time, have more preferments to bestow; and, therefore, more dependencies, than all the Prelates in the kingdom ?" The plot, for such it was, succeeded: "no sooner were these words delivered, but a general consternation showed itself in the looks of his auditors :" so he describes it. And alleging the pretext of being " alarmed on the one side, and threatened by the other," Heylyn, as he would have it appear, surprised the new Chancellor of the University, Laud, by sending to him the Sermon with a Letter proffering "to make good his charge:" information which, he says, "came opportunely" to his Lordship! Between those two, the Aspirer, and "his great minion," it was not long before the Feoffees found themselves in the Court of Exchequer, and eventually, in 1632, in Heylyn's own words, "the Feoffinent damned; the Impropriations by them bought, confiscated to his Majesty's use; and the merit of the cause referred to a further censure."b

Thus was frustrated one of the devices of the Puritans for supplying the pulpits, "in places of greatest need," efficiently, with a preaching ministry; a measure which so greatly commended itself, that Fuller informs us, "it is incredible what large sums were advanced, in a short time, towards so laudable an employment." And so much did he approve of the managers, that he adds, "my pen may salute them with a God-speed;' as neither seeing nor suspecting any danger in the design."d Again; he says, "their criminal part was referred to, but never prosecuted in the Star Chamber, because the design was generally approved; and both discreet and devout men were, as desirous of the regulation, so, doleful at the ruin of so pious a project." Its frustration was made one of the articles of impeachment against Laud, whose defence, as he records it, is, that "I was, as then advised upon such information as was given me, clearly of opinion, that this was a cunning way, under a glorious pretence, to overthrow the Churchgovernment, by getting into their power more dependency of the Clergy, than the King and all the Peers, and all the Bishops in all the Kingdom had. And I did conceive the plot the more dangerous for the fairness of the pretence; and that to the State, as well as the Church."f

No wonder if the shameful act of confiscation, "by the Archbishop's procurement," such are Fuller's words, though Laud had not reached the Primacy, added to the resentment which was increasing every day against him, and drave wise men out of the pale of the Prelatical Church. Such was the case, in particular, respecting the learned John Davenport, B.D. whom Heylyn records as one of the four clergymen who constituted a third part of the Feoffees; and of whom Laud's own testimony is, that he was a most religious man, who fled to New England for the sake of a good conscience!"k Thus we have shown,

* Prynne “Canterbury's Doom," 1646. fo. p. 386.

b Life of Laud, p. 209-212. Fuller's, Church Hist. 1655. bk. xi. p. 136. • Ib. p. 143.

Ibid. p. 137.

f Hist. of Laud's Troubles and Trial. 1695. fo. p. 372.

Church Hist. p. 143.

i In 1637.

h P. 210.

* In his "Answer to Lord Say's Speech," p. 47.

from what probably grew out of it thus far, why we judged it proper to give an account of Burton's Censure of Simony.a

Events of momentous importance, too, sprung out of two publications of Richard Mountagu, Bishop of Chichester, and afterwards of Norwich. In 1624, the first of those works came forth under the title of "A Gag for the New Gospel? No! a New Gag for an Old Goose: Or, an Answer to a late Abridger of Controversies, and Beliar of the Protestant's Doctrine." The Parliament took offence, and sought the suppression of this book, and the censure of its author, through the Archbishop, Dr. Abbot. But no sooner had Charles ascended the throne, than forth came the same offensive doctrines, dedicated to himself, under the title of " Appello Cæsarem: A just Appeal from two unjust Informers." 1625. 4to. pp. 322.

