William Laud

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BX 5199 .L28 H87 1895 Hutton, William Holden, 186(

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Contents

PHAP. PAOE

I. FROM READING TO CANTERBURY ... ... 1

II. PRIVATE LIFE AND FRIENDS ... ... ... 36

Chapter II. Private Life And Friends

Laud's public life seems to overpower and dwarf bis personal history. We know little of how he lived in his own house, or of what were his deepest intimacies. It is difficult to imagine him at home, in his study or his garden, in any of his dwellings which still remain. At Oxford his own work transformed his college completely from the appearance it must have borne when he was a resident, nor is there any record of the room in which he lived. Book-cases known to have been his still remain, but they belong to a date after he had left Oxford. At Gloucester, or Wells, or Fulham, as well as at Croydon, there are other memories to dispute the ground with his. Abergwili is much altered : Lambeth is changed beyond recognition ; the Lollard's Tower and the gateway stand incongruously by the side of the modern building, and the chapel would not be known for the place which Prynne and the accusers so keenly scrutinized. His picture, the shell of his tortoise, books and papers that were his, preserve his memory ; but a modern student is brought most near to Laud in the library, among the official records of his primacy, or tlie faded letters which he so carefully endorsed and preserved.

His person in his habit as he lived it is not hard to recall. The two busts at S. John's,1 made in 1633, both probably the work of Hubert le Sueur, the almost innumerable portraits, attributed with more or less rashness to Vandyke, the medal struck to commemorate his martyrdom,2 the miniatures and engravings, the rough cuts that adorn the countless libels against him, enable us to draw a clear picture of his appearance. He was short and strongly built, but thin except in the face, which was plump and rosy to the day of his death. A trim pointed beard and moustache, bright peering eyes, heavy eyebrows, close-cropt white hair, give a marked individuality to the portraits. Alertness and determination seem the chief characteristics, and a cheery optimism that delights to plan and has confidence in the present. He looks, as his life shows him to have been, active, inquiring, assimilative, not original, but of a strength and impressiveness which originality often lacks. Certainly the face is kindly, and as certainly it is full of intellectual keenness. It would arrest attention anywhere, but it would not compel admiration, perhaps hardly solicit friendship.3

1 One is in the President's lodging, one in the library.

2 See below, p. 227.

3 The portraits of Laud are very numerous. The three best known are the fine portraits in S. John's College Library, at Lambeth, and in the Hermitage Gallery, S. Petersburg. The last was at one time the property of Sir Robert Walpole, and was engraved while it was at Houghton. It was sold to Catherine II. of Russia. The Lambeth portrait was unquestionably there in Laud's own day, and one of the S. John's pictures is also most probably authentic. Another, probably referred to in a letter to Strafford, is not by Vandyke (Works, vii. 295). The S. Petersburg portrait has perhaps the best claim to be considered entirely

Yet after all Laud was certainly a homely man. His letters show him full of jest and quaintness. He likes Yorkshire beef and " hung venison " ; he is grateful for a present of dried fish ; he thanks Strafford for the marten's fur, which will keep him warm in winter ; he hopes that a lady who sends him a cat " does not mean to scratch her friends by such tokens." When he felt at ease with a friend he spoke freely. We may wonder what the staid officials of the Court would have thought had they known how merrily the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord-Deputy of Ireland were writing about them — about the idleness and self-seeking of the ministers, of Cottington's iniquities and the Archbishop of Cashel's " sciatica in the conscience." For a busy man, — and few modern officials have more work than Laud had, — he writes very naturally and freely; and, weary though he often was, he never made his labours an excuse for neglecting an act of kindness. Work, however, seems to have told upon his health and his temper. He was a sickly infant, and a weak and ailing lad at Oxford ; and when he grew older he was constantly ill. He twice broke a sinew of his right leg, and was laid up for a long time. He was easily made

the work of Vandyke, but the others, and many more that are to be found in colleges, private houses, and palaces or institutions with which Laud was connected, have some touches that suggest the hand of the great master. There are a great number of copies ; almost all retain the attitude and style of the famous pictures. The Bishop of S. David's has an interesting portrait at Abergwili, which differs somewhat from those better known.

