others. The Church of his ideal was one in which there would be no enthusiasm and no fanaticism, no zeal of any kind to break up the smooth ease of existence. He loved the services of the Church, but he loved them rather because they were decorous than because they were expressive of spiritual emotion. Far nobler, if also far weaker, was the character of his friend Falkland. Falkland saw, before Milton saw

Falkland.

it, that new presbyter would be but old priest writ large. He feared lest intellectual liberty would suffer from the new Church government as it had suffered from the old.

Although in some respects Lord Digby, Bristol's son and heir, stood nearer to Falkland than to Hyde, his distrust of Presbyterianism was rather the feeling of the polished Digby. gentleman versed in the ways of society than that of the truth-seeking student. Possessed of every quality which lifts a man to success, except discretion, he looked down with the scorn of conscious power upon the sophisms which passed muster in a popular creed. His versatility and lack of principle made him easily the dupe of flattery, and the most brilliant of living Englishmen ended a long career without attaching his name to any single permanent result either for good or for evil. There can be little doubt that the Queen had already gained him over. At the opening of the Parliament he had cried out as loudly as anyone against the iniquities of the Government. In the late debate on the Queen's message it had been his voice which had asked that formal thanks might be returned to her for the friendly assurances which she had given.

on the ec

On February 8 the most momentous debate of these months was opened in the Commons. Formally the question at issue The debates was whether the London petition, which asked for the abolition of Episcopacy, should be sent to a committee as well as the ministers' petition which asked only that the bishops might be restrained by certain defined rules.

clesiastical petitions.

Rudyerd's

The debate was opened by Rudyerd. He arspeech. gued in favour of a scheme of limited Episcopacy, according to which the bishop, being excluded from political

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LORD DIGBY.

277

functions, would be bound in ecclesiastical matters of importance to take the advice of a certain number of the clergy of his diocese. Then Digby followed. No one, he said, was

Digby's speech.

more ready than he to join in clipping the prelates' wings, but he could not join in their extirpation. The secret of his displeasure was not long concealed. He poured out his contempt on the 15,000 citizens who had signed the London petition, as well as on the petition itself. He spoke of it as a comet with a terrible tail pointing towards the north. "Let me recall to your mind,” he said, "the manner of its delivery, and I am confident there is no man of judgment that will think it fit for a Parliament under a monarchy to give countenance to irregular and tumultuous assemblies of people, be it for never so good an end." The petition itself, he declared, was filled with expressions of undeniable harshness, and its conclusion was altogether illogical. It argued that because Episcopacy had been abused, its use must be taken away. Parliament might make a law to regulate Church government, but it was mere presumption for those who were outside Parliament to petition against a law actually in force.

...

Having thus assailed the petitioners, Digby turned round. upon the bishops. "Methinks," he said, "the vengeance of the prelates hath been so layed, as if it were meant no generation, no degree, no complexion of mankind could escape it. . . . Was there a man of nice and tender conscience? Him they afflicted with scandal, . . imposing on him those things as necessary which they themselves knew to be but indifferent. Was there a man of a legal conscience that made the establishment by law the measure of his religion? Him they have nettled with innovations, with fresh introductions to Popery. . . . Was there a man that durst mutter against their insolencies? He may inquire for his 'lugs'; they have been within the bishops' visitation, as if they would not only derive their brandishment of the spiritual sword from St. Peter, but of the material one too, and the right to cut off ears. For my part I profess I am

1 Rushworth, iv. 183. There are short notes of the debate in D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxii. 206. The speeches are given by Rushworth in a wrong order and assigned to a wrong date.

so inflamed with the sense of them, that I find myself ready to cry out with the loudest of the 15,000, 'Down with them! down with them !' even unto the ground."

Other considerations held him back. It was impossible that institutions which had existed since the time of the Apostles could have in them 'such a close devil' that no power could 'exorcise' it, or 'no law restrain' it. He was much deceived "if triennial Parliaments would not be a circle able to keep many a worse devil in order.' He knew of no other government which might not prove subject to 'as great or greater inconveniences than a limited Episcopacy.' Then, pointing his meaning still more plainly, he expressed his firm belief that monarchy could not stand with the government of Presbyterian assemblies. Assemblies would be sure to claim the right of excommunicating kings; and if a king,' he ended by saying, 'chance to be delivered over to Satan, judge whether men are likely to care much what becomes of him next.'

