nified and promoted by the officious zeal of bishop Montague. This prelate assured Panzani, that the two archbishops were prepared to acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the pontiff, and that there were not more than three of their suffragans who would not be found willing to follow their example. In his own case, the doctrine of transubstantiation was the only serious difficulty, but a conference of moderate men would no doubt bring about a satisfactory accommodation on that point. The court of Rome must have seen that to have broken the strength of protestantism in England would have been to humble it throughout Europe, leaving it hardly an asylum beyond the United Provinces :-and those provinces, be it remembered, the seat of a similar vacillation, in consequence of the mistaken policy of Grotius, and dependent for their very existence on the rivalry of their catholic neighbours. It must have been presumed by those who busied themselves in forwarding this scheme that the king would not be found opposed to it. But the name of the monarch, to his honour, is not directly involved in it. The pontiff addressed him in the language of paternal affection. Cardinal Barbarini consulted his taste in presents, particularly pictures, which were accepted with due courtesy. Officers who had been employed in detecting recusants were discharged; an agent was appointed to reside at Rome, as in behalf of the queen; and those who could not hope for a union of the churches, expected some important changes in the relation between them. But as these negotiations proceeded, it became evident that the promises of Montague with regard to the pliancy of his brethren were much larger than he could realise, and even the most zealous advocates of his plans, not excepting himself, retained opinions which it did not comport with the dignity of an infallible church to tolerate. This notion of infallibility, though properly extending only to the doctrine which the church of Rome has sanctioned, has generally operated, and not unnaturally, with regard to matters of discipline and worship, and, in modern times, has rendered her incapable of accommodating herself to the changing circumstances of the world which she aspires to govern. She has managed her affairs, in most respects, with consummate address ; but to bend to the storm has not been her manner, and many of her goodliest branches have been snapped asunder in consequence;-that inflexibility of purpose, which, on the whole, proved so favourable to her policy during the middle age, being much less adapted to the more general culture and less submissive temper of these later times. Thus when Panzani was succeeded by another envoy, presumed to be more equal to the management of the difficult negotiations in progress, the instructions of the papal court were, that the difference between the puritans and the orthodox, so important in England, should not seem to be understood at Rome, but that both should be viewed as aliens from the true church, and without the pale of salvation. This haughtiness sities. of demeanour, without the aid of other circumstances, would probably have been enough to destroy the hopes of the most sanguine Romanist. Neither protestantism nor liberty had much to expect from the The Univer- universities during this period. Those bodies were not so much distinguished by their learning as by their pedantry, their intolerance, and the zeal with which they enlisted themselves in the cause of arbitrary power. It is said indeed that catholicism never received so signal a discomfiture in England as in consequence of the learning directed against it at this time, particularly in the writings of Laud and Chillingworth. But it is certain that conversions to the catholic faith had never been so notorious as during this interval; nor since the death of the Scottish queen had the hope of its re-establishment been so confidently entertained. Chillingworth's book, admirable as it is in many respects, could never have been much read; and the style in which the controversy was managed by Laud and his disciples, by conceding so much to the enemy, was more adapted to confirm than to convert him. General state of the country 1640. It is usually said by the class of persons who are disposed to look on the conduct of the government at this time with the most favourable eye, that admitting the imposts, the monopolies, from 1629 to and other expedients adopted, to have been in many cases illegal and even oppressive, the measures resorted to were prosecuted on the whole with so much moderation and regularity that the commerce and wealth of the kingdom continued to increase. According to Montesquieu, it is the practice of despotism to cut down the tree for the sake of the fruit, and it is obvious that Charles had not yet arrived at that point. But was he not in the way to it? Did he manifest a wise regard for our commerce when endeavouring to coerce the conscience of wealthy foreigners who had settled among us for purposes of trade; or when by the same means he forced so many thousands of the most industrious of his subjects into exile, taking with them nearly half a million of money? His general policy, which virtually denied to the merchant a right over his property, was in its natural tendency the most injurious to commerce that he could possibly have sanctioned, and nothing but time was wanting to bring forth its evil fruit. May, the historian, has given an instructive account of the feelings and speeches of different parties in the kingdom, relative to this long suspension of parliaments, and the state of things attending it. "The serious and just men of England, who were no way interested in the emolument of these oppressions, could not but entertain sad presages of what mischief must needs follow so great an injustice; that things carried so far on in a wrong way, must needs either enslave themselves and their property for ever, or require a vindication so sharp and smarting, as that the nation would groan under it. Another sort of men, and especially lords and gentlemen, by whom the pressures of the government were not much felt, who enjoyed their own plentiful fortunes, with little or insensible detriment, looking no farther than their present safety and property, and the yet undisturbed peace of the nation, whilst other kingdoms were embroiled in calamities, and Germany sadly wasted by a sharp war, did nothing but applaud the happiness of England, and called them ungrateful and factious spirits who complained of the breach of laws and liberties. The kingdom, they said, abounded with wealth, plenty, and all kind of elegancies, more than ever. That it was for the honour of a people that the monarch should live splendidly, and not be curbed at all in his prerogative, which would bring him into the greater esteem with other princes, and more enable him to prevail in treaties. That what they suffered by monopolies was insensible, and not grievous, if compared with other states. That the duke of Tuscany sat heavier upon his people in that very kind. That the French king had made himself an absolute lord, and quite depressed the power