“An accurate delineation, the only Correct Vestige that remains of this Ancient and Curious Object, as it appeared on Sunday the 26th of March 1620; at which time, it was visited by King James the I., His Queen, and Charles, Prince of Wales; attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishops, Officers of State, Nobility, Ladies, etc. etc.; Who were received with great magnificence by Sir William Cockaine, Lord Mayor of London; assisted by the Court of Aldermen, Recorder, etc.; When a most excellent Sermon was preach’d from a text purposely selected by his Majesty (Psalm cii. Verses 13, 14), by Dr. John King, Bishop of London; recommending the speedy reparation of the Venerable Cathedral of St. Paul; which, with its unsteepled Tower, and incumberances of Houses, etc. appear on the back and side grounds.”
From a print engraved from an original picture in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and published by Richard Wilkinson, London, 4th June 1811.
The early years of the seventeenth century saw the Puritan at his best. That he should prefer and hold a narrow creed was inevitable; there was no creed or sect possible which was not narrow. In this respect the Puritan was in no way below the Catholic, the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, or the Brownist, or the Fifth Monarchy man, or any other sectarian. He was not, however, necessarily a gloomy and austere person. He might be a man of many accomplishments; Colonel Hutchinson fenced, danced, and played the viol. But the Puritan was, above all, conscious of his own individual responsibility. Between himself and his God he wanted no priest; he would not acknowledge that there was for any man the need of a priest, or for any priest the possession of supernatural power; he wanted no ceremonies; he remembered that symbolism, as all history proclaims aloud, leads infallibly to the worship of the symbol. He would not allow so simple a thing as the sign of the cross in baptism or the ring in marriage. The key-note of Puritanism, the thing which made it strong and glorified it in the persons of the best and noblest spirits, as Milton and Hutchinson, was that the man was master of himself. Consider, therefore, the wrath and the dismay when such a man saw himself, or thought himself deprived of his liberty of thought, compelled to conformity with what he held to be superstitions, dragged unwillingly and in chains along the road to Rome.
Among the lower ranks, the shopkeepers and the craftsmen of London, the same spirit prevailed; but it led to extravagances. The Bible was kept open on every counter; men discussed texts in every tavern; the barbers quoted Paul while they shaved their customers. A certain description of a citizen’s wife suggests the thought and discourse of a London household of this time. “She was very loving and obedient to her parents, kind to her husband, tender-hearted to her children, loving all who were godly, much misliking the wicked and profane; ... very ripe and perfect in all stories of the Bible; likewise in all stories of Martyrs.” The martyrs were the Marian martyrs; this good woman knew them all; there would be more martyrs, she knew full well, if the Catholics came back. And she knew, and delighted in, all the stories of the Bible; she was ripe in them and perfect in them. If the Catholics came back, her Bible would be taken from her. Consider the dismay of this poor woman when she was told that Laud was doing all he could to bring them back!
Green points out, very forcibly and truly, how the claims of despotic authority, of crown and church, jarred with all that was noblest in the temper of the time. “These were everywhere reaching forward to the conception of law. Bacon sought the law in material nature; Hooper asserted the rule of law over the spiritual world. The temper of the Puritan was eminently a temper of law. The diligence with which he searched the Scriptures sprang from his earnestness to discover a Divine Will, which, in all things, great or small, he might implicitly obey. But this implicit obedience was reserved for the Divine Will alone: for human ordinances derived their strength only from their correspondence with the revealed law by God.” Against such a temper, with such a stubborn people, fully persuaded that their eternal welfare depended upon their adherence to their own convictions, Charles and Laud were bound to fail.
WILLIAM LAUD (1573–1645)
Archbishop of Canterbury.
It must be admitted that the better type of Puritan was apt to degenerate and to give way to a narrower and a stricter school. There appeared the Puritan who pulled down and cut in pieces the Maypoles—those of St. Andrew Undershaft, and of Basing Lane, for example. Also there appeared the Puritan who put down games and sports:—
“I’ve heard our fine refined clergy teach,