The second of the four great religious cla.s.ses, the Catholics, held allegiance to a still older and more imposing organization. However clear the argument of English churchmen that the Anglican body was the church founded by the apostles and enduring continuously in England through all the intervening centuries, the "old church" was still to many the church of which the pope was the earthly head. From the time that Henry VIII. attacked the supremacy of the pope and many of the characteristic doctrines and practices of the mediaeval church, a party separate from the national church came into being, which clung faithfully to that system.
The existence of the English Roman Catholics as a separate body from the established English church may be considered to date from the resignation of Sir Thomas More from the chancellorship in 1532. During the remainder of Henry"s reign their position was equivocal and dangerous, a number of conspicuous Catholics accepting martyrdom under the laws against treason, when brought to the test of the acceptance or rejection of the king"s claim to the headship of the English church.
Under the enlightened rule of Somerset they were not persecuted, but under his successor, and under the personal rule of Edward VI., they fared much worse. [Footnote: Pollard, England Under Protector Somerset, 110-120, 258-264, 322] The time of consolation came under Queen Mary, when for a s.p.a.ce of five years (1553-1558) the English church and English Catholicism again became identical.
Elizabeth on her accession had no antagonism to the Roman Catholics as such. Neither in doctrine nor in ceremonial was there any essential breach between Elizabeth and the Catholic church; and for a moment the world watched to see what her decision would be. [Footnote: Maitland, "Defender of the Faith" (Eng Hist Review, XV.,120).] Yet the nature of her position dictated to her a return to the ecclesiastical position of her father, and an acquiescence in the main results of the Protestant development under Edward VI. She accepted the requirements of the policy readily enough, and by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1559 [Footnote: I Eliz., chaps, i., ii. ] the English Catholics again became a proscribed body, living in disobedience to the law, subject to severe pains and penalties for any speech or action against the established church, and even for the negative offence of absence from its religious services.
The disabilities of the Catholics according to the laws pa.s.sed at the opening of the reign of Elizabeth were as follows: 1. No Catholic could hold any office or employment under the crown, or any ecclesiastical office in England, or receive any university degree: for all such persons were required to take an oath renouncing the authority of the pope, and acknowledging the headship of the queen in ecclesiastical matters. [Footnote: Ibid., chap, ii., sub-section 19-25.] 2. No Catholic could attend ma.s.s: the service of the prayer-book being required at all meetings for worship in England. [Footnote: Ibid., chap, ii., sub-section 3-8.] 3. No Catholic could remain away from the regular services of the established church: as the law required that "all and every person and persons inhabiting within the realm or any other the queen"s majesty"s dominions shall diligently and faithfully, having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavor themselves to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed ... upon every Sunday and other days ordained and used to be kept as holy days, and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the common prayer, preachings, or other service of G.o.d there to be used and ministered." [Footnote: I Eliz., chap, ii., Section 14.] 4. No Catholic could speak, write, or circulate any arguments or appeals in favor of the ecclesiastical claims of the Catholic church or in derogation of the royal supremacy or of the prayer-book.
The penalties for violation of these laws varied from a fine of one shilling for absence from church on a Sunday or holy day to the terrible customary punishment for treason in the case of repeated conviction for supporting the claims of the pope. These fundamental disabilities remained in existence during the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were added to from time to time as the religious conflict in England, and in Europe at large, became more embittered; although, on the other hand, there were occasional periods when the exigencies of policy or the sympathies of the sovereign temporarily suspended their enforcement. They remained the fundamental law long after the Act of Toleration of 1689 made easy the burdens of other Nonconformists, and until the gradual progress of enlightenment in the eighteenth century led to a willing neglect to enforce them; and they disappeared only in 1829.
The tendency during the reign of Elizabeth was constantly towards an increase in the severity of the laws against "popish recusants," as those who refused to conform to the established church were called, and to greater rigor in their application. At four successive periods during that reign additions were made to the disabilities and sufferings imposed by law upon Roman Catholics.
