estowed upon Parker, who
was more Catholic than Protestant, and that of Chester was given to a
sycophant of no character. James made no secret of his intentions to
restore the Catholic religion, and systematically labored to destroy
the Established Church. In order to effect this, he created a
tribunal, which not materially differed from the celebrated High
Commission Court of Elizabeth, and to break up which was one great
object of the revolutionists who brought Charles I. to the block--the
most odious court ever established by royal despotism in England. The
members of this High Commission Court, which James instituted to try
all ecclesiastical cases, were, with one or two exceptions,
notoriously the most venal and tyrannical of all his agents--Jeffreys,
the Chancellor; Crewe, Bishop of Durham; Sprat, Bishop of Rochester;
the Earl of Rochester, Lord Treasurer; Sunderland, the Lord President;
and Herbert, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. This court summoned
Compton, the Bishop of London, to its tribunal, because he had not
suspended Dr. Sharp, one of the clergy of London, when requested to do
so by the king--a man who had committed no crime, but simply
discharged his duty with fidelity. The bishop was suspended from his
spiritual functions, and the charge of his diocese was committed to
two of his judges. But this court, not content with depriving numerous
clergymen of their spiritual functions, because they would not betray
their own church, went so far as to sit in judgment on the two
greatest corporations in the land,--the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge,--institutions which had ever befriended the Stuart kings in
their crimes and misfortunes. James was infatuated enough to quarrel
with these great bodies, because they would not approve of his
measures to overturn the church with which they were connected, and
which it was their duty and interest to uphold. The king had commanded
Cambridge to bestow the degree of master of arts on a Benedictine
monk, which was against the laws of the University and of parliament.
The University refused to act against the law, and, in consequence,
the vice-chancellor and the senate, which consisted of doctors and
masters, were summoned to the Court of High Commission. The
vice-chancellor, Pechell, was deprived of his office and emoluments,
which were of the nature of freehold property. But this was not the
worst act of the infatuated monarch. He insisted on imposing a Roman
Ca