INTRODUCTORY. 9 



and he did what few renegades dare to do. His Irish policy 

 was to further the Protestant interest, and he gave vitality 

 and endurance to the interest which he favoured. His 

 English policy was to use the Irish Catholic interest as 

 a tool to destroy English liberties. But I know nothing 

 more tragic than the silent courage with which he sacrificed 

 himself, when his utterances would have been ruinous to that 

 king who gave him up to his enemies. His only complaint 

 was his dying counsel, * Put not your trust in princes.' The 

 loyalty of the seventeenth century is the most incompre- 

 hensible fact in human history. It is exhibited in the most 

 incomprehensible form in the case of Straffbrd. But love is 

 always more unintelligible than hatred. 



The character of Laud is much more complex and difficult. 

 The extraordinary and enduring influence which this person 

 has had on the religious life of England, apart from the 

 facts of his own career, convinces me that the caricature 

 which Macaulay has drawn of him is not only a wrong to 

 the man, but an affront to all historic conscience. The 

 vitality of an individual career cannot be neutralised, much 

 less nullified, by the discovered follies of private life. I 

 have seen and handled the diary which Prynne saw and 

 handled ; but without his vindictive and retaliatory impulses. 

 I can wonder that Laud was so supremely silly, and withal 

 was so persistently influential. Of course at that time all 

 men believed in omens, even Charles in the sartes Virgilianac, 

 \ Cromwell in his lucky day. During the vigour of Cal- 

 vinism, men were born with predestination in their blood, and 

 assigned the function of natural selection and the survival 

 of the fittest to God, who revealed Himself by the most 

 unlikely agents. And Calvinist predestination affected those 

 who disliked it. 



I am disposed to believe that Laud came into power and 



influence at a time when men were resenting and resisting 



on which the second English reformation wrafl 



rounded. Cranmcr's, the first, was essentially Lutheran ; 



