anything more to say. Upon their answering in the negative, he ended the conference, declaring, "If this be all, I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of this land, or do worse !

The utter indecency of the king's conduct was only to be surpassed by that of the bishops. Bancroft declared "he was fully persuaded that his majesty spoke by the instinct of the Spirit of God!" Lord Cecil declared that they were much bound to God, who had given to the king an understanding heart. And the lord chancellor added, that he had never understood the conjunction of the monarch and the priest till that day.* Barlow adds that the king was "a living library and a walking study." Comment is utterly superfluous !

The third day's conference was worthy of its precursors. During a considerable period the puritans were kept waiting in the outer chamber, whilst the divines of the church were endeavoring within to satisfy the king no difficult matter respecting some points of his prerogative relating to the church, especially the High Commission Court and the ex-officio oaths.

The king said that he regarded subscription as wise and requisite. "If any, after things are well ordered, will not be quiet and show his obedience, the church is better without him, and he is worthy to be hanged. Better that one perish, than the whole body."

He then described the ex-officio oath, "in such a compendious but absolute order, that all the lords and the rest of the present auditors stood amazed at it."†

Whitgift: "Undoubtedly his majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's spirit."

Bancroft, on his knees: "I protest that my heart melts within me with joy that Almighty God has given us such a king, as, since Christ's time, the like hath not been."

* Barlow. Warburton observes, in his notes on Neal, "Sancho Panza never made a better speech, nor more to the purpose, during his government.”

+ Barlow.

This sentiment was unanimously applauded!

After the discussion of questions regarding the high commission, and plans for instituting schools and appointing ministers in Ireland and the border, the puritan ministers were called in for the last time, but it was now only to receive the royal pleasure touching the points in issue. The king announced to them the parsimonious alterations agreed on in their absence; gave them a special exhortation to unity - that is, to uniformity; and, in answer to requests for indulgences to weak consciences, said, among other matters:

66

This is just the Scottish argument; for when anything is there concluded which dislikes some humors, the only reason why they will not obey is, that it stands not with their credit to yield, having so long time been of the contrary opinion. I will none of that; and, therefore, either let them conform themselves, and that shortly, or they shall hear of it!"

And thus ended the Hampton Court Conference.

Contemporary accounts agree in their description of the insulting nature of this whole council. One of the number said that he now saw that "a puritan was a protestant frightened out of his wits." The king, writing to Scotland, says that "he had soundly peppered off the puritans;" and, moreover, "They fled me so from argument to argument, without ever answering me directly, that I was forced to tell them that, if any of them, when boys, had disputed thus in the college, the moderator would have fetched them up and applied the rod." Sir J. Harington said, "The king talked much Latin, and disputed much with Dr. Rainolds, telling the petitioners that they wanted to strip Christ again, and bade them get away with their snivelling." The puritans were evidently borne down and confounded; no one point was thoroughly debated; the prelates interposed the most unbecoming interruptions; the king was witness, advocate, judge and jury, by turns; and the whole debate, if such it could be termed, was a mockery of the ends for which it had been professedly summoned. "This great mountain," says, Heylin, too truly, "which had excited so

The millenary

much expectation, was delivered only of a mouse. plaintiffs have gained nothing by their fruitless travail, but the expounding of the word absolution by remission of sins, the qualifying of the rubric about private baptism, the adding of some thanksgivings at the end of the litany, and of some questions and answers at the close of the catechism." "In the accounts that we read of this meeting," says Hallam, "we are alternately struck with wonder at the indecent and partial behavior of the king. It was easy for a monarch and eighteen churchmen to claim the victory, be the merits of their dispute what they might, over four abashed and timid adversaries." Let it be also observed that these men were not selected by the puritan party, and that the four were not even agreed among themselves as to the points at issue. Well might their brethren say, "Therefore the puritan ministers offer - if his majesty will give them leave — in one week's space to deliver his majesty, in writing, a full answer to any argument or assertion propounded in that conference by any prelate; and in the mean time they do avow them to be most vain and frivolous!

