HAS TOLD THE KING.

183

again. Therefore to the moderation of your own heart, under the grace of God, I must and do now leave you for matter of religion; but retaining still with me, and entirely, all the love and friendliness which your worth won from me; well knowing, that all differences in opinion shake not the foundations of religion.

"Now to your Postscript, and then I have done. That I am the first and the only person to whom you have written thus freely: I thank you heartily for it. For I cannot conceive any thing thereby, but your great respect to me, which hath abundantly spread itself all over your Letter. And had you written this to me, with a restraint of making it further known, I should have performed that trust but since you have submitted it to me, what further knowledge of it I shall think fit to give to any other person; I have, as I took myself bound, acquainted his Majesty with it, who gave a great deal of very good expression concerning you, and is not a little sorry to lose the service of so able a subject. I have likewise made it known in private to Mr. Secretary Cook, who was as confident of you as myself. I could hardly believe your own Letters, and he as hardly my relation. To my

Secretary I must needs trust it, having not time to

write it again out of my scribbled copy; but I dare

184

WILL STILL BE HIS FRIEND.

trust the secresy in which I have bound him. To others I am silent, and shall so continue, till the thing open itself; and I shall do it out of reasons, very like to those which you give, why yourself would not divulge it here. In the last place, you promise yourself, that the condition you are in will not hinder me from continuing to be the best friend you have. To this I can say no more, than that I could never arrogate myself to be your best friend; but a poor, yet respected friend of yours I have been, ever since I knew you; and it is not your change, that can change me, who never yet left, but where. I was first forsaken; and not always there. So praying for God's blessing upon you, and in that way which He knows most necessary for you, I rest,

"Your very loving friend,

"To serve you in Domino,

66

LAMBETH, March 27, 1636.

"W: CANT:

"I have writ this Letter freely; I shall look upon all the trust that ever you mean to carry with me, that you shew it not, nor deliver any copy to any man. Nor will I look for any answer to the queries I have herein made. If they do you any good, I am glad; if not, yet I have satisfied myself. But leisure I have none, to write such Letters; nor

COULD QUOTE IF NECESSARY.

185

will I entertain a quarrel in this wrangling age; and now my strength is past. For all things of moment in this Letter, I have pregnant places in the Council of Trent, Thomas, Bellarmin, Stapleton, Valentia, etc. But I did not mean to make a volume of a Letter.

"Endorsed this with the Archbishop's own hand. March 27, 1636."

HIS preference in favour of a celibate clergy was very strong. "Ceteris paribus," he once said before the king at Woodstock, "he intended, in the exercise of his patronage, to prefer the single to the married." This statement was misinterpreted, but he dexterously contrived to avert the virulence of the misrepresentation by presiding a very short time after, at the marriage of a chaplain of his, Thomas Turner, in the Chapel of London House, to a daughter of Sir Francis Windebank, afterwards Secretary of State upon Laud's own recommendation. And to a certain extent he was undoubtedly right. No doubt a married clergy has preserved us from other evils so great as to demand any sacrifice; but, on the other hand, it is certain that a man who is bound not only to secure a living for himself but a provision for his family out of the Church revenues will not be likely, unless he has private

POSITION OF A MARRied clerGY. 187

sources of income, to spend the revenues of the Church in a single-hearted way. No one can find fault with the ancient system of putting vast sacred revenues into the hands of pious single men. They were expected to be munificently disposed of in a grand public way. It is only necessary to refer to the names William of Wykeham, Waynflete, and innumerable others to be assured of this; and great exception may justly be taken to the placing of these great trusts into the hands of family men. The huge fortunes wrung out of the Church into private hands, so characteristic of the last century, will have to be atoned for some time, and Laud's position is by no means an unreasonable one.

Everything at Lambeth was arranged on this principle. No womankind were allowed in the great establishment. And Laud himself seems to have carried it still further-he had no friendship with women; he had no natural inclination for feminine gentleness and the sweetness they add to life. Mrs. Maxwell, wife of the Black Rod, in whose house he was kept for nearly a year, confided to her gossips that he was the most pious soul she had ever seen, but that he was a silly fellow to talk to a woman.

Curiously enough this custom was maintained