In the year 1633 appeared Prynne’s Histrio Mastix, a violent attack on play-acting, dancing, and masques. In all these things the Queen took great delight. Therefore the work was supposed to be directed against her. A brutal sentence was inflicted upon Prynne, and was duly carried out, and after pillory, branding on the forehead, having his nose slit and his ears cut off, the wretched man was condemned to be disbarred, to be deprived of his University degree, and to be imprisoned for life.
The freedom of the press was of course attacked. Laud assumed a censorship over all new books and over the sale or circulation of old books. Among other books prohibited were Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Bishop Jewel’s Works. Prynne, and with him Dr. Bastwick, a physician, and Henry Burton, a divine, all three being prisoners in the Tower, were prosecuted in the Star Chamber for writing libellous and schismatical books. They were sentenced to pay £5000 each; to stand in pillory; to lose their ears, or, in Prynne’s case, to lose what was left of his ears; to be branded and to be imprisoned in Launceston, Lancaster, and Carnarvon. An immense multitude gathered to see the sentence carried out; they “cried and howled terribly”; they followed the prisoners with shouts of good wishes and groans for their persecutors; they threw money into the coach in which Burton’s wife was sitting. Laud complained afterwards that the prisoners were suffered to speak to the people, and that notes were taken of their speeches and circulated in the City. At Chester, on his way to Carnarvon, Prynne was entertained by the Sheriff and a number of gentlemen, who refreshed him with a good dinner, and gave him tapestry and carpets for his cell.
Let us turn to the other side of religious opinion. If the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, furnished the popular side with arguments in support of every doctrine they professed, the same authority was called in for the maintenance and defence of the High Church and Loyalist party. Laud and his friends were by no means without Scriptural defence. For instance, the most rigid rule of conduct advanced by the divines of Charles the Second’s reign was that of passive obedience, together with the corollary that resistance to the King’s authority was a mortal sin. This doctrine seems to us absurd, we who inherit the training of two hundred years in the belief that all power is conferred by the people and may be withdrawn by the people. But, in fact, the doctrine was perfectly logical if one admitted that the English monarchy was an Oriental despotism such as that of Solomon or any other Eastern king. I have before me a sermon preached on February 6, 1668, in Ripon Cathedral, by the Dean, in which the doctrine is boldly advanced and upheld. The text is from 1 Kings viii. 66, and relates how, after the great and solemn function of the dedication with the blood of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep—surely there is here a superfluity of ciphers—and after a great feast, the people went away blessing the King. One would think this a weak text for the support of such a doctrine, but the learned Dean bolsters it up with an abundance of instances and texts. Thus “St. Paul says that Kings are, not by God’s sufferance but by his ordinance, and therefore, even supposing them never so bad, they are not to be resisted. You may take up the Buckles of Patience; but you must not take up Arms against them; for Rebellion is such rank Poison to the Soul, that the least Scruple of it is Damnable, the very intention of it in the Heart is Mortal.”
In our passive obedience we may, if times are bad, console ourselves with the imitation of “Jeremiah in Prison; Daniel in the Lion’s Den; Amos struck through the Temples; Zachariah murdered between the Porch and the Altar; our Blessed Saviour living under Herod and Tiberius and crucified under Pontius Pilate; His Disciples under Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian; Christian Bishops, under Heathen Persecutors; none of whom ever reviled their Princes or resisted them.” One might object that in these cases resistance would have been useless. But he goes on, “Who questioned Saul for slaying the Priests and revolting to Idolatry? Who questioned Joram a Parricide and murderer of his nobles? Or Joash for his Idolatry and slaying the High Priest? Did the Sanhedrim do it? Who questioned Theodosius for murdering six Thousand innocent Persons? Who questioned Constance, or Valeros, or Julian the Apostate?” Again, one objects the people had not the power to question. Again, “Mephibosheth said of David, ‘My Lord the King is an Angel of God. Do therefore what is good in thine eyes.’”
“Did not God ordain Adam to rule over his wife without giving her or her children any commission to limit his power? What was given to him in his Person was also given to his Posterity; and the Paternal Government continued Monarchical from him to the Flood, and after that to the Confusion of Babel when Kingdoms were first erected and planted over the face of the Earth? And so what right or Title, the People can have ... to restrain the supremacy which was as untouched in Adam as any act of his will (it being due to the Supreme Fatherhood) or from what time it commenced, the Scripture nowhere tells us. Where is the People’s charter extant in Nature or in Scripture, for invading the Rights of the Crown? Or what authority can they have from either to introduce their Devices of presiding over him whom God and Nature hath set over them?”
This was the kind of preaching which was heard from a hundred pulpits in the City of London as well as in country churches and cathedrals during the whole reign of Charles II. and the beginning of his successor’s short period of power. There can be no doubt that it persuaded many, that the preachers themselves were in earnest, and that there were few indeed among the congregation who were able to point to the weakness of a doctrine which rested on an absurdity so great as the parallel between the King of a free people whose liberties had slowly developed from prehistoric customs and an Oriental despotism.
Let us note one or two points of custom and popular belief and practice which should be taken into account when we consider the religious spirit of the time.
Fasting, for instance, was still practised and enjoined by the Church, as it is to this day. The Puritans, while they rebelled against the observance of days, maintained the duty of occasional fast days. The High Church party insisted vehemently on the duty of fasting, and the Restoration brought back the usage of fasting as part of the Church discipline. By this time, however, the poorer classes had lost the habit of eating fish only on Fridays and in Lent, and it was impossible to enforce the practice.
Other customs and beliefs, survivals of the old faith, remained. Sanctuary, for example, although the ancient privileges had been abolished, although a criminal could no longer take refuge in a church, still continued under another form (see [p. 170]). That is to say, certain places remained where Sheriffs’ officers could not venture, where a writ could not be served, and where a rogue could not be arrested. Among these places were the streets on the site of Whitefriars: Ram Alley, Salisbury Court, Mitre Court, the Precinct of the Savoy, Fulwood’s Rents in Holborn, and on the other side of the river, Deadman’s Place, the Mint, and Montagu Close. These pretended privileges were not abolished by law until the year 1697. Some of the places, in spite of this abolition, preserved their immunity for a time by the terror of their lawlessness and violence. The “humours” of Alsatia have been immortalised by Scott, but it must be remembered that there were many other places besides Whitefriars at that time equally entitled to the privileges of sanctuary.
The abolition of Episcopacy was followed by a persecution of those of the clergy who were known to sympathise with the Anglican forms. They were accused of immorality or malignancy; they were haled before the House, which deprived them of their livings and gave them to persons of better principles. Of the sufferings of the London clergy, Walker’s well-known work gives a full account. He sums up as follows:—