shall shortly appeare to be judged, doth know, and Him I call to witness that I was, and am, falsely accused. I have been extremely sick in prison. I thank God I am amended, but yet so that the physicians take it my infection in the prison would be very dangerous. I have a poore wife and five children, who are in a lamentable case. I had six children at the beginning of my imprisonment, but by reason of my sickness in prison, my wife being constrained to attend upon me, and for want of some to oversee them, one of them was drowned in a tub of worte, being two yeares and a half of age. If your Lordship have no compaffiion towards me, yet take pity upon the widow and the fatherleffe, for in that state are now my wife and poore infants, whose teares are before the Lord. I crave no more but this, to be bayled, and if found guilty in any breach of law, let me have extremity without any favor. Your Lordship's to command in Christ.' What afterwards became of Gardiner does not appear.

*

6. Mark Wyersdale. He was vicar of All Saints, Maldon, to which he was instituted June 18, 1584, on the presentation of Richard Franck. After his suspension he refided for a time at Cambridge. He refigned the vicarage in 1586, in favor of George Gifford, who also had the presentation of the patron, but Aylmer refused to institute him. †

Brooks' Lives i. 316; Cooper, Ath Cant. ii. 10; Second part of a Register MSS. 752, P. 93.

+ MSS. Second part of a Register, 584; Newc. ii. 398, p. 78.

CHAPTER V.

TH

1603-1629.

HE acceffion of James was by many hailed with sanguine hope. In 1591 he had been appealed to by certain of the suffering Nonconformists, and had written to Elizabeth on the apprehenfion of Kidd and Cartwright: We cannot . . but by our most affectuous and earnest letter interpose us at your hands to stay any harder usage requesting you most earnestly, that for our cause and interceffion it may please you to have them relieved.' And in that letter he had also likewise expressed himself in terms of favor to the Puritans. The year before that he had gone further still. In a general assembly held at Edinburgh, he had publicly said that: As for our neighbour kirk, England, their service is an evil said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you my good people . . . . to stand to your purity and I, forsooth, so long as I brook my life and crown, shall maintain the same.' And even after he had been proclaimed King of England, in his harangue in the kirk in Edinburgh, he thanked God' that he had settled both kirk and kingdom, and left them in that state which he intended not to hurt or alter any ways.'* Moved by the impressions which James had thus encouraged, the Puritans prepared what was afterwards known as the 'Millenary Petition.' This was signed by seven hundred and fifty ministers, and presented to the King in the month of April. In this petition they ask: That . . . . the cross in baptism, interrogatories ministered to infants, and confirmations may be taken away; . . . . the cap and surplice

* Pierce, Vindication of the Dissenters, 165. Pierce quotes from Calderwood, Hist. pp. 186, 473.

not urged; examination may go before the communion; divers terms of priests, and absolution, and some other used . . . may be corrected; the longsomeness of service abridged; . the Lord's day be not profaned, and the rest upon holidays not so strictly urged; that there may be a uniformity of doctrine prescribed; . . . . no ministers to teach their people to bow at the name of Jesus; and that the canonical Scriptures only be read.' The petition also complains of the want of sufficient preachers, of non-refidence, of the subscription annually required to articles, of commendams, pluralities and improprieties, of excommunications, and of the power and practices of ecclesiastical courts ;'* and concludes with the prayer that God, for 'Christ's sake,' would dispose his regal heart to do herein what shall be for His glory.

At first the King appeared to favor these requests, and he arranged a conference upon the subjects in dispute. But in a proclamation which he issued on the 24th of October, he so expressed himself, that the Puritans too plainly saw there was little hope for them. He says: As we have reason to think the state of the church here established . . . . to be agreeable to the Word of God. . . . so we are not ignorant that time may have brought in some corruptions. which if we shall find to be so, we will therein proceed. . . . . But,' he adds, if any shall either by gathering the subscription of multitudes to supplications, . . . . by open invectives, . . . in the pulpit or otherwise, . give us cause to think that he hath a more unquiet spirit than beseemeth a private person, we will make it appear how far such a manner of proceeding is displeasing to us; . . . our purpose and resolution ever was, and now is, to preserve the eftate as well ecclesiastic as politic, in such form as we have found it here . . . . Wherefore, we admonish all men hereby to take warning, as they will answer the contrary at their peril.' Well might Whitgift, writing to Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, on the 12th

Cardwell, Conferences, 130, 138; Strype, Whitgift ii. 478.