The preconcerted scheme of which this conference was only the exponent was soon made apparent by a royal proclamation, March 5, 1603. The king declared that, after listening to "the exceptions of the nonconformists, which he had found very slender," and after yielding some explanations for their "satisfaction," "he now requires and enjoins all his subjects to conform to the liturgy, as the only public form established in this realm; and adinonishes them not to expect any further alterations, for that his resolutions were absolutely settled." The Book of Canons was immediately adopted by the convocation, in which it was set forth that those denying the royal supremacy, or the orthodoxy of the English church, or the congruity of the public service to the Word of God, or asserting the erroneousness of the Articles, the ceremonies of the church, or administration of its prelacy, or maintaining the legitimacy of ministers not established by law, or favoring conventicles, or holding other anabaptist errors, should be excom

municated, and only restored by an archbishop after due and public recantation.

The effect of these enactments was subsequently aggravated by the publication of the "Book of Sports," which allowed, after divine service, "all lawful recreations," but prohibited all puritans and recusants from the indulgence.

Under these canons, it was computed that fifteen hundred ministers were suspended.

In relating this conference, mention has been made of the names of four ministers of reputation, though they were not actually leaders among the puritan party. This is, perhaps, the proper place to add the names of a few others, who, in or before the reign of James, were conspicuous for similar opinions. That the party was very considerable is obvious, if from nothing else, yet, at least, from the number of names attached to the "millenary petition; that it comprehended men of the highest position, both in church and state, has been already shown. Detesting popery, because it obscured the gospel, because of its essential intolerance, and because it repressed liberty of thought and progress, it had been the design of the early puritans to substitute a spiritual religion in its stead. They were not precisely agreed how far it might be desirable to go; but all were of opinion that they might advance far beyond the point reached already, without hazard. They had therefore witnessed, with surprise and alarm, the sudden check given, by Cranmer's means, to the progress of the reformation. They exclaimed against the arbitrariness of so sudden a pause in reform, and urged upon the higher powers points in which it appeared to them that further amendment was indispensable. Could the

stream have rolled onward, the muddy waters would soon have wrought themselves clear, and the reformers would have seen wherein the channel was defective. But as yet they had never recognized the alliance between the ecclesiastical and civil powers as the great instrument of their sorrow; and by admitting it they involved themselves in endless contradictions, and knotted the whip which lacerated their own flesh. The error mainly consisted

in setting up the model of the Jewish polity as the law of the Christian church. Lacking a special revelation to point out who were the peculiar people, and what, to its very letter, was the belief they should hold, the notion was a mere dream, a phantom, an "airy nothing." It seemed clear to them that they held the truth, and should, therefore, be protected, whilst others were in error, and their opinions should be extirpated. But they forgot that there is more self-delusion in the world than absolute hypocrisy; and that the same doctrine was preached on the opposite side against them. The distinction was not only unfair, but such as it would prove impossible for any civil power to make. Protestantism destroying puritanism was to them murder; protestantism destroying anabaptism, or popery, or Arianism, was no murder at all. The only defence which can be offered for this is, that it was the error of the times. The apology will avail as well for the persecutor as the persecuted. It is not without some force as applied to men; but incorrect principles deserve no favor, and indulgence to them is high treason to truth.

Yet the position in which the puritans stood had much which rendered it unutterably galling and intolerable. Not knowing, as yet, by long experience, the anomalous influence of civil power over spiritual men, they might well wonder how those who, from their very position, ought to be seeking the same great objects as themselves, should — only because the puritans were in earnest first forsake, and then trample them down. War between reformers and Roman Catholics they could understand; but this was more than a civil war it was fratricidal. The wounds were the cruel infliction of a brother; the puritan thus was struck by the very hand which he prayed for. A few of the leaders of this party may be briefly distinguished.

At the foot of the old London-bridge formerly stood a church, destroyed by the great fire of London, but long since rebuilt, bearing the name of St. Magnus. Here, during two years, preached a poor and infirm old man, who had acted a conspicuous part in the great movements of his day; but now, battered and worn, had become an