Early in 1630 Laud was chosen chancellor of the Uni- versity' of Oxford. In the same year he also enjoyed the honor of officiating at the baptism of the infant prince, af- terwards Charles II, although this distinction belonged b}' usage to the archbishop of Canterbury. Laud was now in the full tide of prosperity, and nothing could stand in his way. Did the Puritans undertake to buy up the impropriations of Church livings, that they might have the disposal of them for their lecturers, Laud had them punished for their impertinence, and their purchases confiscated to the king. Did they pre- sume to preach or publish their peculiar tenets at Ox- ford or in Ireland, Laud had them expelled or silenced. ^V'ere any bishoprics or deaneries vacant. Laud saw that they were filled with the right sort of churchmen. He enlarged St. John's College with a new quadrangle. He repaired St. Paul's Cathedral. He took cognizance of the chapels and chaplains of English congregations abroad, and of the congregations or churches tjf foreign- ers in England, and reduced them all to conformity, or placed the members of the latter under the strictest sur- veillance, taking away the children, and burdening the parents with all the disadvantages of alienage. He urged the Scottish bishops, if they made any change in their liturgy, to adopt that of the Church of England without any variation ; and the new liturgy which was drawn up by those bishops was submitted to his final revision. On the king's visit to Scotland, Laud attend- ed him, was made a member of the Scotch Privy Coun- cil, and ]ireached before the king, in the chapel royal in Holyrood House, on " the utility of conformity."
LAUD
LAUD
At length, on the 4th of August, IGo.j, archbishop Ab- bot dicil; on the Otli Laud was promoted by the king to the jiriraacy, and on the 19th of September was ibrmally translated to this, the long-desired goal of his ambition. At the same time he was offered a cardinal's hat by cer- tain emissaries of the pope, which, without betraying either astonishment, or indignation, or disturbance of any kind, he respectfully declined '• till IJome should be otherwise than it then was;" and before his enthrone- ment he was elected chancellor of the University of Dublin.
In his metropolitan chair his first act was to issue more stringent rules for candidates for ordination, so as more effectually to shut out Puritan preachers and lecturers. The next was to revive and extend the king's declaration concerning lawful sports on Sundays. The archbishop now proceeded upon his metropolitan visitations, and he made thorough work of it ; for all Puritanism he was a perfect "root and branch" man. But one great business and burden with him was to see that the communion-tables Avere placed altar-wise, rail- ed in, and approached always with the prescribed bows and obeisances, it being assumed that thus, and thus only, could true devotion and godly reverence be preserved in the Church. His old patron, bishop Williams, he sus- pended for contumacy. He busied himself earnestly in improving the revenues of the poor clergy of London and the poorer clergy of Ireland. He procured a new charter and statutes for the University of Dublin, and the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, instead of those of Lambeth, by the Irish Church. Indeed, through his intimacy with Wentworth, the lord deputy, and his chancellorship of the Dublin Universit}', he seems, as prime minister and archbishop of Canterbury, to have had mucli more control of the affairs of the Irish Church than her own primate, Usher, or any or all of her bish- ops and archbishops. Civil appointments, also, were ac- cumulated upon Laud. He was not only prime minister, privy counsellor in England and in Scotland, member of the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, but he was also appointed a member of the committee of trade, aiid a commissioner of the Treasury, and placed on the foreign committee. He procured the new Caroline Char- ter for Oxford, and continued his munificent gifts. He took especial care of the restoration of the cathedrals and of the Cathedral service, with all the old accustom- ed appointments and ceremonies.
Laud, like Wolsey when in favor with Henry Till, had reached the highest pinnacle of his greatness. All honor, power, and splendor seemed to converge towards him. All around was buoyant with success and glowing with promise. It was Laud here, it was Laud there, it was Laud everywhere. He had three kingdoms well in hand. Church and State lay submissive at his feet. But the scene was soon to change. He was disporting himself upon the bosom of a volcano, whose vent-holes he was lioi)ing to keep stopped up with his puny engineering. The quakings and rumblings of the approaching eruption were already increasing. In the year 1(137, ''some fac- tious and refractory men had determined to establish tlieir enthusiasm on the shores of America, amid tlie fcjrcsts of New England." These disorderly emigra- tions without a royal license it was thought expedient to restrain, "because of the manj'idle and obstinate hu- mors whose only or principal end was to live without the reach of authority." Eight ships in the Thames were stopped by an order of Council, and no clergyman was allowed to leave the country without the approba- tion of tlie archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. Among those intended emigrants Oliver Cromwell is said to have been thus stopped. The sj^mp- toms of dissatisfaction and uneasiness were drawing to- wards a crisis, and some prosecutions of this same year accelerated the national calamities. The first case was the trial of Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton in the Star Chamber. J'rynne was a graduate of Oxford, and a barrister of Lincoln's Inn : Bastwick left Cambridge be-