VIII. CHAP. tition" for a redress of ecclesiastical grievances.' He was never disposed to favor the Puritans; but a decent respect for the party to which he had belonged, joined to a desire of displaying his talents for theological debate, induced him to appoint a conference at Hampton Court. 1604. Jan. 14. 16. The conference was distinguished on the part of the king by a strenuous vindication of the church of 18. England. Refusing to discuss the question of the power of the church in things indifferent, he substituted authority for argument, and where he could not produce conviction, demanded obedience. "I will have none of that liberty as to ceremonies; I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in substance and in ceremony. Never speak more to that point, how far you are bound to obey."" The Puritans desired permission occasionally to assemble, and at their meetings to have the liberty of free discussions; but the king, prompt to discover that concessions in religion would be followed by greater political liberty, interrupted the petition :"You are aiming at a Scot's presbytery, which agrees with monarchy as well as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply and say, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus; and therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, and say, 1 Hume's England, c. xlv. Neal's Puritans, ii. 31, 32. 2 Barlow's Sum and Substance of the Conf. at Hampton Court, 71. I chiefly follow this account, which I find in the New England Library of Prince, though more favorable to the king and bishops than they deserved. Hallam, i. 404. See Nugee Antiquæ, i. 180, 181, 182, for an account more disgraceful to James. Yet Harrington was a friend to the church. CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON COURT. Le roi s' avisera; the king alone shall decide." 297 Turn- CHAP VIII. ing to the bishops, he avowed his belief, that the hierarchy was the firmest support of the throne. of the throne. Of the 1604 Puritans he added-"I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land, or else worse,' hang them; that's all." This closed the day's debate. "2 "only 18. On the last day of the conference, the king defended Jan. the necessity of subscription, concluding that, "if any would not be quiet and show their obedience, they were worthy to be hanged." The high commission and the use of inquisitorial oaths equally found in him an advocate. He argued for despotic authority and its instruments.3 A few alterations in the book of common prayer were the only reforms which the conference effected. It was agreed that a time should be set, within which all should conform ; if any refused to yield before it expired, they were to be removed.1 The king had insulted the Puritans with vulgar rudeness and indecorous jests; 5 but his self-complacency was satisfied. He had talked much Latin; he had spoken a part of the time in the presence of the nobility of Scotland and England, willing admirers of his skill in debate and of his marvellous learning; and he was elated by the eulogies of the churchmen, who paid full tribute to the vanity of their royal champion. "Your majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's spirit," said the aged Whitgift. Bishop Bancroft, on his knees, exclaimed, that his heart melted for joy, "because God had given England such a king as, since Christ's time, has not been;"" and, in a fool 1 Barlow, 79. Neal's Puritans, ii. 43, 44. Lingard, ix. 30. Hume, c. xlv. 2 Barlow, 83. 6 5 Neal's Puritans, ii. 45. 6 Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 181. Montague, in Winwood, iii. 13-16. Barlow, 93, 94. Lingard, x. 32. Neal's Puritans, ii. 45. CHAP. ish letter, James boasted that "he had soundly pep pered off the Puritans."1 VIII. Whitgift, the archbishop, a man of great consistency of character, estimable for his learning, respected and beloved by his party, did not long survive the conference. He earnestly desired not to live till the next parliament should assemble, for the Puritans would have the majority; and grief, it is thought, hastened 1604. his death, six weeks after the close of the conference, Feb. and only eleven months after the death of Elizabeth. 29. 3 In the parliament, which soon assembled, the party opposed to the church asserted their liberties with such tenacity and vigor, that King James began to hate them as imbittering royalty itself. "I had rather live like a hermit in the forest," he writes, "than be a king over such a people as the pack of Puritans are, that overrules the lower house." At the opening of the session, he had in vain pursued the policy of attempting a union between the old religion and the English church, and had offered "to meet the Catholics in the mid-way," while he had added, that "the sect of Puritans is insufferable in any well-governed commonwealth."4 It was equally in vain, that, at the 1605. next session of parliament, he expressed himself 9. with more vindictive decision; declaring the Roman Catholics to be faithful subjects, but expressing detestation of the Puritans, as worthy of fire for their opinions. The commons of England resolutely favored the sect which was their natural ally in the struggle against despotism. Nov. 5 Far different was the spirit which actuated the 1 Strype's Whitgift, App. 239. 4 Neal's Puritans, ii. 51, 52. Rapin, ii. 165, 166. 5 Prince, 111. Neal, ii. 52. CONVOCATION AND ITS CENSURE. 3 299 VIII. Dec. convocation of the clergy. They were very ready to CHAP decree against obstinate Puritans excommunication and all its consequences.1 Bancroft, the successor of 1604 Whitgift, required conformity with unrelenting rigor; 18. King James issued a proclamation of equal severity; 1605 and it is asserted, perhaps with considerable exaggeration, yet by those who had opportunities of judging rightly, that, in the year 1604 alone, three hundred Puritan ministers were silenced, imprisoned, or exiled. But the oppressed party was neither intimidated nor weakened; the moderate men, who assented to external ceremonies as to things indifferent, were unwilling to enforce them by merciless cruelty; and they resisted not the square cap and the surplice, but the compulsory imposition of them. Yet the clergy proceeded with a consistent disregard of the national liberties. The importation of foreign books was impeded; and a severe censorship of the press was exercised by the bishops. Frivolous acts were denounced as ecclesiastical offences. A later convocation, in a series of 1606 canons, denied every doctrine of popular rights, asserting the superiority of the king to the parliament and the laws, and admitting, in their zeal for absolute monarchy, no exception to the duty of passive obedience. Thus the opponents of the church became the sole guardians of popular liberty; the lines of the contending parties were distinctly drawn; the established church and the monarch, on the one side, were arrayed against the Puritan clergy and the people. A war of opinion began; immediate success was obtained by the established authority; but the contest would be 1 Constitution and Canons Ecclesiastical; Neal, ii. 57–60. Prince, 107, 108. 2 Bancroft, in Neal, ii. 67. 4 Calderwood, in Neal's N. E. 1. 73. Compare a note in Neal's Puritans, ii. 64. 5 Bishop Overall's Convocation Book (not printed till 1690). VIII. CHAP. transmitted to the next generation. Would victory ultimately belong to the Churchmen or to the Puritans? to the monarch or to the people? The interests of human freedom were at issue on the contest. Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, "a poor people" in the north of England, in towns and villages of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and the borders of Yorkshire, "became enlightened by the word of God;" and, as "presently they were both scoffed and scorned by the profane multitude, and their ministers urged with the yoke of subscription," they, by the increase of troubles, were led "to see further," that not only "the beggarly ceremonies were monuments of idolatry," but also "that the lordly power of the prelates ought not to be submitted to." Many of them, therefore, "whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth," resolved, "whatever it might cost them, to shake off the antiChristian bondage, and, as the Lord's free people, to join themselves by a covenant into a church estate in the fellowship of the gospel." Of the same faith with Calvin, heedless of acts of parliament, they rejected "the offices and callings, the courts and canons," of bishops, and, renouncing all obedience to human authority, asserted for themselves an unlimited and never-ending right to make advances in truth, and "to walk in all the ways which God had made known or should make known to them." The reformed church, having for its pastor John Robinson, "a man not easily to be paralleled," were "beset and watched night and day by the agents of prelacy. For about a year, they kept their meetings every Sabbath, in one place or another, exercising the worship of God among themselves, notwithstanding all |