1. An act of 1563 extended the lines of restriction so that the oath of supremacy must be taken by a much greater number of officials--by all school-masters, lawyers, and petty officers of court, and by all members of the House of Commons; and so that the first refusal of any person to take it, as well as the first occasion on which any one should in writing or speech support the claims of the pope, should be punished by confiscation and outlawry, the second offence by the penalties of treason. [Footnote: Eliz., chap. i.] 2. The difficulties of the Catholics were increased by the coming, in 1568, of Mary Queen of Scots to England, where she became a permanent centre of Catholic disaffection and hopes; by the Rebellion of the North in 1569; and by the papal bull of deposition of the queen in 1570. The laws at once reflected the anger and alarm of Parliament and ministers, and their care "for the surety and preservation of the queen"s most royal person, in whom consisteth all the happiness and comfort of the whole state and subjects of the realm." [Footnote: 13 Eliz., chap, i., Section I.] From 1571 to 1575 four new treason laws, [Footnote: Ibid., chaps, i, ii.; 14 Eliz., chaps, i., ii.] directed against sympathizers with Mary and bringers of bulls from Rome, recall the savage legislation of Henry VIII. under somewhat similar circ.u.mstances.
3. A third series of additions to the anti-Catholic code was called out by the efforts of the Jesuits, from 1579 onward, to reconquer the heretical nations and especially England, for the church. Hence, in 1581, the mere attempt to convert any subject of the queen to Roman Catholicism, as well as the acceptance of such reconciliation with the church, was made treason; the saying or hearing of the ma.s.s was forbidden under penalty of heavy fine and long imprisonment; recusants who were absent from church a month at a time were fined 20 pounds a month for the length of time for which they stayed away; [Footnote: 23 Eliz., chap. i.] and by a later law the crown was allowed, in case of recusancy, instead of the fine, to seize two-thirds of the property of the offender. [Footnote: Ibid., chap. ii.]
Certain offences which Catholics might be especially expected to commit, such as "by setting or erecting any figure or by casting of nativities or by calculations or by any prophesying, witchcraft, conjuration, or other like unlawful means whatsoever, seek to know, and shall set forth by express words, deeds, or writings how long her majesty shall live, or who shall reign king or queen of this realm of England after her highness"s decease," were made punishable by death and confiscation of goods. In 1585 all Jesuits and Catholic priests trained abroad were banished on pain of death, and all English subjects studying abroad in one of those Jesuit schools, which had already become famous as the best schools in Christendom, were required to return to England immediately and take the oath of supremacy or suffer the penalties of treason.
4. Within the next few years came the execution of Mary, the war with Spain, the defeat of the Armada, and the definite pa.s.sing of the crisis of Elizabeth"s reign. Nevertheless, the year 1593 was marked by an "act against popish recusants," which required all English Catholics to remain within five miles of their homes, and provided for a still closer search for Jesuits and priests. [Footnote: 35 Eliz., chap. ii.]
Thus an augmenting body of oppressive law, in addition to their fundamental disabilities, burdened the English Catholics at the accession of James I. in 1603. That event they may well have looked forward to and welcomed with joy. James was the son of Mary of Scotland, for whom many of them had made such deep personal sacrifices and on whose account all had been made to suffer. He was known to be a man of moderate spirit, easy good-nature, and philosophic breadth of mind. Circ.u.mstances, by relieving England from the fear of invasion from Spain, and by establishing the Protestant succession, might be considered to have left the way open for the admission of a more generous and tolerant treatment of the Catholic minority. The king controlled the enforcement or the non-enforcement of the law; his word could put the machinery of the courts, high and low, into motion for purposes of persecution; or, on the other hand, could open the prison doors to those already incarcerated, and restrain the indictment of those amenable to the law. James might fairly be expected to have the will, as he undoubtedly had the power, to treat the Catholics with greater leniency.
