Studies from Court and Cloister Part 16

Prynne retorted promptly, ent.i.tling his reply, "Lame Giles his Haltings." Soon afterwards, being cited to appear and defend himself for having used intemperate language in a book against plays and players, he was sentenced to have his ears shorn off. As many copies of his book as were forthcoming were burned by his side as he sat in the pillory. He was degraded and prevented from pleading as a lawyer. He only wrote the more. The t.i.tles of his book are ingenious, and would ensure their sale at any time. As for their contents, odious as was the language he used, Prynne always. .h.i.t the nail he intended, and was very good at a blow. In Rome's Masterpiece, he declared that the archbishop was a "middle-man, between an absolute Papist and a real Protestant, who will far sooner hug a Popish priest in his bosom than take a Puritan by the little finger."

Prynne's fellow pamphleteers, Bastwick and Burton, were not far behind him in the violence of their invectives, but the lawyer must be admitted to bear the palm for sharp sayings.

In John Bastwick's Litany, instead of "from plague, pestilence, and famine," we have "from bishops, priests, and deacons, good Lord, deliver us."

In 1637, Laud summoned the three men before the Star Chamber, to answer to a charge of libel. Bastwick's crime was for writing against the "Pope of Canterbury." They were all three found guilty, fined 5000 pounds each, condemned to lose their ears, and to be imprisoned for life, an astoundingly heavy sentence. But in addition Prynne was to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S L for slanderous libeller.

Chief Justice Finch ordered the scars left by his former punishment to be laid bare. "I had thought," said he, "that Mr. Prynne had no ears but methinks he hath ears." Three years before, the executioner had only clipped off the outer rims; but now Prynne was to suffer the full rigour of the sentence. A contemporary thus describes the process:--

"Having burnt one cheek with a letter the wrong way, the hangman burnt that again, and presently a surgeon clapped on a plaster to take out the fire. The hangman hewed off Prynne's ears very scurvily, which put him to much pain, and after, he stood long in the pillory before his head could be got out, but that was a chance." *

* Doc.u.ments relating to Prynne, Camden Papers.

He seems to have borne this martyrdom with great coolness, for on his way back to prison, he composed a Latin distich on the letters S L, which he interpreted "Stigmata Laudis"--the scars of Laud.

Although the sentence had been imprisonment for life, Prynne and Burton entered London in triumph three years later; and if revenge is sweet, Prynne was yet to swim in a sea of sweetness. When by a strange irony of fate he was hired to search the imprisoned archbishop for papers, he carried off Laud's diary.

If Panzani could have seen this strange record of the archbishop's dreams, desires, and impressions, he would doubtless have ceased to look upon Laud as an important factor in his scheme of the corporate re-union of the nation with Rome.

Under date 14th August 1634, Prynne read and gloated over those remarkable entries:

"That very morning at Greenwich there came one to me seriously, and that avowed ability to perform it, and offered me to be a cardinal,"

and two days later--

"I had a serious offer made me to be a cardinal. I was then from court, but so soon as I came hither (21st August) I acquainted His Majesty with it. But my answer again was that somewhat dwelt within me, which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is."

No doubt, in declining the cardinalate, if indeed the offer were not a figment of his own brain, Laud would have been diplomatic enough not to allow his reasons to transpire, and probably the Pope never knew them.

The importance of the statement lies for posterity entirely in the anti-Roman tendency which he expressed in his diary. For the archbishop himself, to have committed the matter to writing, whether it were true or imaginary, proved fatal, the entries serving his enemies as the text of one of the chief indictments against him, when he was brought to trial. Nothing he could plead made any impression on the minds of his accusers. His refusal of the purple ought to have vindicated him; but they maintained that for the offer to have been made to him at all, he must have been friends with the Pope. Moreover, had he not objected to the term "Idol of Rome"? and had he not expressed doubt if not denial of the Pope's being anti-Christ? These things were more than enough for fanatics whose piety consisted chiefly in denunciations and impolite epithets. It was as clear as daylight to their minds that the archbishop had "a d.a.m.nable plot to reconcile the Church of England with the Church of Rome."

Presumably, Mr. Prynne's ears were for something in the overwhelming potency of the argument. But another and scarcely less important article of the indictment related to some pictures of the Life and Pa.s.sion of our Lord, which Laud had once had bound up in Bibles. He had been so greatly pleased with the result that he ordered them to be called the Archbishop of Canterbury's Bibles. The Puritans thought they saw in this strong proof of his "popish and idolatrous affection,"

their ignorance of human nature actually leading them to imagine that on seeing an image or picture of a divine person men would be forthwith moved to prostrate themselves in adoration of the material of which it was composed, no other explanation of the word "idolatrous" being possible in this connection.

