CHAPTER XXXII
THE GROWTH OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I.
1625-1634
LEADING DATES
The Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649
Charles's first Parliament and the expedition to Cadiz 1625 Charles's second Parliament and the impeachment of Buckingham. 1626 The expedition to Ré 1627 Charles's third Parliament and the Petition of Right 1628 Dissolution of Charles's third Parliament 1629 Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633 Prynne's sentence executed 1634
1. =Charles I. and Buckingham. 1625.=--The new king, Charles I., was more dignified than his father, and was conscientiously desirous of governing well. He was, unfortunately, extremely unwise, being both obstinate in persisting in any line of conduct which he had himself chosen, and ready to give way to the advice of others in matters of detail. Buckingham, who sympathised with him in his plans, and who was never at a loss when called on to express an opinion on any subject whatever, had now made himself completely master of the young king, and was, in reality, the governor of England far more than Charles himself. On May 1 Charles was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria, and Buckingham fetched home the bride.
2. =Charles's First Parliament. 1625.=--Charles was eager to meet his first Parliament, because he thought that it would grant him enormous sums of money to carry on the war with Spain, on which he had set his heart. He forgot that its members would be disgusted at the mismanagement of Mansfeld's expedition, and at the favour shown by himself to the Catholics in consequence of his marriage. When Parliament met on June 18, the House of Commons voted a small sum of 140,000_l._, and asked him to put in execution the recusancy laws. Charles adjourned Parliament to Oxford, as the plague was raging in London, in order that he might urge it to vote him a larger sum. It met at Oxford on August 1, but the Commons refused to vote more money, unless counsellors in whom they could confide--in other words, counsellors other than Buckingham--had the spending of it. Charles seeing that, if the Commons could force him to accept ministers against his wish, they would soon control himself, dissolved the Parliament. On everything else he was ready to give way--making no objection to the renewal of the persecution of the Catholics, whom a few months ago he had solemnly promised in his marriage treaty to protect. Though the question now raised was whether England was to be ruled by the king or by the House of Commons, it would be a mistake to think that the Commons were consciously aiming at sovereignty. They saw that there was mismanagement, and all that they wanted was to stop it.
3. =The Expedition to Cadiz. 1625.=--Charles thought that, if he could gain a great victory, there would be no further talk about mismanagement. Scraping together what money he could, he sent a great fleet and army, under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, to take Cadiz, the harbour of which was the port at which the Spanish treasure ships arrived from America once a year, laden with silver and gold from the mines of America. The greater part of Cecil's fleet was made up of merchant-vessels pressed by force into the king's service. Neither soldiers nor sailors had any heart in the matter. The masters of the merchant-vessels did all they could to keep themselves out of danger. The soldiers after landing outside the town got drunk in a body, and would have been slaughtered if any Spaniards had been near. Cecil failed to take Cadiz, and after he left it, the Spanish treasure-ships from America, which he hoped to capture, got safely into Cadiz harbour, whilst he was looking for them in another part of the sea. The great expedition sent by Buckingham to Cadiz was as complete a failure as that which he had sent out the year before under Mansfeld. Whilst Cecil was employed in Spain Buckingham himself went to the Hague to form a continental alliance for the recovery of the Palatinate, hoping especially to secure the services of Christian IV., king of Denmark. Finding Christian quite ready to fight, Buckingham tried to pawn the king's jewels at Amsterdam in order to supply him with 30,000_l._ a month, which he had promised to him. No one would lend money on the jewels, and Buckingham came back, hoping that a second Parliament would be more compliant than the first.
