James I. (reign, 1603-1625) told
them that he would harry them out of the kingdom unless they conformed to
the rites of the Established Church. His son and successor Charles I.
(reign, 1625-1649) called to his aid Archbishop Laud (1573-1645), a bigoted
official of that church. Laud hunted the dissenting clergy like wild
beasts, threw them into prison, whipped them in the pillory, branded them,
slit their nostrils, and mutilated their ears. JOHN COTTON, pastor of the
church of Boston, England, was told that if he had been guilty only of an
infraction of certain of the Ten Commandments, he might have been pardoned,
but since his crime was Puritanism, he must suffer. He had great trouble in
escaping on a ship bound for the New England Boston.
[Illustration: JOHN COTTON]
Professor Tyler says: "New England has perhaps never quite appreciated its
great obligations to Archbishop Laud. It was his overmastering hate of
nonconformity, it was the vigilance and vigor and consecrated cruelty with
which he scoured his own diocese and afterward all England, and hunted down
and hunted out the ministers who were committing the unpardonable sin of
dissent, that conferred upon the principal colonies of New England their
ablest and noblest men.
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