In the course of the marriage negotiations with France James I. had pledged himself by a secret agreement to adopt a policy of toleration, and on his death the agreement was ratified more than once by his son and successor Charles I. (1625-1649). But Charles, though personally well disposed towards the Catholics, was not a man to consider himself bound by any obligations if the fulfilment of them should involve him in serious difficulties. At the time of his accession public opinion in England as reflected by Parliament was intensely hostile to toleration. On the one hand the Puritan party, who had grown considerably despite the repressive measures of Elizabeth and James I., was determined to bring the Church into line with Calvinism, while on the other hand a body of able and learned men within the Anglican Church itself longed for a closer approximation towards Catholic beliefs and practices. With both the Bible was still in a sense the sole rule of faith, but the Puritan party would have the Bible and nothing but the Bible, while the High Church men insisted that the Scriptures must be interpreted in the light of the traditional usages of the Christian world, and that in matters of doctrine and practices some jurisdiction must be conceded to the teaching authorities of the Church. The opponents of the latter stirred the people against them by raising the cry of Arminianism and Papistry, and by representing them as abettors of Rome and as hostile to the religious settlement that had been accomplished. As a result of this controversy, in which the king sided with Laud and the High Church party against the Presbyterians and Calvinists,[10] Parliament, which supported the Puritans, clamoured incessantly for the execution of the penal laws.
In the first Parliament, opened the day after Queen Henrietta's arrival in England (1625) a petition was presented to the king praying for the strict enforcement of the penal laws. Yielding to this petition Charles issued a proclamation ordering the bishops and officials to see that the laws were put into execution, but at the same time he took care to let it be known that the extraction of fines from the wealthy laymen and the imprisonment or transportation of priests would be more agreeable to him than the infliction of the death penalty. Louis XIII. and the Pope protested warmly against this breach of a solemn agreement. Charles replied that he had bound himself not to enforce the penal laws merely as a means of lulling the suspicions of Rome and of securing a dispensation for his marriage.[11] Still, though the queen's French household was dismissed, the king did everything he could to prevent the shedding of blood. The Parliamentarians, who were fighting for civil liberty for themselves, were annoyed that any measure of liberty should be conceded to their Catholic fellow-countrymen. They presented a petition to Charles at the very time they were safeguarding their own position by the Petition of Rights (1628) demanding that priests who returned to England should be put to death, and that the children of Catholic parents should be taken from their natural guardians and reared in the Protestant religion.[12] Charles defended his own policy of toleration on the ground that it was calculated to secure better treatment for Protestant minorities in other countries, yet at the same time he so far abandoned his policy of not shedding blood as to allow the death penalty to be inflicted on a Jesuit and a layman (1628).[13] So long however as he could secure money from the Catholics he was not particularly anxious about their religious opinions. Instead of the fines to which they had been accustomed, he compounded with them by agreeing not to enforce their presence at the Protestant service on condition that they paid an annual sum to be fixed by his commissioners according to the means of the individual recusants.
The appointment of a bishop to take charge of the English Mission (1623) did not unfortunately put an end to the regrettable controversies that divided the Catholic party. On the death of Dr.
Bishop, Dr. Richard Smith was appointed to succeed him (1625), and was consecrated in France. For a time after his arrival affairs moved smoothly enough, but soon a more violent controversy broke out regarding the respective rights and privileges of seculars and regulars, and the obligation on confessors of obtaining episcopal approbation. The dispute became public, and in a short time numerous pamphlets were published in England and in France by the literary champions of both parties. As the Puritans resented strongly the presence of a bishop in England, Dr. Smith was obliged to go into hiding, and ultimately made his escape to France, where he died in 1665. The Pope found it difficult to apportion the blame or to put an end to the strife, but an opportunity was afforded him of learning the facts of the case when an English agent deputed by the queen arrived in Rome (1633). In return Urban VIII. determined to send an envoy into England mainly to settle the controversy between the regulars and the seculars, but also to discover the real sentiments of the court and the country towards Rome. The person selected for this difficult work was Gregory Panzani,[14] an Oratorian, who arrived in England in 1634and had several interviews with the king and queen. Whatever might have been the hopes of inducing Laud and some of the leading bishops to consider the question of returning to the Roman allegiance, the main object the king had in view in permitting the residence of a papal envoy in London and in sending English agents to Rome was to secure the help of Urban VIII. for his nephew of the Palatinate, and especially to induce the Pope to favour a marriage between this nephew and the daughter of the King of Poland. Very little was obtained on either side by these negotiations, nor did the papal agents in England succeed in composing the differences between the clergy.