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Dispaccio 16 Settembre, 1636: Io dissi, Sire, noi teniamo Vra Maest? sopra il parlamento. Egli rispose che era vero, ma che bisognava pensare alla difficolt? grandissime.'

'Il re dimando se non mi pareva che fosse opinione cattiva di supporre l' autorit? regia ai capricci d'un uomo.'

Cuneo: 'Demandai al re, che dottrina teneva egli per buona, fuori quelle che era nella scrittura sacra. Il re me rispose, che credeva li primi quattro concilii ed i tre simboli.'

Conference with Fisher the Jesuit. History of the Troubles, 460.

Cuneo's Letters, June 5, 1637. 'Il Cantuarense seguita en li soliti artificii a mostrarsi buon capo della chiesa Anglicana. Ho procurato di far tastare il Cantuarense, in ordine di levare lo scisma, ma egli ? molto vario nel suo discorso ora mostrando di voler aderire alia dottrina delli primi 400 anni ed ora lamentandosi del concilio di Trento--timido ambicioso ed inconstante e poco abile all' imprese grandi.'

Ubi sint locorum verbi dei ministri eandem illi atque aequalem omnes habent tum potestatem, tum autoritatem, ut qui sint aeque omnes Christi unici illius episcopi universalis et capitis ecclesiae ministri. Art. 31.

Fuller, Church History x. 307.

De republica ecclesiastica. T. ii , lib. vi.

Brace's Calendar, 1633-4 furnishes in the preface and in the extracts which it contains, much new information about Laud.

According to Correro, Relatione 1637, his offence was 'd'aver parlato alla tavola contre il presente governo. La sua pena--ha eccitato le lingue quasi dell' universale alle maggiori exclamationi.'

Dated at Dublin Castle, December 16, 1634. Strafford Letters i. 344. The Canon in Collier ii. 763.

Considerations, in Strafford Letters ii. 60.

Forster's Statesmen ii. 380.

Gussoni, Relatione 1635: 'Gli Inglesi navigano molto meglio armate di quelle caravelle Portoghesi, quali erano per la maggior parte preda degli Olandesi.'

Gussoni: 'Abonda con molta superfluit? cosi per il numero d' offiziali et ministri d' ogni qualit?, come per le assignationi del piatto quotidiano che si da lauto e splendido anche eccedentemente.'

Gachet, Lettres de Rubens. Guhl, Kunstlerbriefe ii. 189.

Old Parliamentary History xix. 83; Waagen, Kunstwerke und Kunstler in England, i. 450.

CONFLICTING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE AND WITHIN THE KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN.

If we adhere to the view that the Latin and Teutonic nations, in the development which they have reached under the influence of the Western Church, make up a great indivisible community which furthermore appears as an unit in the world; and if we further look for the characteristic features by which this system of nations is distinguished from all other growths of worldwide historical importance, we find that they are principally two; the close connexion between Church and State involving a constant struggle between these two principles; and next the mixture of monarchical with representative institutions in each single country and the internal conflicts thence arising. At times republican formations made their appearance; yet they were hardly able to emancipate themselves from aristocratic and even from monarchical forms. At times absolute monarchy obtained the upper hand; but, if we consider the governments which are most conspicuous in this respect, we find that the supreme will of the sovereign was hardly ever able to prevail over the great obstacles presented by provinces and individuals. So there have been centuries in which the great monarchies appear to have been broken up or oppressed by the hierarchy: but even the Papacy met with opposition; the authority of those self-same popular bodies, which were perhaps originally allied with it, in later times was opposed to it. The characteristic life of the West, the continuity of its development, and its ascendancy in the world, are due to this conflict between ecclesiastical and political influences, between the tendencies towards monarchical and those towards representative government, and to the mutual action of independent nationalities, within an unity which embraced all, but yet was never complete, and was rather ideal than actually realised.

The great secession from Rome which came to pass in the sixteenth century did not break up this system of nations. The more remote were brought at times into closer relations with one another by the universal opposition and struggle, which in turn very materially affected the shapes into which the domestic relations of the individual states were thrown.

