Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/387

1660] the Hampton Court conference were substantially the same.

James, therefore, surrounded by a different hierarchy, and seeing dissent assume so much humbler a form, suddenly felt himself inspired with a greater love for episcopacy, and an intenser horror of dissent, which, in its Scottish shape, had so wounded his kingly dignity. He therefore carried matters with a high hand both in church and state, and the insolence and intolerance of his archbishop Bancroft did more to drive the dissidents into open sectaries than all that had been done before. Charles, educated by his father in all his Jesuitry of kingcraft, and taught at once to believe in the divine right of kings, and to attach no sacredness to his word in seeking to acquire absolute power, being of a bolder and more sanguine temperament, soon marched headlong on destruction. We have already carefully detailed the steps by which Laud and Wentworth, and his own imprudent spirit, led him to the block. He had, following in the steps of James, roused all the zeal both of the politicians and the religionists against him, and in the war to the death which was waged by his subjects with him, these two principles went from first to last hand in hand. The oppression of conscience both in Scotland and England had created a deep sympathy betwixt the people of both countries, and vast numbers in England had adopted the same presbyterian idea of church government as prevailed almost universally in Scotland. When, therefore, the questions of ship-money, and other unconstitutional impositions, the king's forcible invasion of the privileges of the commons, and his evident intention to make himself independent of all restraints from his people, had brought his chief ministers to the block, and himself in arms against his parliament, the demand became not only for the restoration of the popular guarantees, but the destruction of episcopacy, and the substitution of presbyterianism. It now depended on the prevalence of different parties what form the future government, as well as the church, should assume.

Exiled Nonconformists Landing in America.

If those who objected to legal exactions, but dreamt neither of overturning the government nor the church, had prevailed, amongst whom we may include lord Falkland, Clarendon, Colepepper, lord Capel, lord Digby, and even Pym and Hampden, the crown would have received the necessary checks, and the episcopalian church would have continued. But some of these chiefs, as Falkland, Hampden, and Pym, died early in the struggle, and the rest joined with the king in endeavouring to resist further encroachments to the utmost and to the last. Had the presbyterian party prevailed, monarchy would have continued, but England might now have been existing without its episcopal hierarchy. But as it happened, men of more republican principles, and of still more liberal ideas of church government, proved the ablest heads, and gave for a time the decisive character to the nation. These were the independents, anabaptists, and fifth-monarchy men, who constituted the leaders of the army, and who leavened the whole of the forces with their principles.

These circumstances led to the destruction of the monarchy,