tolerance, and placing a protestant emperor on the throne, though he received the palsgrave kindly, gave him no immediate hope of restoration. The English ambassador was there, pressing this vehemently on Gustavus; but the Swede told him he regarded him only as a Spaniard in disguise, and said bluntly, "Let the king of England make a league with me against Spain. Let him send me twelve thousand men, to be maintained at his own cost, and which shall be placed entirely at my command, and I will engage to compel from both Spain and Bavaria full restoration of the palsgrave's rights." Gustavus was perfectly right. Had Charles dealt honourably and politicly with his parliament and people, and husbanded his resources, here was the great opportunity to have re-established his sister and brother-in-law, and have had a glorious share in the victory of protestantism on the Continent. Gustavus recovered Darmstadt, Oppenheim, and Mainz, and then took up his winter quarters. Meantime, the Saxon field-marshal, von Arnim, invaded Bohemia, and took Prague, whilst the landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and duke Bernhard of Weimar, defeated several bodies of Tilly's troops in Westphalia and the Upper Rhine lands. This sweeping reverse compelled the emperor to recall Wallenstein to the chief command; who, assembling forty thousand men at Znaim, in Bohemia, marched on Prague, and drove the Saxons not only thence, but out of Bohemia altogether. Meantime, Gustavus issuing from his winter quarters on the Rhine, directed his course to Nuremberg, and so to Donauwerth, and at Rain on the Lech fought with Tilly and the duke of Bavaria. Tilly was killed; and Gustavus advanced and took Augsburg in April, Munich on the 27th of May, and after in vain attacking Wallenstein before Nuremberg, he encountered him at Lutzen, in Saxony, and beat him, but fell himself in the hour of victory. He had, however, saved protestantism. Wallenstein lost favour after his defeat, was suspected by the emperor, and finally assassinated by his own officers. The generals of Gustavus, under the orders of Gustavus's great minister Oxenstjerna, continued the contest, and enabled the German protestant princes to establish their power, and the exercise of their religion, at the peace of Westphalia, in 1648. Charles, shamed into some degree of co-operation, had despatched the marquis of Hamilton with six thousand men to the assistance of Gustavus; but the whole affair was so badly managed, the commissariat and general care of the men were so miserable, that the little army speedily became decimated by disease, and was of no service. Hamilton returned home, and the remains of his forces were routed under the command of the prince Charles Louis, son of the elector Frederick, in Westphalia. Frederick himself, deprived of all hope by the fall of Gustavus, only survived him about a fortnight; and thus ended the dream of the restoration of the Palatinate. At home Charles had determined to rule without a parliament, but this necessarily drove him upon all those means of raising an income which parliament had protested against, and which must, therefore, continue to exasperate the people. Between the dissolution of the parliament, in 1629, and the summons of another, in cause of 1640, these proceedings had wonderfully advanced the apparent cause of despotism, but the real liberty; the nation had been scourged into a temper which left no means but the sword of appeasing it. The first unceremonious violation of his pledge to the public by the granting the Petition of Right, was levying as unscrupulously as ever the duties of tonnage and poundage; and the goods of all such as refused the illegal payment were immediately distrained upon and sold. He next appointed a committee to inquire into the encroachments on the royal forests, a perfectly legitimate and laudable object, if conducted in a spirit of fairness and liberality. In all ages, gross encroachments have been made on these crown lands, and no doubt had been so extremely in the reckless reign of James. But it would seem that the commissioners proceeded in an arbitrary spirit, and relying on the power of the crown, often ruined those who resisted their decisions by the costs of law. The earl of Holland, a noted creature of the king's, was made head of this commission, and presided in a court established for the purpose. Under its operations vast tracts were recovered to the crown, and heavy fines for trespasses leviel. Rockingham Forest was enlarged from a circuit of six miles to one of sixty, and the earl of Southampton was nearly ruined by the resumption of a large estate adjoining the New Forest. Even where these recoveries were made with right, they exasperated the aristocracy, who had been the great encroachers, and injured the king in their goodwill. Clarendon says, "To recompense the damage the crown sustained by the sale of old lands, and by the grant of new pensions, the old laws of the forest are revived; by which not only great fines are imposed, but great annual rents intended, and like to be settled by way of contract, which burden lighted most upon persons of quality and honour, who thought themselves above ordinary oppressions, and therefore, like to remember it with more sharpness." Besides the tonnage and poundage, obsolete laws were revived, and other duties imposed on merchants' goods, and all who resisted were prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned. But a still more plausible scheme was hit upon for extorting money. The old feudal practice introduced by Henry III. and Edward I., of compelling all persons holding lands under the crown worth twenty pounds per annum, to receive knighthood, or to compound by a fine, had been enforced by Elizabeth and James, and was not likely to be passed over in this general inquisition after the means of income independent of parliament. All landed proprietors worth forty pounds a year were called on to accept the title of knight, and pay the fees, or were fined, and in default of payment, thrown into prison. "By this ill-husbandry," says Clarendon, "which, though it was founded in right, was most grievous from the mode of proceeding, vast sums were drawn from the subject. And no less unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot, the damage and reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men; inasmuch as, of twenty thousand pounds a year, scarcely one thousand five hundred pounds came to the king's use or account." A great commotion was raised by the king depriving A.D. 1634.] TYRANNICAL PROCEEDINGS OF CHARLES AND LAUD. many freeholders arbitrarily of their lands to enlarge Richmond Park, and he saw the necessity of making some compensation. Another mode of raising money was by undoing in a great measure what the parliament had done by abolishing monopolies. True, Charles took care not to grant these monopolies to individuals, but to companies; but this, whilst it arrested the odium of seeing them in the hands of courtiers and favourites, increased their mischief by augmenting the number and power of the oppressors. These companies were enabled to dictate to the public the price of the articles included in their patent, and restrain at their pleasure their manufacture or sale. One of the most flagrant cases, was that of the company of soap-boilers, who purchased a monopoly of the manufacture of soap for ten thousand pounds, and a duty of eight pounds per ton on all the soap they made. The scheme was that of the renegade attorney-general Noye; and all who presumed to make soap for themselves, regardless of the monopoly, were prosecuted and fined, the company being authorised to search | the premises of all soap-boilers, seize any made without a licence, and prosecute the offender in the star-chamber. There was a similar monopoly granted to starch-makers. 153 pursued the same course in the church. He had long been On the 29th of May, 1630, the queen gave birth to Charles, afterwards Charles II., who was baptised on the 2nd of July, the ceremony being performed by Laud, who composed a prayer for the occasion, consisting of such ejaculations as the following:-" Double his father's graces upon him, O Lord, if it be possible!" This was a pretty good beginning of royal adulation in the very presence of God, and disgusted even bishop Williams, who had said and done some creeping things in his time, and who could not help designating it as "three-piled flattery and loathsome divinity." But Laud showed that he could be as savage to dissenters as he was impiously fulsome to the throne. King James had conceived an idea that London was become too large, and that was the cause of the prevalence of the plague and contagious fevers. His wisdom had not penetrated the fact that the real cause lay in the want of drainage and cleanliness, and he issued repeated proclamations forbidding any more building of houses in the metropolis. The judges declared the proclamations as illegal as they were absurd, and building went on as fast as ever. Here was an admirable opportunity for putting on the pecuniary screw. Charles, therefore, appointed a commission to inquire into the growth and extent of building done in defiance of his father's orders. If James was the Solomon of England, Charles was the Rehoboam,-resolute in wrong, and destined, like that obstinate monarch, to rend the crown and kingdom. Such persons who were willing to compound for their offences in brick and mortar, got off by paying a fine amounting to three years' rental of the premises. Those who refused, pleaded in vain the decision of the judges, for Charles had a court independent of all judges but himself that devilish instrument by which so long the constitution of the country had been reduced to fable, and Magna Charta made of no more value than a forged note, namely, the star-chamber; and those who escaped this fell into another inquisition as detestable-the court of the earl-marshal. Sturdy resisters, therefore, had their houses actually demo-air of impartiality into the star-chamber or High Commislished, and were then fleeced in those infamous courts to complete their ruin. A Mr. Moore had erected forty-two houses of an expensive class, with coach-houses and stables, near St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He was fined one thousand pounds, and ordered to pull them down before Easter, under penalty of another thousand pounds, but refusing, the sheriffs demolished the houses, and levied the money by distress. This terrified others, who submitted to a composition, and by these iniquitous means, one hundred thousand pounds were brought into the treasury. Simultaneously with these tyrannic proceedings, Laud, bishop of London, and expectant archbishop of Canterbury, Charles had issued a proclamation, forbidding any one to introduce into the pulpit any remarks bearing on the great Arminian controversy which was raging in the kingdomLaud and his party in the church on one side, the zealous puritans on the other. Both sides were summoned with an sion Court, but came out with this difference, that the orthodox divines generally confessed their fault, and were dismissed with a reprimand; but the puritan ministers could not bend in that manner, sacrificing conscience to fear, and they were fined, imprisoned, and deprived without mercy. Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burgess, Dr. Prideaux. Dr. Hall, bishop of Norwich, whose poetry and liberality of spirit will long be held in honourable remembrance, and many others, were harassed because they did not preach exactly to the mind of Charles and Laud; but the treatment of Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scotch puritan preacher, was beyond all in brutality. There had been an ascent in prelatical evil through Parker, Whitgift, and Bancroft, but Laud completed the climax. As Charles marched far ahead of his father in daring absolutism, so Laud far transcended his predecessors in a daring hardihood, more haughty and cruel than they ever reached. boxes; carried everything away, even household stuff, &c. Leighton had published a pamphlet called "An Appeal to Parliament, or Zion's Plea against Prelacy." In this he had certainly made use of most bold and unsparing language. He declared that the king was misled by the bishops to the undoing of himself and people; that the queen was a daughter of Heth; that the bishops were men of blood; and that there never was a greater persecution, nor higher indignities done to God's people in any nation than in this, since the death of Elizabeth; that prelacy was notoriously anti-Christian; and the true laws of the church were derived from the Scriptures, not from the king, for no king could give laws to the house of God. This was so root and branch a denial of all that both church and state had The endeavours of Laud to compel conformity to the assumed since the revolt of Henry VIII. from Rome, that church were as active and unsparing against public bodies it was certain to meet with severe castigation. It quickly as against individuals. There had been a general subattracted the eye of Laud, who in June, 1630, had him scription set on foot, and association formed, for the purpose dragged into the High Commission Court, where he was of buying up lay impropriations, and employing them in the condemned to the following horrible punishment, than support of the ministry. Laud soon discovered that this which the records of the Spanish or Italian inquisitions pre-party was of the puritan class. In the words of that serve nothing more infernal. That he should be imprisoned for life, should pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, be degraded from his ministry, whipped, set in the pillory, have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded on the forehead with a double S.S., as a sower of sedition. He was then to be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried again, whipped, have the other side of his nose slit, the other ear cut off, and shut up in his dungeon, to be released only by death! When Laud heard this merciless sentence pronounced, he pulled off his cap and gave God thanks for it! By the 26th of November the whole of these incredible barbarities, except the imprisonment, had been perpetrated on this learned and excellent man, formerly professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh; and when on the sitting of the long parliament he sent in his petition for release, the whole house was moved to tears by the recital of those sufferings which Laud and the government of Charles had inflicted and rejoiced in. They were thus expressed :-"That he was apprehended coming from a Bermon, by a High Commission warrant, and dragged along the streets with bills and staves to London House. That the gaoler of Newgate clapped him in irons, and carried him, with a strong force, into a loathsome and miserable dog-hole, full of rats and mice, that had no light but a little grate, the roof being uncovered, so that the snow and rain beat upon him, and where he had no bed or place for fire, but a ruinous old smoky chimney. In this woful place he was shut up fifteen weeks, nobody being permitted to come to him. That the fourth day after his commitment, the pursuivant, with a mighty multitude, came to his house to search for Jesuit books, and used his wife in such a barbarous and inhuman manner, as he was ashamed to express. That they rifled every person and place, holding a pistol to the head of a child five years old, threatening to kill him if he did not discover the books; broke open chests, presses, thorough courtier, Sir Philip Warwick, "he prevented a very private and clandestine design of introducing nonconformists into too many churches; for that society of men, that they might have preachers to please their itching ears, had a design to buy in all the lay impropriations which the parish churches in Henry VIII.'s time were robbed of, and lodging the advowsons and presentations in their own feoffees, to have introduced men who would have introduced doctrines which the court already felt too much the smart of." That Laud, with his notions, should endeavour to stop this process is not to be wondered at. Noye, the attorney-general, brought the twelve trustees in whom this property was invested into the court of exchequer, and after counsel had been heard on both sides, it was decided that they had usurped on the prerogative by erecting themselves into a corporation, and that both the impropriations and the money in hand were forfeited to the crown, to be employed by the king for the benefit of the church, as he should see fit. Having reduced the refractory members of the church and of parliament in England to silence for the present, Charles determined to make a journey into Scotland, there to be crowned, to raise revenue, and to establish the Anglican hierarchy in that part of his dominions. For the latter purpose he took Laud with him. He reached Edinburgh on the 12th of June, 1633, where he was received by the inhabitants by demonstrations of lively rejoicing, as if they were neither aware of the character and views of the monarch, nor remembered the consequences of the visit of his father. On the 18th he was crowned in Edinburgh by the archbishop of St. Andrews; but Laud did not let that opportunity pass without giving them a foretaste of what was coming. "It was observed," says Rushworth, "that Dr. Laud was high in his carriage, taking upon him the order and managing of the ceremonies; and, for instance, Spotswood, archbishop of St. Andrews, being placed at the king's right hand, and Lindsey, archbishop of Glasgow, at his left, bishop Laud took Glasgow and thrust him from the king with these words:-' Are you a churchman, and want the coat of your order?'