The advantages
which the crown derived from this close alliance with the
Established Church were great; but they were not without serious drawbacks.
The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been
considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving
two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the
Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth
the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties
in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came to the
throne, those difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally
engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was
therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of
Mary than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to
the new opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in
Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their
brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors
of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during, some
years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more democratical
form of church government, than England had yet seen. These men
returned to their country convinced that the reform which had
been effected under King Edward had been far less searching and
extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it
was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from
Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her
brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were
little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human
authority. They had recently, in reliance on their own interpretation
of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong in immemorial
antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common exertion of
intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke of that gorgeous
and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect that,
immediately after such an emancipation, they would patiently submit
to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest
lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as
before a present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an
idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the
successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys of
earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him as the Beast, the
Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be expected that they
would immediately transfer to an upstart authority the
homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican; that they would
submit their private judgment to the authority of a Church founded
on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid to dissent
from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately
been the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to
conceive the indignation which must have been felt by bold and
inquisitive spirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an
institution younger by many years than themselves, an
institution which had, under their own eyes, gradually received
its form from the passions and interest of a court, began to
mimic the lofty style of Rome.
Since these men
could not be convinced, it was determined that they should be
persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It
found them a sect: it made them a faction. To their hatred of
the Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments
were intermingled; and each embittered the other. The opinions of
the Puritan concerning the relation of ruler and subject were
widely different from those which were inculcated in the Homilies. His
favourite divines had, both by precept and by example,
encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists
in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in arms against
idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too, respecting, the
government of the state took a tinge from his notions respecting
the government of the Church. Some of the sarcasms which
were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without much difficulty,
be turned against royalty; and many of the arguments which
were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synod
seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power was best
lodged in a parliament.
Thus, as the
priest of the Established Church was, from interest, from principle,
and from passion, zealous for the royal prerogatives, the
Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and from passion,
hostile to them. The power of the discontented sectaries was
great. They were found in every rank; but they were strongest among
the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small
proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth they
began to return a majority of the House of Commons. And
doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix their
attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the Crown
and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But
that was no season for internal dissensions. It might, indeed,
well be doubted whether the firmest union among all the orders of
the state could avert the common danger by which all were
threatened. Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe were
struggling for death or life. France divided against herself, had, for
a time, ceased to be of any account in Christendom. The
English Government was at the head of the Protestant
interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at home, extended a
powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches abroad. At the
head of the opposite party was the mightiest prince of the age,
a prince who ruled Spain, Portugal, Italy, the East and the West
Indies, whose armies repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose
fleets kept the coasts of Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long
seemed probable that Englishmen would have to fight desperately
on English ground for their religion and independence. Nor
were they ever for a moment free from apprehensions of
some great treason at home. For in that age it had become a point
of conscience and of honour with many men of generous natures
to sacrifice their country to their religion. A succession of dark
plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the life of the Queen
and the existence of the nation, kept society in constant alarm.
Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to
speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed
Churches was staked on the security of her person and on the success
of her administration. To strengthen her hands was, therefore,
the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that duty was well
performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to
which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour,
that she might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that
rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms
might be victorious by sea and land. One of the most stubborn of
the stubborn sect, immediately after his hand had been lopped
off for an offence into which he had been hurried by his intemperate
zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was still left him,
and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment with which these
men regarded her has descended to their posterity. The
Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them, have, as a body,
always venerated her memory.
During the greater
part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in the House of
Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no disposition to
array themselves in systematic opposition to the government. But,
when the defeat of the Armada, the successful resistance of the
United Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm establishment of
Henry the Fourth on the throne of France, and the death of
Philip the Second, had secured the State and the Church against all
danger from abroad, an obstinate struggle, destined to last
during several generations, instantly began at home.
