When Charles the first succeeded to the throne many of the descendants of the early puritans still adhered to the established church, seeking only the reduction of the inordinate power of the bishops, and the removal of “popish ceremonies.” But the injuries they received were constantly stimulating their inquiries, and strengthening their objections to episcopacy. Dr. Laud, who was successively promoted from the bishopric of Bath and Wells, to the see of London, {103a} and the archbishopric of Canterbury, {103b} wielded the terrors of the star chamber and high commission courts with redoubled cruelty. New and more offensive rites were introduced into the church. The communion table was converted into an altar, and all persons were commanded to bow to it on entering the church. {103c} All week-day lectures, and afternoon sermons on Sundays, were abolished; and the king, “out of pious care for the service of God, and for suppressing humours that oppose truth,” republished, by the advice of his ecclesiastical favourite, the Book of Sports, with a command that it should be read in all parish churches. {104a} This the puritan clergy refused, for which they felt the iron rod of their oppressors. Another grievance under which the puritans laboured at this period, arose from the power assumed by the bishops, (in manifest dereliction both of the canons of the church and the laws of the land,) of framing and enforcing Articles of Visitation in their own names. The Articles of Dr. Matthew Wren, bishop of Norwich, were among the most remarkable. They consisted of nearly nine hundred questions, some very insignificant, others highly tinctured with superstition, and several impossible to be answered. {104b} They appear to have been chiefly designed to detect such ministers as were not “perfect” conformists—inquiring minutely into the observance of the ceremonies, the reading of the Book of Sports, the practice of conversing upon religion at table, and in families, &c. {104c} By his severities this prelate drove upwards of three thousand persons to seek their bread in a foreign land. {104d} Among many who refused to read the Book of Sports, and otherwise disobeyed some of the bishop’s Articles, was Mr. William Bridge, who had been a fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and was parish chaplain of St. George’s, Tombland, Norwich. {105a} He was silenced, and afterwards excommunicated. The writ _de excommunicato capiendo_, having been issued against him, he withdrew into Holland. {105b} An Independent church of English refugees, at Rotterdam, chose him as their pastor, and, during his residence among them, he appears to have become firmly attached to the Congregational mode of church government. {105c}