as strongly set against the Pope as over, they had to a certain extent returned towards some of the Romish doctrines.

Instead of thinking, like the Presbyterians, that it was wicked to have any bishops, they considered that no Church could be a Church at all without bishops. They believed that mystical and supernatural powers had descended to them from the apostles, and that no clergyman was properly a clergyman who had not been ordained by the laying on of their hands. They fell back a little, too, to favouring the celibacy of the clergy; they did all they could to make the Church service more ornamental, by handsome vestments, painted windows, and other decorations. Thus they and the Puritans drew farther and farther apart. The same parties still continue to exist in England. There are the High Church, or Ritualists; there are the Low Church, who are more like what the Puritans used to be; and there are various bodies of Dissenters or Nonconformists, who are also like them in some ways. But now they can all live side by side very peaceably, instead of wishing to cut off each others' ears or heads, as they did then.

7. The king and the Church were very closely bound together. The Church began to hold and teach the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which it is said James I. invented. They said that whatever sort of man a king might be, however he governed or misgoverned, ii ac were the

The divine right of

kings. true and lawful heir by right of his birth, being the

eldest son, or descended from the eldest son, of the last king, he was appointed by God king of the land, and no Christian might oppose him or depose him. This doctrine is evidently quite contrary to the whole history of England, in the entire course of which no king was crowned till he had sworn to obey the laws, to govern justly, and protect the rights and liberty of his subjects. If he broke his vow he was either brought to reason, and compelled to amend, or he was got rid of in one way or another. Nor is this doctrine to be found in the Bible. As Macaulay points out, we should perhaps judge from that that younger sons, not elder ones, were the favourites of Heaven. Jacob was not the eldest son of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solomon of David.

8. This doctrine, however, became the favourite doctrine of the High Church party, and the kings, on their part, favoured and

Treatment

of the Puritans.

protected the Church and the bishops with all their power. And between them they dealt with the Puritans in a very high-handed way. We have a specimen in the answer James gave to some remon

strance about the use of the surplice, and the signing of the cross in baptism. "If, after the gospel's preaching forty-five years among you, there be any yet unsatisfied, I doubt it proceeds rather out of stubbornness of opinion than out of tenderness of conscience, and therefore let them conform themselves, or else they shall hear farther of it." Hearing farther of it generally meant fines and imprisonment.

1620. The Pilgrim Fathers.

9. The Puritans being greatly oppressed, and not even allowed to meet quietly for prayer and preaching in private houses, began to think of leaving the country altogether. They cast their eyes across the sea. By this time a great many Englishmen had been to America, and had perceived how excellent a land it would be for English colonists. The English sailors were always bringing home wonderful stories of the Indies, as they were still called. The Puritans resolved to seek liberty there; and though the government strove to prevent their leaving the country, some of the most resolute among them sailed away over the Atlantic in a little vessel called the May-flower. They gave up the native land which they dearly loved, their homes, their friends, all that they had, and they landed on a wild, rough, desolate coast of North America, seeking what was dearer to them than any earthly thing, "freedom to worship God." They named their adopted country "New England," with a loving thought of the old England they had left behind. These brave men, the " Pilgrim Fathers," as we call them, were the founders of the great American nation. More and more followed them, as they could, looking on America as a sort of promised land. The government, which would give them no peace while they stayed in England, always opposed their going away. In the next reign, when a party of Puritans were making ready to follow their brethren, the government interfered, and entirely prevented their departure. Among this party were Pym, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell, and, as Hume drily remarks, "the king had full leisure afterwards to repent this exercise of his authority."

Sir Walter

Raleigh.

10. One of the most enterprising of the travellers who brought home tales from America was Sir Walter Raleigh, a gallant and chivalrous man, who had been a great favourite with Queen Elizabeth, and had named one of the newfound states "Virginia," in her honour. Besides his stories of adventure, he brought to England what has proved far more useful and valuable than all the gold of Mexico, the potato, which helps so largely now in the food of rich and poor. He

H H

also introduced a more questionable novelty-tobacco ("divine tobacco" his friend Spenser calls it); and the story is well-known of how his servant, for the first time seeing his master smoking, threw a bucket of water over him, supposing him to be on fire. James I. thought the smoking of tobacco a detestable custom, and wrote a book against it, but he could not prevent the new luxury from becoming very popular. James was very cruel and unjust to Sir Walter Raleigh; he imprisoned him on a supposed charge of treason, and kept him for many years in the Tower, where Raleigh beguiled his time in writing, or beginning to write, The History of the World.' Prince Henry, James's eldest son, who had more sympathy and a gentler mind than his father, felt great shame at Raleigh's treatment, and wondered how his 1617. father "could keep such a bird in such a cage." Raleigh at last ended his life on the scaffold, grieved and lamented over by every one.

