Whitgift, might have proved to Laud that the line of argument on which the Anglican Church could successfully rely was, that what is right in Church government means whatever is most practicable. The whole question is thus resolved into a matter of convenience or of taste, as to which there may be two sides, without either party having a right to heat its arguments with such epithets as “irreligious” or “profane.” After establishing itself in triumphant possession of the land by means of the argument that Church government is a non-essential matter, the Anglican system could never consistently proclaim itself to be the one thing needful. Yet this inconsistency was the policy of which Laud was the grand mover and martyr.
This change of attitude injuriously affected the relation of English Prelacy to foreign Protestantism. The Scriptural and evangelical fathers of the Church of England acknowledged the non-prelatic churches as professors of the same faith and religion as themselves. The one true religion was not an insular monopoly, but a European common property. It was reserved for William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, to repudiate this communion of saints.
Laud’s brotherly kindness and aspirations for communion took another direction. He endeavoured to introduce into the Protestant Church, of which he was the Primate, the suicidal principles, “that the Church of Rome is a true visible Church, and never erred in fundamentals, no, not in the worst times; that she is the ancient holy Mother Church; that her religion and ours of the Church of England is all one.” Such a view was not meant to be only additional; it was to be corrective, and to be substituted for the old declarations of fraternity with foreign Protestants. In 1634 the King, by advice of the Lord-Keeper Coventry, having caused letters-patent to pass the Great Seal for a collection on behalf of the distressed ministers of the Palatinate, Laud arrested the publication of the document, because it described the religion of the sufferers to be “the true religion, which we, together with them, profess to maintain.” And a revised patent was issued, merely declaring that the foreign pastors “suffered for their religion.”
Both the Dutch and French Protestant settlers soon felt the archprelate’s ill-will. It was a grievance to him to see their churches enjoying by law the free exercise of their religion and discipline, exempt from all Archiepiscopal and Episcopal jurisdiction. He began by using the plausible argument that such an exemption could have been meant to endure only during the lifetime of the refugees; and that their children, being Englishmen by birth, were clearly subject to the bishops of their respective dioceses. And further, that though the successors of King Edward had confirmed all the exemptions, yet, at least in 1630, there was the reservation, “so long as His Majesty shall be pleased.”
The following documents are sufficiently interesting to be inserted in the place of any narrative. The first was forwarded by Dr Richard Montague, Bishop of Norwich, to Laud, who received it Feb. 21st, 1635, n.s. (Another petition, the same in substance, was sent to the primate himself on the 26th June.)
“To the Right Reverend Father in God, Richard, Lord Bishop of Norwich.
“The humble remonstrance and Petition of the two Congregations of Strangers in the city of Norwich.
“It hath pleased my Lord’s Grace of Canterbury to send forth lately two Injunctions to the three congregations of strangers, Canterbury, Sandwich, and Maidstone, in his Grace’s diocese, to this effect:— 1st. That their English natives should separate from them, and resort to the English Parish Churches where they dwell. 2dly. That the remainder of them, being strangers born, should receive and use the English Liturgy, translated into their own language, upon the first day of March next — the which is generally conceived to be a leading case for all the strangers' congregations that are in England.
“Now, forasmuch as the said Injunctions seem to be opposite not only to certain orders of his Majesty’s most honourable Privy Council, heretofore upon several occasions granted unto several congregations of the strangers, but chiefly to all the gracious liberties and privileges granted unto them of old, and continued during the reign of three most famous princes, King Edward, Queen Elizabeth, and King James, of glorious memory, and confirmed by his now Majesty’s regal word, our gracious sovereign (whom God long preserve), which he was pleased graciously to give unto the deputies of all the strangers’ congregations in England, prostrate at his Majesty’s feet, the 30th of April, 1625.
“And also, that the observing of the said Injunctions will necessarily draw after it many great and unavoidable inconveniences, both common and personal. As, namely, that the parishes shall be needlessly charged with a great multitude of poor
