suppressing of the said book, that they shall not suffer it to be put in print; or if it be already printed, not permit the same to be divulged; and if any man shall presume to print or publish the book above mentioned that he or they shall be then liable to the censure of the said House.

"H. ELSYNG. Cler. Dom. Com."

Whitelocke mentions the attempt of the Primate as if it had been authoritatively made in some shape or other, for he says: "The Primate of Armrgh offered an expedient for conjunction in point of discipline, that episcopal and presbyterial government might not be at a far distance, reducing episcopacy to the form of a synodical government in the ancient church." Dr. Bernard published, in 1658, what he declares to have been the real plan of the Archbishop; the title is, "The reduction of Episcopacy unto the form of synodical government received in the ancient Church: Proposed in the year 1641 as an expedient for the prevention of those troubles which afterwards did arise about the matter of Church government." This tract, if it be really printed as the Archbishop wrote it, and had not first received some pruning from the antiepiscopal prepossessions of Dr. Bernard, was certainly a very great concession to popular clamor. The four propositions, of which it consists, are essentially the same with those respecting Church government laid down by Knox and the heads of the Presbyterian party, except that they require the appointment of Chorepiscopi or suffragan bishops, equal in number to the rural deaneries, and conformable to the Act passed in the twentysixth year of Henry VIII., and revived in the first of Elizabeth. It would seem that, by taking away from bishops all power of order and jurisdiction, there was left to them but the empty title of superintendent or president of the ecclesiastical Synod. If the Primate ever did make such a concession, it must have arisen from the effect produced upon his gentle nature by the violent commotions which he

"The tract has been republished in the twelfth volume of the Archbishop's works, pag. 527.

VOL. I.

P

witnessed. He must have considered resistance impossible, and that the preservation of any shadow of our ecclesiastical constitution was better, than the risk of its total destruction before the reforming rage of the Lower House of Parliament. Almost immediately after he published opinions on the subject much more in conformity with his station in the Church, and maintained with great effect the apostolical origin and establishment of bishops.

We come now to a transaction which involves most deeply the Archbishop's character, and is very differently related by different authors. The pusillanimous conduct of nearly one-half the House of Lords had occasioned the passing of the bill of attainder against Lord Strafford, and all the measures of intimidation which had been successful with the Lords were exerted to extort the King's consent to the iniquitous sentence, a sentence which, as has been truly remarked, "was a greater enormity than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry." Betrayed by his Privy Council, deserted by his Judges, Charles applied for advice to five of his Bishops, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Bishop of London (Juxon), the Bishop of Durham (Morton), the Bishop of Lincoln (Williams), and the Bishop of Carlisle (Potter), and unfortunately did not receive that support which was to be expected from such a consultation. The situation of the Bishops was, however, one of extreme difficulty. As it has been well expressed, "The misery of these learned men must have equalled the conviction of their impotence. A remedy was asked for the remediless. They sadly knew their weakness. Already they were degraded in the eyes of their country. They were about to be rejected from the rights of free men, to give an equal vote with their fellowcitizens; nor could they be insensible, while their chief lay in the durance of the Tower, and the screams of a maddened populace were echoing, No Bishops,' that heads more able to contrive mischief than their own, and hands more skilful in the arts of destruction, were fast undermining the Hie

▾ D'Israeli's Life and Reign of Charles I., vol. iv. pag. 182.

rarchy. In that day of dereliction and terror could the Bishops be more exempt from the common infirmities of our nature, than were all the Right Honorable Privy Councillors? These already had bowed with hat in hand giving them good words' to the insolent citizens, as these Lords going to their House tremblingly passed through their sullen lines, promising, provided they would be quiet, the blood of Strafford! Or were the Bishops to be less terrified than those oracles of the law, who in the sanctuary of justice, sitting at the tribunal of life and death, had revoked their decree and vacillated, till they echoed the cry of the populace around them ?"