On the other hand, parliamentary and popular antagonism to the Roman Catholics had to be contended with. Notwithstanding the legal supremacy and complete predominance of the Anglican church, there was still a wide-spread fear of the "usurped power and jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome"; and much patriotic hatred of the Catholic enemies of England and of their sympathizers within the realm. This national sentiment was strongly reinforced by the fanatical Puritan fervor of opposition to "the devilish positions and doctrines whereon popery is built and taught." The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and other Catholic conspirators showed themselves ready to sacrifice the king, his family, his ministers, and members of Parliament, filled James for a while with fears for his own safety. If James, therefore, should favor the Catholics he must do so in opposition to the overwhelming public opinion of the people of England and to his own timidity. What would be his policy? Would the persecuted minority be taken under the protection of the crown? Or would their position remain as it had been for half a century, or even be made worse?
Upon the answer to this question depended the happiness or unhappiness of the Catholics in England and the likelihood or unlikelihood that many of them would emigrate. Should their position become intolerable, those who could would either take refuge in one of the Catholic states of the continent or find an asylum in those boundless lands claimed by England across the sea. The minds of men through all Europe were turning towards America, not only as a sphere for trade and a base for the fighting out of Old-World quarrels, [Footnote: Zuniga to the king of Spain, December 24, 1606, and September 22,1607, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 88-90, 116-118.] but as a place of settlement for men who could not conform to their Old-World religious surroundings.
Before the reign of James was over Sir George Calvert obtained a charter for Avalon, in Newfoundland, the ambiguity of whose terms made it possible to take Catholic priests and settlers there; and in 1632 he received in exchange for this a charter for Maryland, under which Catholics held all official positions and Jesuit missionaries carried on their work. The British island of Montserrat, in the West Indies, appears to have been settled in 1634 by Catholic refugees from Virginia; [Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 261, n. 9.] and there were other floating proposals to colonize English and Irish Catholics in America. [Footnote: Cal. of State Pap., 1628, p. 95.] It was evidently quite within the bounds of possibility that Catholic colonies should be established in those "other your highness"s dominions," from which the House of Commons in 1623 especially pet.i.tioned that Romanists should be excluded. [Footnote: Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 141.]
As a matter of fact, the policy of James and of his son and successor Charles towards the Catholics had little consistency, and shows an alternation of leniency and increased severity, reflecting the varying inclinations of the king and the changing exigencies of external and internal politics. During the first two years of his reign James lightened their burdens, in accordance with the promises of his first speech in Parliament, "so much as time, occasion, or law should permit." [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 284.] The Gunpowder Plot then thoroughly frightened and angered the king and justified the House of Commons in its protests against leniency to the Catholics. In 1606 two long detailed statutes [Footnote: 3 and 4 James I., chaps. iv., v.] were enacted, carrying much further in principle the persecuting provisions of the law under Elizabeth, increasing the burdens upon the conscience, the purse, and the liberty of Catholics, and specifying the most minute arrangements for the enforcement of the law and the discovery of those who were secretly Romanists.
Before many years a change came, due princ.i.p.ally to the interest of James in the scheme of obtaining a Spanish bride for his son, and to his increasing subserviency to Gondomar, the shrewd Spanish minister.
The king of Spain would not listen to any negotiations for the hand of his sister, unless the persecution of his co-religionists in England was stopped; and James, in order to carry out his foreign policy, blinded by his admiration for the Spaniard, and always p.r.o.ne to follow the line of least resistance, promised what he certainly could not perform, the parliamentary repeal of the anti-Catholic laws.
Nevertheless, he performed what he could, and ordered the suspension of their enforcement. In 1622 the lord keeper of the privy seal wrote to the judges that "it is his majesty"s pleasure that they make no niceness or difficulty to extend the princely favor to all such as they shall find prisoners in the jails of their circuits for any church recusancy or refusing the oath of supremacy or dispensing of popish books, or any other point of recusancy that shall concern religion only and not matters of state." [Footnote: Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 63.] A vast number of Catholics were, in this year, released on bail or freed completely from prosecution. When the Spanish marriage negotiations failed, just before the close of the reign of James, Parliament again pet.i.tioned the king to enforce the old penal laws, at last with success; and a momentary wave of severity towards the Catholics spread over England.
