| Copyright | ||
|
Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1629-1640 1629-1640; Part 2 |
1629-1640; Part 2Wentworth's great friend was Laud. He and Laud were alike in that energy and whole-hearted devotion to the king's service, and in that determination to get things done which was expressed in their letters to one another by their watchword "Thorough". Laud had been President of St. John's College, Oxford, then Bishop of St. David's; in 1628 he became Bishop of London, and five years later Archbishop of Canterbury. It was Laud who directed the ecclesiastical policy of the Government In that policy there is much that can be praised. Large sums of money were spent in the erection and restoration of churches. Order and decency were enforced in the Church services. Laud made, through deputies, a visitation of all the dioceses in his archbishopric, and found much to amend: the chapter of a cathedral neglecting to preach and often absent; the aisle of one church being used by the bailiff of a local lord to melt the lead which had been stripped from the roof; the aisle of another being used for cock-fighting, the vicar himself being present (Laud also stopped St. Paul's Cathedral being used as a club for gossip by the men of fashion, or as a playground by those of more tender years, and he insisted that people should not come into church with their hats on). Moreover, Laud was no respecter of persons, and attacked wrongdoing in however high quarters it might be discovered.But, with all his energy and goodness, Laud was unsympathetic and narrow-minded, a man who thought that everyone must believe in the High Church doctrines which he believed in, whether he be English, Irish, Scot, or even French or Spaniard. Through his control of the Press he tried to stop the publication of all views antagonistic to his own. But it was especially in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission that Laud made his evil reputation (These courts had been established the one in the reign of Henry VII and the other in that of Elizabeth; they tried a man in secret, without a jury, and made prisoners give evidence against themselves). Laud, with his sharp tongue and irritable temper, always voted for the biggest punishment upon theological offenders, and it was chiefly due to him that such barbarous punishments were inflicted as flogging and branding and the cutting off of ears. If Laud saved the Church of England, as in Mr. Gladstone's judgment he did, from being bound in the fetters of an iron system of compulsory and Calvinistic belief, he was also responsible for driving the moderate Protestants into the arms of the Puritans. |
Chronology |
| copyright by www.uuo-ununoctium.info |