the infanta. So turbulent was popular emotion on this subject, that on one occasion the Spanish ambassador was assailed in the streets. When, in the reign of Charles I., mass was celebrated in the ambassador's chapel, and English papists were allowed to join in the ceremony, an attack was made upon the house of the embassy, and the mob threatened to pull it down. But a far deeper and stronger impression was produced upon the minds of sound Protestants by the proceedings of archbishop Laud and his friends. The consecration of St. Catherine Cree Church, on the north side of Leadenhall-street, was attended by ceremonies so closely approximating to those of Rome, as to awaken in a large portion of the clergy and laity most serious apprehension. The excitements of later times on similar grounds find their adequate type and repre sentation in the troubled thoughts and agitated bosoms of a multitude of Londoners in the early part of the year 1631. It was a remarkable era in the ecclesiastical annals of London. The church having been lately repaired, Laud, then bishop of London, came to consecrate it. "At his approach to the west door," says Rushworth, some that were prepared for it cried, with a loud voice, 'Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may enter in.' And presently the doors were opened, and the bishop, with three doctors and many other principal men, went in, and immediately falling down upon his knees, with his eyes lifted up,

and his arms spread abroad, uttered these words, This place is holy, this ground is holy, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.' Then he took up some of the dust, and threw it up into the air several times, in his going up towards the church. When they approached near to the rail and communion table, the bishop bowed towards it several times, and returning, they went round the church in procession, saying the hundredth Psalm, after that the nineteenth." Then cursing those who should profane the place, and blessing those who built it up and honoured it, he consecrated, after sermon, the sacrament in the manner following: "As he approached the communion table, he made several lowly bowings, and coming up to the side of the table, where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed several times, and then after the reading of many prayers, he came near the bread, and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin wherein the bread was laid, and when he beheld the bread he laid it down again, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times towards it, then he drew near again, and opened the napkin, and bowed as before. Then he laid his hand on the cup which was full of wine, with a cover upon it, which he let go, went back, and bowed thrice toward it; then he came near again, and lifted up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine he let fall the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before; then he received the sacrament, and gave it to many

principal men; after which many prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended." The bishop of London consecrated St. Giles's Church in the same manner, and on his translation to Canterbury, studiously restored Lambeth Chapel, with its popish paintings and ornaments. The displeasure awakened by these superstitious formalities and popish tendencies was not confined to men of extreme opinions. The moderate, amiable, but patriotic lord Falkland, the brightest ornament on the royalist side in the civil war, sympathized with the popular displeasure, and thus pertinently expressed himself in a speech he made in the House of Commons: "Mr. Speaker, to go yet further, some of them have so industriously laboured to deduce themselves from Rome, that they have given great suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least to meet it half-way; some have evidently laboured to bring in an English, though not a Roman Popery. I mean not only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people on the clergy, and of the clergy on themselves; and have opposed the papacy beyond the seas, that they might settle one beyond the water, (trans Thamesin-beyond the Thames - at Lambeth.) Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England, and be so absolutely, directly, and cordially papists, that it is all

that £1,500 a year can do to keep them from confessing it." This fondness for Romish ceremonies, and these notions of priestly supremacy, cherished and expressed by Laud and his party, were connected with the intolerant treatment of those ministers who were of the Puritan stamp. Some of them were silenced, and even imprisoned. Mr. Burton, the minister of Friday-street, preached and published two sermons in the year 1633 against the late innovations. For this he was brought before the High Commission Court, and imprisoned. About the same time, Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was imprisoned, and had his ears cut off, for writing against plays and masks; and Dr. Bastwick was also confined in jail for writing a book, in which he denied the divine right of the order of bishops above presbyters. These men were charged with employing their hours of solitude in the composition of books against the bishops and the spiritual courts, and for this were afresh arraigned before the arbitrary tribunal of the Star Chamber. "I had thought," said lord Finch, looking at the prisoner, "Mr. Prynne had no ears, but methinks he has ears."

This

caused many of the lords to take a closer view of him, and for their better satisfaction the usher of the court turned up his hair, and showed his ears; upon the sight whereof the lords were displeased they had been no more cut off, and reproached him. "I hope your honours will not be offended," said Mr. Prynne ;

The

"pray God give you ears to hear."* sentence passed was, that the accused should stand in the pillory, lose their ears, pay £5,000, and be imprisoned for life. When the day for executing it came, an immense crowd assembled in Palace-yard, Westminster. It was wished that the crowd should be kept off. "Let them come," cried Burton, "and spare not that they may learn to suffer." "Sir," cried a woman, "by this sermon God may convert many unto him." "God is able to do it, indeed," he replied. At the sight of the sufferer, a young man standing by turned pale. "Son," said Burton, "what is the matter? you look so pale; I have as much comfort as my heart can hold, and if I had need of more, I should have it." A bunch of flowers was given to Bastwick, and a bee settled on it. "Do you not see this poor bee?" he said, "she hath found out this very place to suck sweet from these flowers, and cannot I suck sweetness in this very place from Christ?" "Had we respected our liberties," said Prynne, "we had not stood here at this time; it was for the general good and liberties of you all, that we have now thus far engaged our own liberties in this cause. For did you know how deeply they have encroached on your liberties, if you knew but into what times you are cast, it would make you look about, and see how far your liberty did lawfully extend, and so maintain it." The knife, the

* State Trials. Guizot's English Revolution, page 64.