Spain was not the only Catholic country with which England was in negotiation. The marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France followed close upon his accession to the throne. The conditions of the marriage treaty called for greater leniency to the Catholics, and the influence of the queen secured it, though not in the degree promised.
Yet on the whole the att.i.tude of the crown and of the judges during the period from 1625 to 1640 was favorable to the Catholics; and although Laud was not plotting to hand over the English church to Rome, as was the popular belief, he was too sympathetic with the spirit of Roman Catholicism to put into force the savage laws against it which were upon the statute-book.
In 1640 Laud fell, the hand of the king was removed from the helm, and the domination of the Long Parliament and the protectorate for the next twenty years meant the bitter persecution of the Catholics; while the Restoration, in 1660, saw a partial toleration of them, preparatory to the Declaration of Indulgence and the active efforts of James II. in their favor twenty-five years later.
Through all this succession of alternately rigorous and lenient applications of the harsh laws of the statute-book, as a matter of fact few Catholics left England, and no American colony remained for any considerable length of time a Catholic community. The reasons for this result are not hard to find. In the first place, it may well be questioned whether the position of the Catholics in England was ever so bad as one would expect to find it from reading the laws and parliamentary proceedings. In all Tudor and Stuart legislation there was a wide chasm between the pa.s.sage of the law and its enforcement; the statute-book is loaded with laws that were never carried out, or were put into force only to the most limited extent. The laws against the Catholics certainly remained largely unenforced.
Secondly, the English Catholics were never without hope of an amelioration of their state at home. The most natural time for a great Catholic exodus was in the later years of the reign of James I. and the early years of Charles I., when the foundations alike of Virginia and New England were being laid, and when Maryland was offering a basis on which either a Catholic or a Protestant community might presumably have been built up; but this was just the period when the influence of the crown was most consistently used in favor of the Catholics at home.
They might fairly hope that a better day was dawning for them, when the powerful interposition of Spain and France was willingly accepted by James and Charles in their favor. The special time when emigration seemed most practicable was also the time when the occasion for it was least.
Again, it is to be noted that no American colony ever reached the position in which it could provide a positively secure refuge to Catholics. Maryland wavered from toleration to Catholicism, then to Anglicanism and to Puritanism, and then back to toleration; but never at any time was it a Catholic settlement in the sense in which Ma.s.sachusetts belonged to the Puritans or Pennsylvania was the special home of the Quakers. English Catholics, hesitating between emigration and the further endurance of their ills at home, would feel no irresistible attraction in the dubious toleration of any of the colonies. [Footnote: Tyler, England in America, chaps, vii., viii.]
Lastly, it is to be noticed that the great proportion of the English Catholics were not of the emigrating cla.s.ses. Many of them were of the n.o.bility and gentry, and therefore not of the ordinary stuff of which colonists were made. It is quite possible that the same conservative tendencies which held them to the old church held them to their old homes. If they had been as easily detached from their native soil as the Puritans and Quakers, one cannot doubt that some great migration comparable to that of those two bodies would have taken place.
CHAPTER XII
THE ENGLISH PURITANS AND THE SECTS (1550-1689)
The mult.i.tude of Englishmen other than Catholics, who, at the opening of the seventeenth century, were dissatisfied with the church of England as by law established, may be grouped under the general name of Puritans; although as time pa.s.sed on various newly organized religious bodies formed themselves from among them, so that two more religious cla.s.ses, at least, have to be differentiated. The roots of Puritanism are to be found in the characteristics of human temperament.
