; and at length
performed that last feeble act of power, expulsion. In a heart already
alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a
bitter spirit. Already he had felt a personal dislike to royalty, and
now he had received an insult from the University: these were motives
which, though concealed, could not fail to work in a courageous mind,
whose new forms of religion accorded with his political feelings. The
"Degrees" of the University, which he now declared to be "unlawful,"
were to be considered "as limbs of Antichrist." The whole hierarchy
was to be exterminated for a republic of Presbyters; till, through the
church, the republican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage
to the Cabinet of his Sovereign, where he had many protectors.

Such is my conception of the character of Cartwright. The reader is
enabled to judge for himself by the note.[409]

But Cartwright, chilled by an imprisonment, and witnessing some of
his party condemned, and some executed, after having long sustained
the most elevated and rigid tone, suddenly let his alp of ice
dissolve away in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political
life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom! His party appeared once
formidable,[410] and his protection at Court sure. I have read
several letters of the Earl of Leicester, in MS., that show he always
shielded Cartwright, whenever in danger. Many of the ministers of
Elizabeth were Puritans; but doubtless this was before their state
policy had detected the politicians in mask. When some of his
followers had dared to do what he had only thought, he appears to
have forsaken them. They reproached him for this left-handed
policy, some of the boldest of them declaring that they had neither
acted nor written anything but what was warranted by his principles.
I do not know many political ejaculations more affecting than that
of Henry Barrow, said to have been a dissipated youth, when
Cartwright refused, before Barrow's execution, to allow of a
conference. The deluded man, after a deep sigh, said: "Shall I be
thus forsaken by him? Was it not he that brought me first into
these briars? and will he now leave me in the same? Was it not from
him alone that I took my grounds? Or did I not, out of such
premises as he pleased to give me, infer those propositions, and
deduce those conclusions, for which I am now kept in these bonds?" He
was soon after executed, with others.

Then occurred one of