The Commons speedily summoned Mountagu to their Bar, but Charles let them know, that as Mountagu was his servant and Chaplain in Ordinary," he had taken the business into his own hands;" at

a The following particulars of another work of Burton's will serve further to show the man and his times. "The Baiting of the Pope's Bull: Or, An Unmasking of the Mystery of Iniquity, folded up in a most pernicious Brief, or Bull, sent from the Pope, lately, into England, to cause a Rent therein for His re-entry. With an Advertisement to the King's Seduced Subjects. By H. B. Lond. 1627." 4to. pp. 95. In his Epistle Dedicatory to the King, Burton styles himself" Your poor old Servant;" and in another Epistle " To the Lord Duke of Buckingham," he describes this "Bull" as " lately sent over into England." The Pope's object was to prohibit his "Catholic Sons" from taking" The Oath of Fidelity" to Charles I. ["If violence proceed so far, as it compel you to that pernicious and unlawful Oath of Allegiance of England; remember, that your prayer is heard of the whole assembly of the Angels beholding you; and let your tongue cleave to your gums, before you cause the Authority of the Blessed Peter to be diminished with that form of Oath."-Urbanus Papa vIII. dilectis Filiis Catholicis Angliæ. Dat. Romæ S. Petri, sub Annulo Piscatoris, die 30 Maii, 1626.] A matter in which, Burton says, he had not been thus bold to meddle, if he had "seen but some Public Edict for the burning of the Brief; as also for the effectual banishing of all Jesuits;" of whom, “England is fuller, at this day, than ever. and now, while the Pope's iron is in the fire, how do they sweat in beating it to perfection!" To meet the objection," But if they be catcht, they are put in prison;" he responds, Alas, they are there but as a bird tied to the net,-to call other birds." Again, representing his Grace pleading ignorance, "But you know no Jesuits;'" Burton remarks, "The greater is your danger and ours:" and presently, he presses his point, without further circumlocution, upon the Duke's conscience," And were it not miraculous," he tells him, "if the Court itself, especially your Grace's house, should be free even from many of such flies which flyblow the purest flesh with their flatteries: .. It is good, therefore, your Grace should make a speedy and diligent search in the Court; in your own house, and in all the skirts of it round about; and so also, throughout the whole Land; what Jesuits are lurking anywhere, and to give them the reward of traitors!"-" Nor let this my boldness seem strange to your Grace; though, perhaps, you be not much acquainted with such as will speak the downright truth... I fear neither prison, nor death itself, that I may discharge a good conscience both towards my God and my King and Country. Nor fear I to be censured as a Polypragmatic."" He warns Buckingham against any who shall, “by hook or crook," hinder his Grace from reading this book; "no doubt," he says, "but your Grace will take that man for no other but a pestilent traitor; and if he be not a Jesuit, yet certainly possessed of a Jesuitical spirit, as seeking to smother such an important overture... Your Grace's poor Orator, Henry Burton."

which the House was much displeased, and, thus was created the first breach between them and the King. Laud took some alarm on this occasion, and recorded in his Diary, "I seem to see a cloud arising, and threatening the Church of England: God, in his mercy dissipate it!" It had been well if Charles had ever borne in mind the wise adage of the Lord Keeper, Williams, "The love of your people, is the Palladium of your Crown."

b Jan. 29. 1625-6. Edit. 1694, fo.

p.27.

a Coke, "Detection" vol. i. p. 228. Coke, sup. p. 235-A production came forth, this year, under a title which, if we should leave unnoticed, would seem, for that reason, to acquire a claim to attention beyond what it really merits. The piece supplies something towards filling the chasm occasioned by the palsied condition into which nearly the whole body of the antiprelatists was reduced by the sway of an Authority which after a while yielded to a combined momentum awfully retributive. Paget and his colleagues were the parties immediately encountered by this thrasonical adversary, who must have occasioned sensations of annoyance in the highnotioned advocate for Presbytery, now a sharer in that kind of defamation which he had himself meted to his fellow-exiles. No interdiction at the press would be apprehended against a work of this description, adapted apparently to circulate only in a Caledonian anti-Knoxian sphere.

"Vox Vera: Or Observations from Amsterdam. Examining the late Insolencies of some Pseudo-Puritans, Separatists from the Church of Great Britain. And closed up with a serious Threefold Advertisement for the general use of every good Subject within his Majesty's Dominions, but more especially of those in the Kingdom of Scotland. By Patricke Scot, North Briton.-Lond. 1625" 4to. pp. 62.

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This task was penned after my safe 'exposal upon a foreign shore, when the sad remembrance of some of my friends and familiars, lately sunk into the unsatiable belly of the vast Ocean, much distempered my brain, and confused my memory." So he tells "the Generous Reader;" an introduction which portends that "Vox Vera" may be interpreted, "Vox Fusca !"