+ Cardwell, Doc. Ann. ii. 64-67; Conferences, 148, 150.

of December, say: Although our humorous and contentious brethren have made many petitions and motions correspondent to their natures, yet your lordship may perceive . . . that they have not much prevailed.'*

The promised conference was held in the month of January following at Hampton Court. All the members were nominated by the King. For the church, there were nine bishops and about as many dignitaries.' Among the former were Dove, Bishop of Peterborough, and Overall, Dean of St. Paul's ; † the Puritans were only four ministers. The conference separated much as it met. James, writing to some person unknown, in Scotland, says: We have kept such a revell with the Puritans here these two days as was never heard the like; quhaire, I have peppered thaime as soundly as ye have the Papists thaire. It were no reason that those that will refuse the airy sign of the cross after baptism should have their purses stuffed with any more solid and substantial crosses.

On the 5th of March, the King issued a proclamation, which announced the result of the conference, to the kingdom generally. He thus speaks of it: We found mighty and vehement informations, supported with so weak and slender proofs ... that there is no cause why any change should have been at all in . . . . the Book of Common Prayer. Notwithstanding, we thought meet . . . . that some things might rather be explained than changed which being done. . . . we have thought it necessary. . . . to require all to conform themselves unto it. Wherefore, we require all archbishops, bishops, and other public minifters to do their duties . . . . in punishing the offenders. And we do admonish all men, that hereafter they shall not expect or attempt any further alteration. account of the alterations made may be seen in Cardwell's

Strype, Whitgift ii. 485; iii. 391. + Dove, ante p. 90. Overall was vicar of Epping. N. i. 50; ii. 248; Strype, Whitgift ii. 303, 305, 313, 437, 504;

iii. 343.

Neal i. 395.

A full

|| Cardwell, Doc. Ann. ii. 76, 79; Conf. 220.

K

Conferences, 217-225. They were wholly immaterial; the most important being an explanatory clause to the title 'Confirmation,' which was 'a laying on of hands upon those that are baptised and came to years of discretion.' *

Fourteen days after the issue of this proclamation James met his first Parliament. In his opening speech, he disposed of those who had expected most of him as follows: The Puritans and Novelifts I call a sect rather than a religion, who do not differ so far from us in points of religion as in their confused form of policy, . . . . being ever discontented with the present government, and impatient to suffer any superiority, which maketh their sects insufferable in any well governed commonwealth.' + Of course all hope ⚫was now extinguished; but even worse remained. As usual, 'Convocation' had been convened at the same time with the Parliament. Whitgift had died on the 29th of February. Bancroft, who had been appointed as his successor, had not yet been consecrated; he nevertheless presided at the opening, which was on the 20th of March. On the 13th of April, the new archbishop brought in the King's license to make canons. On the 2nd of May he delivered the prolocutor' a book of canons, desiring him to a communion of eight or ten to consider of them.' On the same day a petition was delivered in the Lower House by Stephen Egerton, Edward Fleetwood, Anthony Wootton, and Hugh Clarke. These petitioners were admonished to be obedient and conform, together with their adherents, before St. John Baptist next (June 24). By the end of June the 'canons had been adopted, 'printed and published.' They were a hundred and forty-one in number. Few men of any party,' says the latest hiftorian of the Puritans, will now be found to justify the hard and rigorous spirit which several of these enactments bear. Who that has ever sighed over Bishop Hall's sufferings, described in his 'Hard

Common Prayer, Ecc. Hist. Soc. iii. 1479; Procter, Hist. C. P. 91, 92. Parl. Hist. i. 982.

Egerton. Brooks' Lives ii. 289;

Wood, Fasti. i. 125; Fleetwood. Brooks ii. 381; Wootton. Brooks ii. 346; Clark. Brooks ii. 412; Strype's Ann. iv. 553.