—which was an embroidered coat, which he scrupled to wear, being a moderate churchmanand in place of him put in the bishop of Ross at the king's right hand." This question of the embroidered robes of the Roman hierarchy, which Laud had again introduced, with the high altar, the tapers, chalices, genuflections, and oil of unction, was speedily introduced into parliament, and forced on the reluctant Scots, to whom the whole were abominations. They had voted supplies with a most liberal spirit, and laid on a land tax of four hundred thousand pounds Scotch for six years; but when the king proposed to pass a bill authorising the robes, ceremonies, and rites just mentioned, there was a stout opposition. The venerable Lord Melville said plainly to Charles, "I have sworn with your father and the whole kingdom to the confession of faith in which the innovations intended by these articles were solemnly abjured." And the bishop of the Isles told him at dinner that it was said amongst the people that his entrance into the city had been with hosannas, but that it would be changed, like that of the Jews to our Saviour, into, "Away with him, crucify him!" Charles is said to have turned thoughtful, and eaten no more. Yet the next day he as positively as ever insisted on the parliament passing the articles, and pointing to a paper in his hand, said, “Your names are here; I shall know to-day who will do me service, and who will not." Notwithstanding this, the house voted against it by a considerable majority, there being opposed to it fifteen peers and forty-five commoners; yet the lord-register, under influence of the court, audaciously declared that the articles were accepted by parliament. The earl of Rothes had the boldness to deny this, and to demand a scrutiny of the votes; but Charles intimidated both him and all dissentients by refusing any scrutiny unless Rothes would arraign the lordregister of the capital crime of falsifying the votes. This was a course too perilous for any individual under the circumstances: Rothes was silent; the articles were ratified by the crown, and parliament was forthwith dissolved on the 28th of June. Having thus carried his point with the parliament, Charles took every means, except that which had brought upon him so much odium in England, namely, imprisoning and prosecuting the members who opposed him, to express his dissatisfaction with them. He distributed lands and honours upon those who had fallen in with his wishes, and treated the dissentients with sullen looks, and even severe words, when they came in his way. They were openly ridiculed by his courtiers, and dubbed schismatics and seditious. Lord Balmerino was even condemned to death for a pamphlet being found in his possession, complaining of the king's arbitrary conduct in these concerns; but the sentence was too atrocious to be executed. Charles and Laud erected Edinburgh into a bishopric, with a diocese extending even to Berwick, and richly endowed with old church lands, which were surrendered by nobles who held them for a consideration. A set of singing 155 men were also appointed for Holyrood chapel; and Laud, who had been made a privy councillor, preached there in full pontificals, to the great scandal of all good presbyterians. Thence Charles and his apostle made a tour to St. Andrews, Dundee, Falkland, Dunblane, &c., to the singular discomfort of the little churchman amongst the rough fastnesses of the Highlands. Immediately after this, Charles posted to London in four days, leaving Laud to travel more at leisure. No doubt both master and man thought they had made a very fine piece of work of this forcing of the Scottish consciences: they were destined in a while to feel what it actually was, in rebellion and the sharp edge of the axe. Scarcely had they reached London, when they heard the news of the death of archbishop Abbot, and Charles was thus enabled to reward Laud for all his services in building up despotism and superstition by making him primate, which he did on the 6th of August, 1633. It was a curious coincidence that about the same time Laud received a second offer of a cardinal's hat, and he seems to have been greatly tempted by it. He says that he acquainted his majesty with the offer, and that the king rescued him from the trouble and danger; for he adds there was something dwelling in him which would not suffer him to accept the offer till Rome was other than she was. To have accepted a cardinal's hat was to have gone over to the church of Rome, and the church of England was for him a much better thing now he was primate. The only wonder is, that as he had restored the high altars, tapers, confession, the crosier, and the crucifix, he did not introduce a race of Anglican cardinals. There undoubtedly did at this precise time take place an active but private negotiation betwixt the courts of Rome and England on this topic. The queen was anxious to have the dignity of cardinal conferred on a British subject. Probably she thought that the residence of the English cardinal at London would be a stepping-stone to the full restoration of catholicism. Towards the end of August, immediately after Laud's elevation to the primacy, Sir Robert Douglas was sent to Rome as envoy from the queen, with a letter of credence, signed by the earl of Stirling, secretary of state for Scotland. His mission was this proposal of an English cardinal, as a measure which would contribute greatly to the conversion of the king. To carry out this negotiation, Leander, an English Benedictine monk, was despatched to England, followed soon after by Panzani, an Italian priest. From the despatches of Panzani, we find that there existed a strong party at the English court for the return to the allegiance of Rome, amongst whom were secretary Windebank, lord chancellor Cottington, Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, and Montague, bishop of Chichester. He was informed that none of the bishops except three-those of Durham, Salisbury, and Exeter, would object to a purely spiritual supremacy of the pope, and very few indeed of the clergy. Douglas was followed to Rome by Sir William Hamilton, to prosecute this secret business, but it all came to nothing, for the king, who was seeking absolute power, was not likely to listen to any proposal for submitting again to the |