Among the engraving? Hollar's print is the best. The libels are often curious but recognizable distortions. The rare portrait "with the Chain," a rough, vulgar sketch, is mentioned by Laud himself. " The Recantation of the Prelate of Canterbury " (1641) contains a not unpleasing portrait representing Laud probably in his ordinary house dress, a cassock, ruff and skull-cap. (See p. 192, note.)

ill, and yet his constitution was capable of great endurance. As an old man his physical strength amid all the anxieties of his imprisonment and his trial was amazing. His bold heart and strong nerve carried him through times of stress which would have broken down robuster men. Like most students and sedentary men of business, he made occasional and spasmodic efforts to take exercise. When he was detained indoors he would " swing a book for exercise," and so injudiciously as to strain himself seriously. He would walk for hours in the garden at Lambeth, and often transact his business the while. At his trial he did not deny that he played bowls, though he did disclaim that he played them like Calvin on Sunday. He would ride too on occasion. Newcastle, master in the art of equitation, gave him " a fine great horse," and Strafford a " Dutch pad," a saddle so rich that he thought a bishop should not in " this age " use it.

Weak health in a busy man naturally shows itself in a hasty or querulous temper. Laud unquestionably was passionate in retort, and easily irritated by triflers and busybodies. Whatever be the true story of his quarrel with Archie Armstrong, the King's fool, it shows that when weighty anxieties pressed upon him he would not stay to treat folly gently.1 Many of the complaints of his action in the Star Chamber or High Commission were due to his hasty vehemence of language. Much that was charged against him was exaggerated no doubt ; but an archbishop should not even seem to lose his temper in a public place.

1 The facts are best put in Mr. Reynolds's edition of Seidell's Table Talk, p. 62. 'A Romish Recusant' repeats the story in the form which tells most against Laud.

When a troublesome minister named Culmer, a man of no very dignified or pleasant character, came troubling him with questions for consideration, he was said to have replied, " Consideration — I'll take nothing into consideration ; and if you conform not all the sooner, I'll take a more round course with you." 1 Clarendon admits his "unpopular natural infirmities," the "greatest of which," he says, " was (besides a hasty, sharp way of expressing himself) that he believed innocence of heart and integrity of manners was a guard strong enough to secure any man in his voyage through this world." He was, in fact, an honest man himself, and was intolerant to rudeness of anything that did not seem straightforward in those with whom he had to deal. That Heylin repeats much criticism may be taken to prove at least the sharpness of his manner. The roughness of his uncourtly nature, the small command he had of his passion, his neglect of civility to the nobility, his dislike of all ostentation and show — all these told against him in an age and a Court where forms were so greatly regarded. He lived a lonely life. He had no wife or near kin with him to calm his humours and minister to his weariness. No intimate friend ever lived in his house. He had but little time for quiet converse, and few, if any, who would give him advice. When it was given he was grateful for it, with a sort of half-satirical pathos of self-condemnation, which appears in Clarendon's account of an occasion when he was made to hear home-truths. Young Mr. Hyde, always well-meaning if a little officious, thought it would be well that the Archbishop should hear what men said of him, and took upon himself to tutor the Primate.

1 Deposition of Culmer, Cal. Stat. Pap., Dom., 1643-4, p. 15.

" He found the Archbishop " 1 — the passage is so characteristic and so illuminative that it may well be quoted here — " early walking in the garden, who received him very graciously, and continuing his walk, asked him, 'What good news in the country ? ' to which he answered, ' there was none good ; the people were universally discontented, and (which troubled him most) that many people spoke extreme ill of his Grace, as the cause of all that was amiss.' He replied, ' that he was sorry for it : he knew he did not deserve it ; and that he must not wive over serving the King and the Church to please the people, who otherwise would not speak well of him.' Mr. Hyde told him, ' he thought he need not lessen his zeal for either ; and that it grieved him to find persons of the best condition, and who loved both King and Church, exceedingly indevoted to him, complaining of his manner of treating them when they had occasion to resort to him, it may be for his directions.' And then named him two persons of the most interest and credit in Wiltshire, who had that summer attended the Council Board in some affairs which concerned the King and the country; that all the Lords present used them with great courtesy, knowing well their quality and reputation, but that he alone spake very sharply to them, and without anything of grace, at which they were much troubled ; and one of them, supposing that somebody had done him ill offices, went the next morning to Lambeth, to present his service to him, and to discover if he could what misrepresentation had been made of him : that after he had attended very long, he was admitted to speak with his Grace, who, scarce hearing him, sharply answered him, that ' he had 1 Clarendon's Life, Oxford, 1759, vol. i., p. 62 sqq.

no leisure for compliments/ and so hurried away; which put the other gentleman much out of countenance. And that this kind of behaviour of his was the discourse of all companies of persons of quality, every man continuing any such story with another like it, very much to his disadvantage, and to the trouble of those who were very just to him."

