Читать книгу Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times - Lucy Phillimore - Страница 7

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.

Evelyn[31] says:—

‘I saw His Majesty (coming from his Northern expedition) ride in pomp and a kind of ovation with all the markes of a happy peace, restored to the affections of his people, being conducted through London with a most splendid cavalcade; and on 3 November following (a day never to be mentioned without a curse), to that long, ungrateful, foolish, and fatal Parliament, the beginning of all our sorrow for twenty years after, and the period of the most happy monarchy in the world.’ In truth its opening augured ill for the country and for the Church.

Lord Strafford was impeached and sent to the Tower, and the Archbishop next attacked. Sir Harbottle Grimston, in a virulent speech, vented his hatred against Archbishop Laud; ‘and those prelates he hath advanced—to name but some of them: Bishop Manwaring, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Bishop of Oxford, and Bishop Wren—the last of all those birds, but one of the most unclean ones.’ The debate which followed ended—as in the temper of the House it was certain to do—in a vote that the Archbishop was a traitor. Allowed the afternoon at Lambeth to collect papers for his defence, he attended the evening prayers for the last time in the chapel that he had repaired and adorned with loving care. The service, which he had restored to its full beauty, soothed that bitter hour. ‘The Psalms of the day (December 18) and chapter l. of Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me worthy to receive it,’ he wrote in his diary. The poor thronged round Lambeth Palace, and bitterly lamented the departure of their best friend, showering blessings on his head as he was carried away. He remained in the custody of Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, ten weeks, compelled to pay 436l. for his charges, besides a fine of 500l. He was then transferred to the Tower.

WREN UNDER CENSURE.

The Archbishop being secured, the Bishops were next attacked. Hampden came to the Lords with a message to acquaint their lordships that the Commons had received matters of a high kind against the Bishop of Ely, for the ‘setting up of idolatry and superstition in divers places, and acting the same in his own person;;’ adding that he was intending to escape from England, and that they therefore desired he might be put in security, to be forthcoming and abide the judgment of Parliament. Bishop Wren was in his place in the House when this summons came, and was ordered to find bail for 10,000l.; helped by three of the bishops, he managed to do so. When the Primate was in custody, and Wren under censure, at the beginning of the next year Lord Strafford was attacked. Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, not long released from the Tower, anxious to please the Commons, declared that the canon law forbade the Bishops to sit as judges in a case of blood. He spoke in the name of the other Bishops; and the decision was too welcome to Strafford’s enemies not to be agreed to instantly; but it was a concession afterwards very dangerous to those who made it. The issue of that iniquitous trial, perhaps as great a perversion of justice as England had ever then known, needs no repetition here.

The King’s best advisers were in prison or under restraint, except good Bishop Juxon, who bravely told him he ought not, upon any considerations in the world, to do anything against his conscience; and Bishop Williams, who hated Strafford and Laud alike, sent by the Commons to induce the King to sign the death-warrant, had a fatal success.

Bishop Wren came to Windsor after this to marry Princess Mary, the King’s eldest daughter, to William, eldest son of Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange, whom he succeeded in six years. The alliance was one which gratified the Parliament, being so Protestant a connection. Little, however, could they have guessed how deadly an enemy Princess Mary’s son would prove to the house of Stuart. Ten days after this wedding came May 12, when ‘the wisest head in England was severed from the shoulders of Lord Strafford.’ So writes John Evelyn. To the Archbishop, his friend’s death must have been a terrible blow. He was just able to bestow a parting blessing through his prison window, and to hear Lord Strafford say, ‘Farewell, my lord. God protect your innocency.’ The Princess’s marriage was the last occasion on which Bishop Wren was to officiate as Dean of the Chapels Royal.

The Commons had been industriously at work against him since the first attack in December, and as Archbishop Laud said of Prynne, ‘by this time their malice had hammered out somewhat.’ The committee sent in a report, charging the Bishop with ‘excommunicating fifty painful ministers, practising superstition in his own person, placing “the table” altarwise, elevation of the elements, the “eastward position,” as it is now called, at the Eucharist, bowing to the Altar, causing all seats to be placed so that the people faced east, employing his authority to restrain “powerful preaching,” and ordering catechising in the words of the Church Catechism only, permitting no prayer before the sermon but the bidding prayer (canon 5), publishing a book of articles, to which the churchwardens were sworn, containing 187 questions.’

BISHOP WREN’S RESIGNATION.

Upon this report a debate ensued, ending in a vote that it was the opinion of the House that Matthew Wren was unworthy and unfit to hold or exercise any office or dignity in the Church, and voting that a message be sent to the House of Lords to desire them to join the Commons in petitioning his Majesty to remove Bishop Wren from his person and service. Evelyn’s expression, ‘to such an exorbitancy had the times grown,’ aptly describes the state of matters when, for details such as these of the government of a diocese, and for practices which, if they had been proved, were both legal and reasonable, an assembly of laymen presumed to pronounce a bishop unfit for his office in the Church. Whether the petition ever came before the King does not appear, but Wren thought it best to take the initiative; for he writes in his diary five days after the debate: ‘I hardly obtained leave from the King to resign the deanery of the Chapels Royal.’