approved of the refusal, yet after all, in some clandestine way, the candidate obtained an order for induction. This person, whom the Divines pronounced the most troublesome they ever had to do with, came to Thaxted Church, and insisted upon preaching. The sequestrators stood at the door of the desk to prevent his doing so; but the mayor and churchwarden espoused his cause, as did also the rabble of the parish. The latter assaulted the sequestrators, tore their hair, rent their neck-bands, and seized their hats and cloaks. "Let them alone," said the mayor, "and let the women decide the case." This fray in the parish church ended in the commitment of parson, mayor, and town-clerk to prison, "whence they were released on submission." This case gives us a curious insight into the local church politics of those days.[490] [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. Laud, the principal author of the evils which induced the revolution, remained a prisoner. He had become a helpless old man; and it would have been better for the Puritans had they checked their resentment, and suffered their vanquished enemy to linger out his days as a captive or an exile; but unfortunately they determined otherwise. The Scotch Commissioners had presented Articles against him in the House of Lords on December the 17th, 1640; and on the following day the Commons had resolved to accuse him of high treason.[491] In the following February, articles of accusation had been exhibited by the Commons, after which his case had been kept in abeyance for more than two years and a half. Though the idea of bringing him to trial had never been abandoned, mild views of his punishment had been entertained; for, in a newspaper published in May, 1643, it is stated that "the sending of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of Bishop Wren to New England had been agitated in the House, and that Parliament would not banish them without a trial."[492] In the opening of the year 1644, it was resolved that Laud should take his trial. [Sidenote: _Laud's Trial._] The trial lasted from March to July. The accused prelate received three or four days' notice of the time of his appearance, and of the particular articles which were to be alleged against him. From ten until one o'clock the managers of the prosecution stated their case and produced their evidence, when an adjournment followed till four o'clock in the afternoon. Then the prisoner made his defence, and one of the managers replied. The proceedings terminated between the hours of seven and eight, when the fatal boat moored at Westminster,--which had so often glided backwards and forwards on errands of vengeance,--returned with its grey-haired passenger to the archway of the Traitors' Gate.[493] [Sidenote: 1644.]