Conservatives and radicals will always exist; the Puritans were those who carried or tried to carry the principles and ideas of the Reformation to their logical and rigorous conclusion. Such men as Latimer, Cranmer, and many of the theologians of the reign of Edward VI., were already steadily approaching the fundamental position of the Puritans, as their thought developed, long before the foreign influence of the reign of Queen Mary became effective and the modified Protestantism of Elizabeth was introduced.
If the government had kept its hands off, England would have divided into two camps, that of the Catholics and that of a Puritanically reformed church. The Anglican system was an artificial one, a compromise established under the influence of the crown and kept in power by royal determination till it eventually won the devotion, the loyalty, or at least the deliberate acceptance of the great body of moderate and conservative Englishmen. Catholics and Puritans were the logical opposites, and not Catholics and Anglicans, nor yet Anglicans and Puritans.
Yet in a more immediate sense Mary gave occasion to the rise of Puritanism by driving into banishment many of the more devout Protestants of her day. At Frankfort, Strasburg, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva groups of these English exiles gathered, formed congregations worshipping together; developed, apart from the restrictions of government, the logical tendencies of their religious ideas; and in many cases came under the powerful influence of continental reformers.
Especially at Frankfort [Footnote: Hinds, The England of Elizabeth, 12- 67.] and at Geneva was the religious life of these Protestant communities at white heat; and controversies were then begun and principles adopted which dominated all the later life of these Englishmen, and were handed down to their successors in England and America as party cries through more than a century. When the ordeal of Mary"s reign was over, the exiled for conscience" sake returned to England, but they formed already a body divergent from the church as it was then established.
During Elizabeth"s reign three stages of the development of Puritanism gave occasion for corresponding conflicts with the crown and for making more clear the differences between Anglican and Puritan. During the first decade of the reign, Puritanism meant a protest against certain of the ceremonies and formulas and vestments required of clergymen by the law. The sign of the cross on the child"s forehead in baptism, the celebration of saints" days, insistence on kneeling to receive the communion, the use of church organs, the changing of robes during the service, and even the wearing of a surplice or a square cap, were to many earnest souls survivals of "popery" and temptations to superst.i.tion. The clergy who held such beliefs tried by resolutions in convocation to change the practices of the church: but notwithstanding the large votes in their favor they were still in the minority and were defeated. [Footnote: Strype, Annals, I., 500-505.]
Then individual ministers began to disregard the law, and either to neglect the use of certain requirements of the prayer-book altogether or to change the forms there laid down. The archbishop and the Court of High Commission issued detailed instructions insisting on observance of the authorized form of worship; [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 191-194.] but the ministers declared that they owed obedience to G.o.d rather than to man, and either resigned their pastorates or, encouraged by their congregations, continued to disobey the law and the archiepiscopal injunctions. It was at this time and in this connection that the word "Puritan" came into use, as a term of reproach for those who insisted on an ultra-pure ritual, purged from all traces of the old religion. "Puritan" was used as "Pharisee" might have been. [Footnote: Camden, Annals, year 1568.]
From 1570 onward Puritanism entered upon a second stage, in the form of a contest for changes in the organization of the established church. In the main the same men who were dissatisfied with the liturgy of the church began to oppose the system of its government by bishops and archbishops. [Footnote: Letter from Sampson, formerly dean of Christ Church, to Lord Burleigh, March 8, 1574, in Strype, Annals, III., 373.]
The "Admonition to Parliament" of 1572 declares that "as the names of archbishops, archdeacons, lord bishops, chancellors, etc., are drawn out of the pope"s shop, together with their offices, so the government which they use ... is anti-Christian and devilish and contrary to the Scriptures. And as safely may we, by the warrant of G.o.d"s words, subscribe to allow the dominion of the pope universally to rule over the word of G.o.d as an archbishop over a whole province or a lord bishop over a diocese which containeth many shires and parishes. For the dominion that they exercise ... is unlawful and expressly forbidden by the word of G.o.d." [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 199.]
