Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/174

160 Pontifex, Spiritu Sancto effusissime planus, Archangelus et nequid minus!" And Laud accepted all this base adulation, and declared that these most unprotestant and revolting titles were quite proper, because they had been applied to the popes and fathers of the Romish church. In fact, as we have observed, he desired to be the pope of England. And in this great papal authority he was fain to stretch his coercing hand over the churches wherever they were. He procured an order in council to shut the English factories in Holland, and compel the troops serving there to conform to the liturgy of the church of England. Most of the merchants and many of those soldiers had gone thither expressly to enjoy their own forms of religion; but no matter, they must conform. And says Heylin, "The like course was prescribed for our factories in Hamburg, and those farther off, that is to say in Turkey, in the Mogul's dominions, the Indian islands, the plantations in Virginia, the Barbadoes, and all other places where the English had any standing residence in the way of trade." This order was to be carried into the houses and establishments of all ambassadors and consuls abroad.

Thus did this arrant example of that worst species of tyrant, the ecclesiastical tyrant, stretch with a restless, domineering avidity, his busy, meddling hand over the whole extent of the British dominions, into the most distant regions and obscure nooks of the globe, and into the most private recesses of the ambassadorial home, to nip every bud of free conscience, to extinguish every free biblical sentiment, and to compress all souls, if possible, into his own shape of dry and tawdry formalism. But even there he was far from having reached the extremity of his interference. He turned his eyes on the foreign refugees who had fled from the fury of intolerance in their own countries. The Dutch protestants and French Huguenots, who had brought their trades and their religion hither, and under the sanction of Elizabeth, James, and Charles himself, were benefiting the nation by their quiet labours, were called on to conform to Laud's English popery. The weavers of Yorkshire, of Norwich, and other places, were called onto abandon their own rituals and adopt that of Laud. In vain they remonstrated and petitioned; in vain Soubise, who had been ruined by trusting to Charles and Buckingham in the affair of Rochelle, and now lived in England, reminded Charles of his most solemn promises. All he could obtain was, that in the province of Canterbury the refugees might retain their own church service, but their children must go to the English church.

"When," says Roger Coke, "these injunctions were to be put in execution at Norwich, the Dutch and French congregations petitioned Dr. Matthew Wren, the bishop of the diocese, that these injunctions might not be imposed upon them; but finding no relief, appealed to the archbishop, who returned a sharp answer As the Spanish trade was the most enriching trade to this nation, so the trade to Hamburg, and the countries and kingdoms within the Sound, with our woollen manufactures, was the best the English had for the employment of people, shipping, and navigation. The company which traded with the Sound was called the East Country Company, and queen Elizabeth, and after her king James, to honour them, called it the Royal Company. This trade the English enjoyed time out of mind; and the cloths which supplied it were principally made in Suffolk and Yorkshire; and Ipswich, as it was the finest town in England, and had the noblest harbour on the east, and most convenient for the trade of the northern and eastern parts of the world, so till this time it was in as flourishing a state as any other in England. The bishop of Norwich; straining these injunctions to the utmost, frightened thousands of families out of Norfolk and Suffolk into New England; and about one hundred and forty families of the workers of these woollen manufacturers went into Holland, where the Dutch—as wise as queen Elizabeth was in entertaining the Walloons persecuted by the duke of Alva—established these English excise free, and house-rent free, for seven years; and from these the Dutch became instructed in working those manufactures, which before they knew not."

Such are always the blind works of bigotry. This, however, was not the last effort of Laud in his attempts at universal domination. He resolved to visit the two universities, and bring them up to his model. They resisted, declaring that his grace was only chancellor of Oxford, and, the earl of Holland of Cambridge, and refused to admit him without a royal warrant. The matter was debated before the privy council, and it was shown that no archbishop of Canterbury had ever visited either university jure metropolitano; but nevertheless Laud had his way, and made them conform to his wishes.

These proceedings marked out Laud as one of those despots of the first rank who ever and anon astonish the world by the monstrous character of their intense egotism, to whom everything in the world is of less consequence than its gratification; but in his exercise of this diseased will on individuals, there is nothing isolated of demons which can exceed his elaborate cruelty.

William Prynne was a young graduate of Oxford, originally from Fainswick, near Bath, but now an outer barrister of Lincoln's Inn. He was a thorough puritan, grave, stern in his ideas, and rigid in his morals, a man who was ready to sacrifice reputation, life, and everything, for his high ideal of religious truth. He was persuaded that much of the dissoluteness of the young men around him arose from the debasing effect of frequenting the theatres; and in that he was probably correct, for the theatres were not in that age, nor long after, fitting schools for youth. He therefore wrote a huge volume of a thousand pages against the stage, called "Histriomastix." He stated that forty thousand copies of plays had been exposed for sale within two years, and were eagerly bought up. That the theatres were the chapels of Satan, the players his ministers, and their frequenters were rushing headlong into hell. Dancing was, in his opinion, an equally diabolical amusement, and every pace was a step nearer to Tophet. Dancing made the ladies of England frizzled madams, destroyed their modesty, and would destroy them as it had done Nero, and led three Romans to assassinate Gallienus. He went on to attack everything that Laud had been supporting—Maypoles, public festivals, church-ales, music, and Christmas carols; the cringings and duckings at the altar which Laud had so much fostered, and all the silk and satin divines, their pluralities, and their bellowing chants in the church. Laud had made two vain attempts to lay hold on this