of his life.' Bishop Laud pulled off his cap while this merciless sentence was pronouncing, and gave God thanks for it !"

When Charles visited Scotland, he was attended, throughout his whole progress, by Laud, who had now become desirous to introduce the English liturgy into Scotland. On this occasion Laud preached before the king in the royal chapel at Edinburgh, and embraced the opportunity to enlarge on the excellencies of episcopacy, and of the ceremonies of the church. The death of Abbot at last raised Laud to the summit of his ambition: two days after the archbishop's demise, Laud was translated to the sea of Canterbury. One of the first acts of the new primate was the republication of King James's infamous declaration of the year 1618, concerning lawful sports to be used on Sundays after divine service. Countenanced by such grave authority, things went merrily on for a time: "the court had their balls, masquerades, and plays, on the Sunday evenings; while the youth of the country were at their morrice dances, May-games, church and clerk ales, and all such kind of revellings." A series of suspensions, fines, and imprisonments followed; for many refused to obey the archbishop's injunction to read the declaration from the pulpit. The archbishop next set himself to render the book of Common-Prayer ceptionable to the papists, and more distant from puritanism." Having succeeded tolerably well in this pious task; and got some quiet from the incessant railings of his arch-enemies, Prynne and Bastwick, by having them fined, pilloried, and imprisoned, he turned his thoughts against the Calvinists in Ireland, and resolved to confer the benefit of the articles of the church of England, with his own ceremonial amendments, on that kingdom. In this design he was opposed by Archbishop Usher, who moved in convocation, that their own articles, ratified by King James in 1615, might be confirmed; but the motion was rejected, and the primate of England triumphed over his brother of Ireland. A harder task awaited him in Scotland.

66 more unex

The Scottish bishops had been ordered to prepare a book of service for their own use. The first liturgy of Edward VI. was made the basis and guide for the Scottish liturgy; but the compilers were instructed "to keep such Catholic saints in their calendar as were in the English, and that such new saints as were added should be the most approved, but in no case to omit St George and St Patrick; that in the book of orders, those words in the English book be not changed, 'receive ye the Holy Ghost;' and that sundry lessons out of the Apocrypha be inserted; besides these, the word presbyter was inserted instead of priest; and the water in the font for baptism was to be consecrated. There was a benediction or thanksgiving for departed saints; some passages in the communion were altered in favour of the real presence; the rubrics contained instructions to the people, when to stand and when to sit or kneel; to all which the Scots had hitherto been strangers. The main parts of the liturgy were the same with the English, that there might be an appearance of uniformity; it was revised, corrected, and altered, by Archbishop Laud and Bishop Wren, as appeared by the original found in the archbishop's chamber in the Tower, in which the alterations were inserted with his own hand."

This 'good work' being completed, was, together with a collection of canons, ratified by his majesty, and authorised by royal proclamation.

The fate of the book, however, is well known. An attempt to introduce it was made in the High-church of Edinburgh; but no sooner had the dean, in his surplice, begun to read the prayers from the desk, than a hideous noise was raised by the congregation, and the hapless dean assailed by a shower of stones and sticks. The bishop himself ascended the pulpit to remonstrate with the insurgents, but he too was quelled in his very pride of place,' by Jenny Geddes of famous memory, who launched a stool at his person, and compelled him to make a precipitate retreat from the church. The consequence of Laud's injudicious interference with the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland, was the expulsion of his brother prelates from that end of the island altogether.

In November, 1640, parliament voted down the convocation, and declared its several constitutions and canons to be without any binding force on the clergy or laity of the land. A committee was then appointed, to inquire how far his grace of Canterbury had been concerned in the proceedings of the convocation, and in the treasonable design of subverting the religion and laws of his country. Next day, the Scots commissioners presented a series of charges against the archbishop. On the committee bringing up their report, several members pronounced severe censures on the archbishop. Amongst others, Sir Harbottle Grimstone declared that "this great man, the archbishop of Canterbury, was the very sty of all that pestilential filth that had infested the government; that he was the only man that had advanced those, who, together with himself, had been the authors of all the miseries the nation groaned under. That he had managed all the projects that had been set on foot for these ten years past, and had condescended so low as to deal in tobacco, by which thousands of poor people had been turned out of their trades, for which they served an apprenticeship; that he had been charged in this house, upon very strong proof, with designs to subvert the government, and alter the Protestant religion in this kingdom, as well as in Scotland; and there is scarce any grievance or complaint comes before the house, wherein he is not mentioned, like an angry wasp, leaving his sting in the bottom of every thing.' He therefore moved, that the charge of the Scots commissioners might be supported by an impeachment of their own; and, that the question might now be put, whether the archbishop had been guilty of high treason? which being voted, Mr Hollis was immediately sent up to the bar of the house of lords to impeach him in the name of the commons of England."