4. =Charles's Second Parliament. 1626.=--The new Parliament met on February 6, =1626=. Charles, in order to secure himself against what he believed to be the attacks of interested and ambitious men, had hit on the clever expedient of making sheriffs of the leaders of the Opposition, so as to secure their detention in their own counties. The Opposition, however, found a leader in Sir John Eliot, who, though he had formerly been a friend of Buckingham, was now shocked at the misconduct of the favourite and regarded him as a selfish and unprincipled adventurer. Eliot was not only a natural orator, but one of the most pure-minded of patriots, though the vehemence of his temperament often carried him to impute more evil to men of whom he thought badly than they were really guilty of. At present, he was roused to indignation against Buckingham, not only on account of the recent failures, but because, in the preceding summer, he had lent some English ships to the French, who wanted to use them for suppressing the Huguenots of Rochelle, then in rebellion against their king, Louis XIII. Before long the Commons, under Eliot's guidance, impeached Buckingham of all kinds of crime, making against him charges of some of which he was quite innocent, whilst others were much exaggerated. The fact that the only way to get rid of an unpopular minister was to accuse him of crime, made those who would otherwise have been content with his dismissal ready to believe in his guilt. Charles's vexation reached its height when he heard that Eliot had branded Buckingham as Sejanus. "If he is Sejanus," he said, "I must be Tiberius." Rather than abandon his minister, he dissolved Parliament, before it had voted him a sixpence.
5. =The Forced Loan. 1626.=--If the war was to go on, money must in some way or other be had. Charles asked his subjects to bestow on him a free gift for the purpose. Scarcely any one gave him anything. Then came news that the king of Denmark, to whom the promised 30,000_l._ a month had not been paid (see p. 501, 503), had been signally defeated at Lutter, so that the recovery of the Palatinate was further off than ever. Some clever person suggested to Charles that, though the Statute of Benevolences (see p. 342) prohibited him from making his subjects give him money, no law forbade him to make them lend, even though there was no chance that he would ever be able to repay what he borrowed. He at once gave orders for the collection of a forced loan. Before this was gathered in, troubles arose with France. Louis XIII. was preparing to besiege Rochelle, and Charles believed himself to be in honour bound to defend it because Louis had at one time promised him that he would admit his Huguenot subjects to terms. Besides, he had offended Louis by sending out of the country the queen's French attendants, thinking, probably with truth, that they encouraged her to resent his breach of promise about the English Catholics (see p. 501).
6. =The Expedition to Ré. 1627.=--In =1627= war broke out between France and England. Payment of the forced loan was urged in order to supply the means. Chief Justice Crewe, refusing to acknowledge its legality, was dismissed. Poor men were forced to serve as soldiers; rich men were sent to prison. By such means a considerable sum was got together. A small force was sent to help the king of Denmark, and a fleet of a hundred sail, carrying soldiers on board, was sent to relieve Rochelle, under the command of Buckingham himself. On July 12 Buckingham landed on the Isle of Ré, which would form a good base of operations for the relief of Rochelle. He laid siege to the fort of St. Martin's on the island, and had almost starved it into surrender, when, on September 27, a relieving force of French boats dashed through the English blockading fleet, and re-victualled the place. Buckingham, whose own numbers had dwindled away, called for reinforcements from England. Charles did what he could, but Englishmen would lend no money to succour the hated Buckingham; and, before reinforcements could arrive, a French army landed on the Isle of Ré, and drove Buckingham back to his ships. Out of 6,800 soldiers, less than 3,000--worn by hunger and sickness--returned to England.
7. =The Five Knights' Case. 1627.=--Buckingham was more unpopular than ever. "Since England was England," we find in a letter of the time, "it received not so dishonourable a blow." Attention was, however, chiefly turned to domestic grievances. Soldiers had been billeted on householders without their consent, and martial law had been exercised over civilians as well as soldiers. Moreover, the forced loan had been exacted, and some of those who refused to pay had been imprisoned by the mere order of the king and the Privy Council. Against this last injury, five knights, who had been imprisoned, appealed to the Court of King's Bench. A writ of _habeas corpus_ was issued--that is to say, an order was given to the gaoler to produce the prisoners before the Court, together with a return showing the cause of committal. All that the gaoler could show was that the prisoners had been committed by order of the king, signified by the Privy Council. The lawyers employed by the five knights argued that every prisoner had a right to be tried or liberated on bail; that, unless cause was shown--that is to say, unless a charge was brought against him--there was nothing on which he could be tried; and that, therefore, these prisoners ought to be bailed. The lawyers for the Crown argued that when the safety of the state was concerned, the king had always been allowed to imprison without showing cause, and that his discretion must be trusted not to imprison any one excepting in cases of necessity. The judges did not decide this point, but sent the five knights back to prison. In a few days, all the prisoners were set free, and Charles summoned a third Parliament, hoping that it would vote money for a fresh expedition to relieve Rochelle.
