bishops and others, to whom the books were to be delivered by
their owners.

Fuller says that much of Manwaring's sentence was remitted in
consideration of his humble submission; and Charles the very same
year not only pardoned him, but gave him ecclesiastical
preferment, finally making him Bishop of St. David's. Heylin
attests the resentment this indiscreet indulgence roused in the
Commons; but, unfortunately, as Manwaring was doubtless well
aware, to have incurred the anger of Parliament was motive enough
with Charles for the preferment of the offender, and the shortest
road to it.

This is shown by the similar treatment accorded to the Rev.
Richard Montagu, who had made himself conspicuous on the
anti-Puritan side in the time of James. In defence of himself he
had written his _Appello Caesarem_, with James's leave and
encouragement. It was a long book, refuting the charges made
against him of Popery and Arminianism, and full of bitter
invectives against the Puritans. After the matter had been long
under the consideration of Parliament, the House prayed Charles
to punish Montagu, and to suppress and burn his books; and this
Charles did in a remarkable proclamation (January 17th, 1628),
wherein the _Appello Caesarem_ is admitted to have been _the first
cause of those disputes and differences that have since much
troubled the quiet of the Church_, and is therefore called in,
Charles adding, that if others write again on the subject, "we
shall take such order with them and those books that they shall
wish they had never thought upon these needless controversies."
It appears, however, from Rushworth that, in spite of this,
several answers were penned to Montagu, and that they were
suppressed. And what, indeed, would life be but for its "needless
controversies"?

Nothing could be more praiseworthy than Charles's attempt to put
a stop to the idle disputations and bitter recriminations of the
combatants on either side of religious controversy. Could he have
succeeded he might have staved off the Civil War, which we might
almost more fitly call a religious one. But in those days few
men, unfortunately, had the cool wisdom to remain as neutral
between Arminian and Calvinist, Papist and Protestant, as between
the rival Egyptian sects which, in Juvenal's time, fought for the
worship of the ibis or the crocodile. Our comparatively greater
safety in these days is due to the large increase of that neutral
party, which was so