Presence in the Sacrament, or
prayers for the dead. One prelate, Montagu, was in heart a convert to
Rome. Another, Goodman, died acknowledging himself a Papist. Meanwhile
Laud was indefatigable in his efforts to raise the civil and political
status of the clergy to the point which it had reached ere the fatal
blow of the Reformation fell on the priesthood. Among the archives of
his see lies a large and costly volume in vellum, containing a copy of
such records in the Tower as concerned the privileges of the clergy. Its
compilation was entered in the Archbishop's diary as one among the
"twenty-one things which I have projected to do if God bless me in
them," and as among the fifteen to which before his fall he had been
enabled to add his emphatic "done." The power of the Bishops' Courts,
which had long fallen into decay, revived under his patronage. In 1636
he was able to induce the king to raise a prelate, Juxon, Bishop of
London, to the highest civil post in the realm, that of Lord High
Treasurer. "No Churchman had it since Henry the Seventh's time," Laud
comments proudly. "I pray God bless him to carry it so that the Church
may have honour, and the State service and content by it. And now, if
the Church will not hold up themselves, under God I can do no more."

[Sidenote: Laud and ritual.]

And as Laud aimed at a more Catholic standard of doctrine in the clergy,
so he aimed at a nearer approach to the pomp of Catholicism in public
worship. His conduct in his own house at Lambeth brings out with
singular vividness the reckless courage with which he threw himself
across the religious instincts of a time when the spiritual aspect of
worship was overpowering in most minds its aesthetic and devotional
sides. Men noted as a fatal omen an accident which marked his first
entry into Lambeth; for the overladen ferry-boat upset in the passage of
the river, and though the horses and servants were saved, the
Archbishop's coach remained at the bottom of the Thames. But no omen,
carefully as he might note it, brought a moment's hesitation to the
bold, narrow mind of the new Primate. His first act, he boasted, was the
setting about a restoration of his chapel; and, as Laud managed it, his
restoration was a simple undoing of all that had been done there by his
predecessors since the Reformation. With characteristic energy he aided
with his own hands in the replacement of the painted glass in its
windows, and racked his wits in piecin