But we must now return to the year 1636, when popular pa.s.sion ran so high that the opinion of an onlooker is our only means of arriving at a fairly accurate appreciation of events. Panzani, who although wrong in his inferences was correct as to facts, describes the archbishop and his works with great moderation. In his letters to Cardinal Barberini, he tells him that Laud is "short in stature, aged about sixty, is unmarried, and is first in the privy council. His views are moderate, and he is not unfriendly to the Catholic religion. He has the King's interests thoroughly at heart; he studies to increase the revenue, and perhaps for this reason is preferred by the King to all his other advisers. He is ready for any amount of work, and all ecclesiastical affairs receive his personal attention. He is reputed an Arminian, and in nearly all dogmas approaches nearly to the Roman Church. With the King's permission he has made innovations in the Scotch as well as in the English churches, has erected altars, and put sacred pictures in many places. He has the honour and glory of the clergy extremely at heart. Many think his aim is to reconcile this Church with Rome, others hold quite opposite views, and both extremes have some show and reason, for on the one hand, one sees in him great ambition to imitate Catholic rites, and on the other, what looks almost like a positive hatred of Catholics and their religion. Sometimes he persecutes them, but this is interpreted by many to mean only prudence, and a way of escape from the murmurs and quarrels of the Puritans."

The Queen and Panzani were on excellent terms. Cardinal Barberini had sent Henrietta Maria some very costly presents, and she was anxious to show him a similar attention. Father Philip considered that English horses would form a most suitable gift, but the Queen asked him to consult Panzani. "If her Majesty wants to send a really acceptable present to Rome, let her send the heart of the King," said the envoy, smiling. Father Philip replied that this treasure she wished to keep entirely for her own.

"I make no doubt," answered Panzani, "that in sending the King's heart to Rome, the Queen would only possess it the more entirely, and without danger of rivalry from conflicting religious sects."

Father Philip then told her that if it pleased the Father of Mercy, she should send this truly precious gift, and that his Eminence cared for no horses.

Soon after this, Panzani returned home, and was made Bishop of Miletus.

Meanwhile George Conn, a Scotchman, had been chosen to replace him, the papal court considering that he possessed the rare qualities described by Panzani as necessary for the delicate position of papal envoy to the Catholic queen of a non-Catholic country.

Panzani being an Italian, and possessing no language but his own, could only communicate with the Queen and the secretaries of State through an interpreter. As he was a priest, he was liable to cause irritation to such of the court and nation who were not "popishly inclined."

Conn had pa.s.sed twenty-four years in Italy, had courtierlike manners and bearing. He was a layman, although a canon of one of the great Roman basilicas, and as we have already seen, was a candidate for a red hat. With his brilliant parts, great capacity, urbanity, and zeal, it is not surprising to learn that he was declared to be a Jesuit, a generic term not only in his own days, but down to our own, for all who have laboured diligently to restore the old religion.

We find it quite gravely a.s.serted in the records of the reign of Charles I., that Jesuits were of three degrees, and were to be found among politicians, merchants, and the professed Fathers living in religious houses. It would be obviously superfluous to refute this ridiculous statement which seems destined to crop up at intervals to the end of time, quite regardless of the fact that it has been repeatedly shown to affirm an impossibility.

Conn had no sooner arrived in England than the report was spread that he was a disguised Jesuit, come to receive the King into the Catholic Church. Charles, in terror of the Puritans, declared that it was a purely malicious invention, but none the less he continued to temporise, and the court to regulate its conscience according to his vacillating example. Some of the n.o.bility were received into the Church, and among them Lord Boteler and Lady Newport. Ma.s.s was again said in the houses of the Catholic gentry.

In a letter to the Cardinal, written soon after his arrival, Conn gave an account of along conversation he had had with Charles, in the course of which he "remarked to his Majesty that the other powers of Christendom were extremely jealous of the relations which had begun to exist between the Apostolic See and Great Britain. They know," he continued, "that a perfect union between the two must necessarily tend to check their extravagances, and restore to Christ His lost patrimony in the west."

To this the King replied with some emotion, saying:

"May G.o.d pardon the first authors of the rupture."

"Sire," I answered, "the greater will be your Majesty's glory, when by your means so great an evil is remedied." To which the King made no further response. Not long afterwards, Charles asked Conn whether he considered it an easy thing for a man to change his religion.

"I told him," said Conn, "that when a man applied himself without pa.s.sion or prejudice to find out the truth, G.o.d never failed to enlighten him." To which the King took in good part.

"I am obliged to proceed very cautiously," he added, "that they may not think the rumour of my coming here to receive the King into the Church had its origin in my presumption. It was a truly diabolical invention, and calculated to spoil everything."

If the Puritans were angry before, Conn's sojourn in England lashed them into fury. Rome's Masterpiece was written when his service had come to an end, and in the first flush of Puritan triumph. On its t.i.tle-page it styles the mission "The Grand Conspiracy of the Pope and his Jesuited instruments to extirpate the Protestant religion, re-establish Popery, subvert laws, liberties, peace, parliaments--by kindling a civil war in Scotland and all his Majesty's realms; and to poison the King himself, in case he comply not with them in these their execrable designs."

This is how the "conspiracy" is said to have been discovered:--

"Revealed out of conscience to Andreas ab Habernfeld by an agent sent from Rome into England by Cardinal Barberini, as an a.s.sistant to Conn, the Pope's late Nuncio, to prosecute this most execrable plot (in which he persisted a princ.i.p.al actor several years), who discovered it to Sir William Boswell, his Majesty's agent at the Hague, 6th September 1640.

