CHAPTER XII

DIFFICULTIES WITH THE PURITANS

ELIZABETH left the Church firmly established, and secured by its compact with the State in its position as the recognised National Church, remaining in all essentials the same as it had ever been, protected by legislation against the claims of Rome on the on hand, and the disturbing forces of Genevan Nonconformity on the other.

But Nonconformity and Separation were forces to be reckoned with, all the more because of their constant attempts to make Parliament the Court of Appeal for the Church, as to doctrine, worship, and discipline. It was found necessary in the next reign to hold the Hampton Court Conference, where points of difference were argued out. James, however, was as firm in upholding the Royal Supremacy as Elizabeth had been. The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical were drawn up by the Synod held in London, by the King's licence,

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and the royal assent was given according to the form of a certain Statute or Act of Parliament, made in that behalf in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry VIII., and by our said Prerogative Royal and Supreme Authority in causes ecclesiastical, to ratify by our Letters Patent under our Great Seal of England.'

One little incident in connection with the royal assent is important. The King ordered the canons to be received also in the Province of York, but the Convocation of that province objected that they were not bound by canons made in the Convocation of the other province. The King therefore gave his royal licence for the Northern Convocation to enact canons; the Convocation met and accepted the canons of Canterbury, thus establishing the independence of the York Convocation.

The enactment of these canons was the final act of the long process of the settlement of the Church on its reformed basis, and they have continued to be the law book of the Church up to the present time.

During the remainder of the reign of James I. the question of Parliamentary government of the Church was left alone, the only Acts of Parliament referring to Church matters being Acts regulating the possessions of archbishops and bishops, for the

execution of the Statutes against Jesuits and Seminarists, specifying what kinds of meat might be eaten in Lent by licence, establishing the Fifth of November as a day of solemn observance, and against Popish recusants. The reign of James was a period of acquiescence in the Elizabethan settlement, but beneath the apparently placid surface the terrible Puritan fury was developing, ready to burst forth in the next reign and end in the temporary destruction of the Church by the Parlia

ment.

The way to the Puritan reaction was to a large extent prepared by the weakness and vacillation of Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611 to 1633, together with the constant stretch of the royal prerogative in both Church and State by King James, who had the self-willed obstinacy of his Tudor predecessors without their mental power and personal popularity, and King and archbishop agreed to treat Puritans with a severity that was inexcusable. The King extended the powers of the Court of High Commission so that it was gradually usurping the functions of all other Church courts. He terrified lovers of liberty by lighting once again the fires for burning heretics, even going out of his way to influence judges in their condemnation. Legate was burnt at Smithfield for Arianism, after an

argument with the King, during which the King demeaned himself by kicking the poor heretic; and Wightman was burnt as an Anabaptist at Lichfield.

The King next made two serious mistakes which aroused the strong feeling of the Puritans. He tried to make Abbot take a share in the disgraceful proceedings attending the divorce of the Countess of Essex and her remarriage to Carr, the royal favourite, but Abbot refused, to his lasting honour. Afterwards the King committed the great tactical mistake of trying to force the Book of Sports upon an unwilling clergy, and this, too, Abbot opposed, and thus gained back some of the goodwill of the Puritans, who now claimed to be the preservers of the sanctity of the Lord's Day.

But Abbot's most serious difficulty arose from his accidental shooting of a keeper during a staghunt. The Puritans contended that Abbot, as an ecclesiastic, ought not to have been engaged in hunting, whilst bishops-elect refused to be consecrated by hands stained with blood. So strong was the feeling on both sides that the King was obliged to appoint a Commission to examine the matter. The Commission having reported that Abbot had caused scandal, but might be restored

to the Primacy on his sueing for a dispensation, the King appointed a Commission of eight bishops under the great seal to restore the archbishop. This matter was the result of a pure mischance, but it added fuel to the fire of contention, and when, after a career of mingled strength and weakness, Abbot died in 1633, he left behind him the materials for all the troubles which came so abundantly to his successor, William Laud.

With the advent of Laud to the Primacy there began a struggle for supremacy over the Church. On the one side were those who held with Laud to the Reformation settlement-State and Church acting as two independent bodies in alliance under the Sovereign as Supreme Governor of both, State laws being made by Parliament, Church làws by Convocation, but laws affecting the relations between Church and State made by Convocation and Parliament conjointly. But on the other side the Puritan party were determined that Parliament should rule the Church as well as the State. And as is usually the case when two parties are striving for mastery, both asserted their respective principles in the most extreme form.

On the Church side Sibthorpe asserted in a sermon at Northampton that if princes command anything which subjects may not perform, because

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