Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/196

Laud being compelled to read the service to which they objected.

Upon his removal to Lambeth Laud set his chapel in order, placing the communion table at the east end. On 3 Nov. 1633 he spoke strongly in the privy council in favour of that position in the case of St. Gregory's, when the king decided that the liberty allowed by the canons for placing the table at the time of the administration of the communion in the most convenient position was subject to the judgment of the ordinary. No one was likely to be made a bishop by Charles who failed to take Laud's view in this matter. Laud also succeeded in compelling the use of the prayer-book in 1633 in the English regiments in the Dutch service, and in 1634 in the church of the Merchant Adventurers at Delft.

At home nothing ecclesiastical escaped Laud's vigilance. Before his promotion, in 1632, he had complained to the king of the interference of Chief-justice Richardson with the Somerset wakes, and in 1633, when Richardson was before the privy council to give an account of his conduct in the matter, Laud rated him so severely that the chief justice on leaving the room declared that he had 'been almost choked with a pair of lawn sleeves.' The republication of the 'Declaration of Sports' by Charles on 10 Oct. 1633 had the archbishop's warm approval, if, indeed, he did not instigate the step. Laud was the consistent opponent of anything resembling the puritan Sabbath. On 17 Feb. 1634 he spoke in the Star-chamber in much the same spirit against the sour doctrines of the 'Histriomastix.' He denied, in sentencing Prynne, that stage-plays were themselves unlawful. They ought to be reformed, not abolished. If there were indecencies in them, it was 'a scandal and not to be tolerated.' It was not Laud's official business to purify the stage, and we hear of no further advice of his tending in this direction. On the other hand, he called for a heavy sentence on Prynne, though when on Prynne's second appearance in the Star-chamber on 11 June 1634, Noy asked that the prisoner might be debarred from going to church and from the use of pen, ink, and paper, Laud at once interfered. There was a kind of official severity in Laud, a belief that severe punishments were needed to deter men from resisting constituted authorities, but a certain amount of personal kindliness underlying it can occasionally be detected.

As far as the civil government was concerned Laud was in opposition to Richard Weston, first earl of Portland, the lord treasurer, whom he held to be corrupt and inert. That single-eyed devotion to the king's interests which obtained the name of 'Thorough' in the correspondence between himself and Wentworth led him to attack all who sheltered their own self-seeking under pretexts of unbounded loyalty. On 15 March 1635 Laud was, upon Portland's death, placed on the commission of the treasury and on the committee of the privy council for foreign affairs. His dealings with temporal affairs were not successful. He did his best to be rigidly just, but his financial knowledge was not equal to the task he had undertaken, and in the affair of the soap monopoly he committed mistakes which exposed him to the attacks of his adversaries. All opposition he took as a personal slight, and he even quarrelled with his old friend Windebank for voting against him on this matter. As for foreign affairs they remained, as before, in Charles's own hands.

In his treatment of ecclesiastical questions Laud continued blind to the necessity of giving play to the diverse elements which made up the national church. In 1634 he claimed the right of holding a metropolitical visitation in the province of Canterbury, while Archbishop Neile held one in the province of York. For three years, from 1634 to 1637, Laud's vicar-general, Sir Nathaniel Brent [q.v.], went from one diocese to another, enforcing conformity. Irregularities in the conduct of services and dilapidations in the fabric of churches were all noticed and amendment ordered. Some of the irregularities complained of were mere abuses, others were committed in order to avoid practices opposed to the spirit of puritanism. The real question at issue was whether in the face of the difficulties in the way of so strict an enforcement of uniformity it would be possible to avoid the disruption of the church. In refusing even to entertain the question Laud did not differ from his opponents; but the conscientious rigidity with which he enforced his views did much to ripen the question for consideration at no distant date.

The changes which Laud now ordered were intended merely to remove illegal abuses; but it was inevitable that some of them should be regarded as evidence of his intention to draw the church into a path which would ultimately lead to a reunion with Rome. This was especially the case with his direction for fixing the communion table at the east end of the churches. The opposition created was the greater, as Rome was at the same time making an effort to extend her influence in England, and in that effort Laud was naturally, though quite untruly, regarded as an accomplice. From the end of 1634 to 