THE HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE.
The accession of James I. (1603-1625) marks a new epoch. He was no ordinary man. His learning ranged from the mysteries of predestination to witchcraft and tobacco; he had considerable shrewdness, mother-wit, ready repartee, and uncommon sense, but little common-sense, and no personal dignity nor moral courage; he was given to profanity, intemperance, and dissimulation. His courtiers and bishops lauded him as the Solomon of his age, but Henry IV. of France characterized him better as 'the wisest fool in Christendom.' He was brought up in the school of Scotch Presbyterianism, subscribed the Scotch Confession, and once said of the Anglican liturgy that 'it is an ill-said mass in English.' But the Stuart blood was in him, and when he arrived in England he felt relieved of his tormentors, who 'pulled his sleeve as they administered their blunt rebukes to him,' and was delighted by the adulation of prelates who had much higher notions of royalty than Scotch presbyters.
He lost no time in showing his true character. He answered the famous Millenary (or Millemanus) petition, signed by nearly a thousand Puritan ministers, and asking for the reform of certain abuses and offenses in worship and discipline, [1351] by the imprisonment of ten petitioners on the ground that their act tended to sedition and treason, although it contained no demand inconsistent with the established Church. Thus the opportunity for effecting a compromise was lost. He agreed, however, to a Conference, which suited his ambition for the display of his learning and wit in debate.
The Conference was held January 14, 16, and 18, 1604 (old style, 1603), at Hampton Court. The persons summoned were nine bishops, headed by Archbishop Whitgift of Canterbury and Bishop Bancroft of London, and eight deans, on the part of the Conformists, and four of the most learned and moderate Puritan divines, under the lead of Dr. John Reynolds, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. [1352] The King himself acted both as moderator and judge, and took the leading part in the discussion. He laid down his famous pet-principle (which he called his 'aphorism'), 'No bishop, no king;' [1353] and, after browbeating the Puritans, used as his final argument, 'I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.'
Archbishop Whitgift was so profoundly impressed with the King's theological wisdom that be said, 'Undoubtedly your Majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's Spirit;' and Bishop Bancroft, of London (who first proclaimed the doctrine of a jure divino episcopacy), thanked God on his knees that of his singular mercy he had given to them 'such a king, as since Christ's time the like hath not been.' The same haughty prelate rudely interrupted Dr. Reynolds, one of the most learned men in England, saying, 'May your Majesty be pleased that the ancient canon be remembered--Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi; and there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly subscribed. And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your associates, how much are ye bound to his Majesty's clemency, permitting you, contrary to the statute primo Elizabethæ, so freely to speak against the liturgy or discipline established.'
Fuller remarks 'that the King in this famous Conference went beyond himself, that the Bishop of London (when not in a passion) appeared even with himself, and that Dr. Reynolds fell much beneath himself.' The Nonconformists justly complained that the King invited their divines, not to have their scruples satisfied, but his pleasure propounded--not to hear what they had to say, but to inform them what he would do. Hallam, viewing the Conference calmly from his stand-point of constitutional history, says: 'In the accounts that we read of this meeting we are alternately struck with wonder at the indecent and partial behavior of the King and at the baseness of the bishops, mixed, according to the custom of servile natures, with insolence toward their opponents. 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 intimidated adversaries.' [1354]
The Conference, however, had one good and most important result--the revision of our English Bible. The revision was suggested and urged by Dr. Reynolds, who was subsequently appointed one of the revisers, [1355] and it was ordered to be executed by King James, from whom it has its name. [1356]
With all his high notions about royalty, James had not the moral courage to carry them into full practice, and with all his high notions about episcopacy, he had no sympathy with Arminianism, but actually countenanced the Calvinistic Presbyterian Synod of Dort, and sent five delegates to it, among them a bishop. In both these respects Charles went as far beyond James as Laud went beyond Whitgift and Bancroft.