1640 Measures of THE LAST CASE OF TORTURE. 141 of ship-money,' and orders were given to prosecute in the Star Chamber those amongst the sheriffs who were held the Council. to have been more than ordinarily remiss. Equal severity was to be used to gather in coat-and-conduct money; and five deputy-lieutenants of Hertfordshire, who had expressed themselves doubtfully as to the legality of the imposition, were summoned before the Board.2 How much remained to be done may be gathered from the fact that, out of 2,600/. demanded from Buckinghamshire, only 87. 10s. had been collected; and, though this was an extreme instance, other counties were not far in advance.3 May 21. The riots declared The day after these resolutions were taken, one of the leaders of the Southwark tumults was tried before a special commission. The judges laid it down that the disturbances amounted to high treason, and suptreasonable. ported their decision by a precedent from the reign of Elizabeth. The prisoner, a poor sailor, was therefore sentenced to be quartered, as well as hung, and the May 23. Execution of sentence was carried into execution at Southwark, though the authorities mercifully allowed him to hang till he was dead, before the hangman's knife was thrust into his body. a rioter. May 21. execution of John Archer was less fortunate. His part had been to beat the drum in advance of the crowd which marched to the attack upon Lambeth. A glover by trade, he had been Torture and pressed into the King's service to go with the army Archer. as a drummer, and, for some reason or other, it was supposed that he could give information against persons in high position, who were believed to have instigated these tumults. Orders were accordingly given to put him to the torture. The last attempt ever made in England to enforce confession by the rack was as useless as it was barbarous. Archer probably had nothing to disclose, and he was executed without making any revelation.a 1 Rushworth, iii. 1184. 2 Rossingham's News-Letter, May 26, Sloane MSS. 1,467, fol. 112 b. Crane to Crane, May 29, Tanner MSS. lxv. 78. 4 Warrant to torture Archer, May 21, S. P. Dom. ccccliv. 39. Jar The excite. ment dies out, These stern measures were not without effect. For some time extraordinary precautions were needed. On the 27th a placard was fixed up in four places in the City, calling on the defenders of the purity of the Gospel to kill Rossetti. The King was insulted even within the walls of his palace. Some one scratched with a diamond on a window at Whitehall: "God save the King, confound the Queen and her children, and give us the Palsgrave to reign in this kingdom." 1 Charles dashed the glass into fragments with his hand. There was, however, no further disturbance in the streets, and after some little time the trained bands summoned to the aid of the Government were sent home or countermanded, and the capital resumed its usual appearance. During these days of disturbance, Convocation had been busily at work, in spite of the dissolution of Parliament. continues It May 9. was none of Laud's doing. The Archbishop shared Convocation the general opinion, that the end of the Parliament sitting. brought with it the end of the Convocation, and applied to the King for a writ to dismiss the ecclesiastical assembly. To his surprise, the King answered that he wished to have the grant of subsidies completed, and that the canons, the discussion of which had been begun, should be finally adopted. He had spoken to Finch, and Finch had assured him that the continuance of a session of Convocation after the dissolution of Parliament was not prohibited by law. Laud expostulated in vain. He was irritated that the King had conferred with the Lord Keeper rather than with himself, in a matter which concerned the Church, and he had reason to fear that the proceeding would not be so well approved of by public opinion as it was by Finch. When the King's May 13. mind was made known in Convocation, some members of the Lower House expressed doubts of the legality of the course pursued, and Charles laid the question formally before dine's Reading on the Use of Torture, 57, 108. Rossingham's News-Letter, May 26, Sloane MSS. 1,467, fol. 112 b. 1 I retranslate from Rossetti's Italian. Rossetti to Barberini, R. O. Transcripts. May 29, June 8, 1640 May 14. THE NEW CANONS. 143 a committee of lawyers for their opinion.1 The opinion of the lawyers coincided with that of Finch, and on The lawyers the 15th, the day on which the King was giving in legal. on everything else, it was announced to the two Houses that they were to meet on the next day pronounce it May 15. for business. On the 16th Convocation took into consideration a precedent of 1587, when their predecessors had granted a benevoMay 16. lence to Elizabeth in addition to the subsidy which Six subsidies had received Parliamentary confirmation.2 They, Benevolence. therefore, renewed their grant of 20,000l. a year for six years, only, instead of calling it a subsidy, they called it a benevolence, or free contribution. granted as a The new canons agreed on. The canons on the cere. monies. Having thus expressed their loyalty, the Laudian clergy published, in seventeen new canons, their manifesto to a disloyal generation. Those canons, indeed, were not wanting in that reasonableness which has ever been the special characteristic of the English Church. They do not simply fulminate anathemas. They condescend to explain difficulties, and to invite charitable construction. The canon relating to the ceremonies began with a declaration that it was 'generally to be wished that unity of faith were accompanied with uniformity of practice . . . chiefly for the avoiding of groundless suspicions of those who are weak, and the malicious aspersions of the professed enemies of our religion.' It went on to say that the position of the communion-table was 'in its own nature indifferent,' but that the place at the east end being authorised by Queen Elizabeth, it was fit that all churches 'should conform themselves in this particular to the example of the cathedral or mother churches, saving always the general liberty left to the bishop by the law during the time of the administration The committee consisted of Finch, Manchester, Chief Justices Bramston and Lyttelton, Attorney-General Bankes, and Sergeants Whitfield and Heath. 