g the fragments together. The
glazier was scandalized by the Primate's express command to repair and
set up again the "broken crucifix" in the east window. The holy table
was removed from the centre, and set altarwise against the eastern wall,
with a cloth of arras behind it, on which was embroidered the history of
the Last Supper. The elaborate woodwork of the screen, the rich copes of
the chaplain, the silver candlesticks, the credence table, the organ and
the choir, the stately ritual, the bowings at the sacred name, the
genuflexions to the altar made the chapel at last such a model of
worship as Laud desired. If he could not exact an equal pomp of devotion
in other quarters, he exacted as much as he could. Bowing to the altar
was introduced into all cathedral churches. A royal injunction ordered
the removal of the communion table, which for the last half-century or
more had in almost every parish church stood in the middle of the nave,
back to its pre-Reformation position in the chancel, and secured it from
profanation by a rail. The removal implied, and was understood to imply,
a recognition of the Real Presence, and a denial of the doctrine which
Englishmen generally held about the Lord's Supper. But, strenuous as was
the resistance which the Archbishop encountered, his pertinacity and
severity warred it down. Parsons who denounced the change from their
pulpits were fined, imprisoned, and deprived of their benefices.
Churchwardens who refused or delayed to obey the injunction were rated
at the Commission-table, and frightened into compliance.

[Sidenote: The Puritan panic.]

In their last Remonstrance to the king the Commons had denounced Laud as
the chief assailant of the Protestant character of the Church of
England; and every year of his Primacy showed him bent upon justifying
the accusation. His policy was no longer the purely Conservative policy
of Parker or Whitgift; it was aggressive and revolutionary. His "new
counsels" threw whatever force there was in the feeling of conservatism
into the hands of the Puritan, for it was the Puritan who seemed to be
defending the old character of the Church of England against its
Primate's attacks. But backed as Laud was by the power of the Crown, the
struggle became more hopeless every day. While the Catholics owned that
they had never enjoyed a like tranquillity, while the fines for
recusancy were reduced and their worship suffered to go on in private
houses, the Purit