In one word, Laud was a typical Anglo-Catholic, who unchurched all non-episcopal Churches, and regarded the Anglican Church as an independent sister of the Latin and Greek communions, and as the guardian of the whole truth as against the 'sects,' and of nothing but the truth as against Rome. The Anglo-Catholicism of the nineteenth century is simply a revival of Laud's system divested of its hateful tyranny and political ambition and entanglements. Dr. Pusey, the father of modern Anglo-Catholicism, is superior to Archbishop Laud in learning, spirituality and charity, but in their theology and logic there is no difference. [**placement of this note is uncertain**] [1370]
THE STAR-CHAMBER AND THE HIGH-COMMISSION COURT.
The two chief instruments of this royal episcopal tyranny were the Star-Chamber and the High-Commission Court--two kinds of inquisition--the first political, the second ecclesiastical, with an unlimited jurisdiction over all sorts of misdemeanors, and with the power to inflict the penalties of deprivation, imprisonment, fines, whipping, branding, cutting ears, and slitting noses.
Freedom of speech and the press, which is now among the fundamental and inalienable rights of every Anglo-Saxon citizen, was punished as a crime against society. Prynne, a graduate of Oxford, and a learned barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who published an unreadable book (Histrio-Mastix, the Player' Scourge, or Actors' Tragedie, divided into Two Parts) against theatres, masquerades, dancing, and women actors, with reflections upon the frivolities of the queen, was condemned by the Star-Chamber to be expelled from Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, to be fined £5000, to stand in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, to have his ears cut off, his cheeks and forehead branded with hot irons, and to be imprisoned for life. His huge quarto volume of 1006 pages, with quotations from as many authors, was burned under his nose, so that he was nearly suffocated with the smoke. Leighton, a Scotchman (father of the saintly archbishop), Bastwick, a learned physician, and Henry Burton, a B.D. of Oxford, and rector of a church in London, were treated with similar cruelty for abusing in printed pamphlets the established hierarchy. No doubt their language was violent and coarse, [1371] but torture and mutilation are barbarous and revolting. And yet Laud not only thanked the lords of the Star-Chamber for their 'just and honorable sentence upon these men,' but regretted, in a letter to Strafford, that he could not resort to more 'thorough' measures.
THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH.
The excesses of despotism, sacerdotalism, ceremonialism, intolerance, and cruelty exhausted at last the patience of a noble, freedom-loving people, and kindled the blazing war-torch which burned to the ground the throne and the temple. The indignant nation rose in its majesty, and asserted its inherent and constitutional rights.
The storm burst forth from the North. The Scots compelled the King to abandon his schemes of innovation, and to admit that prelacy was contrary to Scripture. In England the memorable Long Parliament organized the opposition, and assumed the defense of constitutional liberty against royal absolutism. It met Nov. 3, 1640, and continued till April 20, 1653, when it was dissolved by Cromwell to give way to military despotism. The war between the Parliament and the King broke out in August, 1642. For several months the Cavaliers fought more bravely and successfully than the undisciplined forces of the Roundheads; but the fortunes of war changed when Oliver Cromwell, a country gentleman, bred to peaceful pursuits, appeared at the head of his Ironsides, whom he selected from the ranks of the Puritans. It was an army such as England never saw before or since--an army which feared God and hated the pope; which believed in the divine decrees and practiced perseverance of saints; which fought for religion; which allowed no oath, no drunkenness, no gambling in the camp; which sacredly respected private property and the honor of woman; which went praying and psalm-singing into the field of battle, and never returned from it without the laurels of victory. And when these warriors were disbanded at the Restoration, they astonished the royalists by quietly taking their place among the most industrious, thrifty, and useful citizens. [1372]
During the reign of the Long Parliament the Star-Chamber and the High-Commission Court were ignominiously and forever swept out of existence amid the execrations of the people. The episcopal hierarchy and the Liturgy were overthrown (Sept. 10, 1642); about two thousand royalist ministers, many of them noted for incapacity, idleness, and immorality, others highly distinguished for scholarship and piety--as Hammond, Sanderson, Pocock, Byron Walton, Hall, Prideaux, Pearson--were ejected as royalists from their benefices and given over to poverty and misery, though one fifth of the revenues of the sequestered livings was reserved for the sufferers. [1373] This summary and cruel act provoked retaliation, which in due time came with increased severity. The leaders of despotism--the Earl of Strafford (May 12, 1641), Archbishop Laud (Jan. 10, 1645), and at last the King himself (Jan. 30, 1649)--were condemned to death on the block, and thus surrounded by the halo of martyrdom. Their blood was the seed of the Restoration. The execution of Charles especially was in the eyes of the great majority of the English and Scotch people a crime and a blunder, and set in motion the reaction in favor of monarchy and episcopacy.
At first, however, Cromwell's genius and resolution crushed every opposition in England, Ireland, and Scotland. On the ruins of the monarchy and of Parliament itself he raised a military government which inspired respect and fear at home and abroad, and raised England to the front rank of Protestant powers, but which created no affection and love except among his invincible army. The man of blood and iron, the ablest ruler that England ever had, died at the height of his power, on the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester (Sept. 3), and was buried with great pomp among the legitimate kings of England in Westminster Abbey (Nov. 23, 1658).' [1374]