The greater number of those who attacked the episcopal organization of the church advocated the system of Presbyterianism which had been extensively adopted on the Continent and recently introduced into Scotland by the Book of Discipline. November 20, 1572, was erected at Wandsworth, in Surrey, the first presbytery in England; [Footnote: Bancroft, Dangerous Positions, chap, i., quoted in Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 247.] from this time forward presbyteries were established here and there by groups of neighboring parishes. Some ten or fifteen years later the larger group, known as the "cla.s.sis,"
was introduced; provincial and national "synods" were contemplated by many of the Puritan clergy; and the English church bade fair to be reorganized on Presbyterian lines, without the authority of the law.
This action met the stern opposition of the queen and the Court of High Commission. In 1583 Elizabeth appointed Whitgift archbishop of Canterbury, and under him the law was enforced with rigor. Individual clergymen were deposed or forced to conform; the devotional practices called "exercises," on which Puritanism throve, were forbidden; and although the contest continued, the introduction of Presbyterianism was held in check.
The latter years of Elizabeth"s reign saw Puritanism within the church taking on a new activity, by turning from questions of ceremony and church government to questions of morals. The Puritans always stood for greater earnestness and for the abolition of abuses in the church, but as time pa.s.sed on they brought into greater prominence the ascetic ideal of life; the strict keeping of the Sabbath borrowed from the Jewish ritual became customary; [Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 123-132.] prevailing immoralities and extravagances were more bitterly reprobated in books, sermons, and parliamentary statutes; and Puritanism took on that unlovely aspect of exaggerated austerity which characterized its most conspicuous manifestations in the seventeenth century.
The great body of men of Puritan tendencies, both clergymen and laymen, were deeply interested in reforming the church of England in liturgy, in organization, and in practices; but they had no wish or intention to break it up, to divide it into different bodies, or to withdraw individually from its membership. They were as completely dominated by the ideal of a single united national church, one in doctrine, organization, and form of worship, as was the queen herself.
Nevertheless, a group of men arose among them, under the general name of Independents, to whom the very idea of a national church seemed idolatrous; who found in the Scriptures, or were driven by the logic of their position, to one plan of church government only--the absolute independence of each congregation of Christian believers. They looked back to the little groups of chosen believers in Syria and Asia Minor, the shadowy outlines of whose organization are found in the New Testament; their imagination gave definite shape and their reverence for the Scriptures gave divine authority to these as examples.
According to the a.n.a.logy of biblical times, they looked upon themselves as a remnant of saints, sacred and set apart from a wicked and persecuting world.
Some of these extreme Puritans were under the influence of Robert Browne, a zealous advocate, whose activity lay princ.i.p.ally between 1581 and 1586. Others came under the somewhat more systematic teachings of Barrow and Greenwood. Thus it became a fundamental principle of several thousand persons, between 1580 and 1600, to separate themselves from the established church. They are, therefore, known as "Separatists,"
though they were more commonly called at that time, as a term of reproach, by the names of their leaders, "Brownists" or "Barrowists."
They met in "conventicles," and even strove to form more permanent congregations by gathering in secret places, or sometimes openly, in defiance of the authorities. A churchman of the time says that they teach "that the worship of the English church is flat idolatry; that we admit into our church persons unsanctified; that our preachers have no lawful calling; that our government is unG.o.dly; that no bishop or preacher preacheth Christ sincerely and truly; that the people of every parish ought to choose their bishop, and that every elder, though he be no doctor nor pastor, is a bishop." [Footnote: Paule, Life of Whitgift (1612), 43, quoted in Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 223.]