"The common obligation of every good Subject," so he writes, in p. 3, tieth me.. to sound the depth of these riotous misdemeanors which, in my late survey of the United Provinces, I have seen at Amsterdam and other places... There I did behold every bookseller's shop, and most pedlars' stalls, loaden with the Nullity of Perth's Assembly; the Altar of Damascus ; the Dialogue betwixt Theophilus and Cosmophilus; the Speech of the Church of Scotland to her beloved Children; and the Course of Conformity, joined with all these severally printed before-reprinted in one volume, and to be sold at no less rate than if they had been Oracles of Apollo !" Other works, relating to Scotland, he adduces, in the next page, and remarks, "These were closed up with a malicious Satirism against a learned grave Treatise written by the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, whose integrity of life and sincerity of Religion, none but barking curs can tax."

Having prepared his reader, as he hoped, in p. 5, by what he says of "seeming holiness," he then shows what reality there was in his own, adding, “It is credibly reported, that an Amsterdam Sister did encourage her own daughter to perjury, by telling her, It is better to fall into the hands of God than of man.' Ask whatsoever schismatic, the reason of their profession, and they will answer, That the sacred Scripture is the level whereby they square the frame and infallibility of their several churches."

"Let us look," he says, in p. 9, "with impartial eyes upon the late proceedings of our own Separatists," meaning the Scots, on several of whose works he descants, and at p. 34, he says "Next, let us look upon the Merchants and Tradesmen, the Brethren of Separation; and we shall see that they propound private gain to themselves, as the main end of their seeming devotion: that, under this colour, they think it tolerable to cheat or cozen what they can, either by sophisticated wares, false weights and measures, or by any other close decree sealed by ' yea and nay,' because it is a praiseworthy part of their trade, a

Laud was ever forward to charge upon others the effects of that misrule in which he was a chief participater and promoter: an instance will be found in " A Sermon preached on Monday the sixth of February [1625-6,] at Westminster: at the Opening of the Parlia

mystery of their profession, without which they cannot be thought to be fit to deal in the world; and for warrant, forsooth they will tell you, with a whining voice, Christ' commanded us to be simple as doves, but wise like serpents! This is but an insignificant amount of what this " good subject" saw with "impartial eyes," for he subjoins, in the same page, "The residue of the life, allotted to this short task should fail me, if I should insist upon the antipathy betwixt their profession, manners, and life; or, if I should bring some of those best-masked hypocrites upon the stage, I should need no other colours to paint them, nor pencil to delineate them, but their own; but, in distaste of the lavish, scandalous tongues and corrupted pens, of most of their profession, I will forbear, and hold it Religion not to insult over any man's personal infirmities... I could point," he continues, p. 35, "at every myrmidon, as well in their Presbyterial or Consistorian Achilles; at the authors of the Instructions sent to Amsterdam, for the advancement of the Catilinarian works of Didoclavius Anonimus, and Philadelphos; by what convoys the Brethren's contribution was sent, and who returned huge volumes of seditious libels, printed at a dearer rate than the abaters would willingly have bestowed either upon Subsidy, Hospital, or other more pious uses."

The "serious Threefold Advertisement"-begins at p. 44, thus; "First, then, I come to you, my Lords, that are Bishops and Rulers, by place, in the Church of Scotland: I need not call to your memory, that you are the sickles, under your Sovereign, to cut down every weed in the garden of the Church; the snaffles, to bridle schisms; and the centinels, to foresee nequid detrimenti Ecclesia patiatur... There is no possible way unto peace and quietness," says this obsequious friend of their lordships, p. 45, "unless the probable voice of every entire society or body-politic overrule all Private Opinion of that same body. Councils are to no purpose, if once their determination set down, men may afterwards defend publicly their opinions... These considerations I leave to your fatherly care; if I have said too much, or to little purpose, it is because I can do nothing but tattle." Then, with a sort of paradox, he adds, "If I were able to do more I would do it, that our divisions might not be told in Gath, nor our nakedness published in the streets of Askelon."