It was in the
Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had, during forty
years, been silently gathering and husbanding strength, fought
its first great battle and won its first victory. The
ground was well chosen. The English Sovereigns had always been
entrusted with the supreme direction of commercial police. It was
their undoubted prerogative to regulate coin, weights, and
measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and ports. The line which
bounded their authority over trade had, as usual, been but loosely
drawn. They therefore, as usual, encroached on the province which
rightfully belonged to the legislature. The encroachment was,
as usual, patiently borne, till it became serious. But at
length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of
monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did
not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which
this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre,
lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at
exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in an angry and
determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed
the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's Highness to be
called in question. The language of the discontented party
was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voice of the whole
nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown was
surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, and
exclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to touch
the old liberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be
some danger that the long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would
have a shameful and disastrous end. She, however, with admirable
judgment and temper, declined the contest, put herself at the
head of the reforming party, redressed the grievance, thanked
the Commons, in touching and dignified language, for
their tender care of the general weal, brought back to herself the
hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable example
of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal with public
movements which he has not the means of resisting.
In the year 1603
the great Queen died. That year is, on many accounts, one of
the most important epochs in our history. It was then that both
Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with
England. Both Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the
Plantagenets; but neither country had been patient under the
yoke. Scotland had, with heroic energy, vindicated her
independence, had, from the time of Robert Bruce, been a separate
kingdom, and was now joined to the southern part of the island in a
manner which rather gratified than wounded her national pride.
Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second, been able
to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against
them long and fiercely. During, the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the English power in that island was constantly
declining, and in the days of Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest
point. The Irish dominions of that prince consisted only of the
counties of Dublin and Louth, of some parts of Meath and Kildare, and
of a few seaports scattered along the coast. A large portion even
of Leinster was not yet divided into counties. Munster, Ulster,
and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns, partly Celts, and
partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their origin and
had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the
sixteenth century, the English power had made great progress. The half
savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one
after another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few
weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which
had been begun more than four hundred years before by
Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had James the First
mounted the English throne when the last O'Donnel and O'Neil who
have held the rank of independent princes kissed his hand at
Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges held assizes in
every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded the
customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal tribes.
In extent Scotland
and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and were together
nearly equal to England, but were much less thickly peopled
than England, and were very far behind England in wealth and
civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her
soil; and, in the midst of light, the thick darkness of the
middle ages still rested on Ireland.
The population of
Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes which were
thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainous parts
of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the
population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the
purest English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and
Lancashire differed from each other. In Ireland, on the
contrary, the population, with the exception of the small English
colony near the coast, was Celtic, and still kept the Celtic
speech and manners.
In natural courage
and intelligence both the nations which now became connected
with England ranked high. In perseverance, in self command, in
forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life,
the Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand,
were distinguished by qualities which tend to make men
interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous
race, easily moved to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone
among the nations of northern Europe they had the
susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which
are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In mental
cultivation Scotland had an indisputable superiority.
Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom, it
already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured
countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched
as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with
more than the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in
science which would have added to the renown of Galileo. Ireland
could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The genius, with which
her aboriginal inhabitants were largely endowed' showed
itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged as they
were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion
of the pure gold of poetry.
Scotland, in
becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her dignity. Having,
during many generations, courageously withstood the English arms,
she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the most
honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained
her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments
remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments
which sate at Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in
Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive to emigrate
northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most pertinacious of
all races for what was to be scraped together in the poorest of all
treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means escaped the fate
ordained for every country which is connected, but not
incorporated, with another country of greater resources. Though in name an
independent kingdom, she was, during more than a century, really
treated, in many respects, as a subject province.
Ireland was
undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Her rude
national institutions had perished. The English colonists
submitted to the dictation of the mother country, without whose
support they could not exist, and indemnified themselves by
trampling on the people among whom they had settled. The
parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no law which had not been
previously approved by the English Privy Council. The
authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. The
executive administration was entrusted to men taken either from
England or from the English pale, and, in either case, regarded as
foreigners, and even as enemies, by the Celtic population.
