24. Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634.—Amongst the most virulent opponents of Laud was William Prynne, a lawyer whose extensive study of theology had not tended to smooth away the asperities of his temper. He was, moreover, a voluminous writer, and had written books against drinking healths and against the wearing of long hair by men, in which these follies had been treated as equally blameworthy with the grossest sins. Struck by the immorality of the existing drama, he attacked it in a heavy work called Histrio-mastix, or The scourge of stage players, in which he held the frequenting of theatres to be the cause of every crime under the sun. He pointed out that all the Roman emperors who had patronised the drama had come to a bad end, and this was held by the courtiers to be a reflection on Charles, who patronised the drama. He inserted in the index a vile charge against all actresses, and this was held to be an insult to the queen, who was at the time taking part in the rehearsal of a theatrical representation. Accordingly in 1633 Prynne was sentenced by the Star Chamber to lose his ears in the pillory, to a heavy fine, and to imprisonment during the king's pleasure. In 1634 the sentence was carried out. Prynne's case, however, awakened no general sympathy, and the king does not appear to have as yet become widely unpopular. The young lawyers came to Whitehall to give a masque or dramatic representation in presence of the king and queen, in order to show their detestation of Prynne's conduct, whilst John Milton, the strictest and most pure-minded of poets, wrote a masque, Comus, to show how little sympathy he had with Prynne's sweeping denunciations. Yet, though Milton opposed Prynne's exaggeration, his own poetry was a protest against Laud's attempt to reach the mind through the senses. Milton held to the higher part of the Puritan teaching, that the soul is to lead the body, and not the body the soul. "So dear," he wrote in Comus,

to Heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And, in clear dream and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I. 1634-1641

LEADING DATES
The Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649

1. The Metropolitical Visitation. 1634-1637.—The antagonism which Laud had begun to rouse in the first months of his archbishopric became far more widely spread in the three years beginning in 1634 and ending in 1637, in consequence of a Metropolitical Visitation—that is to say, a visitation which he conducted by the Metropolitan or Archbishop—either in person or by deputy—to enquire into the condition of the clergy and churches of the Province of Canterbury; a similar visitation being held in the Province of York by the authority of the Archbishop of York. Every clergyman who refused to conform to the Prayer Book, who resisted the removal of the Communion table to the east end of the chancel, or who objected to bow when the sacred name of Jesus was pronounced, was called in question, and if obstinate, was brought before the High Commission and suspended from the exercise of his functions or deprived of his living. Laud wanted to reach unity through uniformity, and made the canons of the Church his standard of uniformity. Even moderate men suspected that he sought to subject England again to the Pope. The queen, too, entertained a Papal agent at her Court, and a few successful conversions, brought about by Con, who at one time resided with her in that capacity, frightened the country into the belief that a plot existed to overthrow Protestantism. Some of Laud's clerical supporters favoured this idea, by talking about such topics as altars and the invocation of the saints, which had hitherto been held to have no place in Protestant teaching. The result was that moderate Protestants now joined the Puritans in opposing Laud.