Parliament

For the duration of the Personal Rule, Cambridge was free from the unwelcome attentions of a suspicious Parliament and the consequent threat of impeachment. Wren, Cosin, Beale and their friends had never had it so good. Able to muster an effective majority in the Consistory Court room they enjoyed the benefits of power. Their confidence was high and they brought the beauty of holiness into their college chapels with a paintbrush dipped in gilt. For eleven years their opponents could only lick their wounds and complain. When Parliament did finally meet, however, the critics of this new divinity gathered the evidence of just what had been done in Cambridge. They made a long list.

So, the 1640s began with careful measurements of the progress that ‘Arminianism and Popery’ had made in the university. When the errors and abuses had been catalogued and charted and all the evidence was in, then battle was joined. The Short Parliament, of April 1640, was the herald of the coming crisis. Both Pym and Rous urged that Parliament address the matter of religion, and in particular to attend to the ‘innovations to prepare us to Poperie’. Their anxieties were numerous and wide-ranging, but it soon became clear that events at Cambridge were a cause of particular concern. Spurred on by the tireless Peter Smart, the attack on John Cosin was resumed and warrants were issued to bring him before the House of Commons. On 29 April it was agreed that the proposed conference with the House of Lords designed to discuss grievances would include an examination of the liturgical changes in churches and ‘University chapels’. Two days later the Commons heard about a sermon preached by William Beale in 1635. Beale had apparently suggested that: ‘the King might make laws without Parliament, and that the Parliament served the King as a man served an ape, gave him a bit and a knock’. The dissolution of Parliament on 5 May ought to have brought Cosin and Beale some relief. Beale, however, discovered that an anonymous opponent, whom he was anxious to identify, was prosecuting him through the High Commission.