Falkland's

Falkland followed in a higher strain. He dwelt more on the effect of Laud's exercise of power on thought than on its effect upon persons. He told how preaching had been discouraged; how the King's declaration, whilst ostensibly imposing silence on both parties, had been used to speech. silence one; how the divine right of bishops, the sacredness of the clergy, and the sacrilege of impropriations had been 'the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred auditories.' Some of the bishops-Montague was doubtless in his thoughts-had so industriously laboured to deduce themselves from Rome, that they had 'given great suspicion that in gratitude they' desired 'to return thither, or at least to meet it half-way.'"Some," he then said, "have evidently laboured to bring in an English, though not a Roman, Popery; I mean not only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves; and have opposed the Papacy beyond the seas, that they might settle one beyond the water." "Nay," he added, with bitter reference to Bishop Goodman, common fame is more than ordinarily false if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of

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NATHANIEL FIENNES.

279

England; and to be so absolutely, . directly, and cordially Papists, that it is all that 1,500l. a year can do to keep them from confessing it."

With all this, and with much more than this, Falkland could see no necessity for the abolition of Episcopacy. Let all laws be repealed which empowered the bishops to persecute, and let no ceremonies which any number counts unlawful, and

no

man counts necessary, be imposed against the rules of policy and St. Paul. "Since, therefore," he said, "we are to make new rules, and be infallibly certain of a triennial Parliament to see those rules observed as strictly as they are made, and to increase or change them upon all occasions, we shall have no reason to fear any innovation from their tyranny, or to doubt any defect in the discharge of their duty. I am as confident they will not dare either ordain, suspend, silence, excommunicate, or deprive, otherwise than we would have them."1

plies not to

to Digby.

It was with the sure instinct of a true debater that Nathaniel Fiennes, Lord Saye's second son, replied to Digby and Fiennes re- not to Falkland. That ecstatic vision of a Liberal Falkland but Church, where no ceremonies were enforced which were unpalatable to any considerable number of the population, had no hold on the actual world around. In answer to Digby, Fiennes vindicated the right of petition, against the notion that the House of Commons was to stand apart from its constituents, and to legislate regardless of their wishes. Going over once more the long catalogue of the oppressions inflicted by the bishops, Fiennes traced the mischief, as Bacon had traced it before, to the fact that bishops had acted despotically and alone. Assemblies, he thought, were not so adverse to monarchy as they appeared to be. It did not, however, follow that the presbyterian system must be introduced because Episcopacy was abolished. It might be that the Church would be most fitly governed by commissioners appointed by the Crown.2 Whatever might be the merit of this suggestion,

1 Rushworth, iv. 184.

2 It will be afterwards seen that the celebrated Root-and-Branch Bill, in its final shape, provided for the exercise of espiscopal jurisdiction by lay commissioners.

there can be no doubt that Fiennes kept his eye more closely than Digby had done upon the stern fact that the bishops of that generation had not merely acted harshly to individual Englishmen, but had opposed themselves to the Parliamentary conception of government. "Until the ecclesiastical government," said Fiennes, "be framed something of another twist, and be more assimilated to that of the commonwealth, I fear the ecclesiastical government will be no good neighbour unto the civil, but will be still casting of its leaven into it, to reduce that also to a sole absolute and arbitrary way of proceeding." Nor was it the political constitution alone that was endangered. "A second and great evil," added Fiennes, "and of dangerons consequence in the sole and arbitrary power of bishops over their clergy is this, that they have by this means a power to place and displace the whole clergy of their dioceses at their pleasure; and this is such a power as, for my part, I had rather they had the like power over the estate and persons of all within their diocese; for if I hold the one but at the will and pleasure of one man-I mean the ministry under which I must live—I can have but little, or at least no certain, joy or comfort in the other. But this is not all; for if they have such a power to mould the clergy of their dioceses according to their pleasure, we know what an influence they may have by them upon the people, and that in a short time they may bring them to such blindness, and so mould them also to their own wills, as that they may bring in what religion they please; nay, having put out our eyes, as the Philistines did Samson's, they may afterwards make us grind, and reduce us unto what slavery they please, either unto themselves, as formerly they have done, or unto others, as some of them lately have been forward enough to do." Fiennes had yet more to say against the existing ecclesiastical system. He declared that excommunication had been degraded to a mere instrument for raising fees. In every respect the temporal part of the bishop's office had eaten away the spiritual. Bishoprics, deaneries, and chapters were like useless trees in a wood. They hindered the more profitable timber from growing. It would be much better to supply their places with preaching ministers. In con