But the
circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland to differ from
Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was Protestant. In no
part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the
Roman Catholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had
vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous
sovereign. They would not endure even such a compromise as had
been effected in England. They had established the Calvinistic
doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they made little distinction
between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and the Book of
Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whom she
sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by
the pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against
him the privileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the
ecclesiastical polity to which she was fondly attached as much
as it was in his effeminate nature to hate anything, and had
no sooner mounted the English throne than he began to show an
intolerant zeal for the government and ritual of the English
Church.
The Irish were the
only people of northern Europe who had remained true to
the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed to the
circumstance that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in
knowledge. But other causes had cooperated. The Reformation had
been a national as well as a moral revolt. It had been, not only an
insurrection of the laity against the clergy, but also an
insurrection of all the branches of the great German race against an
alien domination. It is a most significant circumstance that
no large society of which the tongue is not Teutonic has ever
turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived
from that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern
Rome to this day prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had
taken a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not
Rome, but England; and they had especial reason to abhor those
English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the great schism,
Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During the vain struggle which two
generations of Milesian princes maintained against the
Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became inseparably
blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud of
Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt.
The English conquerors. meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means
of conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation
with instructors capable of making themselves understood. No
translation of the Bible was put forth in the Irish language.
The government contented itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of
Protestant archbishops, bishops, and rectors, who did nothing,
and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the spoils of a Church
loved and revered by the great body of the people.
There was much in
the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which might well excite
the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet,
however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For
the first time all the British isles were peaceably united
under one sceptre.
It should seem
that the weight of England among European nations ought, from this
epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory which her new King
governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth
had inherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and
the most secure from attack that was to be found in the
world. The Plantagenets and Tudors had been repeatedly under
the necessity of defending themselves against Scotland while
they were engaged in continental war. The long conflict in
Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on their resources.
Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns had
been highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore,
not unreasonably be expected that England, Scotland, and
Ireland combined would form a state second to none that then existed.
All such
expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of the accession of
James the First, England descended from the rank which she had
hitherto held, and began to he regarded as a power hardly of the
second order. During many years the great British monarchy, under
four successive princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a
more important member of the European system than the little kingdom
of Scotland had previously been. This, however, is little
to be regretted. Of James the First, as of John, it may be
said that, if his administration had been able and splendid, it
would probably have been fatal to our country, and that we owe
more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom and courage
of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at a
critical moment. The time was fast approaching when either the King
must become absolute, or the parliament must control the whole
executive administration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth,
like Maurice of Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a
valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put himself at the
head of the Protestants of Europe, had he gained great victories
over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned Westminster with
the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish cathedrals, had he
hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's, and had he
found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fifty
thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached
to his person, the English Parliament would soon have been
nothing more than a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a
part. He began his administration by putting an end to the war
which had raged during many years between England and Spain; and
from that time he shunned hostilities with a caution which was
proof against the insults of his neighbours and the clamours of
his subjects. Not till the last year of his life could the
influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament, and his people
combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in defence of his
family and of his religion. It was well for those whom he governed
that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect of his
pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops
were needed, and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and
Germany swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was
still confided to the militia.
As the King had no
standing army, and did not even attempt to form one, it would
have been wise in him to avoid any conflict with his people.
But such was his indiscretion that, while he altogether
neglected the means which alone could make him really absolute, he
constantly put forward, in the most offensive form, claims of which
none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that
those strange theories which Filmer afterwards formed into a
system and which became the badge of the most violent class of
Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into notice. It was
gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary
monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar
favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was
a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and
even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even
that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse
possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive a
legitimate prince of his rights, that the authority of such a prince was
necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by which, in England
and in other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to
be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had
freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty
which a king might conclude with his people was merely a
declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of which
the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this
theory, though intended to strengthen the foundations of
government, altogether unsettles them. Does the divine and
immutable law of primogeniture admit females, or exclude them? On
either supposition half the sovereigns of Europe must be usurpers,
reigning in defiance of the law of God, and liable to be
dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine that kingly
government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives no countenance
from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read that the
chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king,
and that they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their
allegiance from him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the
notion that succession in order of primogeniture is
of divine institution, would rather seem to indicate that
younger brothers are under the especial protection of heaven. Isaac
was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of Isaac, nor Judah
of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David Nor does the
system of Filmer receive any countenance from those passages of
the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance of
God: for the government under which the writers of the New
Testament lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors
were republican magistrates, named by the senate. None of them
pretended to rule by right of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to
whom Christ commanded that tribute should be given, and Nero,
whom Paul directed the Romans to obey, were, according to the
patriarchal theory of government, usurpers. In the middle ages
the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would have been
regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible with
the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine
unknown to the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on
Wilful Rebellion had strongly, and indeed too strongly,
inculcated submission to constituted authority, but had made no
distinction between hereditary end elective monarchies, or between
monarchies and republics. Indeed most of the predecessors of
James would, from personal motives, have regarded the patriarchal
theory of government with aversion. William Rufus, Henry the
First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry
the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had all
reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave
doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It
was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could
have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest
authority in the realm had pronounced that neither was so.
