inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in
innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of
conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his
order, the bishops of several extensive dioceses were able to report to
him that not a single dissenter was to be found within their
jurisdiction.

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil
and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law,
holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were
scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less
ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of
courts the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two
centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these
courts in power and in infamy were the Star-chamber and the High
Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious, inquisition.
Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star-chamber
had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors.

The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of
Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed
when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the
violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament,
they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had
been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their
instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without
restraint. A separate council which sat at York, under the presidency of
Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative,
with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these
tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster hall, and
daily committed excesses which the most distinguished royalists have
warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a
man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the
harshness and greediness of the Star-chamber, that the High Commission
had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom,
and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a
dead letter on the north of the Trent.

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as
that of France. But that one point was all-i