severed from the ancient clergy) should only be licensed in the court of faculties at the recommendation of the bishop of the diocese, with the fiat of the archbishop of Canterbury, and a confirmation under the great seal: and that the contraveners of these regulations should incur suspension for a year and a day, until his majesty, by the advice of the next convocation, should prescribe some further punishmenta.

By these regulations the parochial clergy found themselves interdicted precisely from those topics, political and theological, on which they were heard with most attention and applause; and the lecturers, the most popular class of preachers,-were in effect silenced.

Loud were the murmurs which ensued, and numbers of the puritanical sect chose rather, by perseverance in the forbidden course, to brave punishments under which they were supported generally by self-approbation and always by the sympathy and admiration of their zealous followers, than by a tame submission to forfeit at once their popularity, their consequence, and perhaps the testimony of their own consciences. The lord-keeper saw with uneasiness the progress of a kind of petty persecution which he deprecated as equally vexatious, impolitic and mischievous; he became the advocate and protector of many of the sufferers, and two or three pleasant stories are related by his biographer of the

Fuller's Church history, b. x. p. 109.

ingenious

ingenious artifices by which he sometimes entrapped the king into the exercise of lenity and indulgence. One of these is told as follows:-A scholar of Oxford named Knight, who had recently taken orders, had preached a sermon in the university, in which he "delivered that which derogated much from the safety of regal majesty." The vice-chancellor informed against him to Laud, and Laud carried the report to the king. "Presently the floods lift up their voices; ruin is thundered against Knight, who had set such a beacon on fire in the face of the university." To the Gate-house he was committed a close prisoner, where he lay a great while, 66 macerated with fear, and want, and hard lodging." Dr. White, the same who purchased Sion College for the clergy of London, was threatened with a similar fate: as a residentiary of St. Paul's the good man, then very aged, had preached a sermon which was falsely represented to the king as of a disloyal tendency; "for he was very rich," and the informers hoped to divide his money amongst them.

Both these unfortunate divines threw themselves upon the humanity of the lord-keeper, and he resolved to exert himself to the utmost in their behalf. Going to the king with some instructions for preachers in his hand, which had been committed to him to draw up, he begged that his majesty would allow this article to be added to the rest;-that no man should preach before the age of thirty or after that of sixty. The king exclaimed that there was madness in the notion;-he had many chaplains under

thirty who preached before him at Royston and Newmarket much to his contentment; and his prelates and chaplains who were far advanced in years were the greatest masters of divinity in Europe. "I agree to all this," said the keeper; "and since your majesty will allow both young and old to go up into the pulpit, it is but justice that you show indulgence to the young ones, if they run into errors before their wits be settled, and pity to the old ones if some of them fall into dotage.” He ended by begging, and not in vain, the grace of both the preachers, who "had been foolish in their several extremes of years." The general course, however, of his master's policy proceeded unaltered, all whose measures at this period were directed to promote the completion of his favorite project,-the Spanish match; the negotiations for which will next engage our attention.

a Life of Williams, p. 88.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER XXIII.

1622, 1623.

Embassy of John Digby earl of Bristol to Spain.-Account of him.-Views of Buckingham.-He persuades the prince to go to Spain;—their mode of gaining the king's consent. -The prince's journey.-Lines by Waller.-His arrival and reception at Madrid.-Correspondence of the king and Buckingham.-James required to own the pope's supremacy.-Correspondence of the prince with the pope.-Secret articles added to the treaty.-Disagreement between Buckingham and the Spanish ministry.-Desponding letter of James, his steps in favor of recusants.-Etiquette of the Spanish court.-Articles signed.-Letter of Bristol.Departure of the prince.-Letter of Bristol to the prince. On the death of Philip III. of Spain and the accession of his son Philip IV., in the spring of the year 1622, lord Digby, soon after created earl of Bristol, was sent ambassador extraordinary to that court, not only to perform the accustomed ceremonies of condolence and congratulation, but to resume with the new monarch the marriage treaty which his predecessor had contrived to lengthen out for so many years without bringing it perceptibly nearer to its accomplishment. This ambassador was a person of considerable political distinction, and the steps of his advancement in public life deserve to be traced.

John

John Digby, fourth son of sir George Digby of Coleshill in Warwickshire, was descended from the second of seven brothers of a family long distinguished for their zeal in the cause of the house of Lancaster, who all fought in Bosworth field against king Richard III.; and from the eldest of which brothers the unfortunate sir Everard Digby derived his birth. The same conspiracy which proved fatal to this gentleman, the head of the house, became, through the following circumstances, a means of advancement to the younger branch.

John Digby, after an education at Oxford, and two or three years passed in France and Italy, had returned home an accomplished gentleman of fiveand-twenty. He was in Warwickshire when the gun-powder plot burst forth; and having been a witness of the insurrection attempted by the disappointed conspirators on their arrival in that county, for the purpose of seizing the person of the princess Elizabeth, lord Harrington, under whose care she was residing, pitched upon him as a fit person to post to court with tidings of the safety of the princess and the defeat of the whole design.

The very handsome exterior of the messenger, set off by a dignified and spirited demeanor, instantly caught the eye of the king, whose attention was thus drawn to the intelligence and address which he discovered in the execution of his commission. Digby was speedily appointed a gentle. man of the privy-chamber and carver to his majesty. The next year he was knighted: he was sent am

bassador