2 Nalson, i. 365. Laud's Works, iii. 285. Strype's Life of Whitgift, i. 497, iii. 196. Parliament was still sitting when the grant by convocation was made in 1587. of the holy communion.' This situation of the holy table did not imply that 'it is or ought to be esteemed a true and proper altar, wherein Christ is again really sacrificed; but it is, and may be called, an altar by us, in that sense in which the primitive Church called it an altar, and in no other.' As this table had been irreverently treated, it was to be surrounded with rails to avoid profanation, and, for the same reason, it was fitting that communicants should receive at the table, and not in their seats. Lastly, the custom of doing reverence and obeisance upon entering and quitting the church was highly recommended, though in this the rule of charity was to be observed, namely, 'that they which use this rite, despise not them who use it not, and that they who use it not, condemn not those that use it.' It can hardly be disputed that there is more of the liberal spirit in this canon than in the Scottish Covenant. It is fairly justifiable as a serious effort to find a broad ground on which all could unite. Its fault was that it sought to compel all to unite on the ground which it had chosen. No doubt this was a common fault of the time. In the British Isles at least no one, with the exception of some few despised Separatists, had seriously advocated the idea that worship was to be tolerated outside the National Church. What was fatal to the canon on the ceremonies was that the worship which it advocated was not in any sense national. It approved itself to the few, not to the many, and the many who objected to it had besides other reasons for being dissatisfied with the authorities by whom it was imposed. The canons were therefore at every disadvantage in comparison with the Covenant, as far as their subject-matter was The Divine right of kings. concerned. They were no less at a disadvantage in the sanction to which they appealed. The Covenant claimed to be, and in the main was, the voice of the Scottish Church and people. The canons were only in a very artificial sense the voice of the English Church, and they were in no sense at all the voice of the English people. They were therefore driven to magnify the authority of the King, from whom alone Convocation derived its title to legislate. In the forefront of the argument, therefore, was placed the inculcation 1640 DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 145 of the obedience due to kings. "The most high and sacred order of kings," it was declared in a canon ordered to be read in churches four times in every year, “is of Divine right." It was founded in the prime laws of nature, and clearly established by express texts both of the Old and New Testaments, that God had Himself given authority to kings over all persons ecclesiastical or civil. Therefore it was treasonable against God, as well as against the King, to maintain any independent coactive power either papal or popular,' whilst 'for subjects to bear arms against their kings, offensive or defensive, upon any pretence whatsoever,' was 'at the least to resist the powers which are ordained of God,' and such as resisted would 'receive to themselves damnation.' New import of the language used. In this language there was nothing new. It had been used in the sixteenth century to attack the claims of the Pope. It would be used again in the latter half of the seventeenth century to attack the claims of the Presbyterians. Where Laud erred was in failing to see that an argument always derives its practical force from the mental condition of those to whom it is addressed. The Divine right of kings had been a popular theory when it coincided with a suppressed assertion of the Divine right of the nation. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had prospered, not because their thrones were established by the decree of Heaven, but because they stood up for the national independence against foreign authority. Charles and Laud had placed themselves outside the national conscience, and their Divine right of kings was held up to the mockery of those to whom their assertions were addressed. Nowhere was Laud's feeble grasp on the realities of life shown more than in the clause relating to taxation. It was the The question duty of subjects to give 'tribute and custom, and aid of taxation. and subsidy, and all manner of necessary support and supply' to kings, 'for the public defence, care, and protection of them.' Subjects, on the other hand, had 'not only possession of, but a true and just right, title, and property to and in all their goods and estates, and ought so to have.' A more innocuous proposition was never drawn up, if it implied that the subjects were to be the judges whether their money A |