If Protestantism contributed to strengthen the power of the sovereigns under whose lead it was carried out, yet the temporal estates also shared the gain which accrued from the defeat and curtailment of ecclesiastical interests; for by this means their own power became more firmly established. The restoration of Catholicism at a later period had a very different effect. The concessions which the Papacy voluntarily made to secure it, redounded mainly to the advantage of the sovereigns. The Popes themselves, in order to revive their ecclesiastical authority in every country, employed all the pecuniary resources which could in any way be raised in their newly conquered state, which now for the first time was entirely reduced to obedience. In Italy they created for themselves a new Grand Duchy, by the erection of which the rights of the municipalities comprised within it were entirely destroyed. The Spanish monarchy, which in this epoch played the most important part, had not, it is true, annihilated, but had kept down the independence of the provinces in the Italian as well as in the Spanish peninsula, which in earlier times had been so powerful; and as by the aid of American gold it had obtained a power independent of the good will of the Estates, the authority of the sovereign was asserted far and wide. These two agencies reacted most powerfully upon Germany. Even before the Thirty Years' War the territories of the ecclesiastical and Catholic princes followed the example of Rome. During the war, and by means of it, the house of Austria brought into subjection the representative constitution of the kingdoms and countries belonging to it which had attached themselves to the principles of Protestantism. Frederick Elector Palatine stood at the head of these independent bodies, but they did not understand how to support him effectively. They fell with him. The same thing then happened in the central districts of Germany, where the combinations between sovereigns and estates were so weak from their rivalry with one another that they went to ruin.

In France Catholicism had once helped the Estates in their struggle against the monarch, but this alliance could not be maintained. After the hereditary sovereign had reached throne by the going over to Catholicism, he still based his authority upon the maintenance of an equilibrium between the two religious parties. But for his successors this policy was no longer necessary. The Catholic portion of their subjects attached themselves to them without any regard to a title conferred by the Estates; and though the magnates then sought for safety principally in an alliance with Protestant interests, the result was that ecclesiastical and political independence sustained a common defeat at the hands of the sovereign and of the Catholic party. The power of the state assumed a deeper Catholic colour the more it aimed at absolutism.

The principle of monarchy combined with Catholicism now appeared in different forms in three great kingdoms. In that of Spain it was intolerant of Protestantism, but was surrounded by provincial assemblies of estates, whose action, although subdued, was not altogether annihilated: in the French monarchy it appeared more tolerant of the Protestants even on its own ground, but was master of the Estates, which just at this period were completely subdued: in the Austrian monarchy it was intolerant both towards the Protestants who were persecuted and ejected, and towards the Estates which had just been conquered. The struggle which had broken out between France on the one side, and Spain combined with Austria on the other, caused the two latter kingdoms to adopt, or at least to try to adopt, the principle of unity under an absolute monarch which had been carried out in the former. There is a very peculiar difference in the relations of the three powers with the German Protestants, who were saved from utter ruin by the intervention of the King of Sweden. The French sought to make the Protestant Estates of the Empire as independent as possible of Austria: Spain at that time was willing to tolerate their faith, but wished to bring them back under the control of the Emperor: at the Imperial court itself there was a tendency prevailing, at least for a time, to suppress both their belief and their independence.

Thus the Western world at this epoch was pervaded by a threefold hostility: by the religious dispute between the two great parties, in which the Catholic party had obtained an immeasurable superiority: by the great opposition in regard to foreign policy between France and the Austro-Spanish power; and by a third antagonism in regard to domestic affairs. The monarchical had become more than ever supreme over the constitutional principle.

Let us now sum up the position which England under the Stuarts occupied in these great questions.

From the posterity of Mary Stuart, who at the same time were the successors of Queen Elizabeth, and to whom the alliances of both queens descended, nothing else could be expected than that they should interfere but little in the religious struggles of the continent. They sought to keep on good terms, and even in alliance with both parties. They had certainly been implicated in the great struggle by the affair of the Palatinate: Charles I had on one occasion even taken up a position at the head of the Protestant party; but he had suffered a defeat in that character. This connexion had even turned out ruinous to the Protestants: henceforward he left them to shift for themselves as far as the principal question was concerned, and followed only his private end, the restoration of his nephew, the Elector Palatine.

