ceremonies in matters of religion, as placing the communion table altarwise, and bowing or cringing in towards it, the refusing of the holy sacrament to such as refuse to come up to the rails." Mr. Grimstone uttered a violent denunciation of the late Convocation.1

§ 3. The first retaliatory act of the Commons was a vote that Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, the libellers, should be compensated by large sums of money to be paid by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The first clergyman formally accused before the Parliament was Dr. Cosin, Prebendary of Durham and Dean of Peterborough. Dr. Cosin had

been complained of in a previous Parliament for his Book of Devotions. He had been carrying on a sort of war with Mr. Peter Smart, a Prebendary of Durham. Smart had denounced the ritual at Durham Cathedral in a violent sermon. For this he had been censured by the High Commission Court at York. He replied by bringing Cosin before the Courts of Common Law under the Act of Uniformity. The judges, however, dismissed the case. Now, eagerly seizing his opportunity, Smart petitions against Cosin to the House of Commons (Nov. 10). (Jan. 23) the Commons vote Cosin to be superstitious and scandalous, and order him to be impeached before the Lords. The impeachment, however, when it was tried, utterly failed.

§ 4. On November 10 Sir Edward Dering made the first attack' on Archbishop Laud. He presented a petition from Mr. Wilson, a clergyman in Kent, who averred that he had been grievously persecuted by the archbishop. In commenting on it he said: "I hope before this year of threats run round, his grace will either have more grace or no grace at all. For our manifold griefs do fill a mighty and a vast circumference, yet, so that from every part our lines of sorrow do lead unto him, and point at him, the centre from whence our miseries in this Church, and many of them in the Commonwealth, do flow.”2

§ 5. The attack thus made, which was the precursor of the more serious measures which followed, well illustrates what has been affirmed above as to the peculiar character of the opposition to the Church developed in the Long Parliament. Sir E. Dering was no Puritan, neither was he in reality unfriendly to the archbishop. He says himself two years afterwards: "I thank God my heart hath never yet known the swelling of a personal malignity. Non sic didici Christum. And for the bishop I profess I did (and do) bear a good degree of personal love unto him. I did not dream at that time of extirpation and abolition of any more than his Nalson, i. 506.

2 Ib. 516. Sir E. Dering's Speeches in Matters of Religion.

archiepiscopacy. A severe reformation was a sweet song then. I am and ever was for no more.' "1

§ 6. But there were many others in the House who were not inclined to allow the archbishop to escape so lightly. It was thought by these that no man could be more useful in organising vindictive measures against him than Bishop Williams, who had been for some three years a prisoner, kept in durance, as was generally supposed, by Laud's revengeful temper. On November 16 an order was procured from the king for the release of Williams. The next day he officiated at Westminster Abbey, of which he was dean, being made the object of the greatest observance and flattery on the part of the Puritanical leaders. But Williams, whatever were his faults, was not without some feelings for his order, and regard for the Church. He refused to be made a catspaw in impeaching Laud. He knew well that he had no real grievance against him, and that in fact he owed him much. was ready, indeed, to be the leader of a new ecclesiastical policy, but not to rebel altogether against his Church. Hence, says his biographer, they soon wearied of him.2

He

§ 7. Petitions continued to flow in to the Houses against Church ceremonial and individual clergymen. On December 11, Alderman Pennington brought up an enormous petition from London against the government of the Church by bishops, and the Church ceremonial, divided into 28 heads of complaint.

§ 8. On December 16 it was resolved by the House of Com mons that "the canons made in the late Convocation were against the king's prerogative, the fundamental laws of the realm, the liberty and property of the subject, and contained divers other things tending to sedition and of dangerous consequences." It was also resolved that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the chief author of these canons, and a committee was appointed to inquire into all his former actions, and to prepare a bill against those of the Convocation who had subscribed the canons.3 On the same day the Scotch Commissioners presented to the Lords a long and minute charge against the Earl of Strafford and the Archbishop of Canterbury, charging the latter in particular with making novations in their religion, pressed upon them without order or law, contrary to the form established in their kirk; with forcing upon them a new book of canons, and a Liturgy or Book of Common Prayer, which did also carry with them many dangerous errors in point of doctrine. The archbishop being thus attacked simultaneously in

1 Preface to Speeches (1642).

2 Hacket's Williams, ii. 140.

3 Heylin's Laud, p. 465. Nalson, i. 681. Laud's History of his Troubles, p. 87.

both Houses, a conference between the two Houses was held, and it was decided (December 18) that the Commons should impeach the archbishop before the Lords. On that day, therefore, Mr. Denzil Holles came up to the Lords, and on the part of the Commons accused the archbishop of high treason. The Primate exclaimed indignantly that "not one man in the House of Commons did believe it in his heart." This excited some angry feeling in the Lords, and the archbishop was committed to the custody of Black Rod, being allowed first to go to his house to fetch some papers.1 Thus was the first decisive blow struck, and the House of Commons deliberately committed itself to the policy of undertaking a religious reformation, and, which was far worse, of vindictive retaliation on those who had been instrumental in establishing the system which it disliked.

1

§ 9. Within a few days of the committal of the archbishop, Wren, Bishop of Ely, and Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells, the two most prominent among the disciplinarian bishops, were also impeached by the Commons before the House of Lords, and bound in heavy bail to answer the charges which should be preferred against them.

