studies. Never did so unpromising a beginning lead up to a fairer conclusion. Brooke entered upon his task by denouncing bishops as upstarts of low birth and ill-breeding. His argument meandered for some time amongst disputed points of ecclesiastical antiquity, in which he fails to interest the reader, because, like most other controversialists of his day, he shows that he is not led by any spirit of historical inquiry, and that he is thinking of Laud and Wren much more than of Ambrose and Augustine. When the constructive portion of the book is reached the author wins upon our sympathies. He is not, indeed, aware, any more than Pym was aware, of the full extent of the problem to be solved. His ideal Church is Puritan and nothing more. But he had been brought, as a member of the House of Lords, face to face with the question of the treatment of schismatics. He had doubtless been one of those Peers who visited the conventicle in Deadman's Place. In this practical way he had come to ask himself the question whether liberty of conscience for the ignorant as well as for the wise were good or bad. The bishops, he says, had declared that ceremonies were indifferent, and on that ground had forced all to take part in them. Brooke boldly answers that nothing is indifferent. The least action ought either to be done or left undone, and it is only our ignorance of the right course which we veil under the name of indifference. Yet if there is to be any sort of Church at all, it must impose certain acts upon its members. The difficulty comes when the community is of one opinion and an individual member of another. Brooke decides for the individual. No power on earth, he says, ought to force his practice. 'One that doubts with reason and humility may not, for aught I yet see, be forced Dy violence.' With this thought before him Brooke refused to be frightened by the danger of admitting ignorant and vulgar persons to teach. Why, he asks, may not a man be allowed to preach, though he is basely employed all the week in trade, as well as a bishop who is busy all the week with affairs of state? Brooke has full faith in the purifying effect of liberty. "Fire and water," he says "may be restrained, but light cannot. It

Page 33.

will in at every cranny, and the more it is opposed it shines the brighter, so that now to stint it is to resist an enlightened and inflamed multitude." The activity of the bishops in enforcing conformity had resulted in producing many thousand Nonconformists. Why could not men agree to differ? "Can we not dissent in judgment but we must also disagree in affection? We never prove ourselves true members of Christ more than when we embrace His members with most enlarged yet straightest affections."

work.

1

It is impossible to over-estimate the value of such a book. Whilst the future champions of toleration were silent, whilst Cromwell was giving all his strength to the work of Merits of Brooke's the hour, whilst Milton was lost in admiration of his latest birth of an all-embracing and unobtrusive Presbyterianism, Brooke had worked out the problem of his age, and had given the solution which, after forty-eight years of confused and weary seeking, all England would accept. His pleading on behalf of the liberty of unlicensed preaching preceded by three years Milton's pleading for the liberty of unlicensed printing. No defect in the form of Brooke's work should be allowed to distract our minds from its intrinsic value.

If Pym was very far from possessing Brooke's keenness of insight into the future, it was at least certain that his counsels would be given on the side of moderation. The RootBishops' Ex-and-Branch Bill was finally abandoned at the reclusion Bill. assembling of Parliament. The attempt made by the

The second

committee to enforce the resolutions of the Commons in the matter of the ceremonies was also dropped. On the 21st a new Bill was brought in to deprive the clergy of all temporal authority, and especially to exclude the bishops from their seats in the House of Lords. The opposition to the measure was of a very perfunctory kind. Hyde objected to it on the ground that it meddled with the constitution of the Upper House, whilst Falkland took the more practical ground that it was certain to be rejected by the Peers. The only alternative scheme was offered by Dering, who asked that a national Synod should be

1 Pages 98, 123.

called to remove the distractions of the Church. For the present no attention was paid to this suggestion, which had already been heard of on several occasions since the first meeting of Parliament. It is probable that Pym felt it to be hopeless to expect any such Church reform as he regarded necessary, so long as a compact body of twenty-six episcopal votes was opposed to him in the House of Lords. The new Bill

Oct. 23.

was pushed rapidly through the Commons. It was read a third time only two days after its introduction.1

Oct. 24.

