settlement, with any chance of permanency or peace, was open to them, save a compromise. They must combine the new with the old to conciliate indispensable support; and this must be the common resort in both religious and political divisions when parties are nearly balanced, or indeed if they exist in considerable disproportion. Archbishop Cranmer was just the person to accomplish the needful amalgam; for he possessed rare practical giftsa courtier and churchman as well as comprehensive reformer. But even he and his able colleagues failed to attain all that was desirable; and the elements of religious disunion which survived their attempted fusion have continued since to operate with various degrees of intensity. Queen Elizabeth was jealous of her prerogative as head of the Church, and with her wonted energy tried coercively to repress the spiritual sedition in the newborn establishment. Penal statutes were enacted, and high commission courts, with arbitrary powers of fine, imprisonment, or exile, marshalled for its protection. So rigidly were the laws framed and executed, that it became as necessary that the people should be of one mind in religious matters, as that neither treason nor murder should be perpetrated; nor was the punishment of these offences much more severe.

The next reign was less savage in its policy. Two unfortunate Socinians were roasted, but offenders of lesser degree were more indulgently treated. It was an age of theological controversy, and most appropriate to the eccentric. pedant who ruled. Stuffed with learned ignorance, restless, pragmatical, and disputative, James I. was the model of a pestilent priest or malcontent collegian. He was reputed to be the wisest man and the greatest fool in Europe. His whole time was consumed in arguing, writing, buffoonery, drinking, and hunting. Under the chairman

HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE.

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ship of this accomplished droll, the famous controversy of the bishops and Puritans was maintained at Hampton Court. The first field-day held was in the privy chamber, on the 14th of January, 1604. On the one side were arrayed nearly twenty bishops and high dignitaries of the Established Church, the lords of the privy council, and sundry courtiers, all determined to applaud to the skies the royal infallibility. On the other side were four reforming preachers-Doctors Reynolds and Sparks, professors of divinity at Oxford, and Knewstubs and Chatterton, of Cambridge: the king sate high above them all. "proudly preeminent" as moderator.

On the first day the learned doctors did not enter upon the real controversy, but after a day's rest they met again on the 16th, when the Puritans opened fire, by demanding, among other things, that the Book of Common Prayer should be revised; that the cup, surplice, sign of the cross in baptism, the use of the ring in marriage, the reading of the Apocrypha, the bowing at the name of Jesus, should all be set aside; that non-residence, pluralities, and commendams should not be suffered; also that the obligation of subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles should cease. Against these demands the bishops made their chief stand upon the ceremonies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Articles: London and Winchester, assisted by some of the deans, spoke vehemently and at great length. Then, without listening to the rejoinder of the Puritans, the king took up the argument, combating for the Anglican orthodoxy in a mixed strain of solemnity, pedantry, and levity. He talked of baptism, public and private, of confirmation, marriage, excommunication, and absolution, which last he declared to be apostolical and an excellent ordinance. But it would be endless to report the royal expatiations; speak

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ing was the king's delight, and he commanded and enjoyed a most discursive volubility. At the height of his argument he treated St. Jerome very disrespectfully for saying that bishops were not of divine ordination, closing with his favourite aphorism, "No bishop, no king." When he was tired and out of breath, Dr. Reynolds was allowed to explain. The doctor objected to the Apocrypha, particularly to the book of Ecclesiasticus. James called for a Bible, expounded a chapter of Ecclesiasticus in his own way, then turning to his applauding lords, said, "What trow ye make these men so angry with Ecclesiasticus? By my soul I think Ecclesiasticus was a bishop, or they would never use him so." The bishops smiled decorously, the courtiers less demurely. In answer to a question started by the abashed Puritans— How far an ordinance of the Church could bind without impeaching Christian liberty?-James said he would not argue that point, but answer them as kings are wont to answer in parliament-le roy s'avisera; adding withal that the query smelt very rankly of Anabaptism. Next he told a story of a Mr. John Black, a Scottish preacher, who had impudently told him that matters of ceremony in the Church ought to be left in Christian liberty to every man. But," added the king, "I will none of that; I will have one doctrine, one discipline, and one religion in substance and ceremony. If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth with monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet and censure me and my council and all our proceedings." Next turning to the dissenter Reynolds, said, "Well, doctor, have you anything more to offer?" The humbled divine, who had been constantly interrupted and insulted, replied, "No, please your majesty."

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KING JAMES AND THE DISSENTERS.

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So virtually ended the Hampton Court conference. On the morrow the king rested from his labours. On the 18th the dissenting divines were not admitted till a late hour, and then not to renew the disputation, but only to implore that conformity should not be enforced till after a certain interval. James granted their request, and, with much self-gratulation at his theological victory, dismissed them. His flatterers had not waited for the close to shower down their plaudits. Bancroft, bishop of London, who had before been on his knees "to beseech his majesty to stop the mouth of a schismatic," repeated his genuflexions; "thanking God for his singular mercy in giving them such a king, as since Christ's time the like had not been." Whitgift, the primate, without falling upon his knees, exclaimed that undoubtedly "his majesty spake by the special assistance of God's Spirit." The laity, not to be outdone by the spirituals, joined in the chorus of adulation to the British Solomon. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere affirmed that "king and priest had never been so wonderfully united in the same person;" and the temporal lords generally applauded his majesty's speeches, as proceeding from a "holy spirit and an understanding heart." All this is rich; but no one thought so highly of King James as James himself. "I peppered them soundly,' said he; "they fled me from argument to argument like schoolboys."

The dissenters attempted to rally, and a fresh deputation waited upon the king, but they were again routed by the royal logician. James was a very difficult opponent to encounter, and not scrupulous in his weapons, being a bold liar and not inapt dissembler. Calvinism was the

doctrinal faith of all-Presbyterians, Puritans, and Episcopalians. With the metaphysical subtleties of the Geneva school the king was thoroughly conversant, but he

disliked their secular applications. Cherishing lofty notions of kingly prerogatives, he abhorred them for their democratic tendency; neither did he affect the strictness of their moral conclusions. In 1599 he wrote and published, for the instruction of his son, Prince Henry, his Basilicon Doron, a masterpiece of pedantry, a model of clerical abuse against the Puritans and the whole Church of Scotland. Nothing, he said, could be more monstrous than equality in the Church-nothing more derogatory to the royal dignity than the independence of preachers. Therefore he advises his son to take heed of such Puritans, as pests in the Church and commonwealth, whom no deserts can oblige; suffer not the principal of them to brook your land, if ye list to sit at rest; except ye would keep them for trying your patience as Socrates did his wife." He afterwards declared to the English bishops"I will tell you: I have lived among this sort of men (Puritans and Presbyterians) ever since I was ten years old; but I may say of myself, as Christ said of himself, though I lived among them, yet, since I had ability to judge, I was never of them."

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"The Protestant Pope," the title with which Jamie delighted to be honoured, had other diversions than theology and listening to the fulsome incense of servile priests and courtiers. He loved hunting as much as he loved polemics, and he issued a proclamation that none of his lieges should trouble him with their religious scruples on hunting days, which days of sport occupied one half the year. Meanwhile the laws against nonconformity were strictly enforced at the instance of Bancroft, who had succeeded Whitgift in the primacy. Many clergymen were driven from their benefices, some to wander in foreign countries, some to suffer, with their wives and children, absolute want at home. Spies, such as had been trained to