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the work in ferreting out papists and private masses, found their way to prayer-meetings and secret conventicles, and the gaols of the kingdom began rapidly to be crowded with unlicensed preachers. The Puritans soon added to a contempt of the king's person a thorough hatred of his whole scheme of government. Still they made no advances towards any sound principle-to any sentiment of general toleration; and when James proceeded to a more rigid persecution of the Catholics, they only complained that he was not sharp enough. Smarting themselves under the inflictions of a despotic Church, they did not conceal that, if they could get the rod in their own hands, they would lay it on with an increased severity upon all who did not conform to their peculiar doctrines.

At this point it may be useful to pause. Having reached the first crisis in the history of the Anglican Church, it will not be wasted time briefly to glance at the light thrown by the preceding retrospection on existing ecclesiastical perplexities.

The first conclusion that strikes us is the parallelism between the religious dissensions of King James's reign and those of Queen Victoria. The identity is not flattering to the march of intellect, but the resemblance is too close to be overlooked. The points mooted at the Hampton Court conference, between the Anglican prelates and the reforming divines, were almost precisely those now in issue between the Tractarians and their opponents. They do not turn upon the essentials of Christianity upon those primitive points of the Christian mission that refer to the moral and social interests of men, but to forms and ceremonies - to the use of the cup and surplice, sign of the cross, genuflexions eastward or at the name of Jesus, floral emblems, and subscription

to the Articles. Is it fit that the age should so recede?— that at one step it should recoil two centuries and a half in its onward career?—that under the intemperate or mistaken zeal of a fresh generation of Oxford divines, it should be carried back from the substantial utilities that occupy it its temperate philosophy-generous toleration -cheerful and diversified literature—and noble sympathies with human suffering-to be plunged in the gloom, asceticism, and theological trifling of a semi-barbarous period? That the age was rude is notorious; one of royal favouritism and courtly licentiousness of hypocrisy, treachery, and espionage; of secret poisonings, bloody executions, and savage murders. It was an age of one book, a very good one undoubtedly, but hardly commensurate to the diversified exigencies of existing society. The manual of life, all that men reasoned, argued, and quarrelled concerning, was the Bible and its conflicting interpretations; it formed the sole cyclopædia of science, ethics, natural philosophy, ecclesiastical and political government. It was from this armoury that all weapons of controversy were derived; all authorities deduced; all perplexing and mystifying texts quoted. In such a limited field, with such stinted intellectual resources, it was impossible men could advance in secular knowledge, unanimity, or toleration. They were a prey to the conceits, fancies, and fluctuating impulses of narrow and half-literate guides, and the questions which occupied them were seldom more important or cogently supported than those of the Muscovite doctors. In a controversy of these northern sages, when the question was-"Whether the practice of smoking tobacco was a sin?" the respondent maintained that it was lawful to get drunk with brandy, but not to smoke; because the Holy Scripture saith, "that which proceedeth out of the

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mouth defileth a man, while that which entereth into it doth not defile him."

King James was the oracle the type of his time— its pedantry, ignorance, and superstition. The "wise fool," as Sully termed him, dedicated one of his literary performances to Jesus Christ; in another erudite work on Demonology, he had the good fortune to discover "why the devil did worke more with auncient women than with others." His belief in evil spirits, however, is no great disparagement to his understanding. It was the common faith of the period. The 72nd of the English canons requires a bishop's "license to the clergy for the casting out of devils." In a sermon preached before Queen Elizabeth by Bishop Jewel, is the following illustrative rarity: "It may please your grace to understand that this kind of people, I mean witches and sorcerers, within these few years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto death; their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth; their speech is benumbed, their senses bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great, their doings horrible, their malice intolerable, their example most miserable; and I pray God they may never practise further than upon the subject."

An age ought not to be judged by selected specimens, but by its average characteristics. If exceptional examples were allowed, what would be the future estimate of our own time? At no former period were the laws

* Middleton's Works, vol. i. p. 355.

of nature better or more generally understood; yet there are believers in mesmerism, in supernatural agencies, and in effects without causes. Faith in astrology and sorcery were, however, the reverse of exceptional under Elizabeth and her Stuart successors.

A dread of witches long continued a disturbing apprehension of the nation. Two centuries later, individuals, reputed learned and enlightened, were not exempt from the delusion. No less a personage than Mr. Justice Blackstone, in the presence of the reverend and orthodox body by whom he was appointed to teach, solemnly affirmed, that "to deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament." It is needless to revert to the sentiments of Dr. Johnson or Addison; the first a wilful superstitionist, the other an admirable essayist on common things, but trite and timid in the logical search of important truths.

* Commentaries (originally Lectures at Oxford), book iv. chap. 4.

CHAPTER VIII.

ACCESSION OF THE STUARTS.

Advantages from the New Dynasty. — Character of King James.—

Policy of his Reign.
Laws.

ture.

Progress of the Country. - New and useful

London, its Riches and Buildings.

First Application of Steam. — Lord Bacon; his Writings.— Men of Letters and Literu- Theological Controversies. — New Translation of the Bible. · Commencement of Political Disagreements with the Commons. Death of James I.— Results of his peaceful Reign in improving the Condition of the People.

THE Tudor and Stuart eras differ in name, and mostly form marked subdivisions in historical narration, but they had the characteristic in common of being eminently tranquil. No great external war intervened under either dynasty seriously to interrupt national progress. During the long term of nearly two centuries that elapsed from the accession of the first Tudor to the expulsion of the last Stuart, the kingdom may be said to have been left free to the self-development of its own vitalities in every direction, according to the predominant impulse, in government, religion, laws, and industrial avocations. The absence of any great foreign distraction left full scope for the agitation of the momentous domestic questions pertaining to political and ecclesiastical affairs, which, by their engrossing interests, render the two periods the most instructive in the history of England.

Abiding fruits to the common weal, though differing in origin and kind, were reaped under both the Tudors and Stuarts under the former the crown acquired a