In his disputes with the two great continental powers, James I had carried out still further the policy for which Elizabeth had paved the way. He had contributed to the emancipation of the Republic of the Netherlands from Spain, for the ascendancy of this monarchy by land and sea was obnoxious to James himself. But he would go no further. It was altogether contrary to his wish and intention that he was involved at the end of his days in a quarrel with Spain. As in the religious, so also in the political conflict, the Stuarts did not wish, properly speaking, to take the side either of France or Spain. From this radical tendency of their policy they sometimes deviated, but always returned to it again.

In both those great questions in fine which decided the future of the world, Charles I, after his interference had once resulted in failure, no longer took a pronounced and independent part. We saw what was the issue of his wish to be the ally at the same time of Sweden and of Spain. In domestic affairs on the contrary he had fixed his eyes upon a definite aim. Here, although the questions which were agitated might be altogether native to the English soil and atmosphere, his policy had some analogy with that which prevailed on the continent. He also, like the great Catholic sovereigns, sought to crush the pretensions of the Estates in political affairs; and he, like them, endeavoured to strengthen the royal power by means of the attributes of the spiritual.

It was not that Charles I had thought of subjecting himself to the Papacy. We know how far his soul was averse to this: he could not come to an understanding with the Pope even about the formula in which the Catholics were to promise their obedience, in order to make their toleration possible for him. The English crown could not be strengthened, as was the case with other powers, by encouraging the ideas of Catholicism: on the contrary, it was rather supported by the authority which it had wrested from the Papacy. The royal supremacy over the Church was intended, by means of the closest alliance with the Protestant bishops, to become, in the hands of the supreme power, a weapon which should be employed in all three kingdoms. The bishops were confirmed in their possessions and dignity; moreover the common opposition to their opponents, who had been hated by the Stuarts before they left Scotland, united the bishops as closely as possible with the sovereign, whose cause they defended as their own. When the crown found that its interest lay in sparing the Catholics and suppressing the Puritans, an extraordinary effect followed; the ecclesiastical power which had grown out of the Reformation proved more favourable to the adherents of the old creed than to the zealous champions of the new.

This was completely in harmony with the position of the Stuarts when they received their crown. They wished to be Protestants, but to avoid the hostility of the Catholics and, if possible, to annihilate Puritanism. Their relation with the Episcopal Church was on the whole the same with that which Elizabeth had established; but it differed from it, inasmuch as the Queen persecuted the Catholics with decided hostility and tolerated the Presbyterians as her indispensable allies in this conflict, while the Stuarts hated the Presbyterians, and wished to grant toleration to the Catholics.

The hereditary right of the Stuarts, which was acknowledged by both religious parties, had been the ground of the union between Scotland and England, and of the greater obedience of Ireland: it was therefore natural that the Parliaments should appear to these monarchs to be subordinate provincial bodies, which had only a limited influence on the government of the whole monarchy. They thought themselves fully warranted in enforcing the rights which the monarchy derived either from the abstract idea they had formed of it, or from the customs of their predecessors, without regard to the Parliaments. They regarded them as assemblies of counsellors which they might consult or not at their discretion, and whose duty it was to support the crown, without the right of dictating to it in any way, or of obstructing it in its movements.