The Tudors, far from considering the law of succession as a
divine and unchangeable institution, were constantly
tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of parliament, giving
him power to leave the crown by will, and actually made a
will to the prejudice of the royal family of Scotland. Edward
the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a similar power,
with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.
Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection,
and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and
enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law,
enacting that whoever should deny the competency of the reigning
sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter
the succession, should suffer death as a traitor: But the situation
of James was widely different from that of Elizabeth. Far
inferior to her in abilities and in popularity, regarded by the
English as an alien, and excluded from the throne by the testament
of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet the undoubted heir
of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had, therefore, an
obvious interest in inculcating the superstitions
notion that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by
law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and
temper. It soon found many advocates among those who aspired
to his favour, and made rapid progress among the clergy of the
Established Church.
Thus, at the very
moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest itself
strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of the
monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the
proudest and most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on
the throne.
James was always
boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and yet
it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly
opposed to all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed.
The policy of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong
acts under popular forms. It was thus that Augustus and
Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while the public regarded
them merely as eminent citizens invested with temporary
magistracies. The policy of James was the direct reverse of theirs.
He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantly telling
them that they held their privileges merely during his
pleasure and that they had no more business to inquire what he might
lawfully do than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed
before them, abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance,
and suffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed
to his strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation
excited by his claims and the scorn excited by his concessions went
on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions,
and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and
rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his
childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial
accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and
accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly.
Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the venerable
associations by which the throng had long been fenced were gradually
losing their strength. During two hundred years all the sovereigns
who had ruled England, with the exception of Henry the Sixth,
had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of princely
bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary
level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the decisive
struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be
exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly
tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style
alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue.
In the meantime
the religious dissensions, by which, from the days of Edward the
Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had
become more formidable than ever. The interval which had
separated the first generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was
small indeed when compared with the interval which separated the
third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the
recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the
Roman Catholic party still inspired apprehension,
while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired to universal
dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had a strong common
interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity which they felt
towards each other was languid when compared with the animosity
which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and Nonconformists had
heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme severity
against the Papists. But when more than half a century of
undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established
Church, when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily
Protestant, when England was at peace with all the world, when there
was no danger that Popery would be forced by foreign arms on
the nation, when the last confessors who had stood before
Bonner had passed away, a change took place in the feeling of the
Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the Roman Catholic doctrine
and discipline was considerably mitigated. Their dislike of
the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The
controversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party
took such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new
controversies of still greater importance were added to the old
subjects of dispute.