He, under an oath of secrecy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, among whose papers it was casually found by Mr. Prynne, May 31, 1643, who communicated it to the king, as the greatest business that ever was put to him."

Events had succeeded each other with alarming significance. Nothing was too wild for the Puritans to invent or to believe, and it had been found impossible to uphold Conn in the position of papal envoy to the Queen. After nearly three years' service, he had consequently been withdrawn, and in August 1639, Count Carlo Rosetti was sent to lead the forlorn hope of the English Catholics. His first impression of the state of the country and of the future of Catholicism in England was hopeful. "I have found," he wrote to Cardinal Barberini, "in all persons a better disposition and a readiness towards the affairs of religion in general, and an obedience full of reverence towards the particular person of his Holiness our Sovereign, and of your Eminence."

Windebank was fairly amenable, but Laud had pinned his faith to the Church of England, and was no more favourable to the Catholics than to the Puritans. He opposed Rosetti in every possible way, burned Catholic books publicly, and threw all his weight and influence in Parliament on the side that favoured the enforcing of the penal statutes. Meanwhile, the Queen was not idle, and had pleaded successfully with the King for her persecuted coreligionists, so that Rosetti was able to report, "Through the grace of G.o.d, all the priests and Catholics are at last released from prison, to their extreme consolation."

Nevertheless, there was scarcely any further talk of the nation's return to the bosom of the Church; all that was now hoped for was, that if the King could be got to act with some degree of firmness and consistency, the cause of the unhappy Catholics might not yet be altogether lost. Rosetti drew, as far as it went, a life-like portrait of Charles in one of his letters:

"The King," he says, "is very high-minded; but having no sincere, experienced, and capable persons to a.s.sist him, he is often either agitated or changeable, and undecided in the administration of affairs.

He has great parts, and much benevolence, is by nature gentle and moderate, and with regard to morals, is singular among princes. It is not possible to exaggerate his love of justice; in the exercise of this virtue he is little accessible to compa.s.sion, but at the same time, he is no friend of capital punishment. Honesty is one of the strongest points in his character, but not being surrounded with trustworthy ministers, it often happens that he neglects the interests of the State, and gives himself up to hunting, which is his favourite occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt."

But the Puritans were fast gaining the upper hand; Parliament haggled with the King over the supplies, and frightful scenes were enacted in the churches.

"Last Sunday morning," wrote Rosetti, "many Protestants and Puritans being a.s.sembled at church to celebrate their sacrament, it came to a great contest between them; some were determined to communicate sitting, others kneeling. From words they pa.s.sed to blows, causing much disturbance."

The other day, a large number of Puritans went into a Protestant Church, and upset the altars which stood against the wall with rails in front of them, where people were going to Communion in the Catholic manner. They took possession of twelve statues representing the twelve apostles, and carried them with cries and tumult into the Parliament."

On another occasion he wrote:--

"The Archbishop of Canterbury persecutes the Catholics more than ever.

On the vigil of Pentecost, I am told by a trustworthy person, he threw himself at the King's feet, beseeching him to proceed against the Catholic religion, at least from political interests, if not from conscientious motives."

Laud was terrified. All that he had done to imitate Catholicism he now undid, as far as he was able, in order, if possible, to pacify the Puritans. The order to bow at the holy Name was revoked, the communion-tables were replaced in the middle of the churches, and from being called altars were renamed tables. The altar rails were abolished, and the people communicated after the Calvinist manner. A quant.i.ty of Catholic books were ostentatiously burned in a public square, and the state of affairs looked less like reunion with Rome than ever.

But all that Laud did availed him nothing; the disturbances continued in the churches, and scarcely a service was held without a quarrel arising as to the manner of conducting it, some fighting for one posture, some for another.

Neither did the Archbishop become more popular with the mult.i.tude. A courageous stand against the Puritans might have inspired them with some respect for their enemy; yielding to them from fear only made them more formidable. Sometimes the High Church party would still score a victory here and there. A Puritan holding forth one day in Westminster Abbey, with the usual flow of epithets, on the difference between the Catholic religion and that of the Puritans, the Bishop of Lincoln rose, and declared that his language was unbecoming in a pulpit, put an end to the sermon, and forced the preacher to come down.

But these triumphs were rare; few of the king's men were as bold as the Bishop of Lincoln. All seemed to be painfully busy in saving their skins, while the Parliamentarians complained loudly and efficaciously that Charles had allowed the primate to foist a new religion upon them.

Through the primate they proceeded to attack the King. Placards began to appear all over London, with declarations to the effect that the people were determined to enjoy the liberty with which they were born, and to maintain the integrity of their religious wors.h.i.+p. One of these placards was discovered one morning nailed to the gate of the royal palace at Whitehall. On it were these words: "Charles and Maria, doubt not but that the archbishop must die!"

Charles's authority had disappeared with his dignity, and the parsimony of successive Parliaments had impoverished the royal family to so great an extent that the want of money was not the least of their troubles.