zealot stepped into an official position which opened the widest sphere of action for his ecclesiastical tendencies. He was a man of comprehensive energy, which operated in all directions, and at the same time retained its ardour. With large general designs he united indefatigable attention to details[68]. But all defects which Laud observed in the Church he attributed to the indulgence of his predecessors, especially of the late Archbishop, George Abbot: he had resolved to take an opposite course, and to suffer no departure from the law of the Church and from rigid obedience. Such deviations were punished in the bishops when they made any resistance to the institution of ceremonies, as in the case of Williams, Bishop of Lincoln[69]; how much more in the Puritans, whom he regarded as the most dangerous adversaries of the orthodox system. Woe to the man who ventured to bring forward a controverted point in the pulpit, when once it had been forbidden there: the smallest hint of it was fatal. Laud [A.D. 1637.] set himself against even the religious strictness of the Puritans. In the Sabbatarian controversy, which was then being set on foot, he advocated the Sunday amusements of the people as warmly as the King. An ordinance issued by him on the subject roused disapprobation even among clergymen who conformed in other respects. The Archbishop appears to have thought that by this indulgence he would attract the people to his side. But even in this matter he went to work with an intolerance that could not fail to alienate men’s sympathies from him. We know how zealously the Puritans condemned theatrical representations, which just at that time, when French actresses were introduced, appeared doubly obnoxious. William Prynne, of Lincoln’s Inn, who wrote a copious book called Histriomastix, suffered in consequence the most degrading penalties; he was branded and lost his ears. The same punishment was inflicted on Bastwick, a physician, who on his return from travelling related much that was discreditable to foreign bishops, and which might be unfavourably applied to the English bishops also. The theologian Burton, who blamed as novelties some alterations that were introduced into the Church, fared no better. These were educated men, and belonged to the upper classes; and their exposure in the pillory, which was intended to disgrace them, was turned into a kind of triumph. Laud indeed intended to establish for ever the unassailable authority of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, just as he had emancipated afresh the ecclesiastical courts from the influence of the temporal: but without doubt he undermined it; for no one has ever insulted natural human feelings with impunity. His idea was conformity at any price, subordination of the people to the clergy, subordination of these latter to their own chiefs, and of all to the King.