The founders of
the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an ancient, a decent,
and a convenient ecclesiastical polity, but had not declared
that form of church government to be of divine institution. We
have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the
office of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper,
Whitgift, and other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as
innocent, as useful, as what the state might lawfully establish, as
what, when established by the state, was entitled to the respect of
every citizen. But they never denied that a Christian
community without a Bishop might be a pure Church. On the contrary, they
regarded the Protestants of the Continent as of the same
household of faith with themselves. Englishmen in England were
indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they
were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of the
Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English
churchman, nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed
without scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad
the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in state to the very
worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted at home, and
carefully abstained from decorating their private chapels after the
Anglican fashion, lest scandal should be given to weaker
brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the Primate of all
England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister,
ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by the
Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments in
any part of the province of Canterbury. In the year 1603, the
Convocation solemnly recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church
in which episcopal control and episcopal ordination were
then unknown, as a branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ.8
It was even held that Presbyterian ministers were entitled to
place and voice in oecumenical councils. When the States General
of the United Provinces convoked at Dort a synod of doctors
not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and an English Dean,
commissioned by the head of the English Church, sate with those
doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on the gravest
questions of theology. Nay, many English benefices were held by
divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form
used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such
cases then thought necessary, or even lawful.
But a new race of
divines was already rising in the Church of England. In their
view the episcopal office was essential to the welfare of a
Christian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances
of religion. To that office belonged certain high and sacred
privileges, which no human power could give or take away. A
church might as well be without the doctrine of the Trinity, or the
doctrine of the Incarnation, as without the apostolical
orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in the midst of all her
corruptions, had retained the apostolical orders, was nearer to
primitive purity than those reformed societies which had rashly set up,
in opposition to the divine model, a system invented by men.
In the days of
Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders of the Anglican
ritual had generally contented themselves with saying that it
might be used without sin, and that, therefore, none but a
perverse and undutiful subject would refuse to use it when enjoined to
do so by the magistrate. Now, however, that rising party which
claimed for the polity of the Church a celestial origin
began to ascribe to her services a new dignity and importance. It
was hinted that, if the established worship had any fault,
that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the Reformers had, in
the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient
ceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days and
places were again held in mysterious veneration. Some
practices which had long been disused, and which were commonly
regarded as superstitious mummeries, were revived. Paintings and
carvings, which had escaped the fury of the first generation of
Protestants, became the objects of a respect such as to many seemed
idolatrous.
No part of the
system of the old Church had been more detested by the Reformers than
the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine of
Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the
apostle Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the
crimes and scandals which seemed to prove the justice of this
awful denunciation. Luther had evinced his own opinion in the
clearest manner, by espousing a nun. Some of the most illustrious
bishops and priests who had died by fire during the reign of Mary
had left wives and children. Now, however, it began to be
rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared in the Church of
England; that there was in high quarters a prejudice against
married priests; that even laymen, who called themselves
Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost amounted to
vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set
up a nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a
company of virgins dedicated to God.
Nor was this all.
A class of questions, as to which the founders of the Anglican
Church and the first generation of Puritans had differed little or
not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The
controversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy had
related almost exclusively to Church government and to
ceremonies. There had been no serious quarrel between the
contending parties on points of metaphysical theology. The
doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy touching original
sin, faith, grace, predestination, and election, were
those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close
of Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop
Whitgift, drew up, in concert with the Bishop of London and other
theologians, the celebrated instrument known by the name of the
Lambeth Articles. In that instrument the most startling of the
Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed with a distinctness which
would shock many who, in our age, are reputed Calvinists. One
clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshly of Calvin,
was arraigned for his presumption by the University of
Cambridge, and escaped punishment only by expressing his
firm belief in the tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and
his sorrow for the offence which he had given to pious men by
reflecting on the great French reformer. The school of divinity
of which Hooker was the chief occupies a middle place
between the school of Cranmer and the school of Laud; and Hooker
has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians as an
ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superior in
wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to
whom thousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth,
but who was himself indebted to God alone. When the Arminian
controversy arose in Holland, the English government and the English
Church lent strong support to the Calvinistic party; nor is the
English name altogether free from the stain which has been
left on that party by the imprisonment of Grocius and the judicial
murder of Barneveldt.
But, even before
the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the Anglican clergy
which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic Church government
and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to regard with
dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling was very naturally
strengthened by the gross injustice, insolence, and
cruelty of the party which was prevalent at Dort. The Arminian
doctrine, a doctrine less austerely logical than that of the early
Reformers, but more agreeable to the popular notions of the
divine justice and benevolence, spread fast and wide. The
infection soon reached the court. Opinions which at the time of the
accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without imminent
risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best title to
preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple country
gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth
as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in
England.