8. =Wentworth and Eliot in the Third Parliament of Charles I. 1628.=--Charles's third Parliament met on March 17, =1628=. The leadership was at once taken by Sir Thomas Wentworth, who, as well as Eliot, had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the loan. Though the two men now worked together, they were, in most points, opposed to one another. Eliot had been a warm advocate of the war with Spain, till he found it useless to carry on the war under Buckingham's guidance. Wentworth disliked all wars, and especially a war with Spain. Eliot believed in the wisdom of the House of Commons, and thought that, if the king always took its advice, he was sure to be in the right. Wentworth thought that the House of Commons often blundered, and that the king was more likely to be in the right if he took advice from wise counsellors. Wentworth, however, believed that in this case Charles had unfortunately preferred to take the advice of foolish counsellors, and though not sharing the opinions of Eliot and his friends, threw himself into the struggle in which the House of Commons was trying to stop Buckingham in his rash course. From time to time Wentworth contrived to show that he was no enemy of the king, or of a strong government such as that which had existed in the reign of Elizabeth. He was, however, an ardent and impetuous speaker, and threw himself into any cause which he defended with more violence than he could, in calmer moments, have justified to himself. He saw clearly that the late aggressions on the liberty of the subject weakened, instead of strengthening, the Crown; and he now proposed a bill which should declare them illegal in the future. Charles refused to accept the bill, and Wentworth, unwilling to take a prominent part in a struggle with the king himself, retired into the background for the remainder of the session.
9. =The Petition of Right. 1628.=--Instead of Wentworth's bill, Eliot and the lawyers--Coke and Selden being prominent amongst them--brought forward a Petition of Right, not merely providing for the future, but also declaring that right had actually been violated in the past. Charles was willing to promise everything else asked of him, but he resisted the attempt to force him to promise never to imprison without showing cause, and thus to strip himself of the power of punishing offences directed against the safety of the State. The Commons, who held that he had directed his powers against men who were patriots, proved inexorable. Charles needed money for another fleet which he was preparing for the relief of Rochelle, which was straitly besieged by the French king. He tried hard to get over the difficulty by an evasive answer, but at last, on June 7, he gave way, and the Petition of Right became the law of the land. After that, so far as the law went, there was to be no more martial law or enforced billeting, no forced loans or taxes imposed without a Parliamentary grant, or imprisonment without cause shown.
10. =Tonnage and Poundage. 1628.=--Before the end of the session a fresh question was raised. For many reigns Parliament had voted to each king for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain customs duties known as Tonnage and Poundage. In addition to these James had added the impositions (see p. 484) without a Parliamentary grant. In the first Parliament of Charles, the Commons, probably wishing to settle the question of impositions before permanently granting Tonnage and Poundage, had passed a bill granting the latter for a single year; but that Parliament had been dissolved before the bill had passed the Lords. The second Parliament was dissolved before the Commons had even discussed the subject, and the third Parliament now sitting had found no time to attend to it till after the Petition of Right had been granted. Now that the session was drawing to a close the Commons again proposed to grant Tonnage and Poundage for a year only. Charles, who had been levying the duties ever since his accession, refused to accept a grant on these terms, and the Commons then asserted that the clause of the Petition of Right forbidding him to levy taxes without a vote of Parliament made his raising of Tonnage and Poundage illegal. It was a nice legal point whether customs were properly called taxes, and Charles answered that he did not think that in demanding the petition they had meant to ask him to yield his right to Tonnage and Poundage, and that he was sure he had not meant to do so. The Commons then attacked Buckingham, and on June 26 Charles prorogued Parliament.