On the 26th of February, Pym, Hampden, and Maynard, presented the commons articles of impeachment against the archbishop at the bar of the house of lords. They consisted of fourteen articles. In the first he is charged with endeavouring to subvert the constitution, by introducing arbitrary power of government, without limitation or rule of law. In the second, he is charged with procuring sermons to be preached, and other pamphlets to be printed, in which the authority of parliaments is denied, and the absolute power of the king asserted to be agreeable to the law of God. The third article charges him with interrupting the course of justice, by messages, threatenings, and promises. The fourth, with selling justice in his own person, under colour of his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and with advising his majesty to sell places of judicature, contrary to law. In the fifth, he is charged with

the canons and oath imposed on the subject by the late convocation. In the sixth, with robbing the king of supremacy, by denying the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to be derived from the crown. In the seventh, with bringing in popish doctrines, opinions, and ceremonies, contrary to the articles of the church, and cruelly persecuting those who opposed them. In the eighth, he is charged with promoting persons to the highest and best preferments in the church, who are corrupt in doctrine and manners. In the ninth, with employing such for his domestic chaplains, as he knew to be popishly affected, and committing to them the licensing of books. The tenth article charges him with sundry attempts to reconcile the church of England with the church of Rome. The eleventh, with discountenancing of preaching, and with silencing, depriving, imprisoning, and banishing, sundry godly ministers. The twelfth, with dividing the church of England from the foreign protestant churches. The thirteenth, with being the author of all the late disturbances between England and Scotland. And the last, with endeavouring to bereave the kingdom of the legislative power, by alienating the king's mind from his parliaments. Upon these charges, the lords voted his grace to the Tower, whither he was carried on the 1st of March, amidst the shoutings and execrations of the populace. He remained in the Tower nearly three years, without petitioning for trial, or putting in answers to the charges. At last, the commons ordered the trial to be begun on the 12th of March, 1644. It lasted nearly five months. The principal managers were, Serjeant Maynard, one of the ablest lawyers of his age, Serjeant Wild, afterwards lord-chief-baron, and Samuel Browne, afterwards lord-chief-justice. The archbishop defended himself with considerable coolness and dexterity; but the bill of attainder passed with only one dissenting voice. The king interposed his pardon under the great seal, but it was over-ruled by both houses, on the grounds, first, that it had been granted before conviction, and secondly, that the king could not set aside a judgment of parliament.

On the 10th of January, 1645, Laud was beheaded on Tower-hill. He read a speech to the people from the scaffold, in which he acknowledged himself to have been a great sinner, but solemnly protested that before the tribunal of his own conscience he had not found any of his sins deserving death by any of the known laws of the kingdom. When the scaffold was cleared, he pulled off his doublet, and said, "God's will be done! I am willing to go out of the world; no man can be more willing to send me out." Then turning to the executioner he gave him some money, and bid him do his office in mercy; he then kneeled down, and after a short prayer, laid his head on the block, and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ;" which being the sign, the executioner did his office at one blow. The archbishop's corpse was put into a coffin, and by the permission of parliament buried in Barking-church, with the service of the church read over him. The inscription upon the coffin was this, "In hac cistula condunter Exuviæ Gulielmi Laud, archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, qui securi percussus immortalitatem adiit, die x° Januarii, ætatis suæ 72, archiepiscopatus xii." But after the Restoration, his body was removed to Oxford, and deposited with great solemnity in a brick vault, according to his last will and testament, near the altar of the chapel of St John Baptist college, July 24, 1663. "Thus died,” says Neal, " Dr William Laud, archbishop of Can

terbury, primate of all England, and metropolitan; some time chancellor of the universities of Oxford and Dublin, one of the commissioners of his majesty's exchequer, and privy-councillor to the king, in the seventy-second year of his age, and twelfth of his archiepiscopal translation. He was of low stature, and a ruddy countenance; his natural temper was severe and uncourtly, his spirit active and restless, which pushed him on to the most hazardous enterprises. His conduct was rash and precipitate, for, according to Dr Heylin, he attempted more alterations in the church in one year, than a prudent man would have

done in a great many. His counsels in state-affairs were high and arbitrary, for he was at the head of all the illegal projects, of ship-money, loans, monopolies, star-chamber fines, &c., which were the ruin of the king and constitution."

