Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/178

164 primate very speedily had him in the star-chamber, where he received private information that if he would give up to Laud his deanery of Westminster, that disinterested prelate would let the prosecution slip. Williams refused, and then commenced one of the most disgraceful scenes in history. Laud, Windebank, and the king were determined to force the deanery and a heavy fine from him. They brow-beat his witnesses, threw them in to prison to compel them to swear falsely; removed chief justice Heath to put in a more pliant man, and at length, through the medium of lord Cottington, induced Williams, from terror of worse, to give up the deanery and pay a fine of ten thousand pounds. His servants and agents, Walker, Cathn, and Limn, were fined three hundred pounds a-piece, and Powell two hundred pounds.

This being done. Laud uttered a most hypocritical speech, professing high admiration of the talents, wisdom, learning, and various endowments of Williams, and his sorrow to see him thus punished, declaring that he had gone five times on his knees to the king to sue for his pardon. But even so Williams was not destined to escape. The officers who went to take possession of his effects, found amongst his papers two letters from Osbaldeston, master of Westminster school, in one of which he said that the great leviathan—the late lord treasurer, Portland—and the little urchin. Laud, were in a storm; and in the other that there "was great jealousy between the leviathan and the little meddling hocus-pocus."

This, which was no crime of Williams, but of Osbaldeston, was, however, made a crime of both. Williams was condemned on the charge of concealing a libel on a public officer, and fined eight thousand pounds more, and to suffer imprisonment during the king's pleasure. The chief offender, Osbaldeston, could not be found; he had left a note saying he was "gone beyond Canterbury;" but he was sentenced to deprivation of his office, to be branded, and stand opposite to his own school in the pillory, with his ears nailed to it. He took good care, however, not to fall into such merciless bands.

Such was Laud up to this point. One of those awful exhibitions which the history of the church, ever and anon, has presented. Professing the meek and benevolent gospel of Christ, but acting the unmitigated gospel of the devil; ambitious beyond the stretch of imagination, cruel as death, insatiable as the grave. There are those who have pronounced him honest, pious, and a pattern of ecclesiastical eminence. We leave his actions to speak for themselves. The press was now in his hands, he had made terrible examples of such as dared to differ in opinion from him; yet instead of having in reality reached a secure preeminence, he had created ten thousand implacable enemies, who only bided their time. We must now turn our attention to his brother in the "thorough," the equally insane despot Wentworth.

Amongst those means of raising a permanent revenue for the crown, independent of parliament, which we have already detailed, as tonnage and poundage, the fees on compulsory knighthood, and the resumption of forest lands, there was discovered another which was owing to the ingenuity of attorney-general Noye. The landed proprietors had been greatly alarmed by the rumours that the king would lay claim to the greater part of every county in England except Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, but the whole public was struck with consternation at the additional project of the attorney-general. As he had been always of a surly and morose disposition, he carried this ungracious manner with him into his apostacy. Formerly he had acted like a rude ill-tempered patriot, now he was the more odious from being at once obsequious to the crown, and coarsely insolent to those whose rights he invaded.

In the records of the Tower he discovered writs compelling the ports and maritime counties to provide a certain number of ships during war, or for protecting the coasts from pirates. It was now declared that the seas were greatly infested with Turkish corsairs, who not only intercepted our merchantmen at sea, but made descents on the coast of Ireland, and carried off the inhabitants into slavery. The French and Dutch mariners, it was added, were continually interrupting our trade, and taking prizes of our trading vessels, and that it was necessary to assert our right to the sovereignty of the narrow seas, which it was contended "our progenitors, kings of England, had always possessed, and that it would be very irksome to us if that princely honour in our time should be lost, or in anything diminished."

But the real cause was that Charles was at that time, 1634, engaged in the treaty with Spain to assist him against the United Provinces of Holland, on condition that Philip engaged to restore the palsgrave. Noye's scheme was highly approved and supported by the lord keeper Coventry. On the 20th of October, 1634, a writ was issued by the lords of the council, signed by the king, to the city of London, commanding it to furnish before the 1st of March next, seven ships, with all the necessary arms, stores, and tackling, and wages for the men for twenty-six weeks. One ship was to be of nine hundred tons, and to carry three hundred and fifty men; another eight hundred tons, with two hundred and sixty men; four ships of five hundred tons, with two hundred men each; and one of three hundred tons, with one hundred and fifty men. The common council and citizens humbly remonstrated against the demand as one from which they were exempt by their charters, but the council treated their objections with contempt, and compelled them to submit.

In the spring of 1635 similar writs were issued to the maritime counties, and even sent into the interior, a most unheard of demand; and instructions were forwarded to all parts, signed by Laud, Coventry, Juxton, Cottington, and the rest of the privy council, ordering the sheriffs to collect the money which was to be levied instead of ships, at the rate of three thousand three hundred pounds for every ship. They were to distrain on all who refused, and take care that no arrears were left to their successors. The demand occasioned both murmuring and resistance. The deputy-lieutenants of some inland counties wrote to the council, begging that the inhabitants might be excused this unprecedented tax; but they were speedily called before the council, and severely reprimanded. The people on the coasts of Sussex absolutely refused to pay, but they were soon forced to submit by the sheriffs.

Noye died before this took place, and squibs regarding