of the month is merely, ‘Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.’ Dr. Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was attacked at the same time; but at first no active steps were taken against them, perhaps because the Commons found matters not yet ripe for a wholesale imprisonment of the Bishops. Dr. Wren well knew that matters would not stop here, and while awaiting the next attack began to prepare his Defence against the Articles of Accusation.
The mob in the meanwhile were encouraged by caricatures, libels, and invectives to rail against the Bishops and impute every misfortune and every trade failure to them, by which means the Puritan leaders contrived to stir up a yelling mob of men and women.
ATTACK ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
THE DECOY DUCK.
All petitions against the Church were received and the petitioners encouraged and praised. The populace insulted the Bishops whenever they appeared, and threatened their lives. Westminster Abbey was attacked, when the Bishops were there, by a violent mob, led by Wiseman, a knight of Kent. The officers and choirmen of the Abbey with the boys of the School, among whom must have been Christopher Wren, defended it gallantly, and the fray ended when Wiseman was killed by a tile thrown from the battlements by one of the defenders. After this the Bishops who were in London met in the Deanery at Westminster, the lodging of Williams, Archbishop of York, who had just been translated from Lincoln to York, in succession to the late Archbishop Neile,[33] to consult what should be done. At the Archbishop’s suggestion, they drew up a paper, remonstrating against the abuse offered them, and the manner in which they had been hindered from coming to the House of Lords, their coaches overset, their barges attacked and prevented landing, and they themselves beset and threatened. They claimed their right to sit in the House of Lords and vote, and protested against all that had been done since the 27th of that month (December, 1641), and all that should hereafter pass in time of this their forced and violent absence. This paper was signed by the Archbishop and eleven Bishops, of whom Bishop Wren was one, and presented to the King, who delivered it to Littleton, the Lord Keeper, to be communicated next day to the Peers. The Lord Keeper, who had already deserted his benefactor, Lord Strafford, contrary to the King’s orders showed the paper first to ‘some of the preaching party in both Houses,’ and then to the Peers. Upon the reading a conference was desired between the Houses, and the Lord Keeper declared that the Bishops’ paper contained ‘matters of high and dangerous consequence, extending to the deep intrenching upon the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament.’ The Commons, whose part, like that of the Lord Keeper[34] was pre-arranged, impeached the Bishops of high treason; the usher of the Black Rod was despatched to find and bring them before the House. They, lodging in different parts of London, were not all collected until eight o’clock on the winter’s night, and then, their offence being signified, were committed to the Tower.[35] The Bishops of Durham and Lichfield, both aged and infirm, obtained leave to be in the custody of the Black Rod. The other bishops were carried to the Tower on the following morning. A libellous pamphlet was published at this time, entitled ‘Wren’s Anatomy, discovering his notorious Pranks &c., printed in the year when Wren ceased to domineer,’ has in the title-page a print of Bishop Wren sitting at a table; out of his mouth proceed two labels: on one, ‘Canonical Prayers;;’ on the other, ‘No Afternoon Sermon.’ On one side stand several clergy, over whose heads is written ‘Altar-cringing Priests.’ On the other, two men in lay habits, above whom is this inscription, ‘Churchwardens for Articles.’ It serves to show what were considered as really the Bishop’s crimes, and that he had a fair proportion of faithful clergy.[36] The Archbishop of York had served the Commons’ turn in procuring the King’s assent to Lord Strafford’s death-warrant, and had enjoyed for a short time a remarkable though transient popularity both on that account and as Laud’s bitter opponent. The Commons were, however, soon weary of him, and gladly availed themselves of the pretext afforded by the protest to throw him aside. A pamphlet was published, which had a great success, entitled the ‘Decoy Duck,’ in allusion to the fens of his former diocese of Lincoln, in which he was represented as only released from the Tower in order to decoy the other bishops there. It was thought prudent that the bishops should make no attempt either to see each other, or Archbishop Laud, who had preceded them to that dreary lodging, so that only loving messages passed between the prisoners. So many bishops being in custody, and five sees vacant, the Commons took their opportunity, and brought in a Bill depriving the Bishops of their seats in Parliament, and of the power of sitting as judges or privy councillors. It was feebly opposed by the Churchmen, who had been alienated by the prelates’ desertion of Lord Strafford, and was finally carried. The remark made a little later by Lord Falkland on Sir E. Deering’s ‘Bill for the Extirpation of Episcopacy,’ when the Churchmen, weary of their attendance, left the House at dinner-time, and did not return—‘Those who hated the bishops, hated them worse than the devil, and those who loved them did not love them so well as their dinner,’—appears to have been applicable to this occasion also. Not very long after the first-named Bill had passed, some of the bishops were set at liberty, but Bishop Wren was not released until May 6, 1642.
IMPRISONMENT.
It was a brief respite. He went down to his diocese, to a house at Downham, near Ely, where his wife and children were living, and there, August 17, he kept the last wedding-day that he and his wife were ever to celebrate together. On August 25 King Charles set up his standard at Nottingham and the Civil War began. On the 30th of the month Bishop Wren’s house was entered by soldiers and he was taken prisoner, without, it will be observed, the shadow of a legal charge against him. On September 1st he was again thrown into the Tower, leaving Mrs. Wren with a daughter only eight days old and mourning for their son Francis, who had died in the previous month. Matthew, the eldest son, was then only thirteen years old. Bishop Wren’s was a singularly steadfast, hopeful nature, and it may be that he expected to be speedily released by the victorious Royalist armies. Could he have foreseen the duration of his imprisonment and the miseries which were to befall the Church and the country, even his dauntless spirit might have been crushed. He did not seek an interview with Archbishop Laud, lest they should be accused of plotting, and so each injure the other. Otherwise it would not have been difficult, as the Archbishop was at first carelessly watched, in the hope that he would, by escaping, rid the Commons of a difficulty. The Archbishop ‘would not, at seventy years, go about to prolong a miserable life by the trouble and shame of flying,’ though Grotius sent him an intreaty to copy the example of his own marvellous escape from Loevenstein Castle twenty-one years previously.[37] The services in the Tower Chapel, where they probably met at first, could have given them little comfort, marred and mangled as the services were by the intruders, who came often with no better object than to preach insulting sermons against the prelates.
Dr. Wren busied himself in the completion of the ‘Defence,’ to which allusion has been made in the first chapter.[38] It is too long to allow of being set out in full, but a few points may be touched upon. Of the ‘fifty painful ministers;’ whom he was said to have excommunicated, for some of the sentences there was, as has been said, very sufficient reason. As the Bishop says, ‘Excommunication doth by law fall upon those that are absent, either from visitation, or synods; and suspension is a censure which in the practice of those courts is incurred in one hour and taken off in another, and is of little or no grievance at all except it be wilfully persisted in.’ He complains of so vague a charge, not stating who the clergy were, and proceeds as well as he can recollect to mention those who had fallen under his censure. For those whose licence to preach had been withdrawn, the greater number ought never to have received it at all; one had been a broken tradesman in Ipswich, one a country apothecary, another a weaver, another ‘no graduate, not long translated from common stage-playing to two cures and a publick lecture.’ Yet still when all were reckoned who had ever been censured or admonished, the Bishop thinks that the fifty will hardly be made up.[39]
BOWING TO THE ALTAR.
It is a curious instance of the temper of the times that one head of so serious an indictment should be that ‘To manifest his Popish Affections, he in 1636, caused a crucifix to be engraven upon his Episcopal seal.’ Bishop Wren carefully addresses himself to the defence of this point, and to that of bowing at the name of our Lord, and to the Altar.