By these he was
regarded with increasing intensity as the one disturbing force with
which no understanding was possible and no settled order consistent. To
remove him out of the way appeared, even to those who had no thought of
punishing him for past offences, to be the only possible road to peace
for the troubled nation."
The religious issues of the great struggle, however, were by no means so
simple. Episcopacy, as it had existed, had few supporters in England
outside the ranks of the bishops. The Laudian coercion had not only
reawakened slumbering animosities and given renewed vigour to the
Puritan dislike of the forms and ceremonies of the Anglican Church, but
had served to fill men's minds with a healthy, vigorous, and deep-rooted
distrust of ecclesiastical government in any form. To any claims,
whether of kings or of bishops or of presbyters, to rule by Divine
right, the ear of the nation was temporarily closed. If Protestants of
all shades of opinions had learned to distrust Episcopacy, intellectual
men of all shades of religious beliefs, and of none, equally distrusted
Presbyterianism, and feared that the free play of intellectual life
would be as much endangered by the rule of the presbyters as by the
rule of the bishops. We should, however, do well to remember that at the
outbreak of the war most of the great Parliamentary leaders, including
Pym, Hampden, and even Cromwell, had no deep-rooted objection to
Episcopacy as a form of Church government, provided only that it was
controlled by Parliament, and allowed the fullest possible liberty of
conscience.
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