11. James, having become what we may call an English High Churchman, was not content with persecuting the Puritans. He was just as rigorous with the Roman Catholics. They The Roman- perhaps hoped that, as they had always sided with ists. his mother Mary, he would be more indulgent to them

than Elizabeth had been, but they found themselves quite mistaken. And it must have made a deep impression on the minds of the people of England to observe the contrast between them and the Puritans in their way of meeting the hard treatment of the government. The Puritans attempted to go quietly away; the Catholics made plots and conspiracies. They had already been quite accustomed to this mode of action during the days of Elizabeth, and had been encouraged in it by Pope and priests. Now they began again. It was early in the reign of James I. that the most famous of all their plots, the "Gunpowder Treason," was devised.

1604. Gunpowder Plot.

12. It was a deep-laid plot, and was darkly brooding for many months before it was discovered. The object was, as the conspirators hoped, to get rid of all their enemies at one stroke, by blowing up the House of Parliament on the day of its assembling. The king would be there in state to open the session; with him would be his eldest son, Prince Henry. They and all the lords, the bishops, and the commons would be destroyed at once; one of the younger princes should then be proclaimed king, and educated as a Roman Catholic. The plot was very nearly brought to perfection. The barrels of gunpowder were laid in readiness

under the Parliament House, hidden under piles of faggots. A fearless and fanatical man stood ready to light the fatal train. We seem to see him now in the low doorway, with his slow matches, his tinder, and his dark lantern, just as he was seized in the dead of night-the night before the appointed day.

13. The conspiracy had been discovered. One of the traitors, a Northamptonshire gentleman named Tresham, had felt some relentings towards his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, who would be sure to be in his place in the House of Lords, and would perish with the rest. He wrote him a strange anonymous letter, in a feigned hand, hinting at some terrible blow which the parliament would receive, and warning him, as he tendered his life, to keep away. This letter, being shown to the king and his ministers, led to the discovery of the plot before it was too late. Guy Fawkes was seized in the cellar; the rest of the conspirators were pursued, and either died in defending themselves, or were taken, tried, and executed.

14. This Gunpowder Treason seemed to have something specially demoniacal about it. The very darkness and mystery, the terribleness of a sudden explosion which would give no warning before all was over, the awful cruelty of involving so many innocent people in the punishment which was supposed to be due to the guilty, and its having so very nearly succeeded, struck the whole nation with horror, and remains still one of the most vivid memories in the imagination of the people. Still it is only just to remark that eighty men at most knew of its existence, and it would be entirely wrong to lay it on the Roman Catholics in general, most of whom probably thought it quite as wicked as we do.

15. It is well worth notice, however, that the conspirators believed themselves to be engaged in a noble and sacred work. One of them, a gentleman of high character and unblemished reputation, Sir Everard Digby, wrote to his wife, after his condemnation: "Now for my intention; let me tell you that if I had thought there had been the least sin in the plot I would not have been in it for all the world; and no other cause drew me to hazard my fortune and my life but zeal to God's religion." So utterly can religious bigotry blind the eyes of the soul and deaden the voice of conscience and humanity.

It is said that Digby and some of the others, notably Guy Fawkes, died very penitently and devoutly.

LECTURE XLVII.-THE KING AND THE PARLIAMENT.

The royal prerogative. The parliament. Charles I. The Cavaliers and the Roundheads. Strafford and Laud. Ship-money. Hampden. The Prayer-book in Scotland.

1. Ir was not only in religious matters that James showed his arbitrary spirit, and alienated many of his people. He wished to be supreme in all points, and to have the authority The royal of Henry VIII. without having the character of prerogative. Henry VIII. The exact power which lawfully belonged to the king was not at that time very clearly defined, nor can it be said to be so now. The royal prerogative is a sort of shadowy thing, which seems in theory to be very great, but which in a country like ours shrinks up into almost nothing, unless the sovereign and the nation are of one mind. The Tudors had felt this by instinct, if they did not know it; but the Stuarts neither felt it nor knew it.

2. Just about this period, in other countries as well as our own, the monarchs became more despotic than they had ever been yet; in some of them the last traces of liberty disappeared. The kings of Spain became utter tyrants. In France, too, the national assemblies of the people ceased, and the king and nobles did just as they pleased, without any check upon them. But we in England were better off, because our parliament never came to an end.

The parliament.

3. All through the reigns of the Tudors, it is true, the parliaments had been very meek and submissive, and had almost always done just what the king or queen told them; but still they were there. Outwardly they had all their old powers and rights, and neither king nor queen ever professed to act without their consent. Under the Stuarts the parliaments quite left off being meek and submissive; they remembered their duties and their privileges, and stood up like men to defend them. They fell back on the right, which their predecessors had exercised so manfully in days of