June 9. Henry Percy's

fresh revelations of the Army Plot. Goring's character was at once cleared as far as a vote of the House could do it. Percy, however, in his letter, distinctly letter. charged Goring with being implicated with Jermyn in a deeper plot than that in which he had himself been concerned.

The next morning Marten moved that Digby should be sent for. Kirton told the House that such a motion had come too June 10. late the King had raised Digby to the peerage. Digby made He had himself seen him putting on his robes to take his place in the other House.

a peer.

1

If the feeling which had prompted Charles's act was natural, he had taken the worst possible way of giving it expression. Digby had not yet been condemned, and he was hardly likely to suffer worse consequences for his unguarded language than a few days' imprisonment. By making him a peer, Charles showed not merely that unpopularity in the House of Commons was the highest passport to his favour, but that he was ready to increase the number of those peers who would use their influence in the Upper House to place it in opposition to the Lower. An additional reason was given for keeping the organisation of the Church out of the hands of the King.

How far was

Inside the House of Commons the party which advocated a thorough change in the system of Church government was rather desirous of overthrowing an ecclesiastical despotism which they knew not how to remodel, than inspired with any strong preference for any other system to be established in its room. To a certain extent, no doubt, the majority might be regarded as Presbyterian; but, if so, their Presbythe House of terianism was very different from the zealous devotion of Henderson and Dickson in the North They wanted to have ministers who would preach decided Protestantism of the Calvinistic type, and after their experience of the last few years they thought that they were more likely to have what they wanted without bishops than with them; but they had no enthusiasm for the Scottish discipline.

Commons

Presbyterian?

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. fol. 301.

1641

Plans of
Williams

and Usher.

If the minority were to contend against this widespread. feeling it behoved them to act as well as to criticise. Williams, indeed, had been doing something. He had been gathering together opinions from divines of the most opposite views, and was understood to be elaborating a scheme in which all legitimate desires would find their fulfilment. Usher, too, with the full weight of his piety and learning, had allowed his friends to circulate a draft of a constitution for the Church, in which bishops were to appear as the heads of councils of presbyters, and were to be disqualified from acting without their advice.

1

It

Such a theme had an excellent appearance on paper. was not quite so clear what would be its practical result, if bishops like Wren or Montague found themselves face to face with a council composed of ministers like Burgess and Marshall. The plan, for some reason or another, fell flat on the world. There was a good deal of talk about the advantages of Primi- . tive Episcopacy, but there was no support given even in the House of Lords to any particular project for reducing it to practice. If the King had made any one of these plans his own, and had shown himself in earnest in combating the evils of the existing system, something might perhaps have been done. But Charles gave no sign that he took any interest in the matter. The Root-and-Branch Bill was the only scheme of reform practically in the field.

June 11. The Rootand-Branch Bill in

On June 11 that Bill was before a committee of the whole House. Hyde was placed in the chair, as it is said in order that his voice should thus be silenced on the Episcopalian side. If it was so, he did his best to pay back his opponents in their own coin. SomeCharles and where about this time Charles sent for Hyde, greatly Hyde. to his astonishment. Between the two men there was much in common. Both of them were attached to the

committee.

In the Rossetti Papers there is a running reference to a negotiation, in which Usher professes his readiness to become a Catholic if he could obtain an income equivalent to 500l. a year. I am utterly incredulous. The Padre Egidio, through whom it was conducted, was perhaps hoaxed, or deceived himself.

outward formulas of the constitution. Both of them had a high veneration for the worship and ceremonies of the Church. Neither of them had any of the larger qualities of statesmanship.

Conversa

them.

As soon as he saw Hyde Charles commended him for his faithfulness to the Church, and asked him whether he thought that the Bill would be carried in the Commons. tion between Hyde replied that he thought it would not be carried speedily. "Nay," said the King, "if you will look to it that they do not carry it before I go to Scotland, when the armies will be disbanded, I will undertake for the Church after that time." "Why, then," said Hyde, "by the grace of God it will not be in much danger." Hyde subsequently boasted that he had done his best as Chairman of the Committee to throw obstacles in the way of the Bill.

Debate in committee on the Root

Bill.