In times when church and state were one, such teaching could not be endured. If the Puritans were scourged with whips the Separatists were lashed with scorpions. Their teachers were silenced and imprisoned, and Barrow and Greenwood were, in 1587, hanged at Tyburn. Their congregations were broken up and attendants at their conventicles were fined, deprived of their property, and thrown into prison, where they died by the score. Before Elizabeth"s reign was over, the Separatists had gone into exile or become but a persecuted remnant, so far, at least, as outward manifestation extended; though one can scarcely doubt that among Puritans generally, and even, perhaps, among those who still adhered to the established church, were many who shared their convictions. It is to be remembered that the Independents and all the new sects which were formed in England later in the seventeenth century, as well as the Puritans of New England, organized themselves on the basis of independent congregations of Christian believers.
The close of the sixteenth century saw the contrast between the Anglican churchman on the one hand and the Puritan and Separatist on the other becoming more harsh, their incompatibility more evident.
Fifty years earlier episcopacy and ceremonialism seemed to most Anglicans comparatively unimportant in themselves. They rather blamed the Puritans for making a difficulty about matters indifferent, and for opposing the civil authority in things pertaining to conscience; but did not quarrel with them on religious questions. But a generation of disputes, the development of fundamental principles, the need for justification of a position already taken, drove both parties into a more dogmatic att.i.tude. The high-church party in the established church now began to a.s.sert the divine appointment of the episcopal office, to lay stress on the doctrine of the apostolic succession, and gradually to reintroduce much symbolic ceremonial.
The Puritans, on the other hand, were more than ever convinced that the system they advanced was based upon divine authority; and that the church as it stood was founded upon human regulation only and must be forced, if it could not be persuaded, to change its system. Still greater clearness was given to this division of parties by the theological contest that came into existence between 1600 and 1620. The Puritans were almost completely Calvinist, and they claimed that the established church itself had always been so. On the other hand, the Anglican leaders of the early seventeenth century were Arminian, and this form of theological doctrine was a.s.serted by all those who defended the existing organization and ceremonial practices of the church. [Footnote: Makower, Const.i.tutional History of the Church of England, 75.] Thus the breach between the Puritan and the churchman was now so wide that James I., indolent and arrogant for all his toleration and learning, did nothing--perhaps could do nothing--towards its closing. He said of the Puritans, at the Conference at Hampton Court in 1604: "I shall make them conform themselves or I will harry them out of this land, or else do worse." [Footnote: Gardiner, Hist, of England, I., 157.] He disappointed and angered them, drove them into opposition to his civil rule as well as to his church policy, and strengthened their number and their position by his treatment of Parliament, whose interests and theirs had come to be inseparable.
All the "antagonisms, religious and political," of the reign of James were intensified in that of Charles I. The new king was more autocratic and more unsympathetic with his subjects; Parliament was more self- a.s.sertive and more determined to impose its wishes upon king and ministers; the authorities of the established church were more intolerant towards the Puritans and milder towards the Catholics. The Puritans, on the other hand, were more convinced that the Anglican church was retrograding towards Catholicism, and more determined to destroy episcopacy if they should ever be able to do so.
The freest opportunity of the established church to destroy Puritanism came during the period of the personal government of Charles, from 1629 to 1640, when Parliament had no meetings, and when the Court of Star Chamber, the High Commission, and the Privy Council were the all- powerful instruments of an administration sympathetic with the high- church party. The oppressions of the Puritans were now at their height, and the prospect of ever obtaining freedom to worship as they chose seemed the darkest. With the most prominent liberal and Puritan leaders imprisoned for their political opinions, like Sir John Eliot, or lying in prison, crushed under enormous fines, like Prynne; with the courts subservient to the royal will; with court preachers declaring the duty of pa.s.sive obedience to the government; with Laud guiding the policy of the king in all ecclesiastical matters,--the state of the Puritans might well seem hopeless, and they might well look towards some distant land as a place for the establishment of a purified national church.
Archbishop Laud typified and embodied the spirit of the dominant church, and in addition he had unwearied energy, industry, and determination. Sincere, practical, and brave, but narrow-minded and unsympathetic, he set about the work of reducing the church of England to absolute uniformity in accordance with the law as he interpreted it.