for the defence of the country, not by rousing the patriotic feelings of Englishmen, but by levying shipmoney by his own authority. In the Church, he enforced obnoxious rites and ceremonies, in the hope that England would be brought to entertain religious opinions which he approved, but which the country bitterly detested. In all things, as far as he was concerned, external and visible control took the place of the spontaneous vigour of Elizabethan England. With Laud, the greatest ecclesiastic of his court, correctness of gesture and outward form went far to constitute the test of churchmanship. With Wentworth, the greatest statesman of his court, a due administration of reward and punishment became the highest method of acquiring political influence. The decadence of the courtly literature of the time was the index to the decadence of moral and intellectual strength. The remaining dramatists of the Elizabethan school died, leaving no successors but the sweet and honey-tongued singers of a world of grace and beauty, where earnestness of heart counted for nothing,-the Herricks, the Carews, the Sucklings, who could tell of the loveliness of soft glances and warm kisses, but who knew nothing of the fidelity of Imogen or the bright womanliness of Rosalind. Literature, in the person of Milton, passed to the side of the opposition.

'1/

Puritan

That opposition grew stronger every day, because, 9. The like Elizabeth's government, it harmonised the aspira- Oppotions of men of various minds. To that standard all sition. gathered who reverenced the unseen objects of thought above the visible objects of sense. First, of course, came the Puritan strictly so called, who either objected to the ceremonies of the Church as a whole, or who objected, like the men of Hampton Court, to some special ceremonies which reminded him of the pretensions of the Church of Rome. Towards these ad

СНАР.
VII.

§ 10. The Constitutional Opposi

tion.

vanced another and far more numerous band, who would have been content if Charles had left Church arrangements as he found them, but who were irritated by the order to transfer the position of the communion-table from the centre of the church to the east end, and by other accompanying ceremonial changes. They saw in these things an indication that the king and Archbishop Laud were, if not actually preparing the way for the restoration of the Roman Church, at least furthering a state of things in which the cardinal principle of Protestantism-the direct individual dependence of each man upon God without the intervention of priests and ex-ternal observances-was to be set at nought in favour of a system in which man was to be called on to approach. his Maker in ways settled without his approbation, and through official persons with whom he wished to have nothing to do. So thoroughly were these men, loyal as they were to the Church as it stood in the days of their boyhood, alarmed by Laud's proceedings, that the barrier which divided the Elizabethan Puritan from the merely Protestant churchman was broken down, and the name of Puritan became applicable to both classes alike.

The other great wing of the opposition was composed of lawyers. Lawyers indeed were to be found in plenty on the king's side, for there were many who were content to fall back upon his authority for the maintenance of order. But for the higher class of minds this was impossible. For them there was need of a conception of law, which would ultimately rest on something better than mere precedents and decisions leading up in all unsettled cases to the arbitrary will of a single man. They preferred to give the right of settling such cases to Parliament as the embodiment of the wisdom of the nation. No doubt there was a danger here. If Parliament was to rule instead of the king, it might very well

become as arbitrary and despotic as the king himself. It might impose injustice upon unpopular persons and unpopular classes. But as a legislative body it would have this advantage, that it was less liable than was a single person to act on each special occasion upon the impulse of the moment. The king, professing only to execute the law, might, unless he were placed under control, execute it in a different way at different times according to the temper in which he was at the moment. Parliament, by the very fact that it was obliged to legislate for the future, was always tending to lay down general rules, and was likely to be especially careful to bring them into conformity with the rules of justice, because as long as the existing constitution lasted the execution of them would fall into the hands of the king. In this way the lawyers and the Puritans found a point of contact which was wanting at other periods of our history. Both alike looked for their rules of life to laws which were discovered by the exercise of reason rather than to the commands of an authoritative person or an authoritative class.

Almost all that was noble and dignified in man was on the side of the opposition. Fanatics no doubt there were,-legal fanatics who saw nothing in law but a collection of precedents, religious fanatics who saw no salvation out of the observation of a narrow orthodoxy. But the main body of the opposition was not composed of fanatics. Puritan gentlemen like Hutchinson, or Puritan men of business who, like Milton's father, loved

song and music and literature, ordering their lives Eng // B

into a kindly if severe decency, self-respecting and respecting others, working manfully at their several callings, and remembering that they lived ever in their great Taskmaster's eye. Yet these were the men, forming as they did the bone and sinew of the nation, who were

frowned upon by Charles. Their ideas were treated with contempt. Every rule of law was interpreted or wrested against them. They were compelled, whether they liked it or not, to attend their own parish churches, to bow when the name of Jesus was pronounced, to receive the Communion on their knees before a table at the east end, which they were told to call an altar. Their names were left out of the commission of the peace, in favour of their more subservient neighbours. The Court of Star Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission were ever active to enforce the will of the king against them. Yet it was not solely because he provoked the enmity of thinking men that Charles ran into danger. Those who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their ideas were then, as they always are, a minority. But it is not likely that a government which disregards the ideas of its subjects will pay much regard to their interests. Hundreds who would not be touched by large grievances would be affected by small ones. Those who did not care whether the communion-table stood at the east end or in the centre of the church, cared very much when they found that the clergy began to assume Tordly airs, that the bishop of the diocese had more influence at Court than the gentlemen who were his neighbours, or that the minister of the parish kept the squire in order. So too in civil matters. The enforcement of shipmoney led the way to a breach of the constitutional practice which had been sanctioned by the Petition of Right,that money should not be taken without a parliamentary grant. But the, resistance to the principle was much strengthened by the fact that it involved resistance to the payment of money. The dullest minds could hardly be impervious to the logic which taught them to guard against the demand of a few pence by the sole authority of the crown, because the authority which asked for a few

pence might, by the same reasoning, ask for as much as
it pleased. Charles's resolution to act independently of
the nation marshalled well nigh the whole nation against-
him. Like every weak government, the government of
Charles was driven from sheer terror to violent measures
of repression. Argument against the principles on
which it was based had long been prohibited, and those
who were restrained from the use of serious argument
took refuge in derisive and libellous attacks upon the
persons of their oppressors. Laud and Charles had but

one answer to give. The Star Chamber had brandings
on the cheek, loppings off of ears, life-long imprisonments
for men who like Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick assailed
the bishops, cruel scourgings for men who like Lilburne
called in question its method of procedure. Compas-
sion for the victims added yet another cord to bind
together the hearts of Englishmen against those who
were treating England without knowledge and without
sympathy. Yet even then there was no deliberate pur-
pose of throwing off the king. King, Lords and Commons,
it was held, must work together. The attempt of the
king to stand alone had wrought nothing but mischief.

СНАР.

VII.

9.

Serman

Resistance

Resistance came first from Scotland. The Scottish § 12. The nation had gained its Protestantism in more direct conflict in Scotwith a Roman Catholic sovereign than had been needed land. in England. Its Puritanism was therefore more intense, and its hatred of all ceremonial forms which resembled in any way the ceremonies of the Roman Church was far more decided. James, with the view of keeping the clergy in subordination to himself, had established episcopacy in Scotland, and had enjoined, though he was not everywhere able to enforce, the_practice of kneeling_at the reception of the Communion. Charles went further than his father had ventured to go. By his orders a new prayer-book was drawn up on the model of the