While the majority
of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the
position which they had originally occupied, the majority of the
Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically
opposite, from the principles and practices of their fathers. The
persecution which the separatists had undergone had been
severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy.
They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into
savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressed sects,
they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety,
encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a
disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked
themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were
only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there
was little indeed which, even when perverted by the most
disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the indulgence of
malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained the
history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and
ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him
to do many things which, if done without his special command,
would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not
difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that
might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans
therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference, which,
perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves; but
which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid
to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused to that
tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul
have come down to us. They baptized their children by the
names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and
warriors. In defiance of the express and reiterated
declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly festival by
which the Church had, from the primitive times,
commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath. They
sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and
for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of
Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which
were assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The
prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general
who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in
defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of eastern
hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who
had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under the shadow
of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians
suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners
were subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue,
when the synagogue was in its worst state. The dress, the
deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements of the rigid sect
were regulated on principles not unlike those of the Pharisees
who, proud of their washed hands and broad phylacteries,
taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a winebibber. It was
a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend's health,
to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear
love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to
read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would
have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of
Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical
intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more than monastic
gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers
had been eminently distinguished, and to which they had been, in
no small measure, indebted for their success, were regarded by
the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion.
Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar,
because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it.
The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ
was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques
was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were
idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at
once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the
sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the
nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar
dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style
of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the English
language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric
poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the common
concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of
this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both of
Prelatists and libertines.
Thus the political
and religious schism which had originated in the sixteenth
century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism
were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism
were in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The
violent Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative,
and the violent Puritans who were, to a man, zealous for the
privileges of Parliament, regarded each other with animosity
more intense than that which, in the preceding generation, had
existed between Catholics and Protestants.
While the minds of
men were in this state, the country, after a peace of many
years, at length engaged in a war which required strenuous
exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutional
crisis. It was necessary that the King should have a large military
force. He could not have such a force without money. He could
not legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It
followed, therefore, that he either must administer the
government in conformity with the sense of the House of Commons,
or must venture on such a violation of the fundamental laws
of the land as had been unknown during several centuries. The
Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true, occasionally
supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a benevolence or a
forced loan: but these expedients were always of a temporary
nature. To meet the regular charge of a long war by regular taxation,
imposed without the consent of the Estates of the realm, was a
course which Henry the Eighth himself would not have dared to
take. It seemed, therefore, that the decisive hour was approaching,
and that the English Parliament would soon either share the
fate of the senates of the Continent, or obtain supreme ascendency
in the state.
Just at this
conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded to the throne. He
had received from nature a far better understanding, a
far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his
father's. He had inherited his father's political theories, and was
much more disposed than his father to carry them into
practice. He was, like his father, a zealous Episcopalian. He
was, moreover, what his father had never been, a zealous Arminian,
and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much better than a
Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles had some of the
qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote and
spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but
after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His
taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified,
though not gracious, his domestic life without blemish.
Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain
on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable
propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his
conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was
sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this
great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious,
not only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle.
He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most
esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing
of the nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he
would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every
promise which he made, there was an implied reservation that
such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and
that of the necessity he was the sole judge.
And now began that
hazardous game on which were staked the destinies of the
English people. It was played on the side of the House of Commons
with keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness, and
perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far
before them were at the head of that assembly. They were resolved to
place the King in such a situation that he must either conduct the
administration in conformity with the wishes of his Parliament,
or make outrageous attacks on the most sacred principles of the
constitution. They accordingly doled out supplies to him
very sparingly. He found that he must govern either in harmony
with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choice
was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes
by his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and
found it more intractable than the first. He again resorted to
the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any
show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition
into prison At the same time a new grievance, which the peculiar
feelings and habits of the English nation made insupportably
painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to be of fearful
augury, excited general discontent and alarm. Companies of
soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in some
places, substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of
the realm.
