the part of Milton to take the oaths required of candidates for holy orders in the English church, it will be necessary to give a synopsis of British ecclesiasticism at that period, in and about the year 1632.

The population of England in 1632 was something under five millions, and this whole mass was then considered, legally at least, to belong to the English church. Of course the exceptions in fact were multitudinous. There were in the early years of king Charles' reign two parties which stood boldly out from the state creed, both existing under the ban and at the peril of the law, but both having extensive ramifications inside the church, where each had numerous sympathizers. These were the Roman-catholics, or as they were then popularly called the Papists, and the Separatists or Dissenters. The Catholics were powerful and dangerous, always active, always scheming. Their party embraced numbers of the very highest nobility, and was strongly suspected of having the secret sympathy of many of the bishops of the English church. Reference has been made in a preceding chapter to a debate

in the House of Commons concerning the tendency of the English ecclesiastical polity towards Romanism, in which Cromwell stuttered and stamped his maiden speech, and inquired whither they were tending. It is very certain that numerous gentlemen of property and distinction, together with some churchmen, represented the Catholic interest in different English counties, and in the church itself.*

The Dissenters were but a handful, numerically, and consisted of those ultra Puritans who had considered themselves bound, whether on doctrinal or ritual grounds, to separate from the English church, and set up an altar of their own. The majority of those whose Puritanism led them thus far, had before this emigrated to Holland, or to America, where they raised their psalms of thanksgiving on bleak and unknown headlands, amid cold and hunger, with the inimical Indian prowling upon one side, and on the other the eternal sea line which severed them from dear cruel England, and the long, low, monotonous plash of the sullen waves. But some remained at home,

* Dod's Church History, time of Charles First.

getting covert aid and comfort from their less radical brethren within the church.

Behind these two parties stood the majority of the people, swayed one way or the other according to their sympathies, but not yet prepared to ostracize themselves by becoming "come-outers." The great body of the Puritans were still within the church, and the quarrel was, whether the church should be made to lean towards Puritanism, or towards that high-churchism which, it was contended, ended logically if not inevitably, in adhesion to Rome. Every new ecclesiastical measure therefore, and every new bishop, was closely scrutinized as to its or his leaning towards one or the other of these two sides.

Unfortunately for the unity of the English church, it happened that its most influential members and its ruling bishops leaned decidedly, and many of them fiercely, towards the prelatical or high-church theory. Of course they scouted the idea of conceding any thing to the Puritans, and in this they were openly supported by the king. Yet still unsatisfied, and encouraged by the royal sanction, the

hierarchical clergy rallied their whole strength, and after a bitter contest, succeeded in foisting into the canonical law one hundred and forty-one new canons intensely hostile to the Puritan tenets even going so far as to excommunicate all who refused conformity with the most minute and unessential forms of the ritual.

The result was decisive. Instantly a hundred platforms echoed with arguments for separation, while a score of vigorous presses were kept busy day and night in the publication of Puritan pamphlets, numbers of which were also imported from Holland. Then began a persecution as remorseless as it was searching.

The soul of the new crusade was the famous Archbishop Laud, who was born at Reading, in Berkshire, England. He had been educated at Oxford, and in religion "was a little over the frontier of the church of England, on that side from which the Vatican was visible." The legislative chief of the highchurch party, he pushed affairs to an extremity. Narrow and arbitrary in his disposition, he introduced the most bigoted innovations * Laud's Diary, p. 1.

into British ecclesiasticism. Detestable on account of his intolerance, he was doubly deserving of the scorn of all generous souls on account of his brutal cruelty. He stirred the Star Chamber court to displace obnoxious bishops; he also pushed inferior delinquents to the wall. There were, accordingly, a series of prosecutions from 1628 to 1632, which are recited by the historians of his religious tyranny, and which have covered his name with eternal infamy. Among the most horrible of these cases was that of Dr. Alexander Leighton, father of the famous Archbishop Leighton, a clergyman of earnest piety and decided talent, who held a preachership in Laud's diocese of London. Dr. Leighton had written and published in 1628 a book entitled, "Zion's Plea against Prelacy," which was fairly, though strongly written. For this he was indicted in 1630, sentenced, degraded from his holy orders, and cast into prison, from which he escaped through the connivance of his wardens. Instantly a hue and cry was raised after him, printed handbills were posted in conspicuous places as for a malefactor, describ