Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/167

] many freeholders arbitrarily of their lands to enlarge Richmond Park, and he saw the necessity of making some compensation.

Another mode of raising money was by undoing in a great measure what the parliament had done by abolishing monopolies. True, Charles took care not to grant these monopolies to individuals, but to companies; but this, whilst it arrested the odium of seeing them in the hands of courtiers and favourites, increased their mischief by augmenting the number and power of the oppressors. These companies were enabled to dictate to the public the price of the articles included in their patent, and restrain at their pleasure their manufacture or sale. One of the most flagrant cases, was that of the company of soap-boilers, who purchased a monopoly of the manufacture of soap for ten thousand pounds, and a duty of eight pounds per ton on all the soap they made. The scheme was that of the renegade attorney-general Noye; and all who presumed to make soap for themselves, regardless of the monopoly, were prosecuted and fined, the company being authorised to search the premises of all soap-boilers, seize any made without a licence, and prosecute the offender in the star-chamber. There was a similar monopoly granted to starch-makers.

King James had conceived an idea that London was become too large, and that was the cause of the prevalence of the plague and contagious fevers. His wisdom had not penetrated the fact that the real cause lay in the want of drainage and cleanliness, and he issued repeated proclamations forbidding any more building of houses in the metropolis. The judges declared the proclamations as illegal as they were abused, and building went on as fast as ever. Here was an admirable opportunity for putting on the pecuniary screw. Charles, therefore, appointed a commission to inquire into the growth and extent of building done in defiance of his father's orders. If James was the Solomon of England, Charles was the Rehoboam,—resolute in wrong, and destined, like that obstinate monarch, to rend the crown and kingdom. Such persons who were willing to compound for their offences in brick and mortar, got off by paying a fine amounting to three years rental of the premises. Those who refused, pleaded in vain the decision of the judges, for Charles had a court independent of all judges but himself—that devilish instrument by which so long the constitution of the country had been reduced to fable, and Magna Charta made of no more value than a forged note, namely, the star-chamber; and those who escaped this fell into another inquisition as detestable—the court of the earl-marshal. Sturdy resisters, therefore, had their houses actually demolished, and were then fleeced in those infamous courts to complete their ruin. A Mr. Moore had erected forty-two houses of an expensive class, with coach-houses and stables, near St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He was fined one thousand pounds, and ordered to pull them down before Easter, under penalty of another thousand pounds, but refusing, the sheriffs demolished the houses, and levied the money by distress. This terrified others, who submitted to a composition, and by these iniquitous means, one hundred thousand pounds were brought into the treasury.

Simultaneously with these tyrannic proceedings. Laud, bishop of London, and expectant archbishop of Canterbury, pursued the same course in the church. He had long been the most abject flatterer of the royal power, and now, supported by Wentworth, went on boldly to reduce all England to the most absolute slavery to church and state. He was supposed to have the intention of restoring the papal power in this country; but such was far enough from his intention. Like the Puseyites of the present time, he exceedingly regretted the simplicity of the worship adopted by the Anglican church, and the Calvinistic doctrine which prevailed in it; and was resolved to root out that notion, and restore all the showy rites and ceremonies of the catholic church, so imposing to the imaginations of the vulgar, both high and low, and, therefore, so adapted to both spiritual and political despotism. But with all this, neither Laud nor Charles dreamt for a moment of returning to the union with Rome, for the simple reason that they loved too well themselves the enjoyment of absolute power. Like Henry VIII., they could tolerate no pope but one disguised under the name of an English king. All their efforts went to maintain this Anglican papacy. For this all their ceremonies, and genuflections, and ecclesiastical paraphernalia, and lights, crosiers, and high altars, were revived—they were to give additional power over the multitude; but that power was to be solely vested in the king and the primate, and therefore no foreign pope. Never did the church, either in England or abroad, more egregiously deceive itself than by suspecting Laud or Charles of any design to put on again the yoke of the Roman pontiff. That spiritual potentate, deluded by such empty imagination, offered Laud a cardinal's hat, which was rejected with scorn.

On the 29th of May, 1630, the queen gave birth to Charles, afterwards Charles II, who was baptised on the 2nd of July, the ceremony being performed by Laud, who composed a prayer for the occasion, consisting of such ejaculations as the following:—"Double his father's graces upon him, O Lord, if it be possible!" This was a pretty good beginning of royal adulation in the very presence of God, and disgusted even bishop Williams, who had said and done some creeping things in his time, and who could not help designating it as "three-piled flattery and loathsome divinity." But Laud showed that he could be as savage to dissenters as he was impiously fulsome to the throne.

Charles had issued a proclamation, forbidding any one to introduce into the pulpit any remarks bearing on the great Arminian controversy which was raging in the kingdom:- Laud and his party in the church on one side, the zealous puritans on the other. Both sides were summoned with an air of impartiality into the star-chamber or High Commission Court, but came out with this difference, that the orthodox divines generally confessed their fault, and were dismissed with a reprimand; but the puritan ministers could not bend in that manner, sacrificing conscience to fear, and they were fined, imprisoned, and deprived without mercy. Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burgess, Dr. Prideaux, Dr. Hall, bishop of Norwich, whose poetry and liberality of spirit will long be held in honourable remembrance, and many others, were harassed because they did not preach exactly to the mind of Charles and Laud; but the treatment of Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scotch puritan preacher, preacher was beyond all in brutality. There had been an ascent in