Udall was condemned, as he would not sign a recantation of his doctrine; nor could any of the doctors move him in conference from appealing in its proof to the Scriptures. His fame was great; so that several lords of the council, and even James VI., afterwards king of England, interceded for his life. Archbishop Whitgift became afraid of his being put to death in public, and the Turkey merchants offered to employ him as one of their chaplains, and at length Whitgift consented to pardon him on his leaving the country; but while the hard terms were being arranged with the archbishop, Udall died in prison, from his long confinement and ill treatment. Dr. Fuller remarks of him, that “his wisest foes were well contented with his death, lest it should be charged as an act of cruelty on them who procured it.” He calls him “a person of worth, a learned man, blameless for his life, powerful in his praying, and no less profitable than painful in his preaching.”
Fifty-nine, in different prisons of London, in 1592, petitioned Lord Treasurer Burleigh to be brought to trial; complaining that “many had died in the prisons, that they had been imprisoned contrary to all law and equity, many of them for the space of two years and a half, upon the bishop’s sole commandment.” Among these was Henry Barrowe, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, who was apprehended when visiting his relative, Greenwood, a nonconforming clergyman, who had been in prison a long time. They were tried on a charge of “writing and publishing sundry books, tending to the slander of the queen and government.” Mr. Neal remarks, “They had written only against the church; but this was the archbishop’s artful contrivance, to throw off the odium of their death from himself to the civil magistrate. Being condemned, endeavours were made, but in vain, to induce them to recant. They were exposed under the famous gallows, at Tyburn, March the 31st; but this produced no effect on their pious minds, and they were executed, April 6, 1592. John Penry, a clergyman, and several others, were hanged for dispersing the writings of the nonconformists.
Dr. Reynolds, the queen’s professor of divinity at Oxford, attended some of these martyrs for the Scriptures; and he reported to her Majesty the calm piety which they displayed, and how they had blessed and prayed for her, as their sovereign, and for their enemies; and Elizabeth’s heart melted; but she was urged forward by the chief-inquisitor, Whitgift, and she consented to sanction him in his bigotry, by a severer law against the nonconformists. To this was added a form of recantation; which, if the offenders refused to subscribe, it was further enacted, “that within three months they shall abjure the realm, and go into perpetual banishment; and if they do not depart within the time appointed, or if they ever return without the queen’s licence, they shall suffer death without benefit of clergy!!”
Severities towards the nonconformists increased as the queen and the archbishop advanced in years. Dr. Aylmer, the persecuting and profane bishop of London, died in June, 1594. Dr. Fletcher succeeded him, and was banished by the queen. In 1596, Dr. Bancroft, a haughty, unfeeling persecutor, was made bishop of London. Elizabeth died, March 24, 1602, and Archbishop Whitgift, in 1604, when they were called to render up their awful account to God.
Queen Elizabeth was a great monarch, and she was favoured with statesmen of extraordinary abilities; but, as Dr. Warner remarks, “the severity with which she treated her Protestant subjects by her High Commission Court, was against law, against liberty, and against the rights of human nature. She understood nothing of the rights of conscience in matters of religion; and, like the absurd king, her father, she would have no opinion in religion, acknowledged at least, but her own. She differed from her sister; and as she had much greater abilities for governing, so she applied herself more to promote the strength and glory of her dominion, than Mary did; but she had as much of the bigot and tyrant in her as her sister.”
Dr. Bancroft was translated from London to Canterbury, on the death of Whitgift, in 1604; and his severities were sanctioned by the new sovereign, James I., who became a cruel bigot. Under their government the nonconformists suffered grievously. The inquisitors prosecuted their shocking employment, and two men were executed at the stake on the charge of heresy. One of these, Bartholomew Legate, of Essex, was condemned as a heretic, and publicly burnt in Smithfield, March 18, 1612; the other was Edward Wightman, of Burton-upon-Trent; he was condemned by Dr. Neile, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and burnt as a heretic in Lichfield, April 11, 1612. They were said to be Arians and Baptists, and charged with many absurd opinions; but it is admitted that they were exemplary in their morals. They refused to recant, even at the stake; and popular sympathy being called forth in favour of these victims of the prelates, they were the last that publicly suffered death for their religious opinions in England. There were others in prison under sentence, but they were continued to linger out a miserable existence in Newgate.
Dr. Abbot succeeded Bancroft, in 1611, as archbishop of Canterbury; but, being unfitted for political intrigue, he was suspended in 1620, and Laud, bishop of London, exercised almost unlimited authority in ecclesiastical affairs. His bigotry would have qualified him for inquisitor-general in Rome or Spain, and his evil counsels involved both England and Scotland in most grievous troubles, until his intolerance became the chief cause of his own execution, and that of his misguided master, Charles I., to the astonishment of all Europe.
Dr. Williams, bishop of Lincoln, to whom Laud was under the greatest obligations as his patron, disapproving of his severities by the High Commission Court, incurred his displeasure, when “the warmest professions of friendship were succeeded by the most deadly hatred.” Laud became his persecutor, and succeeded, in the second attempt, in obtaining his conviction, on a charge of tampering with the king’s witnesses. Williams was fined £10,000 to the king, £1,000 to Sir J. Mounson, and imprisonment in the Tower during the king’s pleasure. All his property being seized, his private papers were presumed to contain some reflections on Laud, and he again persecuted him. He was sentenced to pay £5,000 to the king, and £3,000 to the archbishop. “Laud’s thirst of revenge outweighed his fear of reproach,” as remarked by Dr. Vaughan.
Laud’s spirit may be learned more fully from his persecution of Dr. Leighton, who had written “An Appeal to Parliament; or, Zion’s Plea against Prelacy.” For this he was condemned in the “Star Chamber,” which was a political Inquisition; and the archbishop being present, as one of the judges, while the sentence was being pronounced, removed his cap from his head, and, with an audible voice, rendered solemn thanks to God for this decision of the court. The illegal sentence was executed upon Dr. Leighton; and the archbishop was found to have made a record in his diary, thus:—“Nov. 6th. 1. He was whipped before he was put in the pillory. 2. Being set in the pillory, he had one of his ears cut off. 3. One side of his nose slit. 4. Branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, with the letters S.S. On that day seven-night, his sores upon his back, ear, nose, and face, being not yet cured, he was whipped again at the pillory in Cheapside, and had the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other side of the nose, and branding the other cheek!”
Probably, the diary of no other man, in any age or nation, ever contained such a record in his private diary, with his approbation. He must have been a monster; and no language can sufficiently reprobate such cruelties, illegally exercised, and that in the abused name of the Prince of Peace!