11. =Buckingham's Murder. 1628.=--In return for the Petition of Right Charles had received a grant of money large enough to enable him to send out his fleet. In August Buckingham went to Portsmouth to take the command. He was followed by John Felton, an officer to whom he had refused employment, and who had not been paid for his former services. Language used by the House of Commons in their recent attack on Buckingham persuaded Felton that he would render service to God and man by slaying the enemy of both. On August 23 he stabbed the Duke as he came out from breakfast, crying, 'God have mercy on thy soul!' Buckingham fell dead on the spot. The fleet went out under the command of the Earl of Lindsey to relieve Rochelle, but it failed utterly. There was no heart in the sailors or resolution in the commanders. Rochelle surrendered to the King of France, and Charles was left to bear the weight of the unpopularity of his late favourite.
12. =The Question of Sovereignty. 1628.=--Charles was anxious to come to terms with his Parliament on the question of Tonnage and Poundage, and would probably have consented to accept the compromise proposed in =1610= (see p. 486). Neither party, indeed, could afford to surrender completely to the other. The customs duties were already more than a third of the revenue, and, if Charles could levy what he pleased, he might so increase his income as to have no further need of parliaments; whereas, if the Commons refused to make the grant, the king would soon be in a state of bankruptcy. The financial question, in short, involved the further question whether Charles or the Parliament was to have the sovereignty. Dangerous as it would be for both parties to enter upon a quarrel which led up to such issues, it was the more difficult to avoid it because the king and the Commons were already at variance on another subject of pre-eminent importance.
13. =Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628.=--That subject was the subject of religion. The country gentlemen, who almost entirely filled the benches of the House of Commons, were not Puritan in the sense in which Cartwright had been Puritan in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 446). They did not wish to abolish episcopacy or the Prayer Book; but they were strongly Protestant, and their Protestantism had been strengthened by a sense of danger from the engagements in favour of the English Catholics into which James and Charles had entered. Lately, too, the power of the Catholic States on the Continent had been growing. In =1626= the King of Denmark had been defeated at Lutter. In =1628= the French Huguenots had been defeated at Rochelle. It was probably in consequence of these events that there was in England a revival of that attachment to Calvinistic doctrines which had accompanied the Elizabethan struggle against Spain and the Pope.
14. =Religious Differences. 1625-1628.=--On the other hand, a small but growing number amongst the clergy were breaking away from the dogmas of Calvinism, and especially from its stern doctrine on the subject of predestination. The House of Commons claimed to represent the nation, and it upheld the unity of the national belief as strongly as it had been upheld by Henry VIII. In =1625= the House summoned to its bar Richard Montague, who had challenged the received Calvinist opinions on the ground that they were not the doctrines of the Church of England. In =1626= it impeached him. Naturally, Montague and those who agreed with him warmly supported the royal power, and in =1627= urged the duty of paying the forced loan. Another clergyman, Roger Manwaring, preached sermons in which Parliaments were treated with contempt, and the Commons retaliated by impeaching the preacher. Charles would have acted in a spirit in advance of his times, and certainly in advance of his opponents, if he had merely upheld the right of the minority to liberty of speech. Instead of contenting himself with this he made Montague Bishop of Chichester and gave Manwaring a good living.
