1640

May 14.

THE NEW CANONS.

143

a committee of lawyers for their opinion. 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 on everything else, it was announced to the two Houses that they were to meet on the next day

pronounce it

legal. 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

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 deon the cere- claration 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

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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.'

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 New import 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.

of taxation.

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 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

was needed for the public defence. If, on the other hand, it implied that the King was to be the judge, it erected a despotism as arbitrary as that which existed in France. What was the bearing of such high-sounding platitudes on the question really at issue-whether an invasion of Scotland was or was not necessary for the public defence and protection of Englishmen ?

oath.

In one point at least the new canons directly imitated the Covenant. It was impossible that the effective force of the The etcetera oath which bound Scotsmen together could have escaped the eye of Laud. The Church of England, too, should have its oath, not enforced by lawless violence, but emanating from legitimate authority. "I, A. B.," so ran the formula, "do swear that I do approve the doctrine and discipline, or government, established in the Church of England, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and that I will not endeavour by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, to bring in Popish doctrine, contrary to that which is so established, nor will I ever give my consent to alter the government of this Church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c., as it stands now established, and as by right it ought to stand, nor yet ever to subject it to the usurpations and superstitions of the See of Rome."

This oath, soon to be known to the world as the etcetera oath, was hardly likely to serve the purpose for which it was Its unpopuintended. The ridicule piled on the demand, that larity. every clergyman, every master of arts who was not the son of a nobleman, all who had taken a degree in divinity, law, or physic, all registrars, actuaries, proctors, and schoolmasters, should swear to make no attempt to alter institutions, which the very framers of the formula omitted completely to specify, would have had little effect if the oath had in any way given expression to the popular sentiment. It is true that, even in this unlucky production, all was not amiss, and in these days we may contemplate with satisfaction the spirit which demanded no more than a general approval of the doctrine of the Church as containing all things necessary to salvation. After all, the main fault to be found with the oath is that it was intended to be imposed on those who did not want to take it ;

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LAUD AND GOODMAN.

147

whilst the Covenant, at least in its earlier days, was intended to bind together, in conscious unity, those who approved more or less zealously of its principles.1

to sit.

The very existence of this Convocation, after the dissolution of Parliament, was in itself a special offence. It accentuated the distinction, already sharp enough, between the The right of Convocation laity and the clergy. The clergy, it seemed, were to form a legislature apart, making laws in ecclesiastical matters, and even laying down principles for the observance of Parliaments in such essentially secular matters as the grant of subsidies. No doubt it was the Tudor theory, that Convocation was dependent on the King and not on Parliament, just as it was the Tudor theory that the Royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters was vested in the Crown antecedently to Parliamentary statutes. The time was now come when the sufficiency of these theories to meet the altered circumstances of the time would be rudely put to the test.

May 29.

Even in Convocation itself, the question was raised. Bishop Goodman of Gloucester, who had retained his bishopric in spite of his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, Conduct of took umbrage at a canon directed at those professors Goodman. of his creed who were more honest than himself. 'He would be torn with wild horses,' he told Laud, 'before he would subscribe that canon.' When he reached the place of meeting his courage failed him. He fell back on a denial of the right of Convocation to make canons when Parliament was not sitting. Laud waved aside the objection and told him he was obliged to vote for or against the canons. On his refusal to do either, the Archbishop, with the consent of Convocation, suspended him from his office. In the end, Goodman gave way and signed the canons as they stood. As soon as the King heard what had passed he committed the Bishop to the Gatehouse, to answer for his offence in entering into communications with Rome whilst he remained a bishop of the English Church.

Charles and Laud were, before all things, anxious to clear

1 Canons, in Laud's Works, v. 607.