cities, provinces, and empires, but the founders of civilization in America."

The word clergie is in itself historical, meaning, in the Norman tongue, literature. In early times, when learning was almost exclusively with the clergy, they, by this monopoly, held almost the whole power of church and state. We may see an illustration of this union of civil and ecclesiastical functions in the Annals of the See of Bath and Wells, which yielded from its diocesan list to the civil state of England six Lord Chancellors, eight Lord High Treasurers, two Lords Privy Seal, one Master of the Rolls, one Lord President of Wales, one principal Secretary of State; and to higher Episcopal office, five Archbishops of Canterbury, three Archbishops of York, and, says the annalist of the diocese, "to the Protestant Episcopal Church, the cause of Monarchy, and of Orthodoxy, one MARTYR, William Laud."

But, of all the names in that priestly catalogue, to ARTHUR LAKE belongs the transcendent honor, the highest distinction; for it was his missionary spirit that originated the movement which led to the colonization of Massachusetts,

an enterprise

greatly indebted for its success to the unhappy zeal of his immediate successor in the office of bishop, the "martyr" Laud. As this execrable1 prelate embodied the principles and spirit of the hierarchy; as he had a controlling agency in the settlement of New England, by "harrying" the Puritans out of Old England; and as he has ever been remembered with abhorrence by their descendants, some of whose early Puritan "prejudices," not yet eradicated, may very possibly reach future generations, mention of a characteristic act in his official life may be per

1 For an opposite view of Archbishop Laud's character, and the principles involved in it, read his "Life and Times," by John Lawson Parker. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1829.

tinent to our inquiry. It was this: Mr. Leighton, a Scotch divine, being convicted of writing a book denouncing the severities of the hierarchy, Bishop Laud pulled off his hat when sentence was pronounced on the offender, and gave God thanks for the victory. This was in the Star Chamber, and in keeping with the general tone of proceedings which prevailed in this court, in the council, and in the government generally, during Laud's time.

Mr. Leighton "was severely whipped; then, being set in the pillory, his ear was cut off, his nose slit, and his cheek was branded, with a red-hot iron, S. S., as a Sower of Sedition. On that day week - the sores on his back, ears, nose, and face not being curedhe was whipped again at the pillory, in Cheapside, and the remainder of his sentence executed by cutting off his other ear, slitting the other side of his nose, and branding his other cheek."

This man, Laud, who conceived, perpetrated, revelled in, and recorded in his private diary these disgusting details, was by Charles I. promoted step by step in Episcopal office, till, in 1633, three years after the outrage on Leighton, and the next after his brutality on Prynne, - this man was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of the Episcopal Church, the representative man of the hierarchy. The New Englanders always spoke of him as our great enemy."

Early in the next year

66

1634- - this primate, "with my Lord

Privy Seal," after an examination in council of Governor Cradock 1

1 Governor Mathewe Cradock, though prominent in early Massachusetts annals, never set foot in New England. The house built on his plantation, in one of the precious memorials of

what is Medford, in 1634, is yet standing, early times. Brooks' History of Medford honors him as "the founder" of the town, and contains a picture of the house. After the removal of the colony from Cape Ann to Salem, in 1626, under Governor Conant, some of the persevering members of "the Dorchester Company," which had originated the enterprise of colonizing Massachusetts, effected, with new associates, a new organization, for continuing and expanding the colonization of New England, which was at a later period-March 4, 1628-9-"confirmed " by charter from Charles I. Of this new "company" Cradock was appointed the first governor, and John Endecott was

and other friends of the colonists, and of "all their correspondence" with "the brethren" in New England, called them all "imposturous knaves," promised "the cropping of Mr. Winthrop's ears," the loss of the colonial charter, and a “general governor" over all the colonies, to do his bloody behests. "If Jove vouchsafe to thunder, the charter and the kingdom of the separatists will fall asunder,” and so end "King Winthrop, with all his inventions, and his Amsterdam and fantastical ordinances, his preachings, marriages, and other abusive ceremonies, which exemplify his detestation of the Church of England, and contempt of his Majesty's authority and wholesome laws"! Winthrop's ears were not cropped, and Laud became a "martyr"!

