several dioceses, to furnish an annual subsidy for this object. The king contributed at various times ten thousand pounds; Sir Paul Pindar four thousand pounds; and Laud, who was more free of other men's money than his own, gave one hundred pounds a year. He was bent on making St. Paul's a rival of St. Peter's; and as more money became necessary, he summoned wealthy people into the High Commission Court on all possible pleas, of immoral life, and fined them heavily; so that there was a plentiful crop of money, and of murmurs against the primate, who was said to be building the church out of the sins of the people.
He was vehemently accused of going headlong towards popery. Papers were dropped in the streets, or stuck upon the walls, or privately conveyed into his house, in which he was charged with his apostacy, and menaced with its punishment. To pacify such enemies, he was obliged to make a show of hatred to popery. It was talked abroad that he had assured the king of his determination to give a preference to all livings at his disposal to clergymen who lived in celibacy. This was a severs blow at him, for the clergy took it up with great heat, and he immediately got up a marriage betwixt one of his chaplains and a relative of secretary Windebank, a creature of his, and then gave the chaplain preferment, as a practical answer to the charge. He summoned before the council a schoolmaster and innkeeper at Winchester, for bringing up catholic scholars; and having licensed a catholic book, called "An Introduction to a Devout Life," in which the word mass was altered to divine service, he called it in and burnt it.
Yet the proofs of his anti-catholic zeal stopped short on an occasion when, if the work of art had been of real value, we should have commended his taste. A Mr. Sherfield, a barrister, and recorder of Salisbury, by order of a vestry, in accordance with the canons of the reformed church and of acts of parliaments, took down a painting from the window of the church of St. Edmunds, and broke it to pieces. Laud summoned him to the star-chamber for this offence, where Sherfield pleaded that the picture was derogatory to the character of the Almighty, and unfaithful to Scripture. The subject was creation, and the treatment, he contended, was false and impious. "God the Father was painted like an old man, with a blue coat and a pair of compasses, to signify his compassing the heavens and the earth. In the fourth day's work, there were fowls of the air flying up from God their maker, which should have been the fifth day. In the fifth day's work a naked man is lying upon the earth asleep, with so much of a naked woman as from the knees upward growing out of his side, which should have been the sixth day: so that the history is false." Laud, however, contended that the destruction of such works kept moderate catholics from going to church; and though some of the court hinted a doubt whether Laud was not himself going fast to the catholic church, Sherfield was condemned to a fine of five hundred pounds, to the loss of his office of recorder, to make an acknowledgment of his error in the church of St. Edmunds, where he had broken the window, and in the cathedral also, and to give security against the commission of any such action of the kind.
Laud had obtained for his devoted adherents Windebank the post of secretary of state, and Juxton, dean of Westminster, that of clerk of the king's closet so that, as Heylin observes, the king was so well watched by his stanch friends that it was not easy for any one to insinuate anything to his disadvantage; and he went on most sweepingly in his own way. He put down all evening lecturing, evening meetings, and extemporary praying. He went on re-introducing in the churches painted glass, pictures, and surplices, lawn sleeves, and embroidered caps; had the communion-tables removed, and altars placed instead, and railed in; and he carried all this with such an arbitrary hand, that many who might have approved of them in themselves, were highly set against them. The more simple and strict reformers complained of the looseness with which the Sabbath was kept, and the lord chief justice Richardson and baron Denham issued an order in the western circuit to put an end to the disorder attending church-ales, bid-ales, clerk-ales, and the like. But no sooner did Laud hear of it, then he had the lord chief justice summoned before the council and severely reprimanded, as interfering with the commands of king James for the practice of such Sunday sports, as recommended in his Book of Sports, and since confirmed by Charles.
The country magistrates, who had seen the demoralisation consequent on these sports and Sunday gatherings at the ale-houses, petitioned the king to put them down; and the petition was signed by lord Paidet, Sir William Portman, Sir Ralph Hopeton, and many other gentlemen of distinction But they were forestalled by the agility of Laud, who procured from the king a declaration sanctioning all the Sunday amusements to be found in the Book of Sports, and commanding all judges on circuit, and all justices of the peace to see that no man was molested on that account. This declaration was ordered to be read in all parish churches by the clergy. Many conscientious clergy, who had seen too much of the dissolute riot resulting from these rude gatherings of clowns on Sundays, refused to read the declaration, and were suspended from their duties, and prosecuted to such a degree that they had no alternative but to emigrate to America.
This dictation of Laud extended over the whole kingdom, into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, even stirring up Charles to issue proclamation after proclamation, interfering in things entirely beyond the range of his episcopal jurisdiction, such as regulating the price of poultry and the retailing of tobacco. In Ireland, Wentworth, now made lord deputy, went hand in hand with all the whims of this universal dictator. That he might the better interfere in all kinds of matters, he was appointed in 1631 chief of the board of commissioners of the exchequer, and on the death of Weston, lord Portland, the lord high treasurer. He then got his friend and servant Juxton made bishop of London, and in about a year surrendered to him the treasurership, to the surprise and murmuring of many, for Juxton, till he brought him forward, was a man of no mark whatever. Lord chancellor Cottington, who had been a fast friend of Laud's, and calculated on the white staff of the treasurer, now fell away from Laud, and many noblemen who had had an eye to it began to prophecy what the end of his career would be. But. the University of Oxford, going the whole way with him in his advances towards popery, styled him "His holiness, Sumnaus
