The deep-rooted attachment of Charles for the Anglican Church drew him into bonds of close sympathy with Wentworth’s friend, Laud, who about the same time, was raised to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Laud was a man honest of conviction, pure in intention, but unconciliatory of speech, and narrow in his theological views. His intolerance of dissent from the Church of England was rigid, whether in the direction of Puritanism or of Romanism. This fixity of purpose was little understood in his own day, either by Papist or by Puritan, and perhaps not even by his greatest admirers; so little comprehended by the Romanists, that the Pope was deluded into offering him a cardinal’s hat. Laud established his theory of canonical guidance and of church rule solely upon the Prayer Book, carrying out its directions in the spirit and the rubric, and finding in these neither ambiguity nor elasticity; and he imposed upon all his clergy a rigorous adherence to the ritual and ceremonial of the Anglican Church, as he understood it. Many refused this, and were punished as contumacious, being deprived of their cures; and when the people crowded to hear the preaching of these “confessors”—for as such they were regarded—to Gospel truth in its purity, all expounding or preaching was forbidden them. While Laud denounced the excess, as he regarded it, of ecclesiastical ceremony conducted in the private chapel of the Queen, he offended the greater part of his own flock, clergy and lay alike, by the pomp and ceremonial which he introduced into the public services of the Church of England. Possibly no servant of the Anglican Church ever grasped more entirely than Laud the real spirit and tendency of Anglican doctrine; and, had he lived in a later time, his sphere and mission would have been widely acknowledged. As it was, though the few regarded his death as a martyrdom, the multitude rejoiced at the removal of such a stumbling-block in the path of the true spiritual seeker. Music and vesture and change of posture in the Lord’s house were choking husks, to be cast into the fire, and the advocates of these “mummeries” to be as summarily disposed of as might be. The mistake of Laud was in imposing outward observations of religion upon persons who had long discarded the self-denials and practices of the early Christians. Laud might and did closely abide by such rules himself, but they were less easily accepted by the general herd of professing churchmen, who had no mind for too much self-discipline: and hence the charge of pharisaism and needless austerities against the ritualist Laud and his disciples. The accusation of his papistical leanings holds good no further than that Laud, in common with many upright and charitably thinking Christians of all sects and nations, regretted the divisions among the followers of Christ, and strove to mould his teaching by a spirit which might one day develop a stronger desire for the unity of Christendom.