15. =The King's Declaration. 1628.=--With the intention of smoothing matters down, Charles issued a declaration prefixed to the Articles, which would, as he hoped, make for peace. No one was in future to speak in public on the controverted points. Charles probably believed himself to be acting fairly, whilst, in reality, his compromise was most unfair. The Calvinists, who believed their views about predestination to be of the utmost importance to the souls of Christians, were hardly treated by the order to hold their tongues on the subject. Their opponents did not care about the doctrine at all, and would be only too glad if nothing more was heard of it. Charles, however, was but following in Elizabeth's steps in imposing silence and calling it peace. But the times were different. There was no longer a Catholic claimant of the throne or a foreign enemy at the gates to cause moderate men to support the government, even in its errors.
16. =The Second Session of the Third Parliament of Charles I. 1629.=--The Houses met for a second session on January 20, =1629=. The Commons attacked the clergy on a side on which they were especially vulnerable. Some of those who had challenged the Calvinistic doctrines had revived certain ceremonial forms which had generally fallen into disuse. In Durham Cathedral especially, parts of the service had been sung which had not been sung before, and the Communion table, which had hitherto stood at the north door and had been moved to the middle of the choir when needed, had been permanently fixed at the east end of the chancel. The Commons were indignant at what they styled Popish practices, and summoned the offenders before them. Then they turned to Tonnage and Poundage. Eliot, instead of confronting the difficulty directly, attempted to make it a question of privilege. The goods of a member of the House, named Rolle, had been seized for non-payment of Tonnage and Poundage, and Eliot wished to summon the Custom House officers to the bar, not for seizing the goods of an Englishman, but for a breach of privilege in seizing the goods of a member of Parliament. Pym, who occupied a prominent position amongst the popular party, urged the House to take broader ground: "The liberties of this House," he said, "are inferior to the liberties of this kingdom. To determine the privileges of this House is but a mean matter, and the main end is to establish possession of the subjects."[20] Eliot carried the House with him, but Charles supported his officers, and refused to allow them to appear at the bar of the House. Once more the question of sovereignty was raised. The House was adjourned by the king's order in the hope that a compromise might be discovered.
[Footnote 20: _i.e._ to establish the right of the subjects to possess their property.]
17. =Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629.=--No compromise could be found, and on March 2 a fresh order for adjournment was given. When Finch, the Speaker, rose to announce it, two strong young members, Holles and Valentine, pushed him back into his chair whilst Eliot read three resolutions to the effect that whoever brought in innovations in religion, or introduced opinions differing from those of the true and orthodox church; whoever advised the levy of Tonnage and Poundage without a grant by Parliament; and whoever voluntarily paid those duties, was an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer of its liberties. A wild tumult arose. A rush was made to free the Speaker, and another rush to hold him down. One member, at least, laid his hand on his sword. The doors were locked, and, amidst the hubbub, Holles repeated the resolutions, which were accepted with shouts of 'Aye, aye.' Then the doors were opened, and the members poured out. The king at once dissolved Parliament, and for eleven years no Parliament met again in England.
18. =The Constitutional Dispute. 1629.=--The constitutional system of the Tudor monarchy had practically broken down. The nation had, in the sixteenth century, entered upon a struggle for national independence. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had headed it in that struggle, and the House of Commons had but represented the nation in accepting Henry VIII. and Elizabeth as supreme rulers. The House of Commons now refused to admit that Charles was its supreme ruler, because he could neither head the nation, nor understand either its wants or its true needs. Yet the House had not as yet shown its capacity for taking his place. It had criticised his methods of government effectively, but had displayed its own intolerance and disregard for individual liberty. Yet, till it could learn to respect individual liberty, it would not be likely to gain the sovereignty at which it aimed. A king becomes powerful when men want a strong government to put down enemies abroad or petty tyrants at home. A Parliament becomes powerful when men want to discuss political questions, and political discussion cannot thrive when voices disagreeable to the majority are silenced. The House of Commons had thought more of opposing the king than of laying a wide basis for its own power, and now it was, for a time at least, silenced.