These were home-truths indeed, but Laud was very humble under the criticism ; he " heard the relation very patiently, and discoursed over every particular with all manuer of condescension, and said, with evident show of trouble, that ' he was very unfortunate to be so ill understood ; that he meant very well ; that he remembered the time when those two persons were with the Council ; that upon any deliberations, when anything was resolved, or to be said to anybody, the Council enjoined him to deliver their resolutions, which he did always according to the best of his understanding; but of the imperfection he had by nature, which he said often troubled him, he might deliver it in such a tune, and with a sharpness of voice, that made men believe he was angry, when there was no such thing ; that when those gentlemen were there, and he had delivered what he was to say, they made some stay, and spake with some of the Lords, which not being according to order, he thought he gave them some reprehension, they having at that time very much other business to do ; that he did very well remember, that one of them (who was a person of honour) came afterwards to him, at a time he was shut up about an affair of importance which required his full thoughts, but that as soon as he heard of the other's being without, he sent for him, himself going into the next room, and received him very kindly, as he thought ; and supposing that he came about business, asked him what his business was ; and the other answering that he had no business, but continuing his address with some ceremony, he had indeed said that he had not time for compliments; but he did not think that he went out of the room in that manner; and concluded that it was not possible for him in the many occupations he had to spend any time in unnecessary compliments ; and that if his integrity and uprightness, which never should be liable to reproach, could not be strong enough to preserve him, he must submit to God's pleasure." When Hyde pressed him further he answered with a smile, that " he could only answer for his heart, that he had very good meaning; for his tongue, he could not undertake that he would not sometimes speak more hastily and sharply than he should do (which oftentimes he was sorry and reprehended himself for), and in a time which might be liable to misinterpretation, with them who were not very well acquainted with him, and so knew that it was an infirmity which his nature and education had so rooted in him that it was in vain to contend with it."

Heylin's description well harmonizes with Clarendon's, but it is more intimate and more enthusiastic. " Of apprehension he was quick and sudden, of a very sociable wit and a pleasant humour ; and one that knew as well how to put off the gravity of his place and person when he saw occasion, as any man living ; accessible enough at all times, but when he was tired out with multiplicity and vexation of business, which some, who did not understand him, ascribed unto the natural ruggedness of his disposition . . . constant not

1 1 only to the public prayers in his chapel, but to his private devotions in his closet." 1 He was a busy man, with little time for recreation. His rest and refreshment was in the fixed hours of prayer ; then alone could he not be intruded upon ; there, in his chapel, he could renew his strength and his patience.

Yet with all this business and this devotion he was as little an ascetic as he was a worldling. He lived by rule, but by rule which became an enthusiasm. He obeyed the English Church implicitly : his greatest wish was fully to observe her rules. And this became a delight. He loved, one might say, every stone of the ancient fabric. He was not at all a mystic, but he was a truly pious man, to whom the language of the Bible, of the ancient collects and the English service-books, and the intimate thoughts of private prayer, were the very breath of life.

This only could preserve him in a Court so full of selfishness and deceit. He had indeed to go warily, though he never ceased to walk boldly. There was no reliance to be placed anywhere, certainly not upon the King. " But then I have nothing but the King's word to me ; and should he forget or deny it, where is my remedy ? " 2 The Queen with her Roman intrigues was a constant difficulty — "a cunning and practising woman " the Archbishop did not hesitate to call her. A life of extreme simplicity, and with fixed times of work and devotion — this was his safeguard in a Court society which might ensnare even where it could not attract.

Often, one may think, his only relief, after a weary day of labour and contention, was to sit down and write

1 Cypriawus Anglicus, p. 542.

2 To Strafford, Jan 23, 1636. Laud's Works, vii. 211.

the long record of his troubles to the only friend who could truly share them. " I am very weary," he would say to Strafford, and " I have had all manner of provocations put upon me."

That such a man, so restless by nature and by necessity, should dream often and strangely is not wonderful. May it not have been some quaint humour which made him jot down the curious visions that came to him as he slept ? They do not read seriously. There is nothing to show that he seriously regarded them when he came to act. If there was superstition in recording them, it was the gentle superstition which children learn traditionally from their kinsfolk. " They have," thought Carlyle, "an affectionate, lovable kind of character." They touch indeed every side of his thoughts — the humours of a Court, the grim and gloomy outlook of the times, political difficulties, the love of friends, the Christian solace that was nearest to his heart — " my dream of my Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. One of the most comfortable passages that ever I had in my life."