The King called a
third Parliament, and soon perceived that the opposition was
stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a change of
tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the
demands of the Commons, he, after much altercation and
many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully
adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities. The
Parliament granted an ample supply. The King ratified, in the
most solemn manner, that celebrated law, which is known by the
name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second Great
Charter of the liberties of England. By ratifying that law he bound
himself never again to raise. money without the consent of the
Houses, never again to imprison any person, except in due course of
law, and never again to subject his people to the jurisdiction
of courts martial.
The day on which
the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnly given to
this great Act, was a day of joy and hope. The Commons, who
crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth into loud
acclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form of
words by which our princes have, during many ages, signified
their assent to the wishes of the Estates of the realm. Those
acclamations were reechoed by the voice of the capital and of the
nation; but within three weeks it became manifest that
Charles had no intention of observing the compact into which he had
entered. The supply given by the representatives of
the nation was collected. The promise by which that supply had
been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed. The
Parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure. Some
of the most distinguished members were imprisoned; and
one of them, Sir John Eliot, after years of suffering, died in
confinement.
Charles, however,
could not venture to raise, by his own authority, taxes
sufficient for carrying on war. He accordingly hastened to make
peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave his whole mind to
British politics.
Now commenced a
new era. Many English Kings had occasionally committed
unconstitutional acts: but none had ever systematically attempted to make
himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such
was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From
March 1629 to April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in
our history had there been an interval of eleven years
between Parliament and Parliament. Only once had there been an
interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to
refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in
the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.
It is proved, by
the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters, that,
during this part of his reign, the provisions of the Petition of
Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly,
and on system; that a large part of the revenue was raised without
any legal authority; and that persons obnoxious to the
government languished for years in prison, without being ever
called upon to plead before any tribunal.
For these things
history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible. From
the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister.
Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were
suited to his purposes, were at the head of different
departments of the administration.
Thomas Wentworth,
successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of Strafford, a man
of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of a cruel and
imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political and
military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished
members of the opposition, and felt towards those whom he had
deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been
characteristic of apostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the
resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately
belonged, and had formed a vast and deeply meditated scheme
which very nearly confounded even the able tactics of the
statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been directed. To this
scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gave the
expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all, and
more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France; to make
Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put
the estates and the personal liberty of the whole people at
the disposal of the crown; to deprive the courts of law of all
independent authority, even in ordinary questions of civil right
between man and man; and to punish with merciless rigour all who
murmured at the acts of the government, or who applied, even in
the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for
relief against those acts.
This was his end;
and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be
attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a clearness, a
coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object
pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly
entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one
instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects
could be carried into execution. That instrument was a standing
army. To the forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all
the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he
actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not
only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English
colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island, the King
was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be.
The ecclesiastical
administration was, in the meantime, principally
directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the
prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the
principles of the Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome.
His theology was more remote than even that of the Dutch
Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for
ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his
ill concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the
ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal with which he
asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the laity,
would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if
he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his
ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the
world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick
to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathise with the
sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men,
of mistaking his own peevish and malignant moods for emotions
of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the
realm was subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every
little congregation of separatists was tracked out and broken up.
Even the devotions of private families could not escape the
vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire that the
deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable
bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On
the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the
Bishops of several extensive dioceses were able to report to him
that not a single dissenter was to be found within their
jurisdiction.
The tribunals
afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law,
holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were
scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were
less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power
than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the
lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the
nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were
the Star Chamber and the High Commission, the former a
political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither was a part of the
old constitution of England. The Star Chamber had been
remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. The power
which these boards had possessed before the accession of
Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed
when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by
the violent spirit of the primate, and free from the control
of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a
malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The
government was able through their instrumentality,
to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A
separate council which sate at York, under the presidency of
Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of
prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All
these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster
Hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished
Royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that
there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal
experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber,
that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had
scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the
Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on the
north of the Trent.