19. =The Victory of Personal Government. 1629-1632.=--Charles was now to show whether he could do better than the Commons. He had gained one great convert soon after the end of the first session of the last Parliament. Wentworth, satisfied, it is to be supposed, with the Petition of Right, and dissatisfied with the claim to sovereignty put forward by the Commons, came over to his side and was made first a baron and then a viscount, after which before the end of =1628= he was made President of the Council of the North (see p. 397). Wentworth was no Puritan, and the claim of the Commons, in the second session, to meddle with religion no doubt strengthened him in his conviction that he had chosen the right side. Before the end of =1629= he became a Privy Councillor. The most influential member of Charles's Council, however, was Weston, the Lord Treasurer. Peace was made with France in =1629=, and with Spain in =1630=. To bring the finances into order, the king insisted on collecting the customs without a Parliamentary grant, and Chambers, a merchant who refused to pay, was summoned before the Council, and then fined 2,000_l._ and imprisoned for saying that merchants were more wrung in England than they were in Turkey. The leading members who had been concerned in the disturbance at the last meeting of Parliament were imprisoned, and three of them, Eliot, Holles, and Valentine, were charged before the King's Bench with riot and sedition. They declined to plead, on the ground that the judges had no jurisdiction over things done in Parliament. The judges held that riot and sedition must be punished somewhere, and that as Parliament was not always sitting it must be punished by themselves. As the accused still refused to plead they were fined and imprisoned. Eliot died of consumption in the Tower in =1632=. Charles had refused to allow him to go into the country to recover his health, and after his death he refused to allow his children to dispose of his body. Eliot was the martyr, not of individual liberty, but of Parliamentary supremacy. Charles hated him because he regarded him as the factious accuser of Buckingham.
20. =Star Chamber Sentences. 1630-1633.=--The first years of unparliamentary government were, on the whole, years of peace and quiet. The Star Chamber, which under Henry VII. had put down the old nobility, was now ready to put down the opponents of the king. Its numbers had grown with its work, and all of the Privy Councillors were now members of it, the only other members being two judges. It was therefore a mere instrument in the king's hands. In =1630= Alexander Leighton was flogged and mutilated by order of the Star Chamber for having written a virulent libel against the bishops; in which he blamed them for all existing mischiefs, including the extravagance of the dress of the ladies, and ended by advising that they should be smitten under the fifth rib. In =1633= the same court fined Henry Sherfield for breaking a church window which he held to be superstitious. The bulk of Englishmen were not touched by these sentences, and there was more indignation when, in order to pay off debts contracted in time of war, Charles ordered the enforcement of fines upon all men holding by military tenure lands worth 40_l._ a year who had neglected to be knighted. The Court of Exchequer held that the fines were legal; but the whole system of military tenure was obsolete, and those who suffered regarded themselves as wronged through a mere technicality.
21. =Laud's Intellectual Position. 1629-1633.=--For all matters relating to the Church Charles's principal adviser was William Laud, now Bishop of London. As far as doctrine was concerned Laud carried on the teaching of Cranmer and Hooker. He held that the basis of belief was the Bible, but that the Bible was to be interpreted by the tradition of the early church, and that all doubtful points were to be subjected, not to heated arguments in the pulpits, but to sober discussion by learned men. His mind, in short, like those of the earlier English reformers, combined the Protestant reliance on the Scriptures with reverence for ancient tradition and with the critical spirit of the Renascence. Laud's difficulty lay, as theirs had lain, in the impossibility of gaining over any large number of his fellow-countrymen. Intelligent criticism and intelligent study were only for the few. Laud, as he himself plaintively declared, was in danger of being crushed between the upper and lower mill-stones of Puritanism and the Papacy.
