Attack on Lambeth Palace, 1640
He was also distrusted for seemingly advocating High Church Anglicanism, possibly being a crypto-Papist, and for his support of Charles I's unpopular Queen, the Catholic Henrietta Maria.
In 1629 the king, Charles I had married the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, who had sworn to Pope Urban VIII that she would actively aid the restoration of Catholicism in England.
He believed in High Anglicanism, a sacramental version of the Church of England, theologically based upon Arminianism, a creed shared with his main political adviser, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.
[3][4] High church Anglicanism was seen as effectively crypto-Catholicism by the suspicious[5]—indeed, he had been called "the Pope of Lambeth" around Southwark inns[6]—and hence threatened a return to popery.
In 1628 a London crowd—termed a mob by the Victorian historian S. R. Gardiner[8]—had murdered the Duke of Buckingham's physician[9] and in 1634, riots broke out on the pillorying of William Prynne, a religious radical.
The same mob regularly slandered the Queen,[1] both for her Catholicism and alleged profligacy: for example, it was asserted that Charles gave her £1,000 a week, which "the poore Subbiects p[ai]d".
[11] Marches of apprentices were possibly spontaneous, but may have been surreptitiously organised by men such as John Pym, a leading parliamentarian and radical.
[6] Graffiti referencing Laud was found on the walls of the Royal Exchange against the "bishop's devils",[21] which called upon "all Gentleman Prentises yt desire to kill the B[isho]p".
[18] The dissolution of parliament has increased the irritation of the people here to such an extent that, throwing off all restraint, they have not hesitated to break into open revolt against the present government.
Last Saturday several placards appeared in the most conspicuous parts of the city urging every class to preserve their ancient liberty and chase the bishops from the kingdom, as pernicious men; inviting them to meet on the Monday in fields near by to secure in union the death of many leading ministers, reputed enemies of the commonweal.
Accordingly on that day two thousand men assembled at the appointed place supplied with weapons and with drums beating proceeded in a riotous manner to the archbishop's house with the purpose of slaying him.
Being warned of his peril a few hours before, he fled secretly to the palace leaving armed men to defend his house from the insolence of the rioters.
It appears the crowd originally gathered outside the palace gates, and claimed to want only to ask Laud "but one civil question": whether it was, indeed, he who was responsible for the dissolution of parliament.
A contemporary described the events of the night of 11 May and Laud's escape: This eveninge a drum was beat up in Southwarke & Charge given to the trayne bond there to guard the Archb[isho]ps house.
People south of the river were prevented from travelling to the city and boats were kept ready to transport troops to the area at short notice.
Vagrancy was made punishable by arrest, the city watch was doubled, and a militia force took up residency in St George's Fields.
A Northamptonshire lawyer, Robert Woodford wrote that "we hear of diverse other libels, and the state of things in the Kingdome is very doubtfull and uncertaine'.
It was said that on 14 May another crowd—substantially bigger than that of three nights earlier, estimated at between 5,000 and 8,000 people—assembled at Blackheath, while the Venetian Ambassador reported that a mob of 7,000 had destroyed the palace as they had threatened.
Walter argues that this escalation of popular threats to anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic targets illustrates the degree to which the Short Parliament's dissolution was seem as a papist plot.
[26] In 1682, the Tory pamphleteer and clergyman, John Nalson, in what Walter calls his "anything but"[19] Impartial Collection argues that "the Rabble" intended to make the archbishop "the Sacrifice of their Rage could they have got him into their Power", while erl of Clarendon believed they openly stated their intention to dismember Laud.
Londoners, says Walter, "angrily celebrated on the streets"; Laud himself complained how the mob "followed me with clamour and revilings even beyond barbarity itself".
[5] Benstead's death was later eulogised by an anomymous pamphleteer in the Mercuries Message Defended of 1641, as a satirical example of Laud's charity: That he was indeed, to cut off mens ears, and damne them to perpetuall imprisonment for speaking two or three angry words against his lawne sleeves and rochet, but how strangely was the body of his charity divided, when he hung it up in quarters upon four severall gates, and stucke the head [of Benstead] on London-bridge?
[43][44] The attack on Lambeth Palace has often been seen, since Gardiner proposed it in the 19th century, as exemplifying the political crises that Charles's Personal rule had led to.