The government of
England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as that
of France. But that one point was all important. There was still no
standing army. There was therefore, no security that the
whole fabric of tyranny might not be subverted in a single day;
and, if taxes were imposed by the royal authority for the
support of an army, it was probable that there would be an
immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the difficulty which
more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch,
in concert with other lawyers who were employed by the
government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted.
The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants
of the counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the
defence of the border, had sometimes called on the maritime
counties to furnish ships for the defence of the coast. In the room
of ships money had sometimes been accepted. This old practice
it was now determined, after a long interval, not only to revive
but to extend. Former princes had raised shipmoney only in
time of war: it was now exacted in a time of profound peace.
Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, had raised
shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the inland
shires. Former princes had raised shipmoney only for the maritime
defence of the country: It was now exacted, by the admission of
the Royalists themselves. With the object, not of maintaining a
navy, but of furnishing the King with supplies which might be
increased at his discretion to any amount, and expended at his
discretion for any purpose.
The whole nation
was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and well
born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his
own neighbourhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom
generally, had the courage to step forward, to confront the whole
power of the government, and take on himself the cost and the
risk of disputing the prerogative to which the King laid claim.
The case was argued before the judges in the Exchequer Chamber.
So strong were the arguments against the pretensions of the
crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were, the
majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still
there was a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced
that one great and productive tax might be imposed by the royal
authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was impossible to
vindicate their judgment except by reasons directly leading to a
conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If money might
legally be raised without the consent of Parliament for the support of
a fleet, it was not easy to deny that money might, without
consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the support of an
army.
The decision of
the judges increased the irritation of the people. A century
earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a general
rising. But discontent did not now so readily as in an earlier
age take the form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily
advancing in wealth and in civilisation. Since the great northern
Earls took up arms against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed;
and during those seventy years there had been no civil war.
Never, during the whole existence of the English nation, had so
long a period passed without intestine hostilities. Men
had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry,
and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drew
the sword.
This was the
conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in the
greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair of the
destiny of their country; and many looked to the American
wilderness as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and
spiritual freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause
of their religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the
hardships of uncivilised life, neither the fangs of savage
beasts nor the tomahawks of more savage men, had built, amidst the
primeval forests, villages which are now great and opulent
cities, but which have, through every change, retained some
trace of the character derived from their founders. The government
regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and attempted
violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the
population of New England from being largely recruited by
stouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old England.
And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few
years might probably suffice for the execution of his great
design. If strict economy were observed, if all collision with
foreign powers were carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would
be cleared off: there would be funds available for the support of
a large military force; and that force would soon break the
refractory spirit of the nation.
At this crisis an
act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole face of
public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a
cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in
the South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which
there was the greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame,
and that a flame might become a conflagration. Constitutional
opposition, indeed, such as he had encountered at Westminster, he
had not to apprehend at Edinburgh. The Parliament of his northern
kingdom was a very different body from that which bore the same name
in England. It was ill constituted: it was little considered;
and it had never imposed any serious restraint on any of his
predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house. The commissioners
of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the
great nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been approved
by the Lords of Articles. a committee which was really, though not
in form, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish
Parliament was obsequious, the Scottish people had always been
singularly turbulent and ungovernable. They had butchered their
first James in his bedchamber: they had repeatedly arrayed
themselves in arms against James the Second; they had slain
James the Third on the field of battle: their disobedience had
broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposed and
imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was
still as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial.
All along the southern border, and all along the line between
the highlands and the lowlands, raged an incessant
predatory war. In every part of the country men were accustomed to
redress their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation
had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled during their long
absence. The supreme influence over the public mind was divided
between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil and
the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had often
impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and
preachers who had inherited the republican opinions and the
unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the national and religious
feelings of the population had been wounded. All orders of men
complained that their country, that country which had, with so much
glory, defended her independence against the ablest and bravest
Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality of her native
princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province of
England. In no part of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine and
discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church
of Rome was regarded by the great body of the people with a
hatred which might justly be called ferocious; and the Church of
England, which seemed to be every day becoming more and more like the
Church of Rome, was an object of scarcely less aversion.