POLITICAL HISTORY 



might be counted on to favour their religious convictions. Never, however, 

 were any people more mistaken than those who anticipated that King James 

 would smile upon the Puritan party ; and it was the bitter disappointment of 

 these Puritan expectations which ultimately brought about the alienation of 

 the Lancashire Puritans from the House of Stuart. 



The Stuarts were as lacking in political sagacity as the Tudors were 

 conspicuous for that very quality. Doubtless James I received the adulatory 

 address presented to him on his accession by the Lancashire gentry in the 

 same spirit of overweening confidence which proved the ruin of his son. It 

 would appear that though the majority of them were strong Protestants, many 

 of the gentlemen who now testified their loyalty to the king's person were 

 either ' conformed recusants ' or the sons and heirs of recusants." But the 

 Gunpowder Treason of November, 1605, gave a great blow to the king's 

 tolerance of Roman Catholics, and though they had no concern in it a list of 

 Lancashire recusants was, after the discovery of the plot, forwarded at once 

 to the Privy Council." Legislation was enforced to secure the attendance of 

 ' conformed recusants ' at church, and once a year at sacrament,*^ and in 1 6 1 2 

 the Lancashire recusants were deprived of their arms. 



As for the Puritans, their hopes, though raised at first, were subsequently 

 dashed by the king's public denouncement of them and their doctrines. 

 Returning through Lancashire from his visit to Scotland, in 16 17, the king 

 stayed, as is well known, at Hoghton Tower, where he was most royally 

 entertained for three days by Sir Richard Hoghton, assisted by the neigh- 

 bouring gentry. While there he received a petition praying for the removal 

 of the restrictions imposed by the late queen's commissioners for the strict 

 keeping of the Sabbath. The king not merely granted it, but subsequently 

 issued a proclamation '' in which he observed 



That in his progress through Lancashire he found it necessary to rebuke some Puritans 

 and precise people and took order that the said unlawful carriage should not be used by any 

 of them hereafter, in the prohibiting and unlawfully punishing of his good people for using 

 their lawful recreations and honest exercises upon Sundays after service.*' 



In this ' Book of Sports ' as the proclamation was called, the king remarked 

 that he had found two kinds of people in Lancashire — Papists and Puritans. 

 With regard to the latter he observed that he had given orders to the bishop of 

 the diocese to deal with all Puritans and Precisians in the county, and constrain 

 them either to conform or to leave the country. 



As by this ordinance no one was permitted to indulge in Sunday 

 sports who had not previously attended divine service according to the rites 

 of the Church of England, it followed that all recusants were excluded 

 from the benefit of the concession, and those who were included against 

 their will had to see the sanctity of the Sabbath violated before their eyes. 

 Thus the king outraged the feelings of the better class and more sober 

 portion of the Protestant population in order to pander to the tastes of 

 the rabble, and without affording any pleasure to the Roman Catholics, 

 who were expressly excluded from participating in the Sunday revels 



" Lanes. Lieutenancy, pt. ii, 250, note. " Cal. S.P. Dom. 1603-10, p. 264. 



•' Stat, of the Realm, 3 Jas. I, cap. 4 (1605). 



" 24 May, 1 6 1 8. «" Book of Sports. ' 



229 