Two pages forward, he says, "In the Second Place: I come to you, of the Ministry of Scotland, or elsewhere within his Majesty's dominions, that are Lanterns of direction unto your fellows," and he tells them Although I be not of the tribe of Levi, yet I am of the tents of Shem: regard not then, who it is that speaketh, but weigh the truth of what I shall speak." Which way the balance of their judgments would preponderate may be conjectured from what we find him speaking in p. 51. "There is none so ignorant amongst you, but knoweth vos estis dui is a prerogative or summum imperium given to Kings; and estote subditi, a command of obedience, telling Subjects, that as the hand must wither that toucheth, so the tongue must fall out that taxeth the Lord's anointed; against whom the very angels of heaven give not a railing judgment before the Lord!" In p. 55, he touches upon what implies indisputable weight; "In your long digging the barren, desolate, and unfruitful quarry of Dissension, you have gotten nothing but unanswerable stones for the Sanctuary, and rubbish of scandal for yourselves: but from the rich mines of Obedience, Peace, and Christian Society, ye shall reap a golden [!] harvest of those fruits of our Faith, which are only able to direct us towards Heavenly Jerusalem." Now, for a climax, at p. 59, he tells them " Your policies are discovered, your machinations are laid open; and, for aught that can be seen, nothing resteth but expectation of your speedy amendment, or of condign chastisement for offences of so high quality: Rebellio in Principes conatu irrito imperia semper promovit !” Lastly" that is, in the Third Place, he congratulates, in p. 59, "all good Subjects," as well for their "by-past constancy, as soliciting" their "wonted

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ment. By the Bishop of St. David's." This second parliament of Charles, fell under the ban of Heylyn for "not making such use" of Laud's "good doctrine" as they should have done;" and he adds to it, the following whimsical conceit: "At such time as the former parliament was adjourned to Oxon, the Divinity School was prepared for the House of Commons, and a chair made for the Speaker in, or near, the place in which his Majesty's Professor for Divinity did usually read his public lectures, and inoderate in all public disputations: and this first put them into conceit that the determining of all points and controversies in religion did belong to them... For after that, we find no parliament without a committee for religion; and no committee for religion but what did think itself sufficiently instructed to manage the greatest controversies of divinity which were brought before them. And so it was particularly with the present parliament."b

Which professed the better divinity, the committee of one house or the bishops in the other, may be largely disputed, but the quality of Laud's is displayed in this sermon, wherein, upon Psalm cxxii. 3-5, "Jerusalem is builded as a city that is at unity in itself,―or compacted together. For thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord, to the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the Name of the Lord. For there are the seats-or the thrones- of Judgment; even the thrones of the house of David ;" Laud told the Parliament that "the Church and the Commonwealth; God's house, the Temple, and the King's house, the house of David, are met in my text." Thus did he confound things that differ, the material with the metaphorical; and still further did he confound them by enlarging "the type to the State and to the Church."d

After describing some historical effects of evil dissensions, without showing whence they originated, Laud comes to touch his auditors by an application to themselves: "But I pray," says he, "what is the difference; for men not to meet in counsel, and, to fall in pieces when they meet? If the first were our forefathers' error," he adds, "God, of his mercy, grant this second be not ours."e

From the State, he passes to the Church: "The Church-take it catholic-cannot stand well if it he not compacted together into a holy unity in faith and charity. It was miserable, when St. Basil laboured the cure of it for distracted it was then,-as St. Gregory Nazianzen witnesseth, into six hundred diverse opinions and errors. And it is miserable at this day."g

Having shown that State and Church "owe much to unity," he concludes truly, that therefore they "owe very little to them that break the peace of either." Thus far Laud proceeded without stopping to

obedience to God and his Vicegerents." And in p. 61, he proffers them his advice, quod valeat sufficit, "Do not curiously pry into the mysteries and cabals of Princes, which are so unsearchable, that, without touch of disloyalty or admission, they are not to be approached by Subjects; in whom it is contemptuous looseness to be more apt to censure things that are best done, than willing to understand the reasons why they are done!" Life of Laud, p. 146. C P. 4. d P. 8. f Orat. xx. h P. 15.

a 4to. pp. 54.
e P. 11.

* P. 14.