country gentlemen especially were incessantly a mark for the rigors of authority, and saw grow up beside them, in every village, a new power. Laud enrolled the Anglican Church in the service of his king. He thus brought him a faithful and numerous militia. Charles, sincerely pious and Protestant, notwithstanding the weaknesses charged against him with regard to the Catholics, ardently confided himself to this army which came to his assistance. The alliance between the king and the Church soon became close and irrevocable. It was the Puritans, as the dissenting sects were then called, who bore the burden of this alliance. Laud insisted upon establishing everywhere an absolute conformity in the rites and ceremonies which he modified without scruple in the Roman Catholic spirit. Everywhere where the conscience of the Anglican ministers was opposed to these innovations, they were dismissed from their livings. The churches which they went forth to found in France, Holland, and Germany, did not even secure to them the liberty of their faith. Laud claimed to extend his jurisdiction upon the Continent, and pursued them with his tyranny upon the foreign soil on which they sought to establish themselves. {50} The numerous refugees who were driven from their country by religious persecution, and who had obtained charters for the free exercise of their national worship in England, found these charters abolished. Absolute conformity with the Anglican rite was required by the Archbishop, supported by the royal power. Imprisonment and exile overtook the delinquents on all hands. The anger and terror of the English people were becoming great. The Reformation had been, in England, of a double nature. Interested and worldly on the part of the king and the great noblemen, it had been earnest, sincere, profound, among the nation properly so called, and it had always leaned to the side of the Puritans. The novelties introduced by Laud into the worship agitated minds and consciences alike. The Catholics rejoiced, and the Pope thought himself in a position to cause a Cardinal's hat to be offered to the Archbishop; but the latter only wished to secure the supremacy of the Anglican Church and of the bishops in the Anglican Church. When he caused the office of high treasurer to be given to Juxon, Bishop of London, Laud exclaimed in excess of his joy, "Now that the Church subsists and supports itself unassisted, all is consummated; I can no more." He had done enough, for he had brought the Anglican Church to the brink of the abyss, and had prepared for it grievous trials.