From such a gospel the New England Puritans fled; and in the celebrated pulpit at Saint Paul's Cross, in London, its clergy preached often and bitterly against the New England colonies and planters, especially Massachusetts, who, by limiting their franchise to members of their own communion, kept out of political power those enemies1 who followed them hither, and who would have overturned the Commonwealth, which some attempted, as in the case of Child, Vassal, the infamous Maverick, and others. When the Colony became a State, with an educated people, the bars were let down, and suffrage was extended.

the first, if not the only, governor of the colony under this charter. Massachusetts Col. Rec., "The Landing at Cape Ann," and authorities there cited. See note 1, p. xxiii.

1 In the admirable state paper from Massachusetts Bay to the Parliament, in 1651, they say: "We, being men able enough to live in England with our neighbours, and being helpfull to others, and not needing the help of any for outward thinges, about three or four and twenty years since, seeing just cause to feare the persecution of the then bishops and high commission, for not conforming to the ceremonies then pressed upon the consciences of those under their power, we thought it our safest course to get outside of the world, out of their view, and beyond their reach, without the help of the State,

divers hundreds of thousands pounds."

coming hither at our proper charges having expended, first and last,

It was well said in Stoughton's Election Sermon, preached in 1668, that "God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness." "They were men of great renown in the nation from whence the Laudian persecution exiled them; their learning, their holiness, their gravity, struck all men that knew them with admiration. They were Timothies in their houses, Chrysostoms in their pulpits, Augustines in their disputations." Indeed, this exodus of so many of the choicest of England's educated and Christian sons, consequent upon this fanaticism for the church, not religion, alarmed the sober-minded. We find an expression of this in the anecdote of the vice-chancellor's strenuous exception to printing the two lines in Herbert's "Temple,”—

"Religion stands a-tiptoe in our land,

Ready to pass to the American strand,”

when they requested his imprimatur for that poem; and his reluctant assent was given with the "hope that the world would not take Herbert for an inspired prophet." This was in 1633. Towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the judicious Hooker defined the "clergy as a state". or order of men "whereunto the rest of God's people must be subject, as touching" - only — " things that appertain to their soul's health." This was a great advance in the right; but the leaven of Puritanism had then been some time fermenting in England, and many of the churchmen now challenged this claim of the priesthood.

points upon which the

In substance the pre

A late able writer1 sums up clearly "the Puritan clergy and their lords were at issue. lates claimed that every word, ceremony, and article, written in the Book of Common Prayer, and in the Book of Ordination, was as faultless and as binding as the Book of God, and must be acknowl

1 Hopkins, "Puritanism and Queen Elizabeth," vol. ii. p. 369.

edged as such. The Puritans dared not say it. The prelates claimed to themselves - or, more modestly, to the church which

they personified an infallibility of judgment in all things pertaining to religion. The Puritans denied the claim. The prelates claimed obedience; the Puritans, manhood; the prelates, spiritual lordship; the Puritans, Christian liberty." And these preposterous claims of the prelates rested upon acts of Parliament !

The quarrel was in the church. Some of these Puritans fled to New England. They came hither protesting against these prelatical assumptions, and were really a church rather than a state. Separation from the Church of England was at first viewed by those of Massachusetts with repugnance; but it was facilitated by a quasi adoption of a very mild type of the Genevan or Presbyterian polity, the validity of whose ordination had been repeatedly recognized by the hierarchy, and also declared by Act of Parliament, 13th Elizabeth; the very same authority which created the "Established" Church, and tinkered its "infallibility" to suit the changing times. But soon "they read this clearly," as did Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, and John Cotton, that

"New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large."

As they were already imbued with the spirit, they gradually adopted the principles of Independency, absolute democracy, essentially as held and taught by their Plymouth brethren. This was the legitimate result of the Reformation, and it was distinctly conceded to be such by one of Hooker's ablest scholars, George Cranmer. In a letter to his teacher, he said: "If the positions of the Reformers be true, I cannot see how the main and general conclusions of Brownism" - Independency - "should be false." That great man, Sir James Mackintosh, incidentally renders them a noble tribute, in

1

1 In the Appendix to Izaak Walton's Life of Mr. Richard Hooker.