Yet, even in that day of dereliction and terror, two of those bishops rose superior to all the alarms of earthly violence, and did advise their wretched sovereign not to do any thing against his conscience, and those two were Archbishop Ussher and Bishop Juxon. Yet such was, such is, among many writers, the anxious wish to throw odium upon the episcopal order, that the conduct of these two great and good men has been arraigned, and they have been held up as betrayers of their trust, against evidence, which seems to defy every attempt at cavil. The basest motives have been assigned for deciding the Primate's conduct; it has been stated that he was influenced by revenge for Strafford having outwitted him in superseding the Irish Articles and passing the English Articles in their place. We might appeal to the whole life and conduct of the Primate, whether there is one single incident to be found, which could justify an accusation of such base, deliberate malignity. While the Roman Emperor has been handed down with infamy to posterity by the philosophic historian, as "odium in longum jaciens," his deep-laid schemes do not exhibit an instance of human depravity so revolting, as the fiendlike motives attributed to the mild and pious Ussher. If we must condescend to refute the infamous calumny, surely there are abundant materials in the conduct of the Primate towards Strafford during his trial, his visits to him in the Tower, both before and after his condemnation, his being selected by the noble victim as the person to bear his last

request to Archbishop Laud, and still further, to attend him in the awful closing scene of his life.

Dr. Bernard gives the following account of the transaction, from a manuscript in the Primate's handwriting : "That Sunday morning wherein the King consulted the four Bishops (of London, Durham, Lincoln and Carlile) the Archbishop of Armagh was not present, being then preaching (as he then accustomed every Sunday to do) in the Church of Covent-Garden; where a message coming unto him from his Majesty, he descended from the pulpit, and told him that brought it, he was then (as he saw) imployed about God's business; which as soon as he had done, he would attend upon the King, to understand his pleasure: but the King spending the whole afternoon in the serious debate of the Lord Strafford's case, with the Lords of his Council, and the Judges of the land, he could not before evening be admitted to his Majesty's presence.

"There the question was again agitated, whether the King in justice, might pass the bill of attainder against the Earl of Strafford, (for that he might shew mercy to him was no question at all ;) no man doubting but that the King, without any scruple of conscience, might have granted him a pardon, if other reasons of State (in which the Bishops were made neither judges, nor advisers) did not hinder him. The whole result therefore of the determination of the Bishops, was to this effect: That therein the matter of fact,

Carte says that the Parliament appointed four bishops, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Bishops of Durham, Lincoln, and Carlisle, being all Calvinists, and in favor with the faction. That the King, distrusting the four, sent first for Bishop Juxon, who advised him not on any consideration to pass a bill of attainder against the dictates of his conscience. When the other bishops came they acted the part assigned to them, for which they had been very properly chosen by the heads of the faction, and advised his Majesty to pass the bill. The four bishops came again in the evening to renew the charge. The extraordinary falsehoods contained in the above statement afford a melancholy proof of the force of prejudice. In order to exalt Bishop Juxon at the expense of the other four, Carte invents a new arrangement. He makes the Primate present when he was absent, and he makes Bishop Juxon absent in the evening, when he was present. It seems to have been sufficient for Carte that they were selected by the Parliament; they must be made guilty at all events.

and matter of law, were to be distinguished: That of the matter of fact, he himself might make a judgment, having been present at all proceedings against the said Earl; where, if upon the hearing of the allegations on either side, he did not conceive him guilty of the crimes wherewith he was charged, he could not in justice condemn him: but for the matter in law, what was treason, and what was not, he was to rest in the opinion of the Judges; whose office it was to declare the law, and who were sworn therein to carry themselves indifferently betwixt him, and his subjects: Which gave his Majesty occasion to complain of the dealing of the Judges with him not long before: That having earnestly pressed them to declare in particular, what point of the Lord of Strafford's charge they judged to be treasonable, (forasmuch as upon the hearing of the proofs produced, he might in his conscience, perhaps, find him guiltless of that fact) he could not by any means draw them to nominate any in particular, but that upon the whole matter, treason might justly be charged upon him. And in this second meeting, it was observed, that the Bishop of London spake nothing at all, but the Bishop of Lincoln not only spake, but put a writing also into the King's hand, wherein, what was contained, the rest of his brethren knew not."

Upon this narrative Dr. Parr remarks, that it gives proof "of the Primate's modesty, who would not set down his own particular judgment in the matter, but only that it agreed with that of his brethren, and also of his charity and fidelity, who would not (though to acquit himself) betray his trust and accuse the only person of that company, who was supposed to have moved the King to the doing of it."

* For this silence Bishop Juxon has been accused of acting cunningly; but he had most decidedly given his opinion in the morning against the casuistry of Bishop Williams, and his subsequent silence could not have been unintelligible to the distressed monarch. The objections of Bishop Juxon to this doctrine were distinctly stated by the King to Sir Edward Walker: "Having ascribed the opinion that the king had a double capacity of a public and a private man to Ussher, the king replied, 'No, I assure you it was not he;' whence I infer that it was either York or Durham, for at the same time the king fully justified the Bishop of London for his stout opinion against it."-Pag. 360.