The whole system arose out of the views, experiences, and intentions which James I brought with him to the English throne. But this sovereign was as skilful in practice as he was aspiring in theory. Incessant oscillation between opposite parties had in him become a second nature. He avoided driving the adversaries with whom he contended to desperation: he never pushed matters to an extremity. He never lost sight of his end for a moment, but he sought to effect his designs if necessary by circuitous paths, and by means of clever and pliant tools; he had no scruple about sacrificing any one who did not serve his purpose. Charles I deemed it important to avoid this vacillation. He loved to be served by men of decided tone and colour, and thought it a point of honour to maintain them against all assaults. He adhered without wavering to those maxims and theories which he had received from his father, and which he considered as an heirloom. He always threw himself directly upon the object immediately before him. In the world which surrounded him, Charles I always passed for a man without a fault, who committed no excesses, had no vices, possessed cultivation and knowledge to the fullest extent, without wishing to make a show in consequence: not indeed by nature devoid of severity, which however he tempered with feelings of humanity;--for instance, he could hardly be brought to sign a sentence of death. Since the death of Buckingham he appeared to choose his ministers by merit and capacity, and no longer by favouritism: even his queen seemed to exercise no political influence over him. But this calm, artistic, religious sovereign, certainly did not add to his qualities the cleverness which marked the administration of his father. James could never be really affronted: he put up with everything which he could not alter. Charles I had a very lively and irritable sense of personal honour: he was easily wounded and sought to revenge himself; and then perhaps he committed himself to enterprises, the scope of which he did not perceive. He wanted that general sense of the state of affairs which distinguishes what is attainable from what is not. He prosecuted the quarrels in which he was involved as zealously and as long as possible, and then suddenly renounced them. People compared him to a miser, who turns over every penny, as we say, before he parts with it, but then suddenly throws away a large sum. Yet still when Charles I made concessions, he never made them unconditionally. This trustworthy man could bring himself to balance the promises he made in public by a secret reservation which absolved him from them again. With Charles I nothing was more seductive than secrecy. The contradictions in his conduct entangled him in embarrassments, in which his declarations, if always true in the sense he privately gave them, were only a hair's-breadth removed from actual and even from intentional untruth. His method of governing the State was in itself of an equivocal character, inasmuch as he declared that he wished to uphold the laws of England, and then notwithstanding made dispositions which rested on obsolete rights and ran counter to what all the world deemed lawful: he affirmed that he did not wish to encroach upon Parliamentary government, and then nevertheless did everything to relieve himself for a long period from the necessity of summoning Parliament. Notwithstanding all the forbearance from shedding human blood which he had imposed on himself, yet he had the severest punishment inflicted upon the opponents of his system, by which even their lives were endangered. For his political aim outweighed all other considerations, and he did not hesitate to employ any means to attain it.

The system of Charles I consisted in making the royal prerogative the basis of government. He had no military forces however which he could employ to secure that object, such as at this time were used in France to maintain the supreme authority: on the contrary, foreigners were surprised to see how completely the King was in the hands of his people; that there were hardly any fortresses to which he could fly for safety in time of need; that everything depended on the laws and their interpretation. This was just what gave importance to the fact that some of the heads of the judicial body, and those too the very men who had formerly belonged to the Parliamentary party, such as Noy and Littleton, now became champions of the prerogative. Their change may have been due to altered convictions and lawyer-like attachment to one side, as there was much found in the laws which could be urged in favour of their present view; or it may have arisen from slavish ambition, animated by the desire to obtain the highest offices. Many persons in England as well as in France, and with the same zeal which was shown in that country, espoused the idea of the sovereignty of the crown; they thought that it was older than all Parliaments, and was acknowledged in the laws. From the duty of defending and ruling the kingdom they inferred the right of the King to demand from his subjects the means of fulfilling that duty. All the provisions of Magna Charta, or of the laws of Edward I to the contrary, or the doctrines of law-books, which in fact contained much that was indefinite and dependent upon the circumstances of the time, were of no account in their eyes in comparison with this right. And while the advocates of these views thus had a position which could be regarded as legal, the administration had already found in the Lord Deputy of Ireland a man who had the will and the capacity to develop government by prerogative to its full proportions. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had never wavered for a moment, so conducted the government of the Church as to uphold the King's prerogative of supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. He appeared to aim at establishing, or rather, properly speaking, already to possess in substance a British patriarchate, such as that which long ago in Constantinople had stood beside the throne of the Greek emperors, and had promoted their views. Although different in procedure, and in the foundation on which they rested, these efforts had a general coincidence with the policy which was being carried out in other great monarchies in the name of the sovereign by ambitious ministers, obsequious tribunals, and devoted bishops. Where in England was the power which could have resisted it? In order to realise the dull dissatisfaction and the despair of the mother-country which was spreading in consequence, we must recollect that the colonisation of New England was due to emigration from English shores. Even at an earlier time a troop of exiled believers, who termed themselves pilgrims, and who in fact were seeking a refuge in Virginia, had been driven further north, where they founded New Plymouth. After existing for ten years, the colony reckoned no more than three hundred members, and it still lacked legal recognition. But the increasing ecclesiastical oppression which prevailed in England now impelled a number of families of some property and position in Suffolk, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire, to turn their steps in the same direction. Their principal object was to erect a bulwark in these distant regions against the kingdom of Antichrist, which was being extended by the Jesuits. For they thought that they had to fear lest the English Church also should fall a victim to the ruin which had overtaken so many others. How much better, they imagined, would the faithful in the Palatinate and in Rochelle have done, if they had seized the right moment to secure an asylum for the exercise of their religion on the other side of the ocean! That country in which they could best serve God seemed to them their fatherland. As it conduced to their safety that they should not cross the sea as fugitives without rights, they obtained for themselves a transfer of Massachusetts Bay and the neighbouring territory, drawn up according to the forms of English law. But even this was not enough to satisfy them, for they did not wish to be governed from England, after the fashion of other colonies. They did not decide on transplanting themselves until they had received by charter the right of transferring the government of the colony to the other continent. John Winthrop, if not in wealth, in which some others surpassed him, yet in descent and position the most distinguished among those who conducted the enterprise was the first governor of the society and of the colony. In the year 1630 the emigrants, numbering about 1500, crossed to America in seventeen ships, sailing from different ports. But year by year other expeditions followed them. For on this side of the water the pre-eminence accorded to the English Church was constantly becoming more decided, while on that side Presbyterianism, in the strict form in which it was now embodied, had free scope. In the year 1638 the colonists were reckoned at 50,000, and they had already established a number of settlements in the country.