The character of Laud, except by his partial biographer, Heylin, and his canonizer, Dr Southey,' has been justly reprobated by writers of all parties. Warburton, himself, treats him with unmingled scorn. Thus, in the passage of Laud's diary, where he says, on the occasion of making Bishop Juxon lord-high-treasurer of England, "Now, if the church will not hold up themselves, under God, I can do no more," Warburton contemptuously remarks, "Had he been content to do nothing, the church had stood. Suppose him to have been an honest man, and sincere-which, I think, must be granted—it will follow that he knew nothing of the constitution either of civil or religious society · and was as poor a churchman as he was a politician." The same prelate adverts to Laud's persecution of Dr Williams and Mr Osbaldeston in the following terms:-"This prosecution must needs give every one a very bad idea of Laud's heart and temper. You might resolve his high acts of power, in the state, into reverence and gratitude to his master; his tyranny in the church, to his zeal for and love of what he called religion; but the outrageous prosecution of these two men can be resolved into nothing but envy and revenge." Still more decisive as to the character and habits of Laud is the testimony of another prelate, Archbishop Abbot. The following passage occurs in his narrative :-"This man (he was then bishop of St David's) is the only inward counsellor with Buckingham, sitting with him sometimes privately whole hours, and feeding his humour with malice and spight. His life in Oxford was, to pick quarrels in the lectures of the public readers, and to advertise them to the then bishop of Durham, that he might fill the ears of James with discontents against the honest men that took pains in their places, and settled the truth (which he called Puritanism) in their auditors. He made it his work to see what books were in the press, and to look over epistles dedicatory, and prefaces to the reader, to see what faults might be found. It was an observation, what a sweet man this was like to be, that the first observable act he did, was the marrying of the earl of D. to the lady R., when it was notorious to the world that she had another husband, and the same a nobleman, who had divers children then living by her. King James did for many years like this so ill, that he would never hear of any great preferment of him, insomuch that the bishop of Lincoln, Dr Williams, who taketh upon him to be the first promoter of him, hath many times said, that

I See Book of the Church.'

he, when he made mention of Laud to the king, his majesty was so averse from it, that he was constrained oftentimes to say, that he would never desire to serve that master, which could not remit one fault unto his servant. Well; in the end, he did conquer it to get him to the bishopric of St David's; which he had not long enjoyed, but he began to undermine his benefactor, as at this day it appeareth. The countess of Buckingham told Lincoln, that St David's was the man that under. mined him with her son; and verily such is his aspiring nature, that he will underwork any man in the world, so that he may gain by it."

William Chillingworth.

BORN A. D. 1602—died a. D. 1644.

THIS champion of protestantism was the son of William Chillingworth, mayor of Oxford. He was born in 1602. He received the rudiments of education at a private school in Oxford, then taught by Edward Sylvester, a celebrated pedagogue. In 1618, he was admitted of Trinity college, of which he became fellow in 1628. Wood says of him, at this period, that "he was observed to be no drudge at his study, but being a man of great parts, would do much in a little time when he settled to it. He would often walk in the college grove and contemplate; but when he met with any scholar there, he would enter into discourse, and dispute with him purposely to facilitate and make the way of wrangling common with him, which was a fashion used in these days, especially among the disputing theologists, or among those who set themselves apart purposely for divinity." Polemical divinity was at this time in much repute on account of the frequent controversies which arose betwixt the priests of the Roman church and the clergy of the church of England. The toleration which the former enjoyed towards the latter end of the reign of James I., and throughout that of his successor, emboldened them to make a stand for the recovery of their lost footing in the kingdom; and their efforts had been to a considerable extent successful in private families, and especially among the younger members of the universities. In 1628, we find parliament petitioning his majesty "to command a surer and strait watch to be kept in and over his majesty's ports and havens, and to commit the care and searching of ships,-for the discovery and apprehension, as well of Jesuits and seminary priests brought in, as of children and young students sent over beyond the seas, to suck in the poison of rebellion and superstition,-unto men of approved fidelity and religion." The king promised to attend to the wishes of his faithful commons in this matter; but the Jesuits and seminary priests' still continued to flock into the kingdom, without check or molestation Amongst others, came one John Fisher, or Percy, a man of acute and vigorous intellect, who soon won over several illustrious converts to the faith of his church. The reputation which young Chillingworth at this time bore in the university drew upon him the attention of the wily and accomplished Jesuit. They met, and encountered each other on several contested points; but the youthful protestant was no match for