When the Bill was sent up to the Lords, some who wished it ill believed that it would be allowed to pass.2 Its introducFeeling of tion a second time was evidently intended to form the Lords. the basis of a compromise. Yet there was a large party amongst the Peers which was against all concession. The vigour of the sects during the vacation, and the violence with which the orders of the House of Commons had been in some places executed, had produced a feeling of irritation in many of the Peers, which was increased by the not unnatural resentment roused by an attempt to alter the ancient constitution of their own House. It was observed that on the day after the Bill was sent up, which happened to be a Sunday, an unusual number of Lords travelled down to Oatlands to pay their respects to the Queen.3 On Monday an incident occurred which showed how intense was the bitterness of the hatred of which Pym had by this time become the object. A letter was delivered to him in his place in the House. As soon A plague-rag as he had opened it, a rag, foul with the foulness of sent to Pym. a plague-sore, dropped on the floor. The letter in which it was enclosed termed him a traitor and a taker of bribes, and assured him that if he did not die of the infection now conveyed to him, a dagger would be found to rid the world of his presence.1

Oct. 25.

In the first months of the Long Parliament, Pym and his

'D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 31 b. Dering's Speeches, 92. 2 Nicholas to the King, Oct. 25, Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. App. 44.

Oct. 29

• Giustinian to the Doge, Nov. 8'

Ven. Transcripts. R. O.

D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 36 b.

Pym's pro

friends had had the advantage of opposing vague and indefinite schemes. No one could tell precisely what the posal stirs up primitive Episcopacy of their adversaries would come >pposition. to be in practice. That advantage they had now thrown away. After all that had been said and done in support of the Root and-Branch Bill, it was impossible to imagine that the present Bishops' Exclusion Bill was Pym's last word on Church reform. What he wanted, it seemed, was to diminish the majority against him in the House of Lords before producing that scheme which appeared all the more dangerous because he had given no hint what its nature was to be. He would probably have gained far more than he would have lost by bringing forward now a complete but moderate plan of ecclesiastical reform. Unfortunately, he, too, had none of those powers of constructive statesmanship which were most needed at this crisis of our history.

The King's manifesto circulated

Peers.

Not only was the advantage of definiteness of plan lost to Pym, but it had already passed over to the other side. On the 25th Nicholas had been circulating amongst the Peers an extract from a letter which had just reached amongst the him from the King. "I hear," wrote Charles, "it is reported that at my return I intend to alter the government of the Church of England, and to bring it to that form as it is here. Therefore I command you to assure all my servants that I am constant to the discipline and doctrine of the Church of England established by Queen Elizabeth and my father, and that I resolve-by the grace of God-to die in the maintenance of it." 1

The mani

festo practically a de

Charles had at last found an object to stand up for which was higher than his own prerogative. By this manifesto he was to abide till the last solemn scene of his life. It gave him the hearts of all who, from various causes, distrusted Puritan domination. In the mouth of any man less liable than himself to prefer intrigue to statesmanship

claration of

war

This appears to have been the form in which the extract was circulated, but there was an earlier one. The King's Apostyle, Oct. 12. Nicholas to the King, Oct. 25, Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. App. 37, 44. The King to Nicholas, Oct. 18, S. P. Dom.

it would, with some modification, have secured a firm foundation for the constitutional monarchy. So deeply-rooted was the monarchical feeling in England that even after it had been chilled by years of misgovernment, it was ready to spring up again with fresh life the moment that the causes of distrust had been removed. In the mouth of Charles, unfortunately, the manifesto was a declaration of war. He had no thought of making room for so many of the Puritan party as would be content to enter into a compromise with their fellow-subjects. Yet Puritanism was still a mighty force in England, and it was not for Charles to hope permanently to exclude it from the Church, any more than it was for Pym to hope to make it permanently dominant in the Church.

The funda

ditions of

misunder

Both sides, in short, were driven by their antecedents to misunderstand the fundamental conditions of governmental con- ment. Charles believed that an existing system could government be maintained in the face of widely-felt dissatisfacstood. tion. Pym believed that a new system could be introduced by a mere Parliamentary majority in the face of a dissatisfaction equally widely felt. The one maintained that the House of Commons could effect no change without the assent of the King and the House of Lords. The other exalted the authority of an elected assembly whilst forgetting to inquire whether its decisions were in conformity with the actual necessities of the nation.

Pym and the King.

Yet if there were faults and errors on both sides Charles was personally overmatched by Pym. In coolness and dexterity the Parliamentary leader was far his superior. On the 26th, Pym stopped a proposal made by Holles, that the bishops who had been impeached for their part in the late canons should be accused of treason, whilst he himself carried a vote to ask the Lords to suspend the whole Episcopal Bench from the division on the Exclusion Bill, on the ground that they ought not to be judges in their own case, and to direct that the thirteen who had been already impeached should be sequestered from the House till their case had been decided.' An attempt

Oct. 26. Pym asks that the bishops be suspended froin voting on the Exclusion Bill.

1 C. F. ii. 295. D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 40 b.