22. =Laud as the Upholder of Uniformity.=--In all this there was nothing peculiar to Laud. What was peculiar to him was his perception that intellectual religion could not maintain itself by intellect alone. Hooker's appeals to Church history and to the supremacy of reason had rolled over the heads of men who knew nothing about Church history, and who did not reason. Laud fell back upon the influence of ceremonial. "I laboured nothing more," he afterwards said, "than that the external public worship of God--too much slighted in most parts of the kingdom--might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion that unity cannot long continue in the Church when uniformity is shut out of the Church door." He, like Eliot and the Parliamentarians, was convinced that there could be but one Church in the nation. As they sought to retain their hold on it by the enforcement of uniformity of doctrine, Laud sought to retain his hold on it by enforcing uniformity of worship. To do this he attempted to put in force the existing law of the Church as opposed to the existing practice. What he urged men to do he believed to be wholly right. He himself clung with all his heart to the doctrine of the divine right of episcopacy, of the efficacy of the Sacraments, and to the sobering influence of appointed prayers and appointed ceremonies. What he lacked was broad human sympathy and respect for the endeavour of each earnest man to grow towards perfection in the way which seems to him to be best. Men were to obey for their own good, and to hold their tongues. The king was the supreme governor, and with his authority, as exercised in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, Laud hoped to rescue England from Pope and Puritan.
23. =The Beginning of Laud's Archbishopric. 1633-1634.=--In =1633= Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. He at once made his hand felt in every direction. By his advice, in consequence of an attempt of the judges to put an end to Sunday amusements, Charles republished the _Declaration of Sports_ which had been issued by his father, authorising such amusements under certain restrictions. Where, however, James had contented himself with giving orders, Charles insisted on having the Declaration read in church by all the clergy, and roused the resistance of those who regarded Sunday amusements as a breach of the Sabbath. Laud was also anxious to see the Communion table standing everywhere at the east end of the church. No doubt his anxiety came in part from his reverence of the holy sacrament for which it was set apart, but it also arose from his dislike to the base purposes for which it was often made to serve. Men often put their hats on it, or used it as a writing table. The canons, or laws of the Church, indeed, directed that the position of the table should, when not in use, be at the east end, though at the time of Communion it was to be placed in that part of the church or chancel from which the minister could best be heard. A case was brought before the king and the Privy Council in =1633=, and it was then decided that the bishop or other proper authority should settle what was the position from which the minister could best be heard. Of course the bishops settled that that place was the east end of the chancel.
24. =Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634.=--Amongst the most virulent opponents of Laud was William Prynne, a lawyer whose extensive study of theology had not tended to smooth away the asperities of his temper. He was, moreover, a voluminous writer, and had written books against drinking healths and against the wearing of long hair by men, in which these follies had been treated as equally blameworthy with the grossest sins. Struck by the immorality of the existing drama, he attacked it in a heavy work called _Histrio-mastix_, or The scourge of stage players, in which he held the frequenting of theatres to be the cause of every crime under the sun. He pointed out that all the Roman emperors who had patronised the drama had come to a bad end, and this was held by the courtiers to be a reflection on Charles, who patronised the drama. He inserted in the index a vile charge against all actresses, and this was held to be an insult to the queen, who was at the time taking part in the rehearsal of a theatrical representation. Accordingly in =1633= Prynne was sentenced by the Star Chamber to lose his ears in the pillory, to a heavy fine, and to imprisonment during the king's pleasure. In =1634= the sentence was carried out. Prynne's case, however, awakened no general sympathy, and the king does not appear to have as yet become widely unpopular. The young lawyers came to Whitehall to give a masque or dramatic representation in presence of the king and queen, in order to show their detestation of Prynne's conduct, whilst John Milton, the strictest and most pure-minded of poets, wrote a masque, _Comus_, to show how little sympathy he had with Prynne's sweeping denunciations. Yet, though Milton opposed Prynne's exaggeration, his own poetry was a protest against Laud's attempt to reach the mind through the senses. Milton held to the higher part of the Puritan teaching, that the soul is to lead the body, and not the body the soul. "So dear," he wrote in _Comus_,
to Heaven is saintly chastity, That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And, in clear dream and solemn vision, Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal.