Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/73

 called Tulchan Bishops.—Did the reader ever see, or fancy in his mind, a Tulchan? A Tulchan is, or rather was, for the thing is long since obsolete, a Calf-skin stuffed into the rude similitude of a Calf,—similar enough to deceive the imperfect perceptive organs of a Cow. At milking-time the Tulchan, with head duly bent, was set as if to suck; the fond cow looking round fancied that her calf was busy, and that all was right, and so gave her milk freely, which the cunning maid was straining in white abundance into her pail all the while! The Scotch milkmaids in those days cried, ‘Where is the Tulchan; is the Tulchan ready?’ So of the Bishops. Scotch Lairds were eager enough to ‘milk’ the Church Lands and Tithes, to get the rents out of them freely, which was not always easy. They were glad to construct a Form of Bishops to please the King and Church, and make the milk come without disturb- ance. The reader now knows what a Tulchan Bishop was. A piece of mechanism constructed not without difficulty, in Parliament and King’s Council, among the Scots; and torn asunder afterwards with dreadful clamour, and scattered to the four winds, so soon as the Cow became awake to it!—

Villiers Buckingham, the new favourite, of whom we say little, was of the royal party here. Dr. Laud, too, King’s Chaplain, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, attended the King on this occasion; had once more the pleasure of seeing Hunting- don, the cradle of his promotions, and the birthplace of Oliver. In Scotland, Dr. Laud, much to his regret, found ‘no religion at all,’ no surplices, no altars in the east or anywhere; no bowing, no responding; not the smallest regu- larity of fuglemanship or devotional drill-exercise; in short ‘no religion at all that I could see,’—which grieved me much.

What to us is greatly more momentous: while these royal things went on in Scotland, in the end of this same June at Huntingdon, Robert Cromwell died. His Will is dated 6th June His burial-day is marked in the Church of All-Saints,