nce, he gave
the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all,
and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France; to make Charles a
monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and the
personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to
deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary
questions of civil right between man and man; and to punish with
merciless rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who
applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for
relief against those acts. [12]

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this
end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a
clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing
an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly
entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument,
and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried
into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of
such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind.
In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing
a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also
over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island,
the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be. [13]

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, principally
directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelates
of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles
of the Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more
remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the
Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays,
vigils, and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage
of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal
with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the
laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even
if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his
ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world
had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his
own dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone
to the erro