If the Church was in danger it was from Charles's inability to discover the necessity of reform. The debates which ensued showed how few even of the opponents of the Rootand-Branch Bill were as yet ready to support him in and-Branch his policy of mere resistance. Rudyerd and Dering talked loudly, if somewhat vaguely, about a restoration of Primitive Episcopacy. Culpepper, with more practical instinct, asked merely for a change of men instead of the abolition of the office. To the words of the preamble, which declared that 'the present government of the Church had been by long experience a hindrance to the full reformation of religion,' he moved as an amendment that 'the present governors of the Church had been by late experience a hindrance to religion.' His proposal failed to obtain acceptance. The abolition of archbishops and bishops, deans and chapters, was voted. It was hardly possible at the time to excite any enthusiasm for Episcopacy in England. D'Ewes doubtless June 12. gave expression to an anxiety which was widely felt when he said that the liberties and estates of Englishmen were in danger as well as their religion. If there were those who would

1 Clarendon, Life, i. 93. His statement, that he waited on the King in consequence of a message through Percy, is one of his usual blunders. When Percy fled the Bill was not yet introduced.

2 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiv. fol. 217.

1641

THE ROOT-AND-BRANCH BILL.

389

entertain such a design as that of the Army Plot whilst Parliament was sitting, what was not to be feared when Parliament was dispersed !' How, indeed, could the control of religious teaching be left in the hands of a man from amongst whose intimate counsellors the Army Plot had burst on the astonished world? The opponents of the Root-and-Branch Bill felt but little zeal in their own cause. TH The debates were long, and the It was pleasanter, now

body stood in need of refreshment. that the summer days were come, to while away the hours in the tennis-court or the theatre than to listen to dry discussions about bishops and deans. They who hated the bishops," laughed Falkland, "hated them worse than the devil; they who loved them did not love them so well as their dinner."2

Hyde and

66

One day Hyde asked Fiennes in private what government he intended to substitute for Episcopacy. There would be time Conversa- enough to settle that question, Fiennes answered. tion between If the King," he said, "resolved to defend the Fiennes, bishops, it would cost the kingdom much blood, and would be the occasion of as sharp a war as had ever been in England; for there was so great a number of good men who had resolved to lose their lives before they would ever submit to that government." At another time Hyde asked

and between Hyde and Marten.

Marten, who was known to care little for religion, what he really wanted. "I do not think," was the reply, one man wise enough to govern us all.”3

66

Hyde was shocked by such words. He did not see that the only way in which Charles could answer them was by being wise enough to govern. Charles had thrown the reins on the neck of the steed, and was surprised to find that it was taking its own way. The committee found its deliberations perpetually interrupted, not, indeed by Hyde's intrigues, but by the necessity of listening to fresh disclosures on the subject of the Army Plot, and of making provision for the disbandment of the armies. Still, however, some progress was made. A proviso was introduced that, on the abolition of deans and chapters, none of their property should be

Progress with the Bill.

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. fol. 309.

2 Clarendon, iii. 241.

3 Clarendon, Life, i. 75.

June 21. Proposed new govern

diverted from ecclesiastical purposes. At last, on June 21, the important point of the government to be substituted for Episcopacy was reached] The younger Vane proment of the posed a clause providing that Commissioners should be appointed for the present in each diocese to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and that these Commissioners should be appointed in equal numbers from the laity and the clergy.

Church.

Here, then, was the Root-and-Branch scheme at last. It was referred to a sub-committee, to be put into shape.

If the feeling against Episcopacy gathered strength from the growing distrust felt in the King, it did not originate there. Outside the House the Puritan spirit was mounting, and the Puritan spirit assailed not so much the episcopal constitution of the Church as the forms of worship which the bishops protected. At the end of March five English divines, joining their initials 2 to form the uncouth name Smectymnuus, had issued a pamphlet in support of Presbyterianism in reply to Hall's 'Humble Remonstrance.'

Smectym

nuus.

Milton's

let.

'Smectymnuus' was too professional to lift the controversy above the Calvinistic orthodoxy of the day. In the end of June (2) May, or the beginning of June, a new champion apfirst pamph. peared on the scene. The singer of the Comus and the Lycidas felt that the time had now come when it behoved him to lay aside that task of high poesy for which he had been girding himself from his youth up, and to throw himself into the great controversy, on the issue of which, as he firmly believed, depended the future weal or woe of England. Much of the argument by which he supported Presbyterianism against Episcopacy is familiar to the student of the pamphlets and the speeches of that eventful year. But whilst

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. fol. 337.

2 Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow. Professor Masson (Life of Milton, ii. 219) is mistaken in quoting Cleveland's poem as evidence of the immediate popularity of the book. Cleveland speaks of the collection of the poll-tax, and his poem must therefore have been written some weeks after the date of the appearance of Smectymnuus.