e saw settling down on every Puritan heart had
deepened with each succeeding year. The great struggle abroad had gone
more and more against Protestantism, and at this moment the end of the
cause seemed to have come. In Germany Lutheran and Calvinist alike lay
at last beneath the heel of the Catholic House of Austria. The fall of
Rochelle, which followed quick on the death of Buckingham, seemed to
leave the Huguenots of France at the feet of a Roman Cardinal. In such a
time as this, while England was thrilling with excitement at the thought
that her own hour of deadly peril might come again, as it had come in
the year of the Armada, the Puritans saw with horror the quick growth of
Arminianism at home. Laud was now Bishop of London as well as the
practical administrator of Church affairs, and to the excited
Protestantism of the country Laud and the Churchmen whom he headed
seemed a danger more really formidable than the Popery which was making
such mighty strides abroad. To the Puritans they were traitors, traitors
to God and their country at once. Their aim was to draw the Church of
England farther away from the Protestant Churches, and nearer to the
Church which Protestants regarded as Babylon. They aped Roman
ceremonies. Cautiously and tentatively they were introducing Roman
doctrine. But they had none of the sacerdotal independence which Rome
had at any rate preserved. They were abject in their dependence on the
Crown. Their gratitude for the royal protection which enabled them to
defy the religious instincts of the realm showed itself in their
erection of the most dangerous pretensions of the monarchy into
religious dogmas. Their model, Bishop Andrewes, had declared James to
have been inspired by God. They preached passive obedience to the worst
tyranny. They declared the person and goods of the subject to be at the
king's absolute disposal. They were turning religion into a systematic
attack on English liberty, nor was their attack to be lightly set aside.
Up to this time they had been little more than a knot of courtly
parsons, for the mass of the clergy, like their flocks, were steady
Puritans; but the well-known energy of Laud and the open patronage of
the Court promised a speedy increase of their numbers and their power.
It was significant that upon the prorogation of 1628 Montague had been
made a bishop, and Mainwaring, who had called Parliaments ciphers in the
state, had been rewarded with a fat living. Instance