§ 10. With the Primate in prison and the leading men in its body threatened with the same hard measure, the Convocation of the clergy, regularly begun with this Parliament, soon melted away. An attempt was made by one of the proctors, Mr. Warmistre, to induce the members of it to cancel the canons which they had made in the previous May. But this they were not prepared to do, neither is it probable that such a stultification of themselves would have saved them from the violent storm which was then raging against them.

§ 11. It now became the custom, when in any of the numerous petitions a clergyman was accused by name, to send for him to answer for himself before the House of Commons. The unsup

ported and ex parte statements of the petitions were taken for truth; and much injustice was committed towards the clergy in obliging them to remain in attendance on the committees of religion to reply to the charges made against them.2

§ 12. A more intolerable and unjustifiable outrage was the order made by the House of Commons (Jan. 23, 1641) that "Com- ( missioners should be sent into the several counties to demolish and remove out of churches and chapels all images, altars or tables turned altarwise, crucifixes, superstitious pictures, and other monuments of, and relics of, idolatry." They pretended to ground 1 Laud's Hist. of his Troubles, p. 74. 2 Persecutio Undecima, p. 10 3 Neal, ii. 318.

this order upon the Injunctions of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, but these orders had no real relevancy to the state of things then existing in the Church, neither had the House of Commons any right to put them in force, as they were not grounded on statute law but on the royal prerogative. They were made, however, the excuse for all sorts of tumultuary and sacrilegious proceedings. Encouraged by the order for the Commissioners to visit, the disaffected people took the matter into their own hands. "With extreme licence," says May, "the common people, almost from the very beginning of the Parliament, took upon themselves the reforming without authority, order, or decency; rudely disturbing church service while the Common Prayer was reading; tearing their books, surplices, and such things."

1

§ 13. The rapid growth of the anti-Church spirit caused a reaction in the minds of some who were zealous Church reformers. Thus, on February 9, in the debate on the great London petition against Episcopacy, Lord Digby, professing himself a keen reformer, repudiated the notion of destroying the Church because of the faults of individuals, and Lord Falkland did not hesitate to pass a striking eulogium on some of the bishops. The Presbyterian faction saw that it was necessary to proceed cautiously, and to confine their attacks to the most assailable parts of the Church system.

§ 14. On March 1, Archbishop Laud was conveyed to the Tower, fourteen Articles of Impeachment having been exhibited against him by the Commons, and (March 15) a Committee for Religion was named in the House of Lords. It was to consist of ten Earls, ten Barons, ten Bishops. It was to have power to call divines to it for consultation. It was to review doctrines as well as ceremonies, and in fact was a Commission for recasting the status of the Church of England, and essentially a Presbyterian motion skilfully disguised. The circular which it addressed to the divines summoned to assist it plainly declares its purpose. It stated that their lordships intended to examine all innovations in doctrine or discipline introduced into the Church without law since the Reformation; and "if their lordships shall in their judgment find it behoveful for the good of the Church and State, to examine after that the degrees and perfection of the Reformation itself."2 Bishops | Williams, Hall, Morton, and Usher, acted upon this Commission. No other bishops appear to have attended. The Commissioners met in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster, and had six sessions before their labours were interrupted. They condemned, in the first place, under the head of Doctrine, many things written by 1 May, History of the Parliament, p. 75. 2 Laud's History of his Troubles, p. 174.

members of the Church of England. Under the head of Discipline they condemned canopies over the Holy Table, credences or sidetables, candlesticks on the table, the carrying of infants after baptism to the Holy Table to dedicate them to God. In the PrayerBook they agreed that the Scriptures used should be read from the new translation, that prohibited times for marriage should be taken away. They made many other objections to the Prayer-Book"objections," says Hacket, "petty and stale, older than the old Exchange." i Under the head of Government the Bishop of Lincoln introduced a scheme of his own, which was not, however, fully discussed, as the march of events in the Lower House soon overwhelmed this committee of compromise.

§ 15. At the end of March the Commons sent up to the Lords a Bill for putting out clergymen from the Commission of the Peace, and for disabling the bishops from voting in Parliament. The Lords resented this Bill as an invasion of their privileges, and at once threw it out.2

§ 16. Upon this the aggressive party in the Commons determined on a bolder move, and on the 20th of May (while the whole land was still agitated by the great tragedy of the execution of Lord Strafford) they induced Sir E. Dering, chosen as a moderate man, to introduce that Bill which was afterwards known by the name of the "Root and Branch Bill." This provided for the utter abolition of bishops and all the officers depending on them, for the taking away of deans and chapters and the whole hierarchy of the Church. On May 27 the second reading of this Bill was carried. On June 15 the House voted that "deans and chapters, archdeacons, prebendaries, canons, etc., should be utterly abolished and taken away out of the Church." So far the Presbyterian faction had triumphed ; but though the House was ready to assail the outworks of Episcopacy, yet when it came to take into consideration the essential part it showed itself of another mind. Sir E. Dering, who had brought in the Bill without sufficiently considering, as he himself admits, its purport, declared his conviction that bishops "if not of apostolical institution, were yet of apostolical permission. For of and in the apostolical times all stories, all fathers, all ages have agreed that such bishops there were." Sir B. Rudyard, another zealous Church reformer, declared, "I am not of their opinion who believe that there is an innate ill quality in Episcopacy. Bishops have governed the Church for 1500 years, and no man will say but that God hath saved souls all that time under their govern1 Life of Williams, ii. 147. The alterations proposed may be seen in Cardwell's History of Conferences, p. 241. 2 Nalson, ii. 254.

3 Rushworth, iii. i. 283. Nalson, ii. 282.