of parliaments, which had been there as great as in any kingdom, and yet that France flourished, and the gentry lived well. That the Austrian princes, especially in Spain, laid heavy burdens on their subjects. The courtiers would begin to dispute against parliaments in their ordinary discourse, and hoped the king should never need any more parliaments. Some of the gravest statesmen and privy councillors would ordinarily laugh at the ancient language of England, when the word-liberty of the subject, was named." Such speeches, if not reported to us by those who heard them, we might conjecture were not unfrequently made. England, in common with all other countries, has never been without such apologists for oppression; men who, so long as their own narrow sphere of indulgence is not materially disturbed, are found destitute of the capacity or the inclination to look beyond their little interests to those of the community, or from the affairs of the day to their probable effects on the future; and who are perhaps further conscious that much more is to be expected by themselves, or by those dependent upon them, from the favour of the court than from that of the people. Charles, by so far limiting the exercise of the power which he had assumed, and by proceeding toward his object, according to the politic advice of Wentworth, by little and little, secured to himself the benefit of all those speeches, and something more, from this party; and it was only by exposing themselves to every calumny which these speech-makers could devise, and to all the combination of which their luxurious selfishness was capable, that the men sent up to the parliament of 1641, succeeded in putting an end to the labours of those state-artists who had been employed in modelling the English government after the pattern supplied to them by France, and Tuscany, and Spain. That the people were so long quiet with such a prospect before them, is to be ascribed, not to the mildness, so much as U to the severity of the government. It possessed the courts of starchamber and high commission, and its policy there was to intimidate the herd, by striking the leaders without mercy. The eulogy on the conduct of Charles during this period, pronounced by Clarendon and Hume, to which our observations principally relate, is partial and disingenuous in every particular, and it is difficult to suppose that it could have appeared to its authors in any other light. Commerce increased; there was an apparent tranquillity; and to the many there was no want either of employment or provisions: but are these the only things necessary to the rational prosperity, the permanent greatness of a people? Charles, it has been said, like another Pericles, could boast that "no Englishman had worn a mourning gown through his occasion ;" and the writer of this remark is one who had been employed in preparing an answer for the king to a memorable remonstrance of the commons, in which the death of Eliot," by the harshness of his imprisonment, which could admit of no relaxation, though, for his health's sake, he petitioned for it often, and his physician gave in testimony to the same purpose," appeared as one matter of accusation! + Charles, we repeat, may not have meant to become a Nero; but to justify those who opposed to his policy it is enough to know that, whatever his intentions may have been, he did every thing which in his circumstances was possible toward subjecting the country at no very distant day to the mercy of such rulers. CHAPTER V. Change of religious feeling in Scotland-Revocation of Tithes and Benefices- in Scotland. WE have mentioned the attempts made by the late king to subject the church of Scotland to the control of a modified episcopacy. Change of religious feeling Charles entered fully into this policy, and looked upon the unfinished plans of his predecessor as a kind of bequest, which it became him to render perfect. The progress made toward this object in the last reign had been in the face of *Clarendon, Hist. i. 131-137. Hume, Hist. ubi supra. 1625. + Clarendon's Life, i. 85. considerable opposition and complaint, and not without difficulty and danger. Still it was a fact that episcopacy had been introduced, and that it had supplanted, in many respects, the original constitution of the kirk: nor was it to be denied that Scotland continued to exhibit the appearance of tranquillity. But while James occupied himself with these changes in favour of episcopacy, the religious feeling of his country became more than ever identified with the forms of presbyterianism, the strength of the real sentiments of the people being precisely in an inverse proportion to the degree of ecclesiastical submission exacted from them. There was a time when they were accustomed to regard all protestants, notwithstanding a great diversity in matters of ecclesiastical usage, in the light of brethren; but that time had now almost passed away, and as its wiser temper had given place to a zeal which knew not how to admit anything to be protestantism which was not presbyterianism, the churches of the two kingdoms became the haughty and bitter opponents of each other. This error with regard to the relative importance of the old kirk polity, had been connected from an earlier period in this country with episcopacy, and the arbitrary measures of the English government, partly in consequence of that delusion, forced it, by a very common process, upon the favourable attention of our northern neighbours. For when the Anglican church spoke of her bishops as such by divine right, and as essential to the existence of a Christian church, it was not unnatural that the Scottish church should begin to broach similar pretensions on the side of her presbyters. Nor was the distance great, in those times, between opposing pretension of this kind. to pretension, and force to force: and when a persecuted church has become ascendant, it has almost invariably become a persecutor in its turn, its former oppressors being regarded as tyrants rather than as Christians. Lord Bacon saw the mischief likely to result from the controversy between the puritans and the prelates in England when they began to set up these exclusive notions; but the evil which his sagacious foresight deplored among his countrymen, was to be manifested ere long on a much broader scale in Scotland. Thus the pride which taught our court-clergy to assume this sort of authority, dictated the intrigue and violence resorted to in support of it, and by provoking a reaction of the same temper, and an appeal to the same means of accomplishing its objects, prepared the way for the humiliation that was to follow. The effect of these extravagances is still seen in the relative position of the two churches. Charles was so much engaged with his continental wars, and in disputes with his parliaments, during some years after his Revocation accession, as to be incapable of bestowing much attention of Tithes and on the affairs of Scotland. So early, however, as the first Benefices. 1626-1628. year of his reign, a vigorous effort was made toward reclaiming the impropriated tithes and benefices, which, as the property |