It is a poor criticism indeed that must find its evidence in a private diary and its sharpest satires in the world of dreams. Laud was a busy, weary man : when he slept his troubles did not desert him ; when he woke, in those few idle moments when he could find time to write,1 he put down the quaint remembrances in which the night gave some relief to the day's continued toil.

The personal interests of a man so busy were naturally simple. He loved his garden, and his birds, and his music : he did not care for state or dignity or pomp. 1 The Diary was very irregularly kept, and very briefly.

" I'll tell you a pretty story by the bye," he writes to Strafford, "and 'tis true. When I first came to Lambeth, there were in the walks song-thrushes, which ever began to sing in February, and so continued, and the nightingales followed in their season. Both of these came my first year, I think to take their leave, for neither of them hath appeared ever since." 1 His visitation articles and his particular directions to cathedrals show a knowledge of church music and its requirements which could not have been second-hand. His will mentions instruments that he had at Lambeth and at Croydon, his harp and chest of viols, and " the harpsico in the parlour at Lambeth."

But his chiefest interests were undoubtedly those of a scholar. He was always a book-lover. Rare editions, unique manuscripts, rich bindings — the delights of the bibliophile — his own collections as well as his literary remains show him to have been keenly interested in. At the time of Charles's coronation, his old friend Bishop Neile, who had always found him a lodging, had to give up his house to the French Ambassador; the Diary records the care with which he himself arranged his books in their new home. His letters contain constant reference to the purchase of rare books. He made ambassadors and merchants collectors for him ; but with an unselfishness rare among virtuosos, he gave his choicest treasures — it would seem from his will almost all he had, though he still had many liturgies, which, it would seem, were his favourite study — while he still lived to public libraries and private friends. He had a taste for art. He could talk of Vandyke with the King and Strafford : he knew the value of pictures and of medals. 1 Wwks, vii. 416.

He had indeed many of the characteristics of the great prelates of the Renaissance, with just that change which its ideas underwent on English soil. He was a great builder and a patron of art, a scholar and a politician, a priest with a love of comely order and the seemly dignities of public worship. He delighted to read and to control the literature of the day : he would accept dedications and encourage struggling writers. There was a certain formality about it all, viewed from without, a sort of sober stateliness of pose such as the Italian painters give to their church ceremonials and the backgrounds of their cardinals. But with Laud there was a more than English impatience at any ceremonial that was meaningless, and there was, behind all, the deep piety that let no touch of paganism from scholarship or art enter into the scheme of his life.

Such was Laud as we know him in himself. We may learn something more from his association with those who came nearest to his heart. His deepest friendships were with the two most prominent politicians among his contemporaries in the service of the Crown. Minute investigation, which has done so much to rehabilitate the character of maligned ministers, has done little if anything to raise the reputation of George Villiers. Rash, violent, and constantly swayed by the swift currents of his passions and his sympathies, Buckingham was perhaps the least fitted to guide the policy of a great nation of all those who have ever been kings' friends. His personal defects were no less obvious than his public deficiencies. But at the same time it is impossible to deny that the extraordinary fascination which he exercised over some of the worthiest as well as the greatest of his contemporaries was due to his possession of qualities which naturally and rightly inspired the love and admiration of those who knew him. He was a warm-hearted, generous man, who sinned in hot blood, but repented with tears — " goodhearted," as men say, and full of buoyant youth fulness. His contemporaries, with all their adulation of his power and position, yet felt for him always as sober men feel for a gallant boy called upon to perform great tasks. They were tolerant of his errors, they recognized his difficulties, they watched his career with sympathetic interest and almost involuntary admiration.

Such as these were the feelings with which Laud regarded him. They first came together on religious questions. April 23, 1622, "the King sent for me," says Laud's Diary, "and set me into a course about the Countess of Buckingham, who about that time was wavering in point of religion." On May 10 the young Marquis spoke to him of his own religious difficulties, and ten days later Laud gave him " papers concerning the difference between the Church of England and Rome in point of salvation, etc." Buckingham was present at the conference with Fisher, which drew him nearer to Laud as it confirmed him in the English Church. On Whit Sunday they had intimate talk together — " the particulars are not for paper." 1 On the eve of Trinity Sunday the favourite made his confession to the Bishop, and next day he received the Blessed Sacrament. On January 11 of the next year Laud's Diary has — " My Lord of Buckingham and I in the inner chamber at York House. Quod beet salvator

NOSTER CHRISTUS JESUS."

1 "June 15, I became C. to my Lord of Buckingham." There can be no doubt this means confessor. So Heylin, Gyp. Aug., p. 101. Laud practically admitted it at his trial.

From that time they became close friends. It does not appear that Laud knew of the journey into Spain, kept secret as far as possible, till his friend had started on the foolish venture. Letters passed between them during his absence, and when he returned the friendship was knit more closely than ever, and Williams lost all favour with the Duke. From that time till his murder Buckingham and Laud grew more and more near together. Laud watched with him all night when he was sick,1 stayed with him in the country, advised him about his unhappy brother, Lord Purbeck,2 talked to him of all matters, from witches and astrologers to that tragic blot on his own life, the marriage of Lord Devon, christened his children, wrote letters and speeches for him on matters of Church and State, and was, as he styled himself in writing, his " most devoted and affectionate friend." It was a feeling not uncommon in the age in which he lived ; it reminds one at times of Languet's attachment to Sidney, or Michelangelo's to Cavalieri. And of his wife, too much neglected, he writes that she is " goodness itself." It is clear that on Laud's side the aim of the friendship was above all things religious. He looked upon the fickle Duke as one upon whom, more especially after King James's death, the fortunes of England depended, and most of all the fortunes of the English Church. He was welldisposed : it was Laud's determination that he should be also well-informed. Thus he supplied him with the famous list of clergy for preferment, marked with the letters 0 and P. Thus he planned with him Church endowments, and fortified him with arguments against

1 Whit Sunday, 1624, and Tuesday, he watched all night.

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Rome and Geneva. He thought of him sleeping and waking.1 His prayers show how near he was to his heart. " Gracious Father, I humbly beseech Thee, bless the Duke of Buckingham with all spiritual and temporal blessings, but especially spiritual. Make and continue him faithful to his prince, serviceable to his country, devout in Thy Truth and Church ; a most happy husband and a blessed father ; filled with the constant love and honour of his prince, that all Thy blessings may flow upon himself and his posterity after him. Continue him a true-hearted friend to me, Thy poor servant, whom Thou hast honoured in his eyes. . . . . Even so, Lord, and make him continually to serve Thee." Then follow other prayers to the same purport, "much used," as Prynne said,2 "as is evident by the fouling of the leaves with his fingers."

Laud, in fact, as religious men of mature years do so naturally, always hoped and believed the best of his gallant young friend. If to others he was a profligate, to Laud he was a penitent. Laud cherished his best intentions, and believed, perhaps too often, that they would be performed. There was a tenderness indeed about his thoughts of the favourite which added a genuine personal affection to his religious care. It was a friendship which death and danger could not destroy. When he was charged at his trial, years after, with correspondence with Buckingham, he boldly answered, " My lord, I hold it my great honour thac my lord duke would write to me and give me leave to write to him."

Of a different fashion and a different origin was his

2 Breviate, p. 13.

friendship with Strafford. But it is probable that here also the beginning of the friendship was religion. The first entry in Land's Diary relating to Went worth, Jan. 21, 1G30-31, is in terms similar to those used when Buckingham's confession is referred to. These two minds, whose religious belief and theories of government agreed, came naturally together. In method as well as thought their views were akin. What they boldly decided on they would bravely execute. They were not satisfied with smooth semblances : their ideal was " thoroughness " in action as in thought and life. Strafford, in fact, answered more nearly than any one else to the want, which even the self-contained Churchman felt, of a helpmeet in his deepest projects. " I am alone in those things which draw not private profit after them " — so he said pathetically. Thus, as Mr. Firth well says, 1 " the intimacy and the confidence between the two men rose naturally from their characters and position. Each had an unselfish devotion to the monarch lie served, and to the ideas which he hoped to realize through the monarchy." When Wentworth was in Ireland the friends wrote constantly and intimately. Laud was the confidant of all the Deputy's political schemes, and the religious policy belonged to both alike. Strafford sent Laud duplicates of all his important despatches. Laud told Strafford of all his petty worries, as well as his great checks. Both chafed against " my lady Mora," and beat themselves in vain against the sluggish indolence of self-seeking courtiers. " Private ends," wrote Laud, " are such blocks in the public way, and lie so thick, that you may promise

1 Introduction to Robert Browning's prose life of Strafford, p. lxvi.

what you will, and I must perforin what I can and no more."

The mass of letters preserved is very great ; Laud wrote more frequently to Strafford than to any other man. The letters touch not only public affairs, — the agreement of the two men being complete on all matters of policy, and the smallest details being discussed between them, — but also the private matters of the writers. The tone throughout is that of old friends, joking at each other's expense, grateful for remembrances, humouring each other's whims, and devoted to each other's interests, but chiefly to those views of national policy they had at heart.