Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

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HAMPTON COURT
too much — on the theological aspects of the Conference
which gives Hampton Court a claim to commemoration
in the history of the English Church;
but two points are enough to emphasise here. It
was this Conference which made it clear that, now
the Reformation struggle itself was over, the English
Church and its prelates and kings had no thought
of accepting any changes which should sever them
from the old order of the Catholic world. They
still followed the Fathers as well as the Bible, and in
ceremonies, as in doctrine, would not abandon the
old, nor be led into the new straitness of a grim
Genevan model. And if this point concerns historians
and divines, there is another which is worth
noting by the world at large. There is no theologian
more vociferous than your layman. Give
him free speech and he will never have done.
Learning and wit behind him, he will tell his clergy
their duty, and teach them their lesson with light
heart and long tongue. James delighted in the
Hampton Court Conference, for he could say his
best andhis utmost. And so, when men went away,it
was the King's sayings and doings they most thought
of. " No bishop, no king," — and the strange comparison
for the Presbyterian system, in which he had
been brought up, — and his last words, " If this be all
they have to say,Ishall make them conform themselves,
orIwill harry them out of the land, or else
do worse."
It was clear, when the Conference was over, that