And this colony even then appeared a place of refuge for political exiles. We must certainly reject as unfounded what has been so often related and repeated, that Hampden and Pym were hindered by the government itself from going to America: but it is true that they had entertained the thought of going. Their names are found on the list of those to whom the Earl of Warwick assigned as a settlement a large tract of coast which he had acquired.

The catalogue of these names is also remarkable in other ways. We find on it the names of Lord Brook, and of Lord Say and Seale, who, like the Earl of Warwick himself, were among those members of the aristocracy who offered the most decided opposition to the designs of Charles I and of his ministers. They passed for opponents of Weston and of the Spaniards, and for friends of Holland and even of France. Another special bond of union was the Presbyterian interest which was, as it were, the element in which the colony lived and moved. Lord Warwick, one of the largest proprietors in England and America, was one of the principal patrons of the colony. His mother's name is conspicuous among those of the benefactors of the new plantation.

But the nobility in general were by no means upon the side of the King. Their influence indeed had been already felt in the attacks directed by the Lower House against the rising power of Buckingham. If the King abstained from convening another Parliament, they would thus lose the principal influence upon public affairs which they possessed. The English aristocracy did not share the fiery impulses of the French; as it did not at once rise in insurrection, it did not incur those chastisements for disobedience with which the other was visited by an inaccessible power in the State. It waited for a convenient season to come forward.

Like the great nobles, and even in a higher degree than they, the landed gentry felt themselves threatened and endangered by the revival of laws which had fallen into abeyance, and claims to rights which had been forgotten. The extension of the forest-laws was effected without their participation by juries of foresters, wood-rangers, and other persons interested in the advantages which were to be expected from such an extension: their verdict was afterwards confirmed by judges discredited by the suspicion of partiality.

The displeasure of other circles was roused by the degrading penalties which the ecclesiastical courts inflicted on men of no mean position. Very few might find pleasure in Prynne's attack upon the drama; but to crop his ears for some words which referred to the Queen appeared an affront to his University degree and to the barrister's robe which he wore.

And how deeply was public feeling humiliated when the sentence of the judges followed affirming the royal claim to ship-money: men were seen passing one another in silence with gloomy looks. Even those who did not grudge the King a new source of revenue, and esteemed it necessary, were yet alarmed that it could be assured to him without grant of Parliament. The doubtful legality, to say the least of it, of this proceeding inspired anxiety lest the untrustworthy, morally contemptible and covetous men who contended for the claims of the crown, should become masters of the government, without any possible expectation of a Parliament to instil into them some fear and respect.

Such however was now the condition of affairs: no one had a position which enabled him to raise his voice to remonstrate; and any free expression of opinion involved the extremest danger. The authority of the Church and of the judges, supporting itself on its own interpretation of the laws, now governed England. This system was extending itself over Scotland by the agency of the friends and adherents of Laud: in Ireland a resolute will drew the reins as tight as possible. It seemed likely in fact that the union of monarchical and ecclesiastical power, which prevailed in the rest of the Teutonic and Latin world, would also take possession of England, and would thus gain a complete ascendancy.

The foreign policy of England was fairly in keeping with these tendencies in domestic affairs. The great Anglicans and champions of the prerogative showed little ardour for the cause of European Protestantism. On the other hand the adherents of Parliament, and the Nonconformists, regarded the cause of this creed as almost identical with their own:--opposite views which were found even at court, but threw the nation most of all into confusion, and were the main cause why the efforts of the King encountered a resistance which by degrees proved insuperable.

The great struggle began in Scotland.

FOOTNOTES:

From a letter of the younger Winthrop in Bancroft i.

In the year 1634 D'Ewes expresses his astonishment at the number of God-fearing people of both sexes who were resorting to that far-distant region, 'there to plant in respect of the doctrinal part one of the most absolutely holy orthodox and well-governed churches.'

In Hutchinson i. 64.

ORIGIN AND OUTBREAK OF ECCLESIASTICAL DISTURBANCES IN SCOTLAND.

Not one of the governments of Protestant countries had had so little share in carrying out the reform of the Church as that of Scotland. The change had taken place in opposition to Mary Stuart, or the representatives of her rights. James I had accepted it, so far as doctrine was concerned; but he had from the first shown a dislike for the ecclesiastical constitution in which it was embodied.

His ancestors had always found support in their connexion with the hierarchy; and in the same way we have noticed that this prince, induced in the first instance by the relations of the different elements in the state, had sought to restore episcopacy. Political reasons were supported by considerations of a strictly religious character, but above all by the example of England. The establishment of episcopacy appeared to him the principal step towards effecting the union of both countries: he regarded it as one of the great tasks of his life.

Properly speaking the revival of episcopacy passed through two different stages of development during his reign.

So long as George Gladstane was Archbishop of St. Andrews , the Scottish episcopate remained pretty nearly what it was originally intended to be--a superintending body such as had previously existed. Gladstane showed great indulgence in the exercise of his archiepiscopal rights themselves. He tolerated everywhere the ecclesiastical usages which had been imported from Geneva, and which allowed much freedom to the minister. Among learned theologians a school was developed, principally by Cameron's action in opposition to Melville, which reconciled itself to the episcopal system in this shape, and many ministers adhered to it. A sensible addition was made to the strength of Anglican and episcopal tendencies when, in the year 1615, John Spottiswood became Archbishop of St. Andrews, and thereby primate and metropolitan of the Scottish Church: he was one of the three bishops who had received their episcopal ordination from English bishops, and had in consequence espoused the theory of apostolical succession. Even Spottiswood did not go so far as to wish to take the legislative power of the Scottish Church out of the hands of the General Assembly of the clergy: on the contrary he himself, in conferring with the King, opposed a scheme of legislation which aimed at this object; but, while he reserved the rights of the Assembly, he thought himself justified in using it to promote the reception of episcopal authority, and to bring about a nearer approach to the Anglican system. In this he sided with the King, even if he was personally not convinced of the necessity of a change. He cherished the opinion that obedience must be shown to the King in everything which was not in contradiction to the faith; and he asserted this principle in the Assembly of Perth in the year 1618, with such success that the King's proposals were accepted by a considerable majority. These proposals were embodied in the decrees known under the name of the Five Articles of Perth. They decided various points, among which the practice of kneeling at the